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Buyer's Guide: Influencer Marketing Platforms
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users find Impact.com to be easy to use, with a straightforward setup and intuitive interface enhancing their experience.
Users commend impact.com's streamlined features for managing partnerships effortlessly, enhancing their performance marketing efficiency.
Users enjoy the impressive selection of partner programs on Impact.com, enhancing their affiliate marketing experience significantly.
Users find the interface not intuitive, leading to frustrations with navigation and multi-site management.
Users find the learning curve steep, with some features being complicated and navigation overwhelming at first.
Users find the complexity of the interface confusing and less intuitive compared to competitor platforms.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users value the ease of use of Later Influence, enjoying organized campaigns and seamless communication with managers.
Users applaud the efficient campaign management of Later Influence, enhancing their experience as both brands and influencers.
Users highlight the supportive team and user-friendly platform of Later Influencer, enhancing the influencer marketing experience.
Users often face technical issues with Later Influence, experiencing login difficulties and occasional platform bugs.
Users find Later Influence's complexity challenging, with difficulties in onboarding and navigating the interface effectively.
Users face creator issues with sourcing and communication, impacting quality and efficiency in influencer campaigns.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users commend Captiv8 for its ease of use in campaign management, streamlining setup and automated payments seamlessly.
Users love the insightful influencer management from Captiv8, enhancing collaboration and campaign success across organizations.
Users find Captiv8's platform to be extremely user-friendly, streamlining both setup and influencer campaign management effectively.
Users find the complexity of Captiv8's manual processes and learning curve frustrating and time-consuming.
Users note a difficult learning curve with Captiv8, often feeling overwhelmed during the onboarding process.
Users find the inefficient search system frustrating, often leading to incorrect results and tedious manual processes.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the ability to discover influential connections easily, enhancing their marketing strategies and brand alignment.
Users appreciate the simplicity and efficiency of Sprout Social's influencer management for handling partnerships and campaigns.
Users find Sprout Social Influencer Marketing easy to use, simplifying campaign management and enhancing organization and performance tracking.
Users face challenges with limited influencer visibility on Sprout Social, complicating niche connections and content discovery.
Users struggle with inaccurate profiles and incomplete data on Sprout Social, impacting influencer discovery and trustworthiness.
Users experience search functionality issues with irrelevant results and missing essential creator data, affecting usability.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users commend GRIN for its effective influencer management, offering comprehensive tools and excellent customer support for brands.
Users appreciate the ease of use of GRIN, making affiliate program management seamless and efficient.
Users commend GRIN for its outstanding customer support, helping effectively manage all partnership needs seamlessly.
Users experience technical issues with GRIN, including slow loading and bugs, affecting overall usability.
Users miss having a dedicated Customer Success Manager due to poor customer support and slow response times from the team.
Users experience slow loading times with GRIN, affecting productivity and leading to frustration with analytics and crashes.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users love the variety of offers for creators, allowing them to find perfect UGC content opportunities effortlessly.
Users value the options variety in Insense, finding numerous offers that match their UGC content needs.
Users value the extensive UGC opportunities Insense offers, allowing creators to find ideal brand collaborations easily.
Users find the creator compensation inadequate, especially established creators who feel offers are often insulting.
Users find the high costs of Insense frustrating, especially when offers do not match market rates.
Users find the below market rate offers from Limited Brands to be unappealing, especially for established creators.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the ease of use of Afluencer, finding it simple and efficient to navigate and utilize.
Users appreciate the effective influencer connections Afluencer provides, boosting brand visibility and driving traffic efficiently.
Users value the diverse opportunities available on Afluencer, making it easy to connect with brands and projects.
Users find limited options for Indian influencers, hindering opportunities for newcomers and affecting campaign outcomes.
Users note the limited offers available for lower subscription plans, missing out on premium collaboration opportunities.
Users find the limited credits for collaboration applications constraining, especially for micro members seeking opportunities.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users praise the ease of use of PartnerStack, appreciating the user-friendly interface and quick access to insights.
Users appreciate the ease of managing affiliate partnerships with PartnerStack, enjoying seamless tracking and a user-friendly setup.
Users appreciate the user-friendly setup of PartnerStack, making affiliate management effortless and efficient.
Users face payment issues including fund transfer confusion and commission tracking discrepancies, adding administrative burden to managing partnerships.
Users find the reporting limitations frustrating, particularly when needing detailed analytics and facing tracking discrepancies.
Users find partnership management complexity challenging, with issues like cluttered lists and reliance on partner collaboration.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the user-friendly interface of HypeAuditor, making influencer analytics easy to access and understand.
Users value the detailed profile reviews in HypeAuditor, helping them select the right influencers efficiently.
Users value the helpful support team of HypeAuditor, guiding them through the platform's features effectively.
Users express frustration over missing features, like limited data access and lack of flexibility in campaign management.
Users find HypeAuditor to be quite expensive, urging careful consideration of needs before the financial commitment.
Users are frustrated by the limited advanced reports in HypeAuditor, which restricts deeper analytical insights.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users find Meltwater to be easy to use, enhancing their ability to navigate and track media presence efficiently.
Users find Meltwater's helpful customer service and comprehensive tools indispensable for tracking trends and analyzing sentiment.
Users highly value the excellent customer support and training provided by Meltwater, enhancing their overall experience and success.
Users find that improvement is needed for Meltwater's usability and relevance for smaller organizations' specific media needs.
Users struggle with the steep learning curve of Meltwater, finding the platform challenging to navigate initially.
Users find Meltwater not intuitive, struggling with navigation, dashboard setup, and understanding filtering options.
Written by G2’s researcher using verified user reviews and product data, with no personal bias.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users praise Tracknow for its reliable and user-friendly affiliate management, making campaign management and optimization seamless.
Users appreciate the ease of use of Tracknow, benefiting from its user-friendly interface and seamless setup.
Users appreciate the excellent tracking of referrals with Tracknow, making affiliate management straightforward and efficient.
Users find technical issues with TrackNow, including a complex interface and syncing delays, affecting user experience.
Users find Tracknow's interface and settings complicated and confusing, especially with timezone management and report navigation.
Users find the difficult learning process challenging, wishing for more comprehensive and detailed resources to aid understanding.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the ease of use of Lefty, streamlining influencer content management and reporting effortlessly.
Users appreciate the efficient influencer management of Lefty, enhancing workflow and reporting across multiple campaigns.
Users commend Lefty's exceptional customer support, noting its helpfulness, responsiveness, and availability for all inquiries.
Users find Lefty to be expensive, particularly challenging for small businesses due to the high costs involved.
Users express concern about the inaccuracy of metrics on Lefty, preferring more precise data on niche profiles.
Users find the pricing issues with Lefty challenging, as costs feel high and limits on influencers restrict tracking.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users highlight the detailed insights and efficient tools of Influencers.club that streamline creator discovery and recruitment.
Users appreciate the straightforward discovery of creators based on niche and location for effective campaign management.
Users find Influencers.club to be incredibly easy to use, streamlining creator discovery and recruitment effortlessly for teams.
Users report inconsistent quality of prospects due to variable data accuracy, impacting trust in the matching process.
Users express concerns about inconsistent quality of creators due to reliance on influencer-supplied data and filtering accuracy.
Users notice inaccuracy in prospect quality due to variable data from influencers, impacting brand trust in the matching process.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users value the attentive customer support from CreatorIQ, ensuring assistance and collaboration for successful campaigns.
Users value the in-depth analytics and updates from CreatorIQ, which enhance their reporting and influencer tracking.
Users appreciate the robust campaign management features of CreatorIQ, enabling effective tracking and collaboration on influencer campaigns.
Users find the complexity of CreatorIQ's processes can lead to inefficiencies and data confusion.
Users often face technical issues like glitches and outdated analytics, impacting functionality and data accuracy.
Users find content management challenging due to fluctuating statistics and difficulties in sourcing new creators efficiently.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the ease of use of Traackr, enabling daily utilization and effortless integration for influencer reporting.
Users value the efficient influencer campaign management provided by Traackr, streamlining collaboration and performance tracking.
Users find campaign management in Traackr effective for tracking performance and gaining valuable insights on influencers.
Users experience slow loading times with Traackr, requiring extra time for navigation and modifications.
Users report technical issues with Traackr, including bugs, slow performance, and difficulty managing social profiles.
Users express frustration with the inaccuracy of analytics, which undermines campaign measurement and strategy development.
Influencer marketing software is an important solution for any organization that invests heavily in influencer campaigns. Influencer marketing is a social media marketing strategy that aims to build mutually beneficial relationships between brands and individuals known as “influencers." In social media, an influencer is anyone with the power to impact the buying habits or actions of others through their expertise, authority, or relationship with their audience. Brands also often refer to their influencers as ambassadors or creators.
Influencer marketing platforms offer a variety of tools that streamline most or all aspects of the influencer marketing process. The most common features include influencer discovery, campaign management, and campaign analytics. Some solutions enable businesses to identify the most relevant influencers across social media while others maintain a proprietary marketplace of content creators. In addition to discovery, marketers can leverage communication and automation tools to manage their relationships with creators, as well as analytics features to measure the performance of their influencer campaigns.
Key Benefits of Influencer Marketing Platforms
Influencer marketing can be an extremely effective strategy for building brand awareness, generating sales, and even promoting consumer trust. In general, people are more likely to accept product and service recommendations from someone they already know. Many influencers have highly engaged followers who like and admire them; with influencer marketing software, businesses can partner with the right influencers to reach those audiences.
Influencer recruitment — Influencer marketing software is designed specifically to help users reach out to influencers. These platforms either allow users to sift through influencer marketplaces or scan social media channels. The software identifies which influencer is the best match for a company’s brand and campaign initiatives. For example, a pet product brand might wish to promote their new grain-free food to pet owners. The company could use an influencer marketing platform to discover and reach out to the most relevant influencers to partner with for a promotion—in this case, cat- and dog-focused social media accounts with large and highly engaged audiences.
Campaign management and analytics — Productive influencer marketing solutions offer built-in social analytics capabilities, which help users gauge the success of influencer-led campaigns. Brands with mature influencer marketing programs may run dozens of campaigns at a time. Influencer marketing software enables these brands to execute campaigns, communicate with influencers in their network, and measure the impact of each creator’s content. It is challenging to measure the true return-on-investment (ROI) of influencer marketing campaigns since this type of content cannot always be directly attributed to sales or leads. Most campaigns act as one touchpoint among many which contribute to a consumer’s decision to make a purchase. However, influencer marketing software can help marketers benchmark their efforts with analytics such as cost per engagement, cost per follower, and more.
User-generated content (UGC) — User-generated content is a by-product of the relationship between brands and influencers. When an influencer creates and posts sponsored content on social media, businesses can reuse that content for their own marketing purposes. For example, imagine a luxury travel brand partners with Instagram influencers to promote their line of luggage. The influencers then post photos of themselves travelling with the luggage in beautiful, foreign destinations. The brand can then use these photos on their own social channels, on their website, and in digital advertisements.
Influencer marketing software is mainly used by business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, especially those that sell consumer packaged goods (CPG) such as clothing, makeup, food, and household products. It is also a popular strategy among e-commerce brands since influencer content can easily link to an online store, where consumers can purchase a product immediately.
Marketers — Within an organization, marketing teams will be the primary users of influencer marketing software. Influencer campaigns require a significant amount of attention and resources as they involve managing relationships, compensating influencers, delivering samples, monitoring engagement, measuring performance, and more. As a result, these platforms are leveraged by businesses with mature social media marketing programs.
Influencers — Some influencer marketing platforms offer brands access to a proprietary database or marketplace of influencers. Content creators can join these marketplaces to indicate their interest in partnering with businesses. These platforms often provide influencers the ability to reach out to businesses directly, negotiate pay rates, and measure their own campaign performance.
Influencer recruitment — Influencer marketing software enables companies to locate and recruit social influencers, either through a proprietary influencer marketplace or through an AI-powered algorithm which searches for influencers across social networks. Recruitment tools help marketers build digital profiles of relevant influencers with information about them and their audience.
Influencer scoring — Influencer scoring features help businesses identify which influencers will be most relevant to their brand’s message or products, and help provide the most engagement. Platforms use proprietary algorithms to “score" influencers and assess their authority within a business’s target market.
Audience analysis — Influencer marketing platforms analyze the demographic and psychographic characteristics of influencers and their followers. Marketers can use this feature to understand an influencer’s brand affinities, interests, and aesthetic. For example, a beauty brand can use audience analysis to target influencers who are interested in makeup or skincare products.
Influencer segmentation — Segmentation features allow brands to separate their influencers into groups based on specific characteristics, such as their past work on brand initiatives, follower count, or campaign engagement. These tools help marketers manage groups of influencers according to the business’s needs, as well as target the appropriate creators for each campaign.
Influencer collaboration — Influencer marketing software acts as an influencer CRM of sorts, enabling marketers to maintain records of past partnerships and communications. Collaboration tools ensure all members of a marketing team can view and access their business’s past engagement with influencers so everyone is on the same page.
User-generated content (UGC) management — Influencer campaigns generate large quantities of user-generated content for brands. UGC management tools help them schedule, publish, and optimize this content for their own purposes. From a centralized platform, marketers can configure content usage and ownership rights for the various types of content their ambassadors produce.
Workflow capability — Since influencer campaigns are essentially paid advertisements, businesses need to approve the content before the influencer posts it on social media. Influencer marketing software provides workflow capabilities that allow marketers to automate the review and approval processes.
Influencer analysis — Influencer analytics features evaluate the performance of influencers and their associated campaigns. These tools rank influencers according to their impact on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue, brand mentions, and contributed work.
Reporting and dashboards — Campaign analytics features are essential for measuring the success of a business’s influencer marketing strategy. Influencer marketing software allows marketers to monitor and visualize all influencer campaigns through a dashboard that displays key success metrics in real time. These platforms can also generate comprehensive reports to be distributed to relevant stakeholders.
Data importing and exporting — Import tools enable marketers to import their existing list of brand ambassadors to an influencer marketing platform. Businesses can create more detailed profiles for their influencers and manage relationships directly from the platform. Export tools allow marketers to export influencer data from the platform, such as contact information and audience analytics.
Other Features of Influencer Marketing Platforms: E-commerce integration, Influencer compensation, Influencer database, Influencer whitelisting, Opt-in network, Social commerce
Influencer fraud — As brands seek to engage with the most relevant and prominent influencers in their market, they should be wary of scams and fraudulent activity. In order to appear more influential, some social media accounts may purchase fake followers or engagement. These fake influencers pay for bots to follow their accounts, “like" their content, or comment on posts. They can then use these inflated follower counts and engagement activity to entice brands to partner with them. It was estimated that influencer fraud would cost brands $1.3 billion in 2019 alone. However, many influencer marketing platforms are incorporating enhanced algorithms to detect influencer fraud and determine if an influencer’s followers and engagement rates are genuine.