What if you could build an Influencer Management System (IMS) yourself? In my last article, I pointed out that Salesforce can be easily turned into an Influencer management system. Now, I’ll give you guidelines on preparing to build such a system even by yourself!

What You Will Learn

In this article, you will learn:

1. What Influencer Management System (IMS) is, based on my experience
2. What Salesforce CRM is, and how it can be easily turned into IMS
3. How to get (free!) access to Salesforce and get skills or skilled specialists
4. How to define your needs in terms of processes and features
5. How to map those processes and features to Salesforce
6. How a blueprint of the solution might look like

What is an Influencer Management System

You might wonder what an influencer management system is. In short, it’s a system used by e-commerce companies or PR/Influencer agencies to recruit, manage and settle influencers.

I’ll explain it using an example. Imagine you run an e-commerce business.
You don’t want to spend a fortune on ads, so you team up with influencers who will promote your products in their network. If you’ve been on Instagram, you’ve seen that product promotion.

To make the collaboration work, you need a system to manage and monitor it. First, such a system helps you recruit and sign influencers. Second, it helps you distribute promotional codes and manage campaigns. Third, it lets you settle commissions (yes, they are not doing it for free) and measure performance. Of course, these are just examples.

What is Salesforce

What is Salesforce, and how can it be considered as an IMS?
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Let me take this. Salesforce is best known for its cloud Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. However, through the years Salesforce has evolved more towards a platform for people-centric business applications. Today, you can build any business app you want. Most of your work can be done through configuration - no coding skills are required. Of course, some code will be necessary in some cases, like system integrations. But I’d say that the configuration-to-code ratio is roughly 80/20.

Such an app can be an influencer management system. You can build it around the influencer and use ready-to-use features provided by Salesforce, including AI tools. If you are more interested in this topic, visit my article Salesforce—An Alternative Influencer Management System.

Get Access to Salesforce

Now that you know what Salesforce is, you need to access it. There are at least two ways to do this: A free trial account or a developer account. Let me explain the differences.

The first option is to get a free trial account. You can get it under https://www.salesforce.com/in/form/signup/freetrial-sales/ (if this URL has changed, you can find it on the Salesforce website anyway).

From now on, you can expect that a sales rep from Salesforce will give you a ring. This access is time-limited, but you can extend it after talking to a sales rep (not forever, though). If you decide to sign a commercial contract with Salesforce later, this account will turn into your commercial account, and whatever you developed there till then will stay with you.

The second option is to get a Developer Edition Account. You can get it under https://developer.salesforce.com/signup (if this URL has changed, you can find it on the Salesforce website anyway).

Unlike a Free Trial Account, you won’t get sales calls (Uff…), and your account won’t expire when you keep it active (meaning you log in at least once in 180 days). However, if you decide to go ahead with Salesforce, you must re-create everything you did in the commercial account.

Which one to choose? If you are a bit of a techie and want to check the technology, but you don’t even know if this is for you - go for the Developer Edition. If you are serious about Salesforce, you would like to see a demo, get a quote, and maybe even start building before the contract is signed - go for the Free Trial Account.

Hire a Specialist or Learn Yourself

At the beginning of this article, I pointed out that you can build this solution yourself. Yes, you can. But you can also get assistance from a specialist. Which one is for you? Let’s walk through the options.

The first option is to build the solution yourself. Salesforce offers an excellent e-learning platform called Trailhead. You can create your personal account there and start learning from scratch. If you are comfortable with technology you should quickly get the basics to build your app. Of course, at some point, you might get stuck. But there is a large community that can help you solve your issues.

After you build the core of your application, you might struggle with connecting it to other systems. You might need a developer who can help you code. It can still be someone from your team if she has time to read Salesforce documentation.

Why do I believe you can do it yourself? First, you know your company, needs and processes better than anyone outside your organization. Second, when I applied for my first Salesforce job in 2014, I was tasked with building an app before Trailhead existed, and I have no hard technical skills! So I believe, it can be done by anybody, at least the non-code 80% of it.

Another option (for some, a default option) is to hire a specialist. If you don’t have time or patience or miss some skills, you can always get help from outside. There are at least two types of specialists: Certified Freelancers and Official Salesforce Partners. What is the difference?

Certifiied Freelancer

A certified freelancer is a person who has proven Salesforce skills (via the Salesforce Certification program) and is happy to help you on an hourly basis (typically). Those freelancers have their areas of expertise. For this project, you will need the help of a freelancer who holds a Salesforce Administrator Certificate and preferably a Developer I certification. Some degree of creativity is required.  

Working with a freelancer is less expensive than with an agency, and you can book them for just a couple of hours. However, freelancers typically have more than one project; they sometimes disappear, and it’s hard to transfer any risk and responsibility to them. Moreover, they sometimes do not have all the skills in place, which makes you hire two or even three specialists and coordinate them. Another downside is that the quality of work is rarely verified by anybody else.

You can find them, for example, on Upwork: https://www.upwork.com/hire/salesforce-experts/

Salesforce Partners

Another option is to hire a Salesforce partner or an agency. These companies are Salesofrce’s official partners.

It will cost more, but you get all specialists under one roof. You can shift risks, responsibilities, and coordination efforts to them. As there is more brain power, the solution you get is analyzed more thoroughly, and the work delivered is verified in quality. And a Salesforce Partner won’t disappear the next day.

You can find Salesforce partners here: https://appexchange.salesforce.com/consulting

Which one to pick? If you know Salesforce by now, you can do some configuration yourself, but you lack some skills to get work done—hire a freelancer. If your organization has a budget and you don’t have time to get into Salesforce details, hire a partner to walk you through the implementation.

Define Your Goals

Next, set your goals. Why are you actually implementing this system? Because your boss said so? Because your competition already has it? Probably not. What can be reasonable goals?

1. You want to maximize the number of influencers promoting your products
2. You want to maximize sales made by influencers
3. You want to implement transparent processes so that the team is more productive

Why is setting goals so important?

1. They tell you what processes and features you should implement first
2. They tell you what metrics you should track
3. They show you if the project was successful or not

Define Your Business Metrics

When you write down your goals, the next step is to define metrics showing whether you are moving toward them. Let me give you an example.

If your goal is to increase the number of influencers, the metrics you track can be the following:

1. How many new candidates are we getting each month
2. What are the best Influencer sources
3. How many new influencers are you signing per month
4. How long it takes to sign an influencer
5. What are the reasons why you or the influencers reject the deal

If your goal was to maximize sales made by influencers, your metrics could be:

1. How much revenue did influencers bring in last month
2. How influencers perform on an individual level month-to-month
3. What products boost the sales of an individual influencer
4. How sales relate to the number of creations and the day of publication
5. How contract type relate to the sales results

Write Down Your Processes

Next, write down your processes. Your processes should lead to achieving your goals and be measurable.
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For example, you should write down your To-Be influencer recruitment and signing processes to increase the number of influencers. These processes should bring you the metrics from the previous section.

1. Find Influencers you want to work with an external tool such as Modash and export them to an Excel spreadsheet
2. Import your Influencer candidates to Salesforce
3. Send them a message asking if they are interested in a collaboration
4. If they are interested, verify the match and move to the Signing Process
5. If they are not, or you decide not to proceed, pick the rejection reason

1. Agree on collaboration type
2. Send a contract template and get approval
3. Send the final contract using an e-signature tool
4. Influencer signs the contract
5. You sign the contract
6. Board member signs a contract
7. Add a promotional code
8. Do an onboarding
9. Send the brief

What other processes you might have? For example, commission settlement process, campaign briefing process, code assignment process, etc.

Define Features

Next, for each process, define the features. For example, the singing process would map with the following features:

1. Agree on collaboration type > Feature: Contract Management
2. Send a contract template and get approval > Feature: Contract Management, Gmail Integration
3. Send the final contract using an e-signature tool > Feature: E-signature Integration
4. Influencer signs the contract > Feature: E-signature Integration
5. You sign the contract > Feature: E-signature Integration
6. Board member signs a contract > Feature: E-signature Integration
7. Add a promotional code > Feature: Promotional Code Management
8. Do an onboarding > Feature: Campaign Management
9. Send the brief > Feature: Campaign Management

Now, each feature needs to be described in more detail. To make it simple, you can use something called User Stories. A User Story describes what a user wants and why it’s relevant. A user story has a structure of “As a [user name], I want to [ability] so that [benefit].

For example, Promotional Code Management is a feature that can be decomposed into many user stories. For example:

1. As an Influencer Manager, I want to add promotional codes in Salesforce and get them transferred to e-commerce so that I don’t need to enter them manually.
2. As an Influencer Manager, I want to be blocked from adding a promotional code that already exists and is active so that I don’t create duplicates.
3. As an Influencer Manager, I want to be able to add more than one active promotional code per influencer so that can issue codes for seasonal promotions.

Identify integrations i.e. other systems you need to take data from or push to it. Next, define in detail how these integrations should work. Doing it right is essential because this will be done with code and any later change will cost you development time and data migration efforts.

For example, you might have already noticed that one of your integrations is your e-commerce system. Next, you know you want to push promotional codes from Salesforce to that system. Here is where the analysis is actually starting.

You need to consider points like:

1. Can users also add codes directly in e-commerce? And if yes, should these codes sync back to Salesforce?
2. Should duplicate identification be based on codes from Salesforce or E-commerce, i.e., which database is more up-to-date?
3. Is this only adding codes to e-commerce or also updating them from Salesforce?

You can consider integrations with your e-commerce, e-signatures, analytical tools, portals, finance, etc

Engage Users

You need to consider users in many aspects. For example:

1. Engage them in building your processes and defining features. They have their needs and ideas you might not be aware of. I’m talking about engaging people from different levels of the department. Junior managers who work directly with small influencers will have different needs than a CMO interested more in analytics.
2. Let them test early enough. This is called User Acceptance Testing or simply UAT. Features built on Salesforce are not set in stone; if they don’t fit, you can quickly change them. In essence, we can make users happy at a relatively low effort.
3. Define what a given user should see and do in the system. Maybe there is some secret data others should not see, or maybe you have different brands, and there is no point in giving access to the whole team. Alternatively, you want everyone to see the data but not modify it. In Salesforce, everything goes.  Still, good to think of it ahead of time.

Plan Versions

You’ve probably developed many processes and features by now. I recommend splitting them into digestible versions that can be delivered in weeks. I also recommend delivering process-by-process instead of feature-by-feature. Why? If you deliver feature-by-feature you will get an useless system because a user won’t be able to finish her job, meaning a process. Of course, not all processes must be fully blown from day one, but at least they should allow us to get things done. I also think that the processes you implement first should align with your goals.

For example, if your goal is to increase the number of influencers, the first version of the system should focus on influencer recruitment and the signing process. To deliver quickly, you can cut out the e-signatures from that process and move this feature to the next release.

Example:

Goal: Increase the number of influencers

Map to Salesforce

The last stage of planning is mapping your concepts to Salesforce.
Why do I say mapping? Salesforce is a platform with already-existing features, and you (or anybody who helps you) need to translate your requirements into that technology. Exemplary mapping can look like this:

Design Solution

Here is an exemplary solution design:

Summary

This is hot to get ready for building an Influencer Management System on Salesforce in 9 steps:

1. Get Access to Salesforce
2. Hire a specialist or learn it yourself
3. Define your goals
4. Define your business metrics
5. Write down processes
6. Define features
7. Engage Users
8. Plan versions
9. Map to Salesforce

Next Steps

If you have more detailed questions about preparing for Salesforce implementation at your influencer marketing team, contact me using the form or directly at michal.hawrasz@emfire.io. I'm happy to share more in-depth details of this approach with you.

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Who are we? I almost forgot. We are Emfire, an app development agency focused on CRM solutions. We use Salesforce as the underlying app platform, but we also build custom web and mobile apps using React and React Native technologies.