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The influencer marketing industry has been making a lot of noise on the internet for a while now, but some people are still stretching their heads when it comes to finding the right influencer partners for their campaigns.
Fortunately, as influencer marketing has become more prevalent, new matching platforms and influencer marketing tools have accelerated the search process and made it simpler and more transparent than ever before for brands to launch successful influencer campaigns.
As a result, brands no longer have to spend hours searching the web or every social media platform to find the best influencers within a niche.
These 11 influencer marketing tools can help you find the perfect collaborator without a hitch.
1. #paid
Source: #paid
When it comes to influencer marketing, reach is important—but not just any reach. You need to partner with an influencer who can help you tap into your target market. #paid helps brands set up their campaigns quickly by connecting them with the right creators. The platform vets creators and only matches pre-qualified individuals based on a company brief. Creators then submit campaign ideas for review, adding easy transparency and communication to the entire process.
Why consider this tool
After finding the right influencers for your campaign on the #paid platform, you can chat directly with creators. Easy communication is available in one place, and nothing goes live without your approval. You can click on each piece of content and preview the look, feel, and caption, providing comments as you see fit.
"With #paid, the results have been fantastic. We’ve seen our CPA and ROI come in well above the bar, and we’ve seen thousands of leads generated."
—Eva Tang, Head of Marketing Innovation, Precision Nutrition
2. Aspire
Source: Aspire
Aspire is a go-to tool for high-growth ecommerce brands. It’s an ROI-focused platform that aids in discovering industry experts and influencers. From there, it helps provide the tools to effectively manage influencer campaigns, affiliate programs, product seeding, and more.
Why consider this tool
Aspire’s standout feature is customizable campaign workflows. Some brands want to control every aspect of their strategy, while others are only focused on getting their name out to their target audience. Aspire has step-by-step campaign workflows and the flexibility to customize every aspect of the program journey and the CRM.
“From mommy bloggers to YouTubers to animators, we’ve found amazing creators through the platform. I would not be able to manage a growing list of influencers without Aspire.”
—Misty Bond, Director of PR and Communications, Purple
3. GRIN
Source: GRIN
GRIN is an all-in-one creator management platform that acts as a CRM for a brand’s ongoing creator/influencer marketing efforts. It also allows brands to discover and recruit good fit partners, has detailed influencer reporting and analytics, and data storage so that everything is all in one place.
Why consider this tool
For companies with flourishing, well-established influencer marketing efforts, this tool helps keep everything organized so that nothing falls through the cracks. From product seeding to affiliate marketing and well beyond, GRIN makes it easy to keep track of many ongoing engagements across platforms and channels.
“GRIN integrates everything into one, refreshingly intuitive suite, allowing my team to accomplish much more in a fraction of the time."
—Greg Connolly, Founder & CEO, Trifecta
4. Upfluence
Source: Upfluence
Upfluence is now one of the most recognizable influencer marketing platforms, evidenced by its large database. With one million influencers on its roster, it’s easy to find new influencers to jumpstart (or scale) influencer marketing campaigns. It also offers services such as finding and selecting relevant influencers, managing campaigns, and monitoring results.
Why consider this tool
Upfluence’s social listening technology finds and spotlights influencers who are already advocating for your brand. It also provides access to real-time statistics like engagement rates and visitor counters so you can make data-driven decisions when choosing the right influencer to spearhead your campaigns. You can also reach out to influencers by simply adding them to your lists and contacting them in one go.
“We were able to target our influencers accurately, simply, and efficiently. The Upfluence team guides us any time we need and makes our progress easier.”
—Audrey Collieux, Founder, Louty
5. Tribe Dynamics
Source: Tribe Dynamics
Tribe Dynamics entered the influencer marketing market in 2012, less than two years after the birth of Instagram. This tool is known for seamless data gathering, analytics, dashboards, and reports. Instead of directing you to find your best match, it focuses on your preferred influencers across all platforms.
Why consider this tool
Tribe Dynamics has an “Ambassadors” panel that tracks and organizes all content of your influencers from all social media platforms. Using this platform, you can track anyone (or any brand) who follows you and listen to mentions and keywords you specify. Tribe Dynamics helps small and mid-size businesses grow their brands through competitive benchmarking. It’s also the most appropriate influencer marketing tool for those in the lifestyle industry.
“Working with Tribe Dynamics over the past 5+ years has been a true partnership in every sense of the word. The sophistication of their data is unmatched in the industry, and the level of insight in their analysis has become indispensable for any marketer in the beauty space today. They’re truly best-in-class.”
—Mehdi Mehdi, Chief Digital Officer, Rare Beauty
6. BuzzSumo
Source: BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is the world's top content marketing tool, but it can also connect you with the right influencers to boost your marketing efforts. You can sift through millions of accounts and narrow down the most relevant and engaging accounts with its search tools.
Why consider this tool
BuzzSumo is a comprehensive tool for producing high-quality content that gets liked and shared. Not only does it help with finding the right influencers, but it also allows users to do content research on different social media platforms to find out what performs well. BuzzSumo's other great feature is that you can save all the great content you find on the platform, making campaign inspiration simple.
“We’ve been using BuzzSumo since the beta. It’s a tool we’re happy to pay for because it’s saved us so much time.”
—Hannah Smith, Brain Labs Digital
7. Klear
Source: Klear
Klear is a sophisticated tool, powered by an advanced algorithm that sorts over 500 million influencers into 60,000 different categories. Users can filter profiles based on demographics, industry, hashtags, influence level, and price range, as well as access analytics for audience demographics. It provides real-time performance tracking, ROI reports, and competitive analysis.
Why consider this tool
Klear provides a great deal of information in an easy-to-understand format, making it easy to partner with the right influencer. If you offer products designed for a particular demographic. it’s the perfect tool to find the right collaborators that can get your brand in front of the right audience.
“Klear is the best software to build influencer programs! We used it to identify, interact and measure relevant influencers and were very happy with the results.
It is user-friendly, has insightful data, and has a very helpful team!”
—Gladys Diaz, Marketing Manager, Unilever
8. Inzpire.me
Source: Inzpire.me
Inzpire.me's tagline reads: "We humanize marketing". And they mean it. This tool offers influencer search, in-depth analysis, collaboration management, and reporting, and takes it to the next level by tapping into the human side of marketing via personality data. Aside from the platform, users also get full support from the Inzpire.me influencer marketing agency.
Why consider this tool
In addition to the regular profile analysis, Inzpire.me has a Personality Traits feature which analyzes both the brand and the influencer's tone and personality. The higher their match score, the more compatible the influencer is with the brand. Inzpire.me’s efficient metrics and key features are already tested by more than 3000 of the world's leading brands.
“The platform is easy to use and the inzpire.me team is very helpful. They found the right people for us to collaborate with, and we’re happy with the process and the result.”
—Anna L. Sedolfsen, Digital Marketer, Ulvang
9. Influencity
Source: Influencity
Influencity has access to over 70 million influencers, and users can save and organize user profiles in one place. Each profile provides basic info and extensive reports of their reach and performance. They also offer an easy export feature for their comprehensive reports so you can dive deep into data in your preferred format.
Why consider this tool
If you can't work with your ideal influencer, Influencity has an impressive doppelganger feature that allows you to find similar profiles. You can also maximize the investment by customizing inputs based on your specific influencer marketing needs and checking your ROI forecast on different social media platforms.
"The data provided by Influencity is one of the most accurate data provided by similar tools in the market."
—Serge S., Associate Director, Isobar MENA
10. Dyzio
Source: Dyzio
If you’re looking for a more DIY option, you can build your own influencer database with Dyzio. Their primary objective is to relieve marketers from the tedious task of updating spreadsheets. Dyzio's monitoring and reporting tools provide insights into influencer performance and evaluate your ROI in real-time. It also allows Facebook Ads Manager integration where you can collect data from both paid and organic reach.
Why consider this tool
This marketing tool has a white-label influencer platform to improve brand visibility. These features extend from custom branding and domains to white-label reporting and API authentication. If you want to design your own templates and integrate the software into other third-party analytics and marketing platforms, Dyzio is a solid bet.
“Our KPIs focus on product exposure (views/impressions), and Dyzio gives us this insight at the click of a button. It’s quick to set up campaigns and easy to filter by platform or influencer. The tagging system allows us to see a history for each influencer and understand what tools they have already, what content they have created and how their content is performing.”
—James Plumb, Media Manager, Evolution
11. HypeAuditor
Source: HypeAuditor
You can access HypeAuditor's basic analytical solutions for free. For small businesses that can't risk investing in high-end software and are still new to influencer marketing, it's a good starting point. You can use this to explore the interface and features and see if it's ideal for your needs. They also offer free courses and certification in influencer marketing.
Why consider this tool
HypeAuditor is an influencer marketing tool famous for fraud detection—in fact, it was mainly created for that purpose. It has more than 35 metrics to examine the social media accounts of over 23 million influencers. HypeAuditor's AI investigation includes suspicious audience growth and bot-generated engagements. While it helps you target the right influencer for your brand, it also ensures top-tier quality when it comes to audience engagement.
“HypeAuditor helps us solve a big problem of fraud in the Influencer industry. It definitely speeds up the process as well. The Audience Quality Score is fairly consistent and gives us a good indication when analyzing new markets or niches.”
—Luca Magnani, Founder, and Managing Director, Fullswing
12. InfluencerCandy
One big issue that small ecommerce businesses face is not having enough budget to employ big influencer marketing tools—most of which require a great deal of upfront fees without having guaranteed results. They aren't able to afford the exorbitant cost without knowing if it's worth the risk. With InfluencerCandy you're able to accelerate your sales, drive awareness and buzz, generate social proof, build long-term relationships with influencers, and have a library of UGC that you can repurpose in the future.
Find your next influencer the simple and effective way
It’s hard to find influencers that can get you results—particularly if you do your search manually.
Whether you’re just starting with influencer marketing or ready to take it to the next level, these 11 platforms have shown significant promise when it comes to helping SMBs find the right partners for their marketing campaigns.
Let’s end with a bonus tip: If you want to see faster results, you can also tie your influencer marketing strategy to a referral program.
P.S. If you are looking for micro-influencers for your brand, InfluencerCandy might be a tool you'd want to check out. Sign up for early access!