Optimizing Influencer Collaboration and Brand Marketing with a Robust and Scalable Platform

Overview

Our client is a leading B2B SaaS company based out of Europe. The client conceptualised, a platform that connects brands and marketers with the top-rated video influencers and social media influencers leveraging an AI-based algorithm. The platform allows marketers to collaborate with TikTok native video ad collaborations, TikTok Duet collaborations, TikTok stitch collaborations, TikTok sound collaborations and so forth. The platform also facilitates communication, collaboration and payment. The client wanted to implement seamless transactions using Stripe on the platform and also facilitate communication between influencers and marketers to collaborate seamlessly. In addition, they wanted to implement separate profile and login account types for influencers and marketers.

The Business Need

• Managing a large platform with multiple brands, marketers and collaborators requires high uptime and availability. It is also important to ensure fast, secure and automated payments. One of the main requirements was the ability to select the relevant collaboration type and request it. For instance, if a brand wants to collaborate with TikTok Native Ads or Tik Tok Stitch or TikTok Sound or Duet collaboration, they should be able to request it. This means the platform required different types of login accounts and profiles for creators and marketers along with the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively.
• Additionally, they needed to implement a fast, secure, and automated payment solution on the portal protecting the rights of creators and marketers. Once a collaborator accepts a task, the payment is transferred from the brand and held in escrow. The payment is transferred once the request is fulfilled and reverted if the influencer fails to deliver. The platform should also offer the influencer the ability to accept or deny specific requests. Certain regions in the European region have restrictions on escrow accounts, so the platform needed to provide an alternative solution. It was also important to maintain the data sanctity and confidentiality, to ensure that creators and brands don’t bypass the platform.

Challenges

• For a marketplace that connects brands with influencers, there are multiple layers of complexity starting with user experience, data and payment security, speed and accuracy. We needed to design a solution that offered optimum website scalability to ensure high uptime and performance even during peak traffic. It was equally important to implement a seamless payment flow using Stripe where if the influencer fails to deliver within 7 days, the payment is reverted to the brand or upon completion of the request, it is credited to the influencer’s account. With collaboration platforms such as these, there is always a possibility that buyers and influencers may bypass the system and work directly. Our solution had to be designed around protecting our client’s best interests, so that nobody could bypass the platform.
• In addition, We had to manage the complexity of various types of collaborations and transactions and implement a direct messaging functionality that helped all types of users to interact. Last but not least, a marketplace such as this requires high performance, scalability and stability which was implemented by leveraging the appropriate technology stack on the frontend and backend.
• In a nutshell:
  Optimizing website scalability to ensure high uptime and performance even in peak traffic Managing escrow based transaction in Europe (where there are restrictions in certain regions)
• Ensuring data security and payment security
• Managing the complexity of the interactions and transactions
• Automating payments workflow ensuring smooth transactions, refunds and errors handling Solution
• Integrated and implemented Stripe for transactions
• Created an interface with login and profile screens for marketers to interact with influencers
• Ensuring influencers and brands don’t bypass the platform to avoid commissions
• Implemented a chat function for influencers and marketers to collaborate
• Built a high performance framework with Virtual DOM or VDOM

Solution

• Managing high uptime and performance
  TenUp fully understood the complexities and user experience challenges of the platform. We implemented a robust solution leveraging HTML5, CSS3, React JS, Redux, Node.js, Express.js. For the backend, TenUp used Postgres, Object relational Mapping, Sequelize, and GraphQL API.
  

  Features like code reusability made the platform user friendly and lightweight. Since high performance and availability were key success criteria, we used AWS for its elasticity and scalability.

• Seamless, automated and secure transactions
  One of the key project requirements was to ensure that payments are handled effectively regardless of the location and neither the brand nor the influencer suffered when an agreement fell through. We designed a payment flow that ensured that payment is only credited if the task is fulfilled within the 7 days by the influencer, otherwise the payment is reverted to the brand.
• Ease of collaboration
  One of the highlights of this platform is the effortless way in which brands can connect with the influencers most aligned to their brand (using an AI-based algorithm). Our role was to ensure that the communication and collaboration is smooth and effective. Implementing a chat-based collaboration ensures that neither brands nor creators bypass the platform.

Business Benefits

• The resultant solution vastly improved website performance and scalability and implemented a flawless, automated payment system meeting the client’s criteria. Code reusability ensured lightning fast speed and maintenance. Overall, the platform benefited greatly from the seamless influencer to marketer collaboration, an attractive and intuitive interface and well-designed user journeys. Most notably, the client observed an increase in the number of daily transactions post feature enhancements.