If you’re looking for a platform to organize and execute your influencer marketing campaigns, we’re here to help. We’ve compiled a list of the best influencer marketing platforms for campaign managers and marketing managers to use in 2023 to help you find influencers and launch successful campaigns.
Let’s take a look at the best of the best for this year.
1. Upfluence
Primarily built for ecommerce brands and DTC companies’ marketing efforts, Upfluence can help brands and agencies turn their top customers into influencers, building brand awareness and brand affinity along the way.
Upfluence can help brands connect with their customers and turn them into brand ambassadors through passive recruiting tools. With this unique model, Upfluence takes a distinct approach to finding influencers to match a brand — it's primarily focused on the brand’s existing customers.
Upfluence may be the best choice for your company if you run a small business with an ecommerce site or even a larger DTC company. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and extremely precise, and the brand ambassador element makes it even more useful.
2. GRIN
GRIN is an influencer marketing agency’s best friend with a wide variety of features worth knowing about.
A few of the key features on their platform include:
• The Discovery Suite, which helps you connect with relevant influencers through helpful tools. The Discovery Suite features a creator search tool for Instagram, a web extension, a custom landing page, and a social listening tool.
• Their Influencer Content Management tools, which help you organize all of the content from your collaborations with different creators. This set of tools also allows you to track and report stats on all of your influencer marketing campaigns.
• Influencer Relationship Management tools, which can help you build long-lasting professional relationships with social media influencers and keep everyone happy.
In addition to helping you find potential influencers, manage content, and maintain strong influencer relationships, GRIN also makes it easy to send out influencer payments. By managing payments for you, GRIN makes it easy to focus on expanding your influencer network with their suite of top-tier influencer marketing tools.
3. #Paid
Hashtag Paid makes it easy for brands of all sizes to collaborate with creators on different social media platforms. Through their Handraise tool, they make it easy to review influencer profiles, make a partnership with a creator who fits your brand, and launch a campaign in just a few clicks.
To make the search even simpler, any creators matched with your brand by #Paid are pre-qualified by the platform before you work with them. #Paid does the heavy lifting by finding the top influencers for you based on pricing, your target market, and other parameters.
In addition, #Paid fosters a healthy relationship between creators and companies with their unique workflow. On the platform, creators meet with companies and pitch their ideas for campaign content, putting their own spin on the brand’s messaging and bringing innovative ideas to the table.
4. AspireIQ
AspireIQ has an influencer database with over 150,000 creators, making it incredibly easy for brands to match up with influencers who fit them.
All of the creators on AspireIQ have achieved at least 2,500 YouTube views or 500 Instagram likes on a single piece of content, and there’s a broad range of personalities on the platform to choose from.
When choosing influencers on AspireIQ, you can use the influencer marketing software’s built-in “Quickmatch” feature to make the influencer search even easier. The platform also has a built-in search engine, allowing you to narrow down creators manually.
5. Klear
Klear is an influencer marketing program for anyone who loves data. With various analytics tools, Klear makes influencer outreach easy while helping you measure KPIs like engagement rates, conversions, and more.
Klear uses powerful algorithms to separate influencers into detailed categories, making use of AI tech to continue improving. Over time, through competitive research and social listening, Klear’s proprietary AI can learn more about your brand, pointing your marketing team towards the best influencers in real time.
6. CreatorIQ
This influencer marketing platform is used by some of the biggest brands in multiple industries, from Airbnb to Calvin Klein. It’s a unique database that allows companies to discover and evaluate content creators who perfectly fit their brand voice and style.
In addition to its functionality as an influencer discovery platform, CreatorIQ can also help you fine-tune your marketing strategy with metrics and data related to trends in your industry.
CreatorIQ is one of the best tools to reach your target audience with high-quality creator-led marketing. With its unique suite of tools, this platform can help you find the right influencers and streamline your pathway to exponential growth.
7. Impact.com
Primarily functioning as a partnership management platform, Impact.com helps your company on multiple fronts: affiliate marketing, publisher connections, business partnerships, and influencer marketing. The platform opens the door to a broad social network of potential partners, then helps your brand maintain partnerships with its robust suite of tools.
Impact.com helps you find the right creators for your brand on their influencer marketplace and takes the pressure off of you to handle the payment logistics.
One of the best aspects of using Impact.com is its precision. The platform helps you develop an in-depth influencer marketing strategy that maximizes your chances of a high ROI. In addition, the platform collects tons of useful data from influencers throughout campaigns, giving you insight into how you can fine-tune your strategy in the future.
8. Influencity
Influencity uses data from TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to index millions of user accounts with their Discover tool. This tool gives brands helpful insight into audience demographics, follower counts, and more. It offers an incredible amount of data that companies can use to match themselves with their ideal influencer pairings.
The powerful Discover tool is perfect for startups, small brands, and anyone looking for a massive list of influencers to pull from for campaigns. With Influencity, you’ll get relevant results whenever you search for creators.
In addition, the platform helps you make accurate projections for campaign performance and analyze the success of a campaign after it ends.
9. Traackr
Used by a wide array of major brands, Traackr can help companies become an influencer’s top choice for collaboration and partnership. Their built-in features simplify the influencer onboarding process, streamlining the pathway from reaching out to influencers to getting them involved in a campaign. They’re one of the best platforms we’ve found for vetting and onboarding creators.
Traackr lets you search for potential influencer partners across all major social platforms, vetting them to ensure that you evade influencer scams. The platform uses multiple criteria to filter out creators and help you find the ideal matches for your company, keeping your results tailored to your needs.
In addition, Traackr is even more useful thanks to its built-in gifting program and paid content platform. This influencer marketing tool allows you to start and automate gifting for your brand partners, building brand affinity and helping you stay at the top of an influencer’s list of favorite companies.
Traackr functions as a CRM for influencer management. It gives marketers everything they need to review data, interact with influencers, and work with the best possible partners. Overall, it’s one of the most versatile and useful influencer marketing platforms we’ve found.
10. Neoreach
This platform is used by some of the world’s biggest brands, from Amazon to The New York Times to Walmart. Their team integrates with a company’s marketing staff, providing support throughout influencer marketing campaigns to ensure their success. This makes Neoreach a much higher-end solution that may be out of the pricing range of some companies.
Neoreach is also one of the best sources of fraud detection for companies. Using AI technology, the platform helps brands vet influencers and spot scams, fake followers, and other pitfalls.
How To Choose an Influencer Marketing Platform: Essential Tips
With so many influencer marketing platforms to choose from, it can be tough to determine which one is right for your brand. Below are some tips to help you pick a platform that will be an ideal fit for your company’s needs.
Request a Demo First
Sometimes you want to take a test drive before committing to a program or tool for your business. With influencer marketing platforms, you can typically request a demo and get a feel for the software before you decide whether it’s the best choice for your team.
In many cases, influencer marketing software companies will provide temporary access to the platforms for free, giving you and your team a chance to see how well a program will work for your campaigns. The demo period is the perfect time to ask the developer any questions you might have about the program’s functionality — and pricing.
Find a Platform That Serves Multiple Purposes
If your marketing team has multiple needs that a platform can meet all at once, that might be the influencer marketing platform for you. For example, if your team needs help with affiliate marketing, fraud protection, and finding the right influencers, a platform like Neoreach can knock out all of those needs in one.
Zeroing on one program with multiple functions can save your team time, energy, and money. It also minimizes the amount of proficiency each of your team members needs in different programs.
Get Industry Reviews
If you frequently network with other professionals in the marketing industry (which you should), that networking can be an opportunity to find out what programs your peers use for their work. If you can get a glowing review of an influencer marketing platform for a trusted contact in the industry, that recommendation might be all you need to take the leap and choose that platform for your work.
Getting advice from industry buddies is often helpful because those friends have no agenda in making a recommendation. You know you’ll get an unbiased opinion, which makes the decision-making process much easier.
Read User Reviews
In addition to comments and feedback from trusted friends in the industry, it’s helpful to read reviews from other users of a certain influencer marketing platform. If you can find a detailed review that outlines the pros and cons of a certain platform — a review that isn’t sponsored — you’ll have some valuable insight into whether that platform can serve you well.
We recommend doing your research with both people you know and others in the industry, taking the time to compare and contrast your options before taking the leap. Marketing bloggers can also be helpful sources of advice about the best platforms for your brand, but bear in mind that some bloggers are sponsored!
Know Your Budget
Many marketing teams spend a significant portion of their monthly budget on influencer efforts. That’s the new normal for 2023. Whether you have a big or small budget overall, Remember to commit a significant portion of that money to your influencer marketing strategy.
Knowing how much of your budget can be dedicated to your influencer marketing campaigns gives you additional insight when choosing a platform; you’ll know what’s in the budget and what’s not.
Consider Outsourcing
While your in-house marketing team can execute influencer marketing campaigns in theory, it’s a lot of hard work in practice. If your team is currently overwhelmed by other projects, it might be the right time to outsource.
Consider working with an influencer marketing agency like GR0, who can run your campaigns, connect you with influencers, and optimize your strategy for the best results.
The Bottom Line
There are plenty of influencer marketing platforms out there with top-tier features. Finding the right platform for your brand will take some research and comparison. Don’t be afraid to ask for expert opinions, get a free demo, and spend time comparing your options before you commit. While things move fast in the world of marketing, there’s always time to make a strategy.
Ultimately, any of the options we’ve listed above can serve your company well. However, you can also outsource your influencer marketing efforts to an agency like GR0. We use the top tools to launch successful campaigns that will help your business stand out. Contact us today to find out more about how we can help you grow with influencer marketing.
Sources:
Direct to Consumer Advertising (DTC): What it is, How it Works | Investopedia
New Study: One In Four Influencers Bought Fake Followers | Forbes
Return on Investment (ROI): How to Calculate It and What It Means | Investopedia
