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Below is our recent interview with Nicolas Miachon, CMO at Upfluence:
Q: Can you tell us something about Upfluence and the idea that started it all?
A: Upfluence was conceived by necessity. Fresh out of college, CEO Vivien Garnès and co-founder Kevin Creusy were struggling to sell men’s neckties on their first e-commerce site. Despite strong SEO and SEM efforts, nothing was working (and they had boxes of ties crowding their living rooms.)
Their last ditch effort was influencer marketing. It was incredible! Bloggers could move product faster than any other method and as soon as they had cleared the entire stock of ties, they decided to put their newfound knowledge to the test and start an influencer marketplace.
Turns out influencer marketing was just about to go big.
While marketplaces sufficed in the beginning, there was a lot of room to develop in this new space. The economy of influence was growing at a rapid pace: Marketers were going to need tools to take advantage of this new strategy.
That’s when in 2016, Upfluence launched its SaaS offer which has catapulted Upfluence into a period of growth unlike anything the industry has ever seen. Since launching the software, Upfluence has experienced stable double-digit monthly revenue increase, satisfied over 500 clients, and become one of the leading influencer marketing platforms in the world.
This year Upfluence was named in the top 10% of INC’s 5,000 fastest growing American companies!
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Q: How does influencer marketing differ from other marketing forms? What are the pros and cons?
A: Influencer marketing is when influencers use their influence to broadcast a brand message for marketing purposes.
The first pro that often comes to mind is the fact that influencers have lot’s of followers.
It’s true that they increase the visibility of content in a saturated environment compromised by the use of Adblock. impending sanctions on using consumer data, and algorithms that favor user content.
But you’re not only reaching a larger audience with influencers, you’re reaching a more receptive one.
Ask yourself: Are you more likely to consider a product after you’ve read an engaging review from a trusted source, or a pop up? Are you trying to watch the YouTube video or the paid ad beforehand?
People want to see influencer content, that’s why they’re following them. They value their recommendations. It differs from other forms of marketing in that there is a trusted personality delivering that message.
In a modern age in which we are consuming HOURS of content every day via social media, this is the most human way to reach people.
Of course, leveraging human interactions has its cons: they’re not like programmatic ads, they’re people. There’s some level of bargaining involved, there can be issues of off-brand communication, the impact of communications is harder to measure.
Though, at Upfluence, we create technology to maximize the benefits associated with influencer marketing and minimize human error (on the influencers and the marketers part.)
Q: How would you say your offering is better than competitors that would offer a similar service?
A: Short answer, Upfluence’s influencer marketing is powered by technology.
Long answer, Upfluence differentiates from competitors by offering the widest range of features and the highest caliber of analytics available in the industry. In practice, this manifests in the following ways:
· Upfluence software offers the largest and most diverse independent database of influencers on the market. It does this by aggregating millions of profiles from seven different platforms to provide access to more than 1.2 million influencers in 150 countries.
· Upfluence’s trademark search engine uses quantitative and qualitative search criteria that allow clients to identify influencers with an unmatched level of precision. For example, one can perform a search for “Food influencers with more than 45k Instagram followers and an engagement rate of +7%, who speak English, that are located in Texas and which are popular with women aged 30 and up.” or “Fortnight influencers with more than 20k subscribers on Twitch that are popular with American male youth.” This level of granularity accounts for the complex nature of influence: it can be micro, it can vary based on niche, it can vary based on age group, and it’s never static.
· Which brings us to analytics: Upfluence has detailed analytic reports (that are updated daily) for every single influencer in the database. It’s proprietary algorithms can show you an influencer’s follower demographics, historical performance rates, fake follower analysis, public contact information, and so much more.
· Upfluence software is truly global. Clients can run as many campaigns as they want, whenever they want, in any country they choose, thanks to our language agnosticism and the sheer size of the database.
· Upfluence software comes with dozens of other tools such as internal mailing, influencer listing, campaign management dashboard with content review, real-time social listening reports, internal notifications, and a global payments platform. While these are considered “the staples” of influencer marketing tech, Upfluence is always pioneering new solutions like AI-assisted influencer recommendations and machine learning to stay ahead of the curve.
· All of these things are what make Upfluence the first true “all-in-one” SaaS for influencer marketing. Marketers can launch a campaign in minutes, streamline the workflow, scale results, and profit.
· Finally, our clients are a testament to the quality of this product. It is used by some of the biggest PR agencies in the world (OMD, Publicis, Havas) to conduct influencer marketing campaigns for their clients.
Q: You have recently raised $3,6M could you tell us more about your recent funding round?
A: Sure, Upfluence is a French-American startup so our Series A round received significant backing from French tech investors: notably, ISAI, the investment group that funded the first French “unicorn” BlaBlaCar, along with additional participation from French Partners. We’re excited to welcome Thierry Vandewalle, venture partner at ISAI, to Upfluence’s board of directors. His strategic experience in marketing and communications (Former MD at Publicis) will be a huge asset to Upfluence as we scale. France has become a veritable startup nation and we’re proud to work with some of the most elite entrepreneurs the country has to offer as we continue our global expansion.
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Q: How do you see the future of Upfluence?
A: Upfluence is a uniquely data-driven and tech-backed platform which is rare in this space. The recent funding has shown however that we’re headed in the right direction. Our dedication to analytics is already paying off in an age in which bot fraud and poor tracking plague the industry. In the very near future, Upfluence’s transition to SaaS will only become more advantageous as companies require tools to market in-house.
If we continue to play our cards right, the future of Upfluence and the future of influencer marketing will advance hand in hand. We believe tech has the potential to bring greater transparency and efficiency to the industry as a whole. We have a lot in store for the next year but it all boils down to smarter technology. With our platform, Upfluence can help advertisers turn influencer marketing into a highly profitable, stable, and reliable acquisition channel.
Last Updated on January 1, 2019
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