Word-of-mouth recommendations are the primary reason behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions, according to a study by McKinsey. The power of social media — a type of digital world-of-mouth — has amplified the weight of personal recommendations, and subsequently shaken up marketing across online channels.
This tectonic shift has given rise to influencer marketing, creating a new wave of martech companies in its wake.
Today, newcomer Dovetale launched out of Expa Labs to become the all-encompassing platform for influencer marketing. Founded by Mike Schmidt and Navied Shoshtarian, the pair previously founded music app Listn, which they sold to Beatport in 2014.
“When we were building Listn, we didn’t have the budget to acquire customers through traditional methods, such as Facebook marketing, so we were really excited about influencer marketing,” said founder Mike Schmidt. “As a result, we ended up pulling off one of the first influencer marketing campaigns on Vine, and we became super excited about building the tools so that all brands could do this type of marketing.”
Dovetale’s dashboard encapsulates four buckets of influencer marketing tools — discovery, management, payments and measurements. When it comes to discovery, the platform allows brands to add any image that matches the look and feel they desire for their marketing campaigns, as well as choose the follower range among influencers. Dovetale then matches brands with influencers that fit their criteria.
Once brands employ a set of influencers, the platform allows them to monitor the individuals’ social reach, average comments, engagement and trending buzz. The platform also allows brands to easily pay influencers through its platform.
While influencer marketing has traditionally presented a challenge when it comes to measuring core metrics — as likes and followers are difficult to evaluate — Dovetale’s platform provides brands with demographic profiles using image recognition technology.
Prior to its official launch, Dovetale is already working with New York-based tech brands such as SeatGeek, Ando and Kit to help the companies find influencers.
“The hardest part of influencer marketing is finding the right people, paying them and measuring the success of the campaign, so we built a platform that incorporates all of those aspects,” said Schmidt. “Going forward, we want to show people what Dovetale is and educate brands on the best way to do influencer marketing.”
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