Influencer marketing platforms provide organizations with an end-to-end solution for discovering social influencers, managing influencer-generated content, and analyzing influencer marketing campaigns. This type of software enables brands to tap into new acquisition channels and promote new products or services through partnerships with celebrities, content creators, micro-influencers, and brand ambassadors. Influencer marketing platforms are most frequently used by marketing and advertising teams in consumer goods industries like retail, fashion, and beauty, as well as e-commerce businesses and direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands.
There are two distinct methods for sourcing influencers through an influencer marketing platform. Some vendors provide a large, searchable influencer database that contains information about verified influencers across multiple social networks. These products often use artificial intelligence to analyze influencers and their audiences. Other providers grant access to a private, opt-in network of social influencers who want to partner with brands. Regardless of the sourcing method, both types of influencer marketing platforms allow businesses to filter through influencers by establishing detailed search criteria. Marketers can then use built-in collaboration and content management features to communicate with influencers, manage influencer-generated content, and analyze the performance of social influencer campaigns.
Influencer marketing platforms are often implemented to support other social media marketing software. Some influencer marketing solutions may offer features of user-generated content software or customer advocacy software to help brands leverage social proof and convert existing advocates into social influencers.
To qualify for inclusion in the Influencer Marketing Platforms category, a product must:
- Provide tools that enable users to search for social influencers within an influencer network or across social networks
- Allow users to filter through and segment influencers according to a series of factors
- Offer campaign management and communication tools with which users can communicate and manage influencers
- Provide a dashboard through which users can visualize and evaluate influencer campaign performance
- Facilitate importing and exporting of influencer data, including contact information
