Facebook has just made it a lot easier for brands to connect with creators to work out deals for product placement and sponsored content with the launch of its new Brand Collabs Manager. The search engine makes it easy for brands to browse web celebrities according to their audience’s demographics and get a view of their past sponsored content to give their marketing strategy a serious edge.
Creators in search of sponsors can set up a portfolio that is connected to their Facebook page, which they can use to demonstrate how they incorporate brand messages and products into their content. Brands can narrow down the offerings based on the creator’s geographic location and the characteristics of their audience, such as relationship status, interests, homeownership, gender, and many more.
The tool is highly sophisticated, allowing brands to set audience matches to see the percentage of a creator’s audience that matches their own. They can also easily generate customized lists of creators based on their past branded content partners, those creators who have liked their page in the past, and other metrics.
It’s a useful tool, and it signifies just how mainstream influencer marketing has become. The move makes it clear that Facebook expects this approach to play a big role in the future of advertising on the platform.
According to Adweek, highly targeted and individualized advertising shows no signs of slowing down, as ad revenues shift from mass media to influencer marketing.
It’s also a way for Facebook to stay afloat in the changing social media landscape as they could see creators leaving for other platforms if they can make more money elsewhere. YouTube and Twitch, for example, are making serious inroads in this realm.
Facebook adds new ways for creators to boost audience engagement
Facebook also recently added new tools and features for their video creators. For example, they can now add polls to their on-demand and Facebook Live videos, allowing them to ask questions with set answers to get quick feedback from viewers. It also added gamification features like challenges and quizzes to Facebook Live videos, which can help bring new levels of engagement with audiences – and that’s very good news for the brands that support them.
They also launched their limited Facebook for Creators Launchpad program, which helps identify those creators whose content could thrive on Facebook Watch. Creators can earn money using mid-roll Ad Breaks while also boosting their community of followers.
Now that Facebook has made a big step forward in the realm of influencer marketing, it’s only a matter of time before similar tools and metrics start appearing on other platforms, especially properties owned by Facebook like Instagram. Influencer marketing is clearly here to stay, and the fact that the world’s biggest social network is embracing it so wholeheartedly should see it becoming even more mainstream in the months and years to come.
