One of the earliest problems faced by businesses wanting to engage in influencer marketing was finding suitable influencers with whom to work. Brands first had to find influencers. They then had to slowly build a relationship with the selected influencers, in the hope that they could eventually formalize the process. While this is a truly organic and authentic way to find influencers, it can be a slow process, particularly if your chosen influencers have no wish to participate in influencer marketing. Influencer marketing platforms were born as a way to streamline the influencer discovery phase and speed up the entire process.
The first influencer marketing platforms focused on influencer discovery. Some asked influencers to apply to join their platform, vetting whether they were influential or not. Other platforms use a more algorithmic process, building vast databases of influencers from available social data. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) and data mining have become more important in establishing influencer lists.
The third type of influencer platform uses a hybrid of the first two approaches. While these encourage influencers to apply to feature in their databases, and in some case, allow brands to suggest suitable influencers, they also use a complex algorithm to discover any other influencers potentially missed by a self-selection process.
The number of influencer marketing platforms has significantly increased over the last year. As we show in our Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2019, 320 new platforms and influencer focused agencies, have opened in the last 12 months, bringing it up to 740 influencer agencies and platforms at the end of 2018.
Influencer marketing platforms have also widened the range of tools they offer their clients. Influencer discovery is just one tool, and indeed not all influencer platforms now offer influencer discovery. Some of the additional tools provided by the platforms include:
- Relationship management
- Campaign management
- Influencer marketplace
- Third party analytics
- Influencer content amplification
Here are some of the top influencer marketing platforms that we believe are worth watching in 2022. Note that the Influencer Marketing Hub has carried our extensive reviews on most of the platforms listed. The links to those platforms lead to relevant reviews.
Top Influencer Marketing Platforms to Keep an Eye On:
Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Campaign Management Social Networks Catered For: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Blogs Pricing Tiers: Upfluence offers its SaaS platform services through a subscription model, with a range of modules available for a starting monthly fee of $478. Upfluence grew out of two products – Façade, an influencer search engine, and Publishr, an influencer management system, and content marketplace. The company evaluated its software and decided to close Publishr down, rebranding the discovery search engine as Upfluence. Over time, they have migrated the best management features over from Publishr and added social listening features, resulting in an all-in-one influencer experience. The Upfluence database is massive, including over one million influencers. Their algorithm updates all of this data in real-time. They analyze every item of content posted for reach and engagement. You can search through the Upfluence database in multiple ways, drilling down in detail. You can place relative weights on your keywords, to help further narrow down your results. 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 Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Campaign Management Social Networks Catered For: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat Pricing Tiers: Customized pricing. NeoReach mines the web for social data, that it indexes and makes available for searches on its platform. Its programmers developed an algorithm that mines the internet for social data, discovering influencers, rather than letting influencers opt-in themselves. It now has over 3 million influencers in its database. NeoReach recognizes the importance of data. Influencer searches begin with a keyword. NeoReach searches through its database of users and their posts to discover a march for your selected keyword. You can then refine your searches by factors such as conversation topic, social channel, social metrics per channel, audience demographics, and audience psychographics. In addition to searches you may make as a user, NeoReach offers additional recommendations, using AI. The more you use NeoReach, the better its influencer recommendations will be. NeoReach also includes a full set of campaign management tools. It acts as a centralized communications hub between you and your influencers. It continues its emphasis on data in the reports it gives its clients. One particularly useful statistic is NeoReach’s own Influencer Media Value (IMV), which is its adaptation of the more traditional Earned Media Value (EMV). 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 Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Campaign Management, Third Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitch Pricing Tiers: Customized, but an annual fee contingent on the number of users you want to give access to the software. Julius began life in 2012 as a platform named Thuzio. Before long, Thuzio became a type of web-based talent agency for current and former athletes. Before too long, the platform had moved into influencer discovery and had an easier-to-pronounce name, Julius. More recently, they have expanded their offerings, and are now a full-fledged self-service marketing suite. Julius works with a database of more than 120,000 influencers. Although Julius uses AI and algorithms to come up with suggested influencers, it does not recommend anybody before they have first had their data vetted by humans, who can also flesh out their profile. Julius includes a detailed data search engine, with more than 50 different criteria for narrowing a search—covering demo- and psychographic data. You can easily make shared lists with your team. Julius includes an excellent comparison feature. You can compare up to five influencers at a time, across a range of data features. This makes it particularly easy to see how influencers stack against one another. Once your campaign is underway, you can easily find anything you want to know about your campaign. It provides in-depth reports, with clear visualizations. Key Features: Search/Discovery, Influencer Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, Forms/Compliance, Channels: TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Campaign Management, Third Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, Blogs Pricing Tiers: Basic – $50/mo. (50 searches /mo., 20 results/search, limited search filters, 1 list of 10 influencers) / Pro – $100/mo. (150 searches /mo., 50 results/search, limited search filters, 2 lists of 25 influencers) / Premium – $500/mo. (500 searches /mo., 1,500 results/search, better search filters, 4 lists of 25 influencers) / Enterprise – custom pricing (unlimited searches, results/search, and lists. Other campaign management tools) Open Influence began life as InstaBrand, and grew out of a completely different product – a “fashion sales aggregation thingy.” Although it may have started as fashion-focused, Open Influence ended up as an influencer platform, for brands in any industry. Although there are two comparatively cheap small business plans, they have little real practical value. Most businesses will need to have at least a Premium plan to make use of Open Influence. The critical point of difference with Open Influence is its focus on images. It includes advanced image recognition technology. This makes it easier to find influencers who share pictures of any topic that interests you. Open Influence’s AI labels the content directly and accurately. It includes an intelligent algorithm that means it can almost “understand” what an image shows. This is particularly useful for finding people whose style and audience fit the image of your brand. You can also use audience demographics and psychographics to refine your search. One unusual feature of Open Influence is its Mood Board, which gives you an indication of what you campaign will ultimately look like, based on influencers’ past posts. This gives an excellent way of seeing whether an influencer’s style and aesthetics match your own. Key Features: Search/Discovery, Content Review, Content Library, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, Visual Discovery, Channels: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, Blogs Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Search & Discovery, Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Third Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, TikTok Pricing Tiers: Pricing Tiers: Freemium – Free (1 user, 3 influencers) / Standard – rate varies by number of influencers (5 users, 25 – 2,000+ influencers) / Premium – rate varies by number of influencers (5 users, 25 – 2,000+ influencers, multiple other features, including campaign stats, and content monitoring) Stellar takes a different approach to many of the other platforms. It allows you to turn Excel spreadsheets and social media account pages into your own influencer marketing platform. As it advertises, once you use Stellar, you will have no further need of spreadsheets for you influencer campaigns. There are three main sections within the Stellar platform – Influencers, Groups, and Reports. You add your influencers in the Influencer section. As it doesn’t include influencer discovery, you may need some other tool to find your influencers initially. The Influencer section of Stellar replaces any database or spreadsheet you may currently use to keep your influencer records. Stellar includes a browser extension to make it easier for you to add new Influencers in the future. Once you’ve entered your influencers, Stellar will import their profile details, and provide essential information from their biggest social account. You can see detailed metrics going back 30 days. Once you have uploaded the details of your influencers, you can organize them into groups. You can set up groups in virtually any way you can think of. Although you can place people into groups in the separate Groups section, it is often simpler to do so from within the Influencer’s module. The Reports section is comprehensive. You can run reports on both your own and your competitors’ campaigns. You can create top-level reports, but you can also drill down to reports on the performance of individual influencers in each campaign. Key Features: Influencer Relationship Management, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Library, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, Fake Follower/Fraud Detection, Competitor Research, Channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Blog, TikTok Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Campaign Management, Influencer Marketplace, Third Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube Pricing Tiers: Contact Tagger Media for pricing information Tagger Media provides a range of tools to help brands through the influencer marketing process. It features an opt-in database of over one million influencers. It actually began in 2015 as a music recommendation engine. It tracked social conversations and analyzed fan preferences to come up with relevant music suggestions. It was not long, however, before Tagger Media realized that their algorithms could be of more use recommending potential influencers to brand clients. The platform has far more features than just an influencer discovery engine, however. It includes most of the features of an influencer marketplace. Once you have found the influencers you wish to work with you can create campaigns for them within the platform. Indeed, you may opt to create your campaign first, then use the discovery engine, and then invite your preferred influencers to work with you. The best feature of Tagger Media, however, is its focus on psychographics. The influencer discovery engine includes social listening. This analyzes what people are talking about, as well as concrete things like their interests. Their Affinity Engine can dissect audience interests and note where they overlap. Key Features: Search/Discovery, Automated Recruiting, Influencer Marketplace, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Library, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, Fake Follower/Fraud Detection, Payment Processing, Social Listening, Competitor Research, Channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok Influencer Services Offered: Third Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: Instagram Pricing Tiers: A Pay-As-You-Go model, no subscription required. You buy tokens. Each token gets you one influencer report) Tokens range from $1.99 each to $0.72, depending on the quantity you buy. HypeAuditor is another tool that focuses solely on analytics, eschewing traditional platform features such as influencer discovery. It began life as a more conventional influencer marketing marketplace but chose to move away from what they saw as a crowded market. It changed direction in 2017 to become a vast database powered by artificial intelligence that’s indexed nearly 3 million Instagram profiles so far. In particular, HypeAuditor repurposed to fight influencer fraud. Its analytics aims to give brands and agencies very detailed insights into influencers and their audiences. HypeAuditor decided that it should place its focus on audience quality. That way, it provides far more use to brands than merely spotting fraud. It uses 28 different metrics and scores, to give users a thorough understanding of whom they’re dealing with. It calculates an Audience Quality Score (AQS) for each influencer – a score ranging from 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating better quality audiences. You should feel comfortable working with any influencer with an AQS of 70 or more. The report provides numerous other valuable analytics, including recommendations of followers reachability and followers quality. It splits audiences by type, e.g., real people, influencers, mass followers, and suspicious accounts. Key Features: Search/Discovery, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, White Label Reporting, Fake Follower/Fraud Detection, Channels: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Influencer Content Amplification Social Networks Catered For: Instagram Pricing Tiers: Contact Model Village for pricing information As Model Village’s name indicates, an influencer platform that focuses strongly on fashion models. The platform has signed up over 5,000 fashion models, from the world’s leading agencies. For the platform to accept you as an influencer, you must be an agency-signed model signed with one of their partner agencies and have at least 1,000 genuine followers on Instagram. Fashion brands create campaigns through the Model Village SaaS dashboard. They can use the dashboard to shortlist the influencers with the profiles that fit their brand. Once they have decided on suitable influencers, they can use the system to automate the shipping of products to selected influencers. They can also book influencers to attend brand events and to plan and schedule Instagram Stories. Brands go through a three-step process when using Model Village for a campaign. They begin by creating a campaign brief and setting audience targeting. Once they have selected influencers, the influencers then create content that the brand can approve or decline. Once posts go live, brands can use the platform to track performance in real-time, using advanced analytics to assist them. Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Third Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: Instagram, YouTube, Blogs Pricing Tiers: Either Self-Service or Managed Service. Contact Collabary for precise payment details. 30-day Free Trial. Content creators join free. Collabary offers two levels of service, depending on whether you want to do it yourself, or would prefer a fully managed campaign. They target both brands and agencies. They also encourage content creators to sign up to the platform for free. Collabary believes that if content creators sign to work with the platform they have already indicated a willingness to work as influencer marketers, and it makes them more visible to interested brands. Their minimum requirements for content creators are a minimum of 2/3k – 5k followers, no bought followers, and likes, a decent frequency of posting. Content creators must be over 18 years old (or have parental sign-up), or alternatively, already be managed by an agency/ agent. Brands (who choose the self-service option) go through six stages on the platform. A fully managed campaign uses similar steps, although Collabary staff performs most of the steps. Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Campaign Management, Relationship Management, Third Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: YouTube, Twitch, Instagram Pricing Tiers: Pay for actualized campaigns only. No monthly fees. Free for influencers. Matchmade provides a platform that brings advertisers and influencers together for targeted and measured campaigns. It specializes in gaming, allowing gaming companies to work with the best gaming influencers. Matchmade’s algorithm attempts to match up gaming advertisers with those gaming influencers who have the best audience to suit the game. From the influencer’s perspective, the platform offers an easy way to find sponsored deals from products their audience will enjoy. Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Third Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs Pricing Tiers: Setup Fee $0. Self-Service (for budgets of $5K+) – 15% on top of each collaboration. Fully Managed (for budgets of $50K+) – 25% of your total campaign budget. Creators pay a 5% processing fee from their payouts. PitchBoard helps brands to connect and collaborate with the right influencers seamlessly. Its AI-powered platform includes intelligent matchmaking, so businesses don’t have to trawl through long lists. Audience verification checks ensure brands don’t have to deal with fake followers. The platform uses high-end AI technology to automate background tasks like profiling influencer audiences, understanding psychological traits, and measuring engagement data. All brands have to do is explain their goals and target audience through a simple campaign creation form. The platform provides detailed insights into a creator’s audience. It even predicts the sort of engagement an arrangement might get. It includes brand safety analysis, with details on such as emotion distribution and use of bad language. Clients can easily keep track of campaigns with daily, weekly, and monthly progress reports. There are four steps to the PitchBoard process: Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery Social Networks Catered For: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest Pricing Tiers: Pro (1 user, 6 lists, 20 profiles per list) / Platinum (2 users, 6 lists per user, 30 profiles per list) / Enterprise (4 users, 12 lists per user, 50 profiles per list). Customized pricing. HYPR was one of the first platforms to realize the importance of data to influencer discovery. We stress multiple times on the Influencer Marketing Hub, the importance of selecting influencers whose followers match your target market. That can be tricky; however, HYPR makes it easier to find influencers with the right followers for your business. HYPR’s database includes more than 10 million influencers. The system uses complex algorithms to analyze social media messages to help it offer relevant influencer suggestions. Unlike many of the platforms here, HYPR has restricted its features to providing data for influencer discovery. It has resisted trying to become the Swiss Army Knife of influencer platforms and found its clear niche. HYPR is very much a tool for searching and analyzing influencers. It does also collect data on live campaigns now, however. Key Features: Influencer Search & Discovery, Influencer Outreach and Engagement, Performance Tracking with Audience Demographics and Conversion Attribution, Global Influencer Payment, Fraud Detection and Audience Health, Channels: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Search & Discovery, Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Third-Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitch, Blogs Pricing Tiers: Contact CreatorIQ for pricing information CreatorIQ analyses over 1 billion public social accounts and their content, checking everything against a set of criteria to see if they merit being added into the platform database. Currently, more than 15 million creator accounts have met the criteria and entered into the system. CreatorIQ takes a “content first” approach to discovery. It analyzes at all the discrete parts of any given piece of content and makes logical inferences. It uses image recognition to isolate all of the components of images. It makes a point of weeding out fake influencers with fake followers. The AI assigns each influencer an “Integrity Quotient,” which can help you discern just how authentic an audience is. You can invite potential influencers via email to join your network. Influencers create an account, fill out tax and compliance forms, self-identify their interests, and set up their payment options. They also connect their social accounts to your portal and give CreatorIQ permission to access their data. This provides more reliable information about their audience and engagement. It looks, feels, and acts like an influencer marketplace, but it’s your marketplace, and you don’t have to compete with anybody else. CreatorIQ is exhaustive in its ability and scope. It looks like the product of a person who’s lived and breathed marketing for decades. It is, however, designed for large businesses and enterprises. All the companies who CreatorIQ highlight as clients have earnings of $100M or more. 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, Blogs Influencer Services Offered: Influencer Discovery, Relationship Management, Campaign Management, Influencer Marketplace Social Networks Catered For: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs Pricing Tiers: Basic (1 user, 1 active campaign) / Pro (4 users and 4 active campaigns) / Enterprise (unlimited users and 10 active campaigns). Customized pricing. AspireIQ was formerly known as Revfluence (and that is the term we have used in previous influencer marketing platform posts on the Influencer Marketing Hub). AspireIQ offers tools to help with virtually all stages of an influencer campaign. It began as an influencer discovery platform but has added other tools over time. It was one of the first platforms to add robust influencer and campaign management tools. An influencer needs to have an account on the platform to be able to participate in campaigns; however, the database of influencers isn’t restricted to those who’ve opted in. The influencer discovery software uses an algorithm to crawl through a massive amount of social data to find suitable influencer suggestions for campaigns. A more recent focus of AspireIQ has been on retaining successful influencers. They recognize the current trend towards building lasting, meaningful influencer relationships. You can quickly identify high performing influencers, and AspireIQ provides you with tools to nurture these relationships. It even includes a recommendation engine that suggests similar types of influencers, once you have found successful influencers. Key Features: Search/Discovery, Influencer Relationship Management, Influencer Marketplace, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Review, Content Library, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Forms and Compliance, Payment Processing, Social Listening, Competitor Research, Visual Discovery, Influencer Content Amplification, Channels: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blogs Influencer Services Offered: Third Party Analytics Social Networks Catered For: Instagram Pricing Tiers: Free – $0/month (1 user, limited analytics) / Premium – $49/user/mo. (all Analisa features) Analisa is another influencer tool that has taken a different turn from the traditional influencer discovery platform. It is also much cheaper than most of the other influencer marketing platforms covered in this post. Analisa is strongly data-focused, or to be more precise analytics-focused. It doesn’t just supply raw data – it includes analysis of that data, often in great detail. You can run two types of reports with Analisa – an @account report and a #hashtag report. @Account reports give you in-depth analytics about an influencer. This includes engagement rates, like rates, comment rates, average engagement rates, total posts, tags, and mentions, posting map, posting activity and audience engagement, average likes and comments per post, with average engagement rates, total posts (with a weekly breakdown), and caption words and hashtags most used. #Hashtag reports allow you to monitor campaigns. These give you in-depth analytics on audience and engagement, total posts, total follower reach, total engagement, geolocation, average and total engagement per day, total follower reach per day, posting activity and any audience engagement, caption words and hashtag most used, and participation. The #hashtag report also goes into depth about the influencers’ performance. Key Features: Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, Audience Analysis, Fake Follower/Fraud Detection, Channels: Instagram, TikTok1. Upfluence
2. NeoReach
3. Julius
4. Open Influence
5. Stellar
6. Tagger Media
7. HypeAuditor
8. Model Village
9. Collabary
10. Matchmade
11. PitchBoard
12. HYPR
13. CreatorIQ
14. Aspire (formerly AspireIQ)
15. Analisa
