ClanConnect, is India’s first and only AI-driven smart platform for influencer marketing.
ClanConnect is a one-stop platform for influencer marketing campaign management for both influencers and brands. It facilitates seamless collaboration between content creators and marketers to optimize the value of their branded content.
Kunal Kishore Sinha, COO (Chief Operating Officer) – clanconnect.ai on their expansion plans, the use of AI for Influencer marketing and more……
ClanConnect the journey
The idea of launching a product in the influencer marketing space came to us in April 2019. The next six months were spent researching the vast and burgeoning sector, garnering an in-depth understanding of international markets and brands, identifying the key areas of massive growth potential in India, and reading numerous global reports on influencer marketing. After decoding global solutions and setting up an actionable plan, actual work on the platform started in September, and we finally launched ClanConnect.ai last month!
ClanConnect recently got seed money worth 5 Cr, your thoughts and way forward?
We were actually looking to raise a much smaller amount to contribute toward building the business. There was a portfolio of key investors that we were keen on bringing on board. However, when we saw prominent investors with a remarkable repertoire of experience in scaling high-growth businesses, we did not want to miss the chance of working with them. Thus, ClanConnect ended up raising a substantial INR 5 crore.
Having raised this significant amount, we are now investing in new technology to develop phase two of our product, which will go live in October. We will also leverage the amount to ramp up the process of bringing influencers on board our platform and also expand our marketing efforts.
How does AI work in terms of identifying influencers and the relevant brand/Marketer?
Every influencer leaves a long digital footprint that is replete with data points around the traction they garner with each post. ClanConnect’s technologically-advanced AI tool analyses these publically available data points to understand a particular influencer’s social media performance, follower quality, level of engagement, audience demographics, etc, to give brands the right recommendations for influencers to can deliver the highest impact with their campaigns.
The sophisticated AI-based platform can also offer recommendations to brands that are looking for influencers within a certain budget, a specific audience reach, or particular audience interests. Simply put, ClanConnect.ai is an excellent platform to match brands to the most suitable influencers through data-driven insights so brands can gain maximum ROI from their digital marketing efforts.
In this pandemic where digital is gaining importance, how an AI enabled platform allows brands to scale their influencer marketing efforts?
An AI-enabled platform such as ClanConnect can help brands scale their influencer marketing efforts in 3 ways. First, a lot of influencer marketing activity is currently happening based on guesswork. Brands are willing to invest in influencers but since social media is brimming with options, they do not usually know which ones to choose. Since decisions are taken manually, brands tend to keep choosing the same influencers and, as a result, are not able to make an impact beyond a certain number and set of audiences.
AI-led platforms can take the guesswork out of the process and allow brands to choose the right influencers based on data-driven insights. Secondly, the platform gives a set of recommendations to brands in order to help them derive maximum ROI from their influencer marketing campaigns. It can help brands discover influencers who will have the right impact, essentially picking the needle out of the vast haystack of influencers out there today.
Finally, technologically-advanced influencer management platforms also help brands manage multiple influencer campaigns by consolidating all the information on one user-friendly platform. Therefore, it can revolutionize and simplify the entire influencer marketing space with targeted and effective solutions.
Now with the festive season on us more and more brands will be using influencers, do you think that there is a need for a structured process of selecting influencers for brands?
Yes, definitely. In fact, brands were already looking for such a service that could uncomplicate their influencer marketing activities and help them deliver a larger impact with each campaign. Since we commenced operations, we have been flooded with queries from brands. On our part, we have fine-tuned the product in such a way that it can come in very handy for brands by helping them discover authentic influencers, examine audience quality, manage and track campaigns and measure effectiveness swiftly and efficiently.
How does your platform help marketers identify and partner with more relevant influencers?
As mentioned above, the AI-driven system matches the right influencers with brands based on their digital footprint. This largely involves each influencer’s audience quality, type of posts, audience demographics, overall reach, and engagement, along with other crucial markers.
How challenging is this business?
Any business which is at the infancy stage and is growing at a very fast pace offers a wealth of learning experience every single day. We are very excited to learn these lessons and apply them to the long-term growth of our brand. We don’t see it as a challenge but an opportunity, which will push us towards excellence. This is a high-potential sector which is valued at $10 billion and is poised to grow by 250% to reach $25 billion in less than 5 years. Our vision is to organize this largely unorganized, dynamic sector and so, we believe there are only opportunities in this journey.
Can you showcase some of your work?
We are in the first month of operations and all our campaigns are currently under execution. We will be able to showcase our work over the next few months.
