If your brand hasn’t found its place on your target market’s newsfeed just yet, consider looking for the right influencers. These days, that no longer refers to the ones with the biggest following. In fact, even micro and nano-influencers with just a few thousand followers are sometimes preferred for their niche and highly engaged audiences. The trick is finding the best match for your brand, and thankfully there are platforms highly equipped to do the sorting for you.
The influencer marketing market is not one to be underestimated. By the end of 2024, it’s projected to go as high as $24B, which tells us that both brands and creators continue to see the value in these partnerships. According to our Benchmark Report 2024, 84.8% of respondents believe that influencer marketing is effective. On the business end, 67% plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets towards the rest of the year. Tapping the right influencers for your brand can become a rewarding investment that drives a large ROI.
Navigating the world of influencers—that is, finding a list of names, reaching out to them one by one, filtering and coordinating with them—might seem tedious at first. With the right influencer marketing platforms, however, the whole process can be transformed into something simple and efficient. These platforms not only help you narrow down relevant influencers, but also provide a centralized dashboard where you can track and manage each one and manage their campaigns.
If that sounds like something your business could use, keep reading. We’ve narrowed down 5 of the best tried and tested influencer marketing platforms for all kinds of businesses.
Location: Brighton, UK Year Founded: 2007 Notable Clients: Apart from Insta360, Brandwatch is trusted by 2,200+ of the world’s biggest brands. These include Unilever, GSK, Nestle, and McDonalds. In the world of influencer marketing, Brandwatch hardly needs any introduction. They have made their name as the world’s leading digital consumer insight platform, specializing in influencer management as well as consumer data and social media marketing. They’ve earned several awards over the years, some of the most recent ones being Finalist for Content at The Drum Awards 2024, and Winner for Best Influencer Marketing Platform at the Digiday Technology Awards 2023. When it comes down to knowing what consumers want, Brandwatch are industry veterans. This applies to finding the right influencers for every campaign, too. They have one of the most comprehensive directories available, with over 20+ million influencers worldwide—any of whom you can reach out to in a click. Their platform, Influence, allows clients to sift through the wide database based on topics or metrics that matter most to their campaign. Source: influence-help.brandwatch.com One of their clients who put their solutions to work was the camera company, Insta360. Known for their 360-degree cameras, the brand naturally creates visually captivating content—and so does their market. All that was missing was the right opportunity to bring everyone together and make content as a big community. With Brandwatch’s Influence, Insta360 was able to see exactly when a trend was starting to gain momentum. This started off with customers filming silly videos with their 360-degree cameras in their mouths. Insta360 jumped on the trend, reached out to 4,000 partners through Brandwatch, and came up with the Insta360 Nose Mode Campaign. It was a combination of timing and effective automated social media tools. With Brandwatch’s help, the campaign’s reporting process was sped up by 90x, allowing them to make campaign decisions almost real-time. And with the campaign housed on one easy-to-use platform, they were able to create and manage hundreds of funny and viral videos on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. By the end, the campaign got 320 million views through their influencer partners, and 680 million views in total—at just 0.0004 dollar cost per view, a significantly lower cost way below the industry average. Brandwatch allows clients to save time, whether that’s for finding and filtering the right influencers, communicating with them, down to tracking their posts the moment they hit the feed. With their influencer marketing solutions, brand teams can focus instead on managing relationships and making strategic business decisions. It’s a great platform especially for large businesses looking to scale campaigns. Key Features: Influencer Discovery, Influencer directory management, Creation of private influencer network, Campaign management and reporting, Broad platform coverage, Automated reporting, Channels: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, TikTok, Shopify Location: Dallas, TX Year Founded: 2011 Notable Clients: LTK works with over 7,000 retailers, and over 1 million brands use their solutions in some capacity. Some of their biggest clients are Walmart, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Dyson Airwrap. Influencers are no longer just creators. Through their personal content, they’ve also turned into effective brand ambassadors and even sales assistants. LTK understands this well and leverages it, bringing together brands, creators, and shoppers in one platform. If you’re looking for creators who will lead to purchase, LTK might be who you’re looking for. They’re the largest curated Creator community today, and not to mention a 3x Honoree on Fast Company’s List of Most Innovative Companies. They can find the right influencers in fashion, beauty, fitness, home, and lifestyle with bespoke storefronts that drive sales up to 20% faster than social ads. LTK’s winning strategy is understanding that personal works best. That’s why their campaigns, tools, and strategies value creator authenticity and organic collaboration. This allows influencers to take center stage, making content that resonates, excites, and converts their viewers. More than 40 million shoppers turn to LTK and their curated Creators, trusting them for their purchasing decisions. This results in an amplified reach that’s twice more than that of ads or celebrities and translates to $4.1 billion in trackable annual sales. Even luxury designer brands partner with LTK Creators to drive awareness and sales. One such case was for the launch of a new, limited-edition handbag collection. Instead of pouring money solely on ads, the designer brand worked with LTK and let creators take the spotlight. This created a more organic partnership where creators had the freedom to share the designer bag links and products at their own discretion. The luxury brand was also generous in gifting the creators high-value reimbursements, on top of collab fees. When creators are given full support and freedom, it shows in the quality of content they produce. With just 13 LTK-curated Creators, the campaign had a combined audience of 5,645,000 followers and made an impressive $173K+ in sales. The launch finished strong and generated 2.5x ROAs from product sales value versus campaign investment. LTK offers metrics at every step, with a comprehensive tool that gives brands access to new industry data that allows them to better understand their Creator Marketing investment. Meanwhile, AI influencer solutions ensure that businesses get the best Creator management based on their performance and engagement. With these solutions, it’s no wonder why LTK has been a 3x Honoree on Fast Company’s List of Most Innovative Companies. Key Features: Search/Discovery, Content Review, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, Product/Gifting Tools, Forms and Compliance, Payment Processing, Channels: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Blogs, LTK App Location: San Francisco Year Founded: 2014 Notable Clients: NeoReach helps brands and influencers shine online and in real life. They worked with FIFA to activate an influencer-led “Wave” in a huge soccer stadium, and with Del Monte to mount one of their most successful SXSW events to date. An influencer marketing agency that packs a lot of punch, personality, and expertise in tech, NeoReach pools together top niche creators, innovations, and deep insights to create impactful campaigns. They work especially well with tech, sports, and gaming-related brands, even creating campaigns specifically for Web3, Crypto, and NFTs. Their database of 5 million influencers and in-house tools and tech can help any brand stand out on any feed. NeoReach’s platform can search, manage, and track campaigns with 40 filters to help you pin down the right influencers. These range from keywords, social platforms, profile performance, down to audience demographics, so you know just who you’re talking to. They also cast a wide net with micro and macro influencers across different niches. When it comes to success on social media, NeoReach values authenticity and genuine success. That’s why they go above and beyond to protect brands with fraud detection and reporting. Their software analyzes posts and profiles and helps brands get rid of fake likes, followers, and empty, artificial engagement. Their solutions and data-backed strategies are hard at work to give your brand your viral moment, and once it happens, you’ll know you’ve earned it. This was exactly how it went for the launch of Clash, a new short-form video app. NeoReach’s path to success for this campaign included a strong creator cast, a sharp strategy, and the agility to ride the right trend at the right time. Clash app’s main goal was to build a loyal creator community. Of course, the first step was to launch with a bang. But at this time, they didn’t have access to many resources, so they enlisted the help of NeoReach to build them a strong line of influencers. Their launch came at a time when everybody was buzzing about the TikTok ban in the US. #RIPTikTok was trending online, and NeoReach saw this as the perfect opening to introduce the Clash app to the world. They hijacked the conversation on Twitter, diverting attention away from the TikTok ban and instead towards the shiny, new app that could do much of the same functions. This proved to be an effective strategy, as #ClashApp shot up to #2 on the trending hashtags, second only to #RIPTikTok! Their interception reached over 11 million total followers on TikTok and Instagram. Best of all, it translated to downloads: Clash app reached #2 on the App Store under Photo and Video Apps, and peaked at #17 overall. Key Features: Campaign Management, Search/Discovery, Influencer Relationship Management, Team Collaboration Tools, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, Forms and Compliance, Channels: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat Location: New York Year Founded: 2011 Notable Clients: Upfluence is preferred by brands such as Amazon, Asics, Universal, Farfetch, Verizon, and Marriott. For many businesses starting out in influencer marketing, the entire process may seem a bit tedious. Upfluence answers those concerns by effectively simplifying the whole workflow, from influencer discovery down to campaign results. Their platform’s strongest features include automation and customization. For one, influencer discovery is optimized through data-rich influencer profiles that can be compared and analyzed to fit your campaign to a T, and achieve double digit ROI. When it’s time to reach out to influencers, Upfluence provides contract templates and an AI mailing assistant to help you reach out to as many prospects in the most time-efficient way. And once they’ve signed, your influencer campaigns become easier to manage with a complete, automated, and customized workflow. This shows all the influencers you’ve hired, the drafts they submitted, the amount of sales generated, and even all the payments made—all in one place. Speaking of sales, Upfluence is also a verified Amazon Affiliate. The direct traffic towards your brand’s Amazon listings helps improve your product’s organic ranking, visibility, and sales. Payment is also a breeze, with hassle-free transactions, performance-based incentives, and payments available in any currency. Connecting, collaborating, and transacting with influencers from all over the globe won’t be a problem. Upfluence’s efficiency in influencer marketing benefits businesses of all sizes, making it easier for them to grow their campaigns. For ROOTS PR, an award-winning agency, Upwork’s expertise was necessary to take their influencer strategies to the next level. The agency had big names under their portfolio, namely Tanqueray, Adidas, Mortlach, and Johnnie Walker. But when it came to their influencer marketing approach, they were getting things done manually. This meant they scrolled through Instagram feeds on their own and followed hashtags one-by-one. The process was too time-consuming, and they could barely keep up with their clients’ fast-paced lifestyle category. That’s when they sought out Upfluence’s end-to-end influencer identification, outreach, and management services. Needless to say, the results were undeniable. ROOTS PR’s team was able to access advanced data, search through filters, and generate analytics all in one click, reducing hours’ worth of work into mere minutes! That alone improved their influencer discovery efficiency by 80+%! With a small team of less than 8 members, the agency was able to run several influencer campaigns simultaneously and grow their clients’ communities of top-performing influencers. The impressive increase in workflow efficiency allowed them to come up with more accurate integrated communications strategies for their clients. Their efforts rewarded them with 30%+ campaign reach and engagement and 40%+ improvement in influencer outreach, surpassing expectations. Here’s what they had to say about Upfluence’s impact on their agency: “We’ve just renewed another year of subscription. Why? Time-saving for greater outreach across platforms, provides reliable insights and allows a small team like ours to manage multiple campaigns simultaneously, all in one tool!” Angel Ng, Account Director, Content & Influence The best part is, it’s easy to integrate Upfluence into your existing work processes. It works alongside daily tools like Gmail, Slack, Outlook, Shopify, and more. You can also access their resources through a free Chrome extension, blog, content hub, industry guides, and more. Key Features: Influencer Search & Discovery, Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Third Party Analytics, Automated Recruiting, Influencer Lifecycle Management, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Review, Campaign Reporting, Audience Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Payment Processing, Social Listening, Affiliate Management, Affiliate Campaigns, Channels: Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Tiktok, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs Location: West Hollywood Year Founded: 2014 Notable Clients: Disney, Estee Lauder, Red Bull, H&M, Google, and Unilever are just some of the big names that trust Creator Q for influencer marketing. For Creator IQ, data powers everything. It’s through advanced data science and analytics that they’re able to turn the unpredictable world of influencer marketing into measurable, predictable returns. This has earned them multiple awards across the board, most recently from G2 as an Industry Leader across multiple categories in 2024. But being largely data-first doesn’t mean they don’t know how to have fun. They value creator-led marketing just as much, and they push for content that’s authentic, reliable, relatable, and cost-efficient. With their tech, clients can set conversion and sales goals for each ecommerce or affiliate program. Brands can plan, execute, and measure success while the campaign is ongoing. This is just one of the many ways efficiency and creativity meet halfway through Creator IQ. Source: businesswire.com They have a global creator database that has millions of profiles across every social media network. You can sort them according to the most relevant topics, categories, engagement rates, demographics, and more. If you want to speed up the process, there’s also an AI-powered search that can give you quick recommendations in seconds. No matter the size of your campaign, reaching out to creators is kept simple with Creator IQ’s dynamic CRM. It takes care of onboarding and recruitment, with an added in-app messaging feature that streamlines conversations and keeps them personalized. Women’s activewear brand, Fabletics, saw the power of data in action through one of their influencer partnership campaigns with Creator IQ. From the get-go, Fabletics knew they didn’t want to do typical one-off partnerships at a large scale. While campaigns like those may cause a spike in awareness in the beginning, they felt that it would be unsustainable in the long run. What they wanted was to establish long-term partnerships with quality partners who would stay with the brand through years and eventually become long-term advocates. To Fabletics, the key to lasting conversations and brand loyalty depended on genuine influencers who truly embodied their brand attributes. Through Creator IQ’s Influencer Analytics, Fabletics gained in-depth insights that allowed them to study the activity and effectiveness of their current and prospective advocates. This data was essential in helping them narrow down the influencers who could drive value over time and could mature along with the brand. Meanwhile, they also needed to scout a new demographic who could match their new styles. That’s where Creator IQ’s Creator Discovery came in. The feature recommended influencers based on pre-selected data, such as demographics, audience, and historical performance. To test the data’s accuracy, Fabletics launched a testing program for recent fans. Using analytics, they were able to evaluate which of the ambassadors showed the strongest potential in creating relationships. Based on that data, they were able to identify and successfully onboard 10 of the best-performing ones. They set the stage for meaningful and long-term partnerships, and reduced customer acquisition by 30%. Historical analysis, predictive forecasting, and real-time measurement are just some of Creator IQ’s key features that make a difference. Brands can anticipate their program performance across various campaigns, creators, and posts. Estimates also help you stay within budget, negotiate the best rates with creators, and optimize your brand’s ROI. Key Features: Search/Discovery, Automated Recruiting, Influencer Relationship Management, Content Review, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Forms and Compliance, Fake Follower/Fraud Detection, Payment Processing, Channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitch, Blogs1. Brandwatch Influencer Marketing Software
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2. LTK (formerly rewardStyle)
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3. NeoReach
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4. Upfluence
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5. CreatorIQ
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Why Invest in Influencer Marketing?
At the end of the day, influencers are real people with big platforms. This makes them ultimately more authentic than any brand, and that value makes their content worth paying attention to.
Partnering with them also provides great proof of your brand’s effectiveness, as you can get a seal of approval from someone whose opinions matter to many. These creators become powerful partners for brands, providing the following benefits:
- Brand awareness. There’s no need to introduce your brand; they’ll tell their friends and followers all about you.
- Brand promotion. Product launches, special announcements, big sales—their content generates organic excitement for your brand’s promotional campaigns.
- Customer loyalty. More often than not, when a brand collaboration is effective, their community ends up being part of your brand community as well.
Tips for Choosing the Right Influencer Marketing Platform for Your Business
- Take time to research the kind of influencer your brand identifies with. Don’t just go for who’s popular or who’s trending. Use data to find the best match or the right niche for your brand.
- Narrow down the kind of content you want for each campaign. For example, a dance challenge may go viral but might not effectively drive sales. Make sure your goal is set so your collaborations are clear and productive.
- Remember that a sharp strategy can draw better results than a big budget. Many successful campaigns were able to deliver astounding wins despite their limitations.
- Take advantage of free demos, which most influencer marketing platforms have. This helps you get a temporary view of what they can do, as well as get firsthand experience of which features are most important for your influencer marketing efforts.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can influencer marketing affect my business?
Social media influencers can act as spokespersons for certain brands. Collaborating with them helps you reach a wider audience, increase brand awareness, and eventually drive more traffic to your brand or website. In some cases, influencers are even more effective than branded ads, making it a great investment for any kind of business.
What are influencer marketing platforms for?
While there are many influencer marketing platforms in the market, they essentially provide brands with everything needed to plan, execute, and monitor an influencer marketing campaign. These typically include tools for discovering influencers, a platform to engage and communicate with them, a dashboard for launching and managing campaigns, monitoring data and analytics, and processing payments.
