Brand Safety and Suitability

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) defines brand safety as avoiding content that is usually considered undesirable for advertising and unsuitable for producing revenue for publishers, regardless of the ad or brand. As an example, suppose a content producer collaborates with a business to advocate an alcoholic beverage but then generates additional content that promotes underage drinking. This violates brand suitability, safety, and quality regulations and has legal and ethical consequences that may severely damage a company's reputation.

The IAB's definition of brand suitability revolves around assisting a brand in steering clear of content that is not suitable for its particular sensitivities and principles but might be acceptable for a different business. To illustrate, a breach of brand suitability occurs when a content creator promotes a non-alcoholic product while claiming not to consume alcohol, only to be later seen partying with alcoholic beverages. While this behavior may not be unlawful, it poses a risk to the quality and suitability and potentially has equally harmful consequences.

When a creator collaborates with a brand, they take on the ambassador job, which comes with considerable duties. When they create content promoting a brand's product or service, their audience naturally expects a value alignment. Essentially, they become essential to the brand's marketing team, promoting offers by utilizing their experience of a specific demographic. When a brand and creator's ideals fully connect, their synergy is most effective. However, lacking this unity, the brand's reputation may suffer.

Given this, brand safety, suitability, and quality are crucial to the success of campaigns, building trust, and maintaining a solid partnership. This is why organizations increasingly invest in influencer campaigns to protect these fundamental principles.

An influencer marketing platform is available to assist brands in preventing safety suitability and quality issues, with a strong commitment to minimizing such incidents in the future. Let us go over some of the most popular capabilities of influencer marketing platforms and how they may help your brand.

A platform for advertising can streamline your search efforts by offering options to find potential collaborators based on various criteria such as keywords, location, industry, aesthetics, engagement metrics, and audience demographics.

Keep an eye out for standout features like a Creator Marketplace, e-commerce integrations for customer discovery, or social listening tools that identify online conversations about your business, enabling you to invite those individuals to join your campaign.

The era of manually tracking and handling everything is a thing of the past. Establish customized workflows to oversee every stage of your campaign, from initial outreach to product distribution and payment.

Most platforms also offer automation for transactional emails and reminders, ensuring that no crucial tasks go overlooked. Delegate the repetitive tasks to your advertising platform, allowing you to focus on what truly matters.

Managing content creator's relationships is paramount. Unlike paid ad campaigns, marketing involves investing in people and relationships. The ability to monitor the lifecycle of these relationships is crucial, which is why top platforms include an influencer CRM. This contact database allows you to categorize and evaluate the performance of your influencer connections. You can send bulk emails to your entire list or specific segments to keep it up to date.

Influencer marketing platforms often feature quality tools to help you effectively organize your content. It can be challenging to keep track of content ownership rights, so having a system that clearly distinguishes between content you can use and content you can't is highly efficient. Content creation is central to storytelling and community building, and an influencer advertising campaign will facilitate this process.

An influencer campaign enables you to gather valuable and quality data for analysis, allowing for more informed decisions in the future. Whether you're assessing ROI through metrics like clicks, promo code usage, total reach, or other specific indicators, your platform should provide the insights you need.

For newer brands, effective measurement of campaign reach and impressions is essential. If your goal is to increase awareness, metrics related to engagement (likes, comments, shares, etc.) hold significant importance, as they indicate a high level of interest from potential customers.

Every business has unique resources and strategies. Employing appropriate influencer marketing and media coverage is an effective approach to facilitate business growth. However, for brands or businesses that have yet to engage in influencer marketing or media outreach, the initial step, which involves finding suitable influencers or media outlets, can be quite challenging.

Competitors are common in your industry, and while they may not exactly match your organization, you are likely to encounter similar businesses. A simple technique is to look for your competitors' names or product names on your preferred platform. This search should produce prospective creators and media outlets. These influential figures and media sources have an added advantage: they are well-versed in related products, which can assist in avoiding mistakes when introducing your offerings. You can also describe your products to them while referencing your competitors' products.

In many sectors, customers often purchase multiple quality products for a single use, and these products frequently come from different companies. For instance, cooking enthusiasts may need both utensils and seasoning from different sources. Similarly, travelers might require suitcases, backpacks, and tickets from distinct companies. By determining the other products or services your potential customers commonly use, and you can search for them on various platforms.

Influencers place a high value on demonstrations and instructional content. A simple technique entails looking for activities that correspond with your consumers' interests, which can assist you in identifying prospective figures with suitability. If you sell culinary gear, for example, a basic search like "how to cook a steak" will return a plethora of future influencers with suitability.

Creating a list of prospective figures and media outlets for a new business may be more complicated than it appears. However, with the correct methods, you can produce quality ideas with suitability to help you get started.