Unlocking Success: A Guide To Influencer Marketing Tools

Brands use digital tools for almost everything in today’s economy, from monitoring their social media accounts to organizing staff rotas. As such, it stands to reason that they would also use software for their influencer marketing efforts.

Proper influencer marketing management is becoming more vital to company success. Brands that get it right can benefit from incredible returns on investment (up to $7.65 in revenue for every dollar spent according to some statistics).

But what tools should your company be using?

That’s the topic of this guide. We look at various software categories and how specific solutions can help you dominate influencer discovery, relationship management, campaign management, and reporting.

What Are Influencer Marketing Tools?

Influencer marketing tools are pieces of software that help brands find and manage the social media personalities they work with. Part of their appeal is that they help you manage your marketing campaigns at scale, allowing you to grow your outreach tremendously.

As you might expect, influencer marketing tools can vary significantly. Some deliver niche functionality, like finding influencers, while others are more comprehensive, offering everything you need to manage your network of brand advocates.

Why Should You Use Influencer Marketing Tools?

How you use these tools depends on your operational requirements and what you want to achieve in your marketing campaigns. Saying that, almost every company can benefit from them in one way or another.

For example, influencer marketing tools help you:

• Discover relevant influencers in your niche. Find the people who want to work with you the most.
• Track trends that help you create more viral content with influencers. Get help with ideation by monitoring popular hashtags and topics on your chosen channels.
• Use data to make decisions. Leverage advanced analytics to monitor influencer success and make suggestions for how to improve future campaigns.
• Measure your return on investment (ROI). See whether your campaigns are boosting your bottom line and helping you make more sales.

Once you have these solutions in place, your brand is better-positioned to take advantage of influencer opportunities and ensure they generate returns. The more information you can gather, the more likely you are to succeed.

Influencer Discovery Tools

Finding influencers in your niche is challenging. You don’t always know who to work with and whether anyone out there is ready to fight your corner.

That’s where influencer discovery tools come into the picture. These helpful pieces of software tell you more about the best social media personalities to promote your brand. These tools sometimes have additional functionality, but their primary role is to uncover opportunities in your space. If you can’t find suitable influencers in your niche, these tools should be your first choice.

HypeAuditor

Top Features:

• Finding influencers in your niche
• Following influencers and assessing the potential impact
• Monitoring social channels and signals
• Tracking return on investment (ROI) from collaborations
• Managing relationships with influencers in real-time

HypeAuditor is an intelligent, AI-powered tool that helps brands find suitable people to work with long-term. This clever software leverages data to identify social media personalities offering the best value for money and maximum impact. It carefully tracks information across channels to detect where some influencers might outshine others in specific niches and platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube. It also offers various tools to track the success of marketing campaigns and whether the influencers match your brand.

Julius

Top features:

• Influencer performance metrics
• Tools for measuring contract compliance
• Influencer messaging included in the apps
• Content hub rapid-fire marketing campaigns
• Advanced data science and discovery analytics

Julius doesn’t quite have the AI-powered oomph of HypeAuditor, but it remains a useful tool for brands searching for influencer partnerships across social media sites. It connects companies to personalities on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, and Twitch, making it one of the most comprehensive influencer-sourcing options.

What’s amazing about Julius is its clever use of data science. It has a team of data scientists who are always beavering away in the background, looking for new insights into matching influencers to companies better. As such, the tool has more than 50 search criteria you can use to find the most relevant social media personalities to push your message to new audiences.

Heepsy

Top features:

• Advanced influencer search features
• Campaign management tools
• Search for influencers across platforms
• Learn more about the value, impact, and audience of specific influencers

Heepsy is another high-quality discovery engine for finding health influencers in your niche in seconds. The tool offers a vast feature set, simplifying the selection process and enabling you to find partners for natural brand collaborations.

Part of Heepsy’s genius is its ability to determine audience demographics. It understands who’s watching specific channels and how they might overlap with your audience. You can use the tool to generate bulk lists, understand the authenticity of specific influencers, and search them by name and theme.

The depth of the tool is also impressive. Heepsy can discover influencers on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch whether you are a brand or agency, with filters for follower count, location, category, and engagement rate.

CreatorIQ

Top features:

• AI-powered creator recommendations based on brand audiences
• Image-recognition in search filters
• Community management tools

CreatorIQ is also a popular tool for those looking for niche influencers. The marketing platform offers numerous creator identification features, letting you narrow your search and analyze profiles to determine whether a specific individual fits your requirements.

The solution also has some of the most advanced search filters in the industry, allowing you to select profiles most likely to aid your brand. The system can leverage image recognition and even provide recommendations based on AI analytics.

However, the most impressive aspect of CreatorIQ is its ability to discover influencers using your existing customer data. The tool can match your audience to the followerships of creators, bypassing guesswork.

Campaign And Influencer Relationship Management Tools

Campaign management tools have a different emphasis. While they contain many of the features discussed so far (albeit to a lesser extent), they are more concerned with helping you reach out to influencers and negotiate contracts successfully.

Influencity

Top features:

• Enormous influencer database across top social media platforms
• Numerous search filters for more accurate influencer targeting
• Robust profile insights
• Campaign results estimation from working with specific influencers
• Email marketing integration as standard

Influencity is a pioneering campaign management tool that helps you work more effectively with social media personalities in your niche. It offers over sixty individual software tools, enabling you to do everything from search profiles to estimate campaign results.

The most valuable elements in Influencity’s tech stack are its customized workflows and ability to instantiate end-to-end influencer marketing campaigns. The tool makes it simple to automate authentic relationship-building, allowing you to reduce workloads and improve output over time.

NinjaOutreach

Top features:

• Discover influencer profiles in your niche
• Use editable influencer outreach templates
• Automate communications with scheduled follow-up emails
• Use Smart Tags to create and find contacts
• Add instructions and notes for every lead

NinjaOutreach is another leading tool for finding influencers on Instagram and YouTube and encouraging them to work with your brand. It offers a massive email address and social profile database that’s sensitive to your location and niche. You can use it for scheduling follow-ups, keeping track of conversations and generally keeping your partners happy.

Most brands think of NinjaOutreach as a kind of CRM for their influencers. It helps with almost every aspect of these relationships, from maintaining steady contact to keeping notes on influencer compliance.

Traackr

• Data-driven audience insights
• Influencer scoring metrics for better relevancy and impact
• Campaign analytics and easy-to-interpret insights
• Affiliate program management tools

Traackr is another comprehensive influencer tool. However, it deserves special mention in this section because of its campaign management’s sheer effectiveness and capabilities. The platform provides everything you need to run effective outreach efforts at scale, growing in utility as you expand across platforms.

The core of this SaaS solution is its audience analysis and campaign analytics. The tool lets you see precisely who you are targeting and the effectiveness of your efforts so far. You also get in-depth influencer reporting statistics and tools for improving campaign leverage.

NeoReach

Top features:

• In-house marketing team to boost app-related outreach efforts
• Influencer scheduling and sourcing
• Contract negotiation tools and systems
• Fraud prevention (the use of fake accounts)

NeoReach might be another suitable tool if you operate a large brand or head up an enterprise. It combines clever campaign insights with in-depth knowledge of specific influencers, making it one of the most insightful solutions on the market.

One benefit of NeoReach is the presence of a fully-fledged in-house marketing team. You can contact them any time to discuss influencer marketing efforts, how to make better use of the services’ tools, and improved methods for tracking campaign success. You also get contact negotiation systems that show you if you’re getting a good deal.

Referazon

Top features:

• Influencer analytics including engagement rates and audience demographics
• Influencer contact information (for quick connections)
• Advanced filtering by follower count, engagement rate, and more
• Influencer lists to track campaign partners
• Competitor influencer marketing analysis

If you want to manage influencers on Amazon, consider Referazon. It’s specialist software for brands looking to connect with the ecommerce platform’s growing collection of impactful, native influencers.

Referazon’s primary advantage is the ability to search Amazon’s influencer storefront (something that’s otherwise quite time-consuming). It lets you find influencers in your niche and connect with them rapidly.

However, it’s also good for identifying bloggers that link to Amazon products via third-party sites – an even larger potential market. As such, it’s the ideal tool for brands wanting to go beyond social media channels and access influencers across the wider internet.

Analytics and Reporting Tools

Analytics and reporting solutions are a special category of influencer tracking tools that give you even greater insights into suitable social media personalities and what your audiences are saying. The software can analyze sentiment and help you make fast decisions if attitudes change suddenly.

Buzzsumo

Top features:

• In-depth social listening
• Track trends, mentions, and updates
• Research suitable content
• Add to Chrome

Buzzsumo began as a content amplification tool, helping blog and website owners reach more people. However, it’s maturing constantly, offering valuable analytics and reporting for brands wanting to find and leverage influencers

For instance, the tool now has social listening features, letting you track mentions, trends, and updates across the board. It also has journalistic outreach – tools to network with professionals at leading publications.

The smartest brands use Buzzsumo to build networks of relationships between various parties, including influencers on TikTok, the media, and bloggers. Leveraging these capabilities allows you to penetrate target markets more and improve your positioning.

With that said, Buzzsumo isn’t a specialist influencer search tool. Therefore, most brands combine it with other solutions in their influencer toolkit.

Brandwatch

Top features:

• Track mentions and conversations across most social platforms
• Gauge sentiment through online mentions (positive, negative, and neutral)
• Analyze emerging trends in your niche
• Monitor competitors’ online presence and activities
• Gain deeper insights into social media audiences

Brandwatch is a comprehensive tool that helps you understand your customers in real time and engage with them effectively. It helps you and your influencer partners move “at the speed of social” (i.e. fast!)

Brandwatch currently tracks 100 million social media sources, providing an enriched data overview of your current social standing and what it means. It tells you how your audience feels about your products and social efforts and offers feedback on making improvements.

Ultimately, Brandwatch is about knowing where you stand and what you can do to improve your visibility. While its influencer-related capabilities are minimal, it is an excellent ancillary tool to keep in your arsenal.

Comprehensive Influencer Marketing Platforms

Finally, comprehensive influencer management tools do a bit of everything. These are helpful if you want a single solution to take care of everything for you.

Upfluence

Top features:

• Comprehensive influencer discovery database with advanced search filters
• CRM-like features for managing the influencer relationship lifecycle
• Automated email sequences for personalized campaigns
• Integration with e-commerce platforms
• Influencer insights and performance metrics, including average likes and engagement rates

Upfluence has been through several changes over the years. It now offers a narrower set of features, aiming to play to its strengths. However, it still has a library of over a million influencers, with real-time social profiles indexing and analyzing content for engagement and reach.

Upfluence’s stand-out feature is the ability to make lists of influencers who meet your criteria. It allows you to be ultra-specific, narrowing down the personalities most able to help your brand thrive.

It also provides a central repository for email correspondence. This function enables you to track progress with each influencer and manage your relationships over time. Templates prompt you on what to do next and how to keep relationships with influencers healthy.

Modash

Top features:

• Comprehensive influencer discovery database
• Find influencers across niches and locations
• Collaborate with influencers natively on the platform
• Measure the ROI of campaigns
• Benefit from CRM-like relationship management features
• Avoid influencers with fake followers

Modash is another world-leading influencer marketing tool with more than 250 million profiles in its extensive database. Again, its most compelling feature is its filters which apply across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, allowing you to find partners regardless of niche or size.

One of the solution’s most celebrated elements is its lookalike function. This tool helps you find influencers who are similar to your best-performing collaborators, increasing the likelihood that partnerships with them will succeed. The feature reduces risk while increasing the potential for rewards.

Modash also has other benefits like campaign tracking and content collection, automating many tasks you might be doing manually. It offers numerous demographic metrics to determine if your influencers’ audiences align with your campaign goals.

IQfluence

Top features:

• Discover influencers from various niches and backgrounds
• Manage campaigns with project coordination tools
• Track the performance of outreach efforts in real-time
• Benefit from AI-powered insights
• Discover more about social media personalities’ audiences, including engagement rates
• Detect accounts with fake followers

IQfluence is the ideal solution for finding compelling influencers on Instagram, the world’s third-largest social network. It offers advanced filtering options and a user-friendly design, allowing you to fine-tune your searches and metrics, such as follower count, engagement rate, and content type.

Like many of the top apps, IQfluence leverages AI for better campaigns. Machine learning finds influencers in your niche in seconds, allowing you to reach out more effectively, cutting down on search times.

The tool also uses AI for analytics, letting you learn more about influencers’ audiences. You can discover their age, gender, location, interests, average follower count, and more.

There are even influencer communication and collaboration tools. These improve relationships with your partners and allow you to establish contact directly through the platform.

Klear

Top features:

• Find influencers that match your requirements
• Track the performance of influencer campaigns in real-time
• Assign communication tasks to team members on the platform
• Benefit from CRM-like capabilities
• Understand your audience in more detail, including psychographic analysis
• Perform advanced industry benchmarking

Klear is another one-stop shop for Instagram marketing, offering a comprehensive suite of tools to help you connect with influencers on the platform. The solution has search, discovery, automated recruiting, influencer relationship management, campaign reporting, e-commerce outreach, fake follower detection, social listing, and competitor research.

Klear’s standout feature is its campaign measurement facilities. These automatically combine data from various sources to help you identify your most profitable relationships.

HYPR

Top features:

• In-depth influencer discovery (with advanced audience insights)
• Performance tracking tools
• Fraud detection and audience health tools
• Conversion attribution

HYPR is one of the most compelling influencer tools on the market. It has a database of 10 million high-quality leads for targeting campaigns.

HYPR’s database isn’t as extensive as the other tools mentioned in this guide. But it does offer in-depth insights for those it already contains. The platform provides more in-depth demographic data for improved decision-making.

Interestingly, HYPR claims to be “talent agnostic.” This means it doesn’t simply list the influencers who’ve agreed to work with them. Instead, it provides access to the full gamut, allowing you to make more connections to support your brand.

Later

Top features:

• Use existing audience information to discover the most suitable influencers
• Leverage campaign management by offering end-to-end workflows
• Benefit from real-time analytics, including conversion ROI
• Create creative briefs so that influencers can align content with brand requirements
• Streamline the content and UGC approval process with an easy feedback tool and content guidelines
• Discover fake engagement or followers

Later is another all-in-one influencer marketing tool offering search, discovery, influencer relationship management, campaign reporting, and influencer analysis. However, it doesn’t require you to do the legwork of discovering influencers in your niche. Instead, it analyzes your audience and makes recommendations based on its findings.

We suggest using this tool to find suitable micro-influencers to grow your online following. You can use its pre-built activities to generate instructions influencers can follow, reducing the number of instructions you provide. (Simply give them instructions generated by the tool).

You can also use the tool to encourage existing micro-influencers to create new ones to promote your brand in a network marketing-like scheme. This option amplifies your existing reach, enabling you to widen your audience rapidly.

Aspire

Top features:

• Content collaboration tools
• Advanced discovery function across a curated database of influencers
• Ability to create digital term sheets
• Comprehensive campaign lifecycle management

Finally, you might consider using Aspire. The tool has more than 500,000 influencers in its discovery engine and uses an advanced algorithm to crawl the web looking for social accounts with promise.

However, the platform is more than just a search solution. It is also one of the top-rated influencer marketing tools of all time thanks to its campaign creation, product tracking, and content collaboration. It’s ideal if you want to track influencer performance and ensure you are getting value for money.