Join us as we chat with Pavel Beinia, CEO of Buzzguru, about the opportunities and challenges of influencer marketing in today’s fast-paced digital landscape.
Marketing has always been an essential component of any business, but with the rapid rise of digital technology, it has taken on a new level of importance. The internet and social media have changed the way we communicate and conduct business, and marketing strategies have had to adapt to keep up. As the CEO and Founder of BuzzGuru, Pavel Beinia has been at the forefront of the digital marketing revolution. His company is dedicated to providing innovative marketing technology solutions to businesses, helping them to navigate the complex world of digital marketing and maximize their results.
In this interview, we will be discussing Pavel’s journey in the industry, the challenges and opportunities he has faced, and how BuzzGuru is helping businesses to succeed in the world of digital marketing. Join us on this exciting journey!
Pavel, can you tell us about your background and how you came to found BuzzGuru?
I started to work at influencer marketing at the age of 16. I was so driven by my aspiration to contribute to the industry’s development, that I have brought several innovative digital projects to life. Today my projects include a cutting-edge influencer marketing platform BuzzGuru and an influencer marketing agency Famesters.
How did I come to found BuzzGuru? After embarking on our journey as an influencer marketing agency, we gained solid experience and grew pretty fast. Having an aim to go further, we realized that a large amount of manual work did not allow us to scale the business. After conducting extensive research, we have found out that this problem is pervasive across most influencer marketing agencies and industry players alike. Here came an idea to automate all these steps, in order to save time, money and resources. Shortly thereafter, we released an influencer marketing intelligence platform BuzzGuru.
What is the unique value proposition of BuzzGuru in the crowded social media marketing space? How has BuzzGuru evolved since its founding?
We started BuzzGuru’s journey primarily as an analytical platform and a competitive intelligence. And the latter is our UVP: it allows marketers to study the market or a narrow niche, respond quickly to its changes, reveal their competitors’ activities, including influencers involved, ad mentions, and estimations of budgets spent. These findings make it easier to develop a strategy that is both effective and sets you apart from your competitors.
As we grew, we added more features and values for our clients, and now we can proudly say that apart from analytics and competitive intelligence, BuzzGuru has become an all-in-one influencer marketing platform equipped with a range of tools that aims at helping brands and marketers to automate every single task on their influencer marketing journey, manage campaigns in real time, track their performance with detailed metrics and reports, and optimize campaigns to get maximum reach and impact.
What challenges have you faced in building BuzzGuru, and how have you overcome them?
At the very beginning, driven by the idea to contribute to industry development and create an innovative product, we decided to set up a marketplace and unite advertisers and bloggers under one digital roof. The idea seemed brilliant, and we committed all of our forces towards the product development. Alas, we did not do any preliminary research, and shortly after the release realized that the marketplace was like a superhero without any superpowers – cool, but unneeded.
Armed with the experience, we have decided not to give up and get rid of the development team, but to transform BuzzGuru from a marketplace to a really valuable digital product. We thoroughly searched and identified the needs of potential customers and packed our platform with top-priority features. And so, BuzzGuru rose from the ashes.
Can you talk about a particularly successful campaign that BuzzGuru has run for a client?
One of the most remarkable stories of BuzzGuru’s partnership is the one with the iconic game publisher SEGA.
Prior to BuzzGuru, the team used another platform covering YouTube influencers from Japan only. With a strong focus on Tier-1 regions, Europe, and the US, this potential was not enough for a gaming giant. That is why SEGA came to BuzzGuru.
Now the Japanese game publisher utilizes BuzzGuru to reach their target audience and connect with influencers across popular platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok, where gaming enthusiasts flourish. Besides, they utilize the Competitor research tool to monitor both competitors’ activities and their own products’ mentions.
Can you talk about a feature or tool that sets BuzzGuru apart from other social media marketing platforms?
BuzzGuru offers unique competitive intelligence and market research features for YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Twitch. This is the only platform that allows advertisers to take a look at the competitors’ influencer marketing landscape (including influencers they work with, their ad budgets, organic and paid mentions and more) and compare their own strategy against the leading brands. Influencer marketers usually spend hours updating performance metrics of influencers – instead, the platform does everything automatically.
The marketers no longer need to surf the internet trying to find out which bloggers the brands collaborate with. The platform has all the information – you just need to type in the brand’s name into the dashboard – and you’ll see all their campaigns’ information and performance analytics.
Besides, the platform offers comprehensive solutions for A-Z influencer marketing management:
- Influencer discovery allows you to search and discover the best influencers for your specific needs.
- Campaign management makes it easy to run, track and optimize influencer marketing campaigns in real time.
- Reporting & analytics provides all the data to measure the success of your advertising campaign, calculate relevant metrics and get the performance reports in a few clicks.
BuzzGuru offers services for multiple social media platforms. How do you prioritize which platforms to focus on?
Originally, we have chosen to work with gaming and app verticals that typically advertise on YouTubers and Twitch. However, with the growth of the platform’s potential and customers portfolio we noticed that despite being targeted on a narrow niche, BuzzGuru platform piqued the interest of other business verticals – especially among e-commerce and financial brands. Recognizing the value of influencer marketing, these businesses wanted to venture beyond YouTube and Twitch and discover creators on Instagram and TikTok as well. Responding to these evolving needs, we expanded our scope, and today we connect businesses with influencers across these four major social media platforms.
How does BuzzGuru help businesses and organizations of different sizes and industries?
We believe that influencer marketing can and should be simple for everyone – the platform covers and fulfills needs of all business sizes, and the database of more than 27M influencers worldwide allows companies of any size to pick the most aligned content creators for their campaigns – from micro influencers to celebrities.
Small companies benefit from BuzzGuru an opportunity to scale their business faster without hiring new employees and departments. There is no need anymore to hire people who will manually search for content creators, analyze their social media accounts, performance and audience – all these tasks are already covered with BuzzGuru – the platform already knows what data to collect, does it automatically, and presents the information already conveniently arranged. Besides, the platform helps create up to date reports within seconds. This allows to track the actual performance at any time, adjust the strategy, and grow the business.
For large enterprises we offer solutions to run influencer marketing in-house easily: using the tools, it is possible to optimize the work, simplify campaigns management process, estimate and scale company’s presence on socials, make the influencer marketing activities more profitable, and strengthen the market position.
With automation tools we offer, it is possible for every business to get rid of manual tasks, save money and resources on customer acquisition via the influencer marketing channel, avoid human mistakes, and foster the influencer marketing efforts.
At the same time, when a brand aims to launch in new regions and seeking the expertise and support, or never tried the influencer marketing and would love to, they mostly come to Famesters agency.
As you have mentioned Famesters agency, could you tell a couple of words about its approach in influencer marketing?
Famesters is committed to helping businesses unlock the potential of influencer marketing and create campaigns that drive actual results. We run a full cycle of influencer marketing services and are backed by our expertise in gaming, fintech, app, software, igaming and other spaces. Famesters’ client portfolio already includes more than 1000 companies including Opera, AtlasVPN, Yager, Konami, Netease, Wargaming, Gaijin, FxPro, and others.
At our work we stake on a data-driven approach to running campaigns and a human approach to clients and influencers – and it never lets us down. Using high-tech solutions including the BuzzGuru platform, our team suggests customized and client-focused approaches to reach and exceed our clients’ goals and needs. It also allows the team to forecast and guarantee the performance of every single ad campaign. We launch on average 1000 campaigns each month. And this figure continues to grow. I think the most winning strategy for growth is transparency in communication with all the campaign participants – including clients and influencers. We stake on clear media plans, pricing, performance expectations – we always have data to show. This approach allowed us to earn the reputation of a reliable contractor and partner, build authentic, lasting and trust-based relationships and reach skyrocket growth.
What are the most important trends you’re seeing in the social media marketing industry right now?
- More and more marketers will use AI in their work. Today we observe AI revolutionizing the digital advertising and marketing landscape. This powerful technology is rapidly processing vast amounts of data, providing marketers with a deeper understanding of their customers and enabling them to create more personalized content. In addition, AI’s automation tools have revolutionized the way influencer marketing campaigns are executed, resulting in more effective campaigns and higher ROI. It is essential for marketers to stay up-to-date with the latest influencer marketing trends to take advantage of the benefits that AI can offer.
- Influencer marketing industry will continue to evolve and this year we expect the rise of nano-influencers: 77% of brands already prefer working with them and this trend will grow.
- Brands start to advertise their products in a new format: as a combination of a creator’s content and a performance component. Brands split the ad campaign into two parts: the first one is a classic publication with ads and a link in the influencer’s profile – this is how brands collaborate with influencers usually. But let’s go further. After two weeks, promote the ready-made influencer’s video. This allows to target the influencer’s video (and not just some content created by a brand, as in regular cases) to the target audience you need, increase the coverage of the published video and get a direct link in the video itself.
How does BuzzGuru balance the need for data-driven marketing with the need to protect consumer privacy?
This balance always requires a thoughtful approach. We take data privacy seriously and maintain a policy of being transparent with clients, as well as fully compliant with data protection regulations.
We provide an open privacy policy with clear explanations of data handling, who has access to it, and how it is secured. We also use encryption and other security measures to protect customer data.
What advice do you have for businesses that are just starting to use social media for marketing purposes?
- Set realistic goals: Before jumping in collaborations with content creators, take a step back and think about what you hope to achieve with your efforts. Determine what you want to achieve with influencer marketing. Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or boost engagement? Having clear goals will help you choose the right influencers and create effective campaigns.
- Identify your target audience: Understanding your target audience will help you select social media platforms they use the most. For example, if you aim to communicate with gamers, it is worth paying attention on YouTube and Twitch. Understanding the target audience will help you select the right influencers who have a strong following among your target audience. In fact, consumers trust influencers more than brands: 62% vs 38%.
- Select the right influences: Look for influencers who have a high engagement rate, genuine followers, and relevant content that aligns with your brand. Here you can search manually or use influencer marketing platforms, like BuzzGuru – the latter will definitely save time.
- Develop a clear message: Work with your influencer to create a clear and concise message that resonates with your target audience. It’s important to make sure the message is authentic and aligns with your brand values.
- Measure the results: Track your influencer marketing campaigns to see how well they’re performing. Use metrics such as engagement rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate to determine the success of your campaigns.
- Be transparent: Make sure your influencer discloses their relationship with your brand. It’s important to be transparent about influencer marketing to maintain trust with your audience.
- Monitor progress: Track how well your social media campaigns are performing by looking at metrics like reach, engagement, and conversions.
93% of the marketers have already used influencer marketing channel, and it is the key ad strategy for most brands in 2023. To manage your ads, you could run everything manually or streamline your efforts with an all-in-one influencer marketing platform like BuzzGuru.
Looking ahead, what are BuzzGuru’s goals for the next 1-3 years?
Our team is constantly pushing the boundaries of AI innovation: the BuzzGuru platform continues to change, we constantly add new advances to our platform and look for new high-tech solutions that make a marketer’s work easier and even define the future of influencer marketing.
In coming years we plan to continue innovating the Campaign Management tool, which will allow our clients to manage all influencer-related tasks in one place: from search and discovery of the influencers, to their outreach, communication, document workflow, and payment. We believe that this integrated approach will enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of influencer campaigns, saving clients time and resources while delivering better results.
Besides, we recently underwent a rebranding process, and as part of our growth strategy, we are dedicating a significant amount of effort and resources towards developing Famesters agency. Our goal is to build a strong brand reputation and provide exceptional services to our clients and become a leader in the industry. We believe that through hard work, dedication, and a focus on building strong relationships, we can achieve our goals and continue to grow and evolve as a business.
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Pavel Beinia, Chief Executive Officer & Founder of BuzzGuru
Pavel Beinia is a serial entrepreneur and a profound expert in the influencer marketing industry. His projects include creative influencer marketing agency Famesters, and influencer discovery & marketing intelligence platform BuzzGuru. LinkedIn.