Influencer marketing tools and platforms continue to grow and evolve every year.
In fact, influencer marketing as a whole is expected to grow to be worth 16.4 billion in 2022.
And as this discipline evolves, influencer management tools do as well to fit the needs of brands.
To help you decide which platform is right for you, we created this article reviewing the best influencer management tools at the moment.
What are influencer marketing tools?
Influencer marketing tools are designed to support brands in the various stages of influencer campaigns or programs.
They can help you identify ideal influencers, manage the collaboration, make payments, streamline communication, track key metrics, among other things.
Every tool is different, so they can do all of these things or just one.
Features of influencer marketing tools
If you manage multiple influencer campaigns or programs, then you probably know that doing so manually is very time-consuming, not effective, and you don’t have a clear understanding of the value you’re driving.
That’s why, eventually, you will need a tool to help you with some stage of the process.
When that time comes, these are some of the features that you should be looking for in a platform:
- Recruiting: Some tools can connect with your customer database to find influential people that already love your brand. Some also have an influencer database you can browse.
- Communication: When managing multiple influencers across email and DMs, communication can get messy. So having all your communication within a single platform is great.
- Task management: A great influencer tool should allow you to send tasks to your influencers for ongoing collaborations.
- Tracking: Tracking the results of your campaigns is a must. Tools can help you track the metrics that matter to you, like sales, impressions, ROI, and more.
- Offline tasks management: Many influencer programs are now integrating field marketing aspects. Some tools can support them and others don’t.
- Payment management: Sending products to your influencers and making payments can be much easier if everything is controlled from a single platform.
- Integrations: Make sure the tool integrates your specific eCommerce platform.
- Affiliate links: More and more brands include affiliate links in their strategy because they are easy to track and give amazing results for both the brands and the influencers. Only a few platforms have this capability.
Do you need influencer management tools?
The answer to this question is most certainly yes, you need an influencer management tool.
Let’s take a look at why.
In the beginning, you can probably manage a few simple influencer campaigns manually.
However, you won’t be able to have a clear ROI since a complete manual tracking is not possible without some sort of tool.
In addition, finding influencers on your own is possible, but not efficient.
Tools allow you to quickly filter through thousands of profiles and find influencers with the exact characteristics you’re looking for.
Plus, some platforms give you a score based on how good of a fit they are for your brand.
And given that the success of your campaign is 90% dependent on the influencer selection, a tool increases your chances of success by a lot.
Plus, without influencer management software, you can’t use affiliate links, assign offline tasks or other features.
Now, let’s start looking at the top platforms of 2022.
Influencer Marketing Tools in 2022
SocialLadder
SocialLadder is an end-to-end influencer management platform designed to help brands find and recruit ideal influencers for their campaigns, manage the partnerships, and track in real-time all the metrics that matter.
The powerful platform can scan through your customer database to find influencers that already love your products. This way your partnerships can be as authentic as possible.
Plus, SocialLadder has its own database of influencers that you can filter through to find your ideal profiles.
Then, you can chat with your influencers, send them tasks, pay them, generate affiliate links, and track results from the same platform.
Now that influencer marketing is moving towards long-term and authentic partnerships with creators, platforms are starting to adapt to those types of collaborations.
The difference with SocialLadder is that the platform was built with those capabilities in mind, so it’s a robust software for all types of campaigns.
Key features:
- Influencer discovery
- Enterprise API
- Application management
- Social media integrations
- In-app chat
- Task Assignment
- Offline task management
- Gamification
- Support for multiple compensation methods
- Automated rewards
- Referrals links
- ROI tracking
- Real-time analytics
- Customizable reports
Conclusion
SocialLadder is the most complete influencer marketing platform because it gives you the ability to launch and manage the exact influencer program you want. It has all the tools from the other platforms plus support for field marketing activities.
Grin
Grin is another popular platform for influencer relationship management specifically made for eCommerce brands.
Just as the previous platform, Grin also allows you to find influencers in your CRM or in their database.
Other capabilities include the ability to communicate with influencers through the email integration, manage content, manage influencer payments, among other things.
Grin is a strong option especially for eCommerce brands that use Shopify and that are planning to work with a few influencers at the same time.
While it’s possible to manage an ongoing long-term influencer program instead of a short-term campaign with Grin, it’s not the most optimized platform for that purpose.
Key features:
- Integrations
- Influencer recruiting
- Payment tracking
- Content management
- Tracking and reporting
Conclusion
Grin is a strong platform with all the tools you need to manage traditional influencer campaigns. From discovering influencers to managing the relationship, it’s a good option for DTC brands on Shopify. However, it was built for those types of campaigns so it doesn’t have the capabilities of other platforms when it comes to supporting larger influencer programs. For example, no API, mobile app, segmentation, gamification, etc.
CreatorIQ
CreatorIQ is one of the most trusted platforms to manage influencer campaigns for a reason.
Its highly customizable influencer database makes it easy for brands to find influencers with the characteristics they want.
With over 20 million available profiles in their database, it’s a great option to find influencers on your selected social media platform.
In addition, their guided campaign creation feature gives brands organization and control over the campaigns they are running at the same time.
Plus, just like the previous two options, they support affiliate marketing
Even though the platform lacks features for certain types of influencer programs, CreatorIQ is a robust platform to build a network of creators.
Key features:
- Influencer Recruitment tools
- Segmentation
- Collaboration
- Content Approval
- Campaign Analytics
- Data Importing and Exporting Tools
Conclusion
CreatorIQ is a good platform that offers the same capabilities as most influencer marketing platforms plus a few more in relation to the API and data importing. However, some user reviews have pointed out that the influencer discovery tool is not very user-friendly, but you would have to check it out for yourself if that’s the case.
Upfluence
Upfluence has been one of the leaders in this space for some time for its strong influencer marketing features.
The platform allows you to find influencers in your customer base if your brand uses Shopify or Woocommerce, discover candidates on their database, manage the campaigns, send products, generate affiliate links, and more.
Upfluence also features some social listening capabilities that let you monitor your brand’s social media presence and your competition’s.
One of the cons for this platform is that there are some user complaints that the user experience is not as good as with other alternatives.
However, it is still a great option to consider for managing influencer campaigns.
Key features:
- Access to customer database if using Shopify or Woocommerce
- Influencer Recruitment tools
- Influencer Collaboration
- User-Generated Content (UGC) Management
- Campaign Analytics
- Reporting and Dashboards
- Influencer Compensation
Conclusion
Upfluence is another strong contender, with access to your customer database to find the best influencers. Looking at your own customers is the best way to find partners who can genuinely talk about your brand. However, this feature works only for Shopify and Woocomerce.
Aspire
Aspire is another well-known platform, previously known as AspireIQ and before that, Revfluence.
It features some of the same capabilities as the other platforms such as influencer discovery, relationship management, ROI tracking, content management.
Plus other features like reverse image search, content licensing, and digital term sheets.
This last feature allows brands to send the influencers which act as a contract for the collaboration where you can the terms and conditions.
While Aspire is a good option for influencer campaigns, its influencer search tools aren’t as strong as the other ones and the platform lacks functionality for eCommerce platforms other than Shopify.
However, Aspire is still worth checking out.
Key Features:
- Campaign Creation
- Campaign Lifecycle Management
- Digital term sheets
- Rewards inventory
- Campaign analytics
Conclusion
Aspire has been a trusted platform for many years and that’s because of its various features. One of its downsides is that it’s not as strong when it comes to finding influencers. However, make sure you still check Aspire out.
Final considerations for influencer marketing tools and software
As you have seen from our guide, influencer marketing software offers a variety of tools to find and manage influencers.
Making the whole process much easier for you.
You also probably noticed that the platforms that we talked about had similar features.
So the best way to know if one of these platforms is right for you is to first look at what you are trying to do with your influencer campaigns.
Remember that traditional short-term sponsorships aren’t the only way to do influencer marketing.
In fact, we strongly suggest that you focus on more long-term partnerships with different types of creators and tasks.
Then, look at the platforms that have all the features you need to manage everything from a single platform.
Finally, and most importantly, check out a demo of the product to see how the tools actually work.
Sometimes you can find a tool that is not as user-friendly or as robust as it appeared.
So make sure you take a close look at the influencer marketing platforms you’re considering.
