Category: Influencer Marketing

These days, people are Googling the term “influencer marketing” about 6x more than they did three years ago.

Influencer marketing is a hot topic for marketers in 2018 – and for good reason. Consumers (in particular Millennials and Generation Z) are getting better at tuning out advertisements (at a somewhat alarming rate, if you’re an advertiser).

At the same time, influencers are on the rise – and people listen to what they have to say. 40% of consumers say they have purchased an item after seeing an influencer use it on Twitter, Vine, YouTube, or Instagram, and teens’ emotional attachment to YouTube stars is 7x greater than that for traditional celebrities like Seth Rogen or Jennifer Lawrence. Not surprisingly, 73% of marketers say they are allocating part of their budget towards influencer marketing.

This bears out in conversations we have with the e-commerce brands in our network – virtually every brand we talk to is highly interested in influencer marketing. Most, however, know little about it or don’t have time to devote to it. Many who have tried it find it resource-intensive and difficult to measure success and some have encountered problems with fake influencers with inflated statistics. The bottom line: marketers need help in getting a positive ROI in their influencer marketing campaigns.

The rise of the influencer marketing platforms

While marketing with influencers can be effective, it is also hard to do. Running a campaign with dozens or hundreds of influencers takes a lot of work, and traditional metrics like ROI and EMV (earned media value) are hard to come by. That’s not to mention the challenge of dealing with the many diverging personalities, preferences, and business priorities involved with the numerous influencers a brand needs to work within parallel.

To help brands through this, the cottage industry of influencer marketing platforms has been born and is now thriving. In fact, the number of startups in this space is exploding, with 40 mature and viable platforms competing in the marketplace based on our latest count.

The challenge for many brands now is in deciding which influencer marketing platform is right for their needs. To help clarify this dynamic and evolving space, we did a deep-dive and explored this new world of influencer marketing platforms and compiled our findings here in this report.

Broadly speaking, influencer marketing platforms fall into four categories:

Single-platform marketplaces focus on single sites like YouTube

These pure-play platforms focus on one social network (predominantly YouTube), connecting brands with influencers on that platform. They mostly serve as a marketplace and directory of top influencers that brands can use to find the right influencers, and these services usually act as an intermediary to aid communication and facilitate payments. These are great for smaller brands with a specific product or message to promote.

Discovery tools help you find influencers

These platforms focus on providing very robust search, filtering, and matching capabilities so that brands can scour the entire universe of influencers across all platforms to identify the ones that are the best candidates to help them promote their message. Most of these companies focus on data analytics to machine learning to crunch through millions of profiles to enable powerful search capabilities. These work well for brands with existing resources to contact influencers and manage campaigns, and just need a powerful way to find the right influencers.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools focus on providing feature-rich software

These SaaS players are not marketplaces, in that they do not maintain relationships with influencers themselves, rather they provide software that enables brands to better manage their outreach themselves. These companies combine influencer discovery tools with relationship management features (CRM), aiding in the back-and-forth communication required in managing influencer campaigns, and some offer rich campaign analytics as well. SaaS platforms are great for larger brands who are already working with influencers, but who want software to accelerate and expand their current efforts.

Full-service influencer marketing platforms help with the entire process

Full-service influencer marketing platforms combine a SaaS platform with an influencer marketplace, so not only do they provide software to manage the entire influencer management process, they develop relationships with influencers and aid brands in connecting with them. These work well for brands who are serious about running large-scale influencer campaigns, but who lack the dedicated resources to do this.

A quick list of the leading influencer marketing platforms

We analyzed and did deep dives into 40 platforms below, categorized first by the budget they appeal to (small or large), and then the four major segments.

Platform-specific influencer marketplaces

Ifluenz (starts at $15/campaign) – Links marketers and Instagram influencers in many different verticals for product placement
Shoutcart (price depends on influencer’s fee) – Simple place to buy Instagram shout outs
Tribe Group (price depends on influencer’s fee) – Influencers bring completed content to marketers running campaigns
Octoly (pricing not listed) – Similar to Famebit, focuses on non-paid reviews only. Handles shipping of product samples for brands.
Influenster (pricing not listed) – Hands-off marketplace for health & beauty brands to send the product out for review
Famebit (price depends on influencer’s fee) – Leading YouTube marketplace (now owned by Google!)

Influencer discovery platforms

• Heepsy (starts at $29/mo) – An affordable Instagram search tool with a focus on international influencers
• BuzzSumo (starts at $70/mo) – Search over 1 million pieces of content to find relevant influencers, and find Twitter influencers by niche
• Ninja Outreach (starts at $75/mo) – 8 million searchable social profiles and bloggers, quick & easy outreach features
• Keyhole (starts at $179/mo) – Discover influencers based on hashtags and keywords, has strong all-around analytics
• Klear (starts at $250/mo) – 500 million searchable social profiles, starting at $250/month
• HYPR (starts at ~$500/mo) – 10 million searchable social profiles, targeting small to medium businesses
• Onalytica (starts at $550/mo) – 150,000 influencers to pick from, rich influencer analytics and ability to track relationships and conversations
• NeoReach (starts at ~$4,166/mo) – 3 million searchable social profiles, much deeper data analytics, targeting large enterprise customers

Full-service influencer marketing platforms

IZEA (starts at $1/mo) – 250,000 opt-in creators, lots of features to help brands with many types of influencer marketing campaigns
Tomoson (starts at $49/mo) – 50,000 opt-in influencers, full-service platform which caters to smaller clients
Open Influence (starts at $50/mo) – 465,000 opt-in influencers, cutting edge AI search capabilities
Intellifluence (starts at $99/month) – Browse through over 15,000 micro-influencers, ideal for small businesses just getting started with influencer marketing
Scrunch (starts at $99/mo) – One of the largest influencer databases, with more than 20 million active profiles of all sizes in almost 25 topic areas
Webfluential (starts at $100/mo) – 15,000 opt-in influencers reviewed by the platform’s staff, AI matches up brands with influencers
Influicity (starts at $199/mo) – Plan & manage campaigns with over 10 million opt-in influencers, offers a free version for newbies
Buzzoole (minimum €500/campaign) – 265,238 influencers from 176 countries, focused on content
Hypetap (minimum $1,000 AUD/campaign) – 1,240 invite-only, heavily curated influencers, full service platform
TapInfluence (starts at $1,999/mo) – 50,000 opt-in creators, one of the most established and full-featured influencer marketing platforms
The Cirqle (minimum $10,000/campaign) – 10,000 opt-in lifestyle influencers, full service with strong Saas platform
Grapevine Logic (price depends on influencer’s fee) – 130,000 YouTube and Instagram influencers specializing in 5 big niches, end-to-end platform with robust analytics
Dealspotr (price depends on influencer’s fee) – 2,500 opt-in creators. The lower-cost platform that focuses on conversion tracking and ROI.
Linqia (performance-based payment)- 100,000 opt-in influencers, specializing in small to mid-size influencers
Whalar (depends on campaign) – Opt-in roster of influencers, provides matchmaking based on content, content quality driven
Popular Pays (pricing not listed)- Hyper-curated database of 8,000 Instagram micro-influencers, popular with big-name brands
BrandBacker (pricing not listed) – 20,000 opt-in influencers, full-service influencer marketing platform with lots of live support to help brands manage their campaigns
Mavrck (pricing not listed) – 10.6 million micro-influencers, uses a site plug-in to identify influencers among your customers

Influencer marketing SaaS platforms

Zoomph (starts at $12.75/mo) – for those already running campaigns, this full-service platform will identify influencers in your audience
BuzzStream (starts at $24/mo) – Search influencer profiles by keyword & get stats on each profile, good for any size business as a discovery tool
PitchBox (offers custom plan model) – Automates outreach and CRM with bloggers pulled from the web, well-rounded app that excels at email management
Upfluence (starts at ~$950/mo) – Search engine with access to over 1 million international influencers, great for list building
Traackr (starts at ~$4,166/mo) – Huge searchable database of social profiles with deep data analytics, plus rich CRM features. Targets larger enterprise customers.
GroupHigh (starts at ~$8,000/mo) – Data-centric platform with over 16 million influencers and bloggers, targets companies with large budgets
Julius (pricing not listed) – Searchable database of 100,000 human-vetted influencers, the only platform to support Twitch
Revfluence (pricing not listed) – 500,000 searchable profiles, plus they make contact information available. Targets mid-size business.

– by Michael Quoc