The Impact of ChatGPT on Influencer Marketing

Have you tried influencer marketing? Have you found it overwhelming? Well, there may just be a solution to that now: ChatGPT. Yes, I’m talking about “that viral AI thing” that everyone’s obsessed with because it feels like it can do pretty much anything you ask it to. Well, it turns out that includes its ability to increase the influencer capabilities of your team. But before we get into that, let’s make sure we’re on the same page.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is simply a marketing strategy that leverages both the audience and creative talents of influencers to create and distribute content. This approach leverages the influencers’ credibility and reach to enhance brand visibility and drive consumer engagement. 

Over the past few years, influencer marketing has grown into a $21 billion industry. It’s most effective for reaching target audiences, particularly among younger demographics, who value the authenticity and recommendations of influencers they already follow. Brands can tap into influencers’ established trust with their followers, creating a more organic and personalized approach to marketing that resonates with consumers and influences their purchasing decisions.

Influencer Marketing and ChatGPT

So, what happens when you pair a strategy like influencer marketing with a tool like ChatGPT? Magic, right? Well, it turns out it depends on who is using it and how they’re doing so.

While influencer marketing has been around in its current state for over 15 years, it’s still an ever-evolving landscape. And compared with more traditional marketing channels, it’s still in its infancy. For those who don’t fully understand influencer marketing, it can feel like a daunting and risky option. The same can be said for the use of AI. Leveraging the two together strategically may seem like an insurmountable task.

But the reality is, using ChatGPT for influencer marketing can be exactly what you need to reach your target audience in an authentic and meaningful way. 

Impact of ChatGPT on Each Step of Campaign Execution

Our influencer marketing campaigns at NP Digital usually consist of eight steps: 

Pitching

Sourcing

Outreach

Contracting

Drafting & Approvals

Publication Monitoring

Payments

Reporting

While some of these steps inherently require a human touch, you can automate many of them in part or in whole. That’s where our trusty companion, ChatGPT, comes in. But how does ChatGPT impact each of these stages individually? How can you use ChatGPT in the most impactful way possible? 

Let me break down for you what I’ve found works best.

Pitching: ChatGPT Can Help You To Create The Best Pitch For Different Influencer Campaigns

Every influencer campaign starts with a pitch. We all know the struggle that can occur trying to dedicate time in the day to simply sit down and think about solid ideas to bring to your manager or client. Well, ChatGPT can help ignite that spark of creativity you need for your influencer campaign strategy. 

For instance, I’ve previously asked ChatGPT, “What are some specific and inventive campaign ideas for how Adobe can use influencer marketing to promote software downloads?” You can see in the image below that ChatGPT responded with ideas for types of influencers to target, campaign angles, and implementation suggestions.

Of course, I always exercise my editor’s eye to cherry-pick the most fitting ideas for our clients. But hey, ChatGPT is here to provide us with a treasure trove of thought starters, arming us with solid inspiration. 

Once you’ve decided what you are going to pitch, you’ll need to communicate your brilliant ideas to your team, clients, and potential influencers. At the moment, you likely pitch your campaigns using a PowerPoint presentation. One deck alone can take hours of planning, writing, designing, and presenting. Thanks to the AI revolution, tools like SlidesGPT have emerged, instantly conjuring up tailor-made PowerPoint presentations at your command.

In fact, Microsoft has even injected the powers of ChatGPT right into PowerPoint with Microsoft 365 Copilot! This useful feature is accessible across many Microsoft applications, including PowerPoint, and enables seamless AI-generated slide creation. It recently became publicly available to Windows 11 users. So, head on over and give it a try if that’s you!

Sourcing: Use ChatGPT And Auto-GPT To Help You Identifying The Correct Influencers To Engage

Sourcing, the act of identifying the correct influencers to engage with, is a heavily manual and painstakingly slow process. I typically source at least 10 times the number of influencers I’m looking to work with to give myself a few to pick from in the end. For instance, if I’m looking to work with 10 influencers, I’ll reach out to 100. I’d expect about 50 to respond, approximately 30 to be interested, and 15 to be in budget. Then, from those 15, my client gets to pick the 10 they ultimately want to proceed with. 

That being said, sourcing so many influencers obviously takes a whole lot of time. So, of course, it’s hard to resist the allure of ChatGPT as a tool to automate influencer sourcing. But while it does hold some potential, there are a few quirks you should understand. 

For example, you may type in “Who are the top 15 tech TikTok influencers today?” and ChatGPT would respond with a neat list of influencers. Amazing! We’ve just saved hours of searching! Or have we? 

ChatGPT’s knowledge base currently cuts off at September 2021, so the information it provides may lack accuracy and current data. In fact, I’ve seen ChatGPT literally conjure up usernames of non-existent influencers when I ask it for a list. Quite the trickster, isn’t it?

But don’t lose hope just yet—there are ways to maneuver around these hurdles. Enter ChatGPT Plus, available at a reasonable $20/month, granting you access to real-time data. 

Alternatively, if you possess a knack for backend development and coding, there’s an open-source gem called Auto-GPT. This marvelous resource also utilizes the internet for real-time data.  

Auto-GPT talks to OpenAI’s API to carry out requested tasks. Its main mission is to follow commands generated by the AI. Those tech-savvy enough can clone the project and run it locally on their computer to unlock a world of possibilities. But before it gets down to business, you have to give it a name, role, and objective using a terminal. 

Let’s say you name it Influencer-GPT and its role is to find the absolute best finance TikTok influencers out there. The objective? To scour TikTok and locate those creators. Behind the scenes, Auto-GPT uses all kinds of features, like memory management and the powerful GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, for tasks like generating text, storing files, and summarizing information to carry out whatever objective you give it.

With real-time data, influencer sourcing assistance with ChatGPT Plus or other options could be a real timesaver. But given the limitations, one of your team’s influencer experts will still need to look over what ChatGPT sends your way, select the ideal influencers, and potentially add in some supplementary profiles. (i.e., ChatGPT may present you with 100 profiles, you pick the top 15, and then you go find five more on your own to hit your goal of 20 influencers.)

So, whether you opt for ChatGPT Plus or explore the realms of Auto-GPT, it’s possible to streamline your influencer sourcing to acquire current and relevant data.

Outreach: Another Place We Can Use ChatGPT For Influencer Marketing

Once you have a list of at least 10 times the number of influencers you’re looking to work with for the campaign, it’s time to move onto the phase of reaching out to them and crafting the perfect email that captures their attention. You need to master the art of informative but concise communication. Here’s another place we can use ChatGPT for influencer marketing. 

First up will be invitation emails. These initial messages hold great importance, as influencers need to understand both your expectations and what you’re offering them. Don’t make the email too long or the important data too hard to find, as the influencers simply won’t read it in that case. You can see in the prompt shown below that I always make sure to give ChatGPT a word count limit and tell it to speak in a casual tone.

Additionally, I always include a creative brief in my initial outreach email. This simple document provides a succinct and digestible overview of what the campaign will look like. Our briefs are one-pagers that include the following:

The Brand: Ask ChatGPT to take a stab at describing the brand. You can also check the brand’s site for a description on its about page or its Wikipedia description.

The Campaign: Write out a sentence or two about what this specific campaign is trying to achieve—e.g., spreading awareness about a specific product, promoting a publication, general brand awareness, etc.

Incentives: This is where you’d note if the influencers are being paid, if you’re sending them a gifted product, etc.

Agreement: This section might say something along the lines of “By agreeing to join the campaign, you are committed to respecting [your brand]’s Statement of Work and Independent Contractor Agreement.”

Deliverables: This will be the biggest and most important section because it outlines content specifications, brand social accounts, campaign hashtags, the campaign landing page, and due dates.

Do’s: If there’s anything you want to note to the influencers that isn’t already included in the deliverables section, it’ll be included as a “do” bullet point.

Don’ts: I always include notes about how influencers shouldn’t post any offensive content about the client or NP Digital, tag or mention other brands, or post any blurred content. You can include any additional restrictions you’d like here as well.

Creative Inspiration: This is a visual representation of what the content should look like. I like to pull in images from the brand’s website, brand social pages, or from stock photo sites such as Unsplash.

Post-Campaign Expectations: In this section, I note that the influencers should send over a copy of their video file as well as their performance analytics after the post has been live for seven days. This helps when building out the campaign report.

The brief could be simple text written out and bulleted on a Microsoft Word document. However, that tends to come across as unprofessional. So, that’s when a lot of people would default to tools such as InDesign to build out a branded and well-designed version of the document.

But, if fancy design tools aren’t your forte, Canva is at your service. This user-friendly platform is perfect for creating beautiful briefs—especially with the help of Magic Write, its AI text generator powered by OpenAI. So, if you ever find yourself stuck on what to include in your brief, an AI suggestion is just a click away.

With ChatGPT assisting you in crafting compelling invitation emails and Canva’s Magic Write igniting your creativity, you’re well on your way to capturing the attention of your ideal influencers. 

Contracting: Ask ChatGPT To Create A Contract For An Influencer Campaign

Contracting can be a complicated and time-consuming process. But while every campaign is different—and you should always seek approval from a lawyer or your legal department—ChatGPT can get you off the ground much faster by drafting a template contract.

For example, you could prompt ChatGPT with something like, “Please create a contract for an influencer campaign between @influencer and Client. The contract should specify that the influencer must publish 1 TikTok video with a link in his/her bio for 5-days, in exchange for $X from Client. Don’t forget to mention that Client will have the rights to the content and include an exclusivity clause for 7 days prior and 30 days post-publication.”  

In just a few seconds, ChatGPT conjures up the text for a contract. At this point, all you need to do is give it a thorough review, format it appropriately, and seek approval from your legal team.

Once your contract template is generated and given the green light, it’s time for the grand finale—mail merging! Simply provide ChatGPT with a table of influencers, fees, and any other pertinent information you want to include. Watch as ChatGPT seamlessly merges this data into the template, transforming it into a personalized contract for each influencer.

Drafting and Approvals

Once your selected influencers have signed their contracts, they’ll begin creating their content. Beyond the guidelines you’ve provided them with up to this point, the direction and style of the content is entirely up to them and what they think their audience will respond best to. 

Typically, you can expect them to do an incredible job. However, I’ve worked with many companies that have very particular guidelines and want to have complete control over how their brand is being represented. So, in that case, you’ll want to make sure the influencer sends over a copy of their content before publishing, and even sometimes a script before filming.

ChatGPT can assist influencers in drafting scripts and creating captions. Tools like Descript can even transform long-form content into bite-sized videos that dramatically amplify the reach of content with minimal additional effort. In fact, some mega-influencers, such as Casey Neistat, have embraced ChatGPT-powered influencer technology as a standalone content creation strategy.

Additionally, platforms such as Rev.com or Descript can quickly convert finished videos back into text, so your team can review a written script. That script can even be pasted into ChatGPT so you can automatically analyze it for brand mentions or negative keywords that need to be removed. All of this together can ensure that the content aligns with your vision while maintaining an authentic touch.

Reporting: How To Combine SlidesGPT And ChatGPT For Your Report-Building Pleasure

We all know that creating reports can be a daunting task, especially when it involves crafting 20-25 slides highlighting positive results for your client or manager. But ChatGPT once again saves the day here.

Remember those tools we mentioned that could help with the pitch presentation—SlidesGPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot? They’re like trusty sidekicks that can jump in again and help you get a head start on creating the report. While you’ll still need to add your personal touch and decide on the exact data and formatting you want, the AI will give you a helping hand. 

But that’s not all! When it’s time to gather those oh-so-important results for your report, both Auto-GPT and ChatGPT Plus, armed with internet access, can effortlessly pull in metrics from influencers’ posts. Just provide them with links, and they’ll work their magic, organizing everything into a neat and tidy table for your report-building pleasure.

So, bid farewell to the days of agonizing over manual calculations and tedious data entry. Let ChatGPT and its AI companions handle the heavy lifting while you sit back, relax, and get ready to impress everyone with the incredible results your influencer campaign yielded.

Impact of ChatGPT on Influencer Marketing Campaigns as a Whole

At the moment, ChatGPT’s greatest benefit for influencer marketing lies in its ability to minimize repetitive manual tasks and automate tedious administrative work within campaigns.

Pitching and Reporting: Use tools like SlidesGPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot to create stunning presentations.

Sourcing: Use ChatGPT Plus or Auto-GPT to source potential influencers in bulk. But don’t forget to verify their outputs!

Outreach: Use Magic Write, Canva’s AI design tool, to create captivating influencer campaign briefs in just a few clicks.

Contracting: Use ChatGPT to draft the text and even autofill merge fields for a seamless experience.

Draft Approvals: Use AI-powered tools like Descript to help your team review and approve influencer content before it goes live.

All Stages: Use ChatGPT to effortlessly draft compelling email messages, making your work much less stressful and more streamlined.

With this arsenal of AI assistance at your disposal, your influencer marketing team can devote more time to critical tasks such as negotiating better deals and discovering the perfect influencers for your client or brand. It’s a game-changer that allows even small teams to execute large-scale campaigns.

The Future of ChatGPT for Influencer Marketing

Clearly, AI is progressing at lightning speed, and we can certainly expect more advancements that will shape the influencer marketing landscape in the months ahead. No matter how much the tools change, one thing’s for certain: This industry will continue to thrive. After all, influencer marketing is essentially the modern-day equivalent of good ol’ word-of-mouth advertising. It may come in the form of user-generated content (UGC), classic influencer sponsorships, or client testimonials, but it maintains its power. And in the future, its form might evolve into something we haven’t even imagined yet.

As AI tools empower lightning-fast content creation, a flood of content from creators, who may not know their stuff, will likely bombard social platforms in the coming months. In this sea of noise, the value of influencers will only increase. The more poor-quality content there is, the more we crave authoritative figures and thought leaders in their respective specialties.

So, gear up for a future in which influencers continue to increase in value, guiding us through the chaos with their expertise and credibility. As the noise increases, their role as trusted public figures will become far more important. They’ll help us navigate through the overwhelming amounts of information, ensuring that we find the best of what’s available.

The influencer marketing landscape is in for a wild ride. It’s an ever-evolving world where new tactics and AI-driven advancements will shape the path ahead. Now that you know a bit more about how ChatGPT can make this strategy slightly easier to implement, hopefully it won’t be quite so daunting. 

But if it’s still too much for your team, there are countless agencies, such as NP Digital, that can help maximize your results and take advantage of this incredibly powerful marketing strategy.