After an initial five months at OCA, I went on to my first Arcadia placement at AIfluence, a high-growth Kenyan artificial intelligence-driven influencer marketing startup. AIfluence uses a proprietary AI platform to identify nano-influencers with high potential to reach target audiences in a wide range of campaigns for both commercial and impact-focused clients. The company’s digital marketing specialists manage the entire campaign process, from influencer onboarding to performance tracking and reporting. With my experiences skewed towards finance/investments, I was eager to immerse myself in an operational role in the AdTech industry and excited to work with Lamusia Anzaya, AIfluence’s Co-founder & COO.
AIfluence was founded to solve one of the biggest problems faced by marketers — measuring return on investments in influencer marketing campaigns. In just over a year of operations, the company had grown to 15+ staff and executed highly successful campaigns for leading global brands and NGOs. There was also a spike in the pipeline for behavioural change campaigns, especially around Covid-19 and vaccine hesitancy from international NGOs. This rapid growth required operational efficiencies in managing campaigns and consistent delivery of high-quality work and service. Internally, management needed more insights on performance against KPIs for individual campaigns and a broad view of all ongoing work at any given point in time.
To understand the campaign management process, I held consultations with campaign managers and reviewed existing reporting templates. Additionally, we had weekly working sessions to identify pain points, opportunities for improvement and define high-priority KPIs. I assisted the team in improving data quality by streamlining data collection and campaign budget tracking tools. I also developed two interactive dashboards to track detailed KPIs for each campaign and report high-level metrics & KPIs for the entire campaign portfolio.
These tools are enabling AIfluence to track campaign performance effectively and implement timely interventions. Additionally, with a single source of truth, management reporting is streamlined. The dashboards will also inform future process improvements as they are integrated into the company’s technology platforms and aid data-driven decision-making. Finally, as AIfluence is expanding and winning new work across Africa and Asia, they will leverage this data to communicate their past success and impact to potential clients and partners. I am excited to hear more about AIfluence’s growth and impact as they scale their disruptive business model globally!
Kabo Madigele, OCA Analyst
