How To Connect Social Media Influencers With Brands That Fit

Written by Clive Reffell

Influencer marketing is a hot topic. How big do you think the creator economy is? In 2023, an estimated $1.25 trillion will change hands through Social Commerce, and social media influencers will help sell products worth billions of dollars online. Influencer marketing is the fastest growing area of eCommerce, and 4 in 10 brands currently use influencer marketing. Financial services and consumer packaged goods are leading the way. The stats come from Because I Love It – BILI – which is a social commerce platform that simplifies the process of connecting influencers with brands that are a good authentic fit.?

BILI helps social media influencers and brand-owners find each other to create profitable relationships. It is run by co-founder and CEO Adrian Capobianco, and headquartered in Toronto, Canada.??

Brand-owners can access BILI’s database of 10,000 social media influencers and content creators in North America, who between them reach over 230 million followers, and connect with the ones who give them access to their selected target audiences. From the other side, influencers take advantage of BILI’s eco-system to access brand partners that are ready to share profits, and they can build new revenue streams through commissions and bonuses payable for influencer marketing.?

We were very pleased to recently catch up with Wendy Bairos, Head of Communications at BILI, and she shared her insights into the business of connecting influencers with the right brands.

Wendy, in a crowded market, what sets “BILI – Because I Love It” apart from other similar platforms?

Adrian Capobianco‘s background is in leading a number of advertising agencies, and my own is in public relations, including 12 years at Google. We’ve all seen a lot of stories about the growing number of social media creators who are really making a lot of money, notably on the celebrity side. However, like many of our friends, we realized that we weren’t necessarily following these large creators. We were finding greater value through engaging with smaller, mid-sized and also really niche creators. We ran a survey, and found that this seemed to be the case across the board.?

Many of these smaller creators didn’t have agents, and didn’t know where or how to start monetizing what they were doing. At the same time, as media is becoming increasingly fragmented, a lot of brand-owners are trying to identify the creators that like their brands in order to use them as sales channels. So we thought if we could create a network where they can connect with each other, the social media creators could get a percentage of every sale. The brands can afford to pay for their influencer marketing because they achieve added sales without dealing with standard retailers, where they pay out large percentages of markups.?

“Our vision is a world where every influencer and creator can become a retailer.”

We first tested the pet category, and have since grown to 10 categories. We have a network of over 10,000 creators, and the list of brands participating continues to grow weekly. It’s really about connecting this mid-market where there is tremendous value and where there are a lot of customers, to deliver a win-win commerce opportunity for brands and also for the social media creators.?

How does BILI curate and select the products and brands featured in your platform?

We produce a catalog of products and the creators themselves are the ones that curate the products that they love, that they think make sense for their audience and align with the content that they’re sharing. Our platform is a place where they can find those products more easily.?

As new brands or new products come on board we share some of the sales stats in our creator or influencer newsletter to see if anyone’s interested in getting behind them. But the beauty of BILI is the influencers curate their own store themselves, putting together a unique collection of products that they love.

Here is more https://crowdsourcingweek.com/blog/connect-influencers-with-brands/

#crowdweek #crowdsourcingweek #socialmedia #brands