If you head over to the search engine of your choice and type in the phrase, “best tools for finding microinfluencers,” you’ll see plenty of options available for up-and-coming amateur creators looking to monetize their personal brands and score paid partnerships with brands. These marketplaces and platforms serve as the intermediary between brand and creator to forge long-term (and mutually beneficial) relationships.
What was once a burgeoning industry is now rapidly approaching maturity, with the number of microinfluencer marketplaces and platforms doubling each year since 2015.
With peer-to-peer marketing becoming so vital to the growth of brands, it’s natural that marketers want to find influencers – from the macro to the micro – more efficiently. After all, influencer discovery is arguably one of the most time-intensive and complex tasks related to any brand ambassador or creator marketing strategy. Not only that, but you have to figure out which microinfluencers are right for your brand.
Fortunately, we marketers have powerful tools available to us: microinfluencer marketing platforms. In this article, we’ll highlight some of the best industry-specific microinfluencer marketplaces to pay attention to in 2022.
What is a Microinfluencer Marketplace?
Think of a microinfluencer marketplace as a single’s bar for influencers and brand marketers to mingle and create meaningful relationships. These marketplaces enable established and up-and-coming creators to post profiles and portfolios of work to demonstrate to potential brand suitors what they can do and how well they can do it.
Brands use these marketplaces in much the same way: advertise who they are, what they do, and what market category they fit into – all signals to influencers they’re open for partnerships.
Although these microinfluencer marketplaces are not exactly social media platforms, they serve a similar function by providing a mechanism by which brands and influencers can connect.
Note: These marketplaces are built around discovery and matching, so they’re specialized tools. If your brand requires management and analytics functionality on top of searchable databases, SocialLadder can help.
Book a Free Demo to learn more.
InfluenceHerCollective
For brands and female creators in the general lifestyle space, InfluenceHer Collective stands head and shoulders above the rest. An influencer marketplace and community, InfluencerHerCollective connects brands with female millennial and Gen Z influencers.
Creators report fair compensation as most of the brands using the marketplace have ample budget and detailed briefs outlining clear expectations and requirements for creating high-performing content.
ACTIVATE by Impact.com
ACTIVATE is one of the leading influencer marketplaces, bringing together creators and brands in collaborative partnerships. They work primarily with top-tier influencers and their agents, but nano – and micro – influencers have an opportunity to gain a foothold in the industry and get lucrative brand partnerships.
Scrunch
A global membership for creators and marketing professionals, Scrunch takes a different approach to pairing creators and brands with a membership portal that definitely favors the in-house marketing team.
The pay-to-play model may prove distasteful to micro-influencers and other creators, but for those who are serious about landing the best brand partnerships while building their portfolios, the cost may be justified.
In-house marketing teams (and agencies) tasked with identifying, vetting and recruiting creators, on the other hand, may see the value immediately.
Final Thoughts
Let’s be clear.
Influence marketplaces have their place for brands just dipping their toes into creator marketing and brand ambassador programs, and in the case of most use-cases for the marketplaces, they skew towards top-tier influencers with big reach (and the rates to match). For identification and recruitment tasks more associated with finding microinfluencers through early onboarding and program launches, they’re worth exploring.
However, brands looking to build their programs at scale need campaign analytics, tracking capabilities and more substantial creator management tools.
