What Are Influencer Marketing Tools?
Influencer marketing tools are used to add efficiency to the tasks involved with running influencer collaborations.
Every tool is different, but they can help with:
- Finding relevant influencers
- Analyzing their audience, content, and performance
- Managing influencer relationships
- Speeding up workflows like briefing, contracts, and content approvals
- Measuring the impact of influencer collaborations
9 Best Tools for Influencer Marketing
Here’s our list of the best influencer marketing tools.
Influencer Analytics
Influencer Analytics is a Semrush app that helps with planning, running, and measuring influencer marketing campaigns.
Use cases:
- Influencer discovery
- Competitor research
- Influencer campaign management
The tool has features and data to help with influencer marketing on YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok.
If you’re starting from scratch, the first step is to find relevant influencers.
Here’s how:
First, click the “Influencer Discovery” tab and select a social platform. Next, click “Filters.”
In this example, we’ll search for YouTube influencers using filters to narrow the results.
Next, apply filters. For example, you can choose to only see YouTube creators within a particular subscriber range. Or located in a particular country.
You’ll get a list of results that match your filter criteria.
Click on any influencer to open their profile and get more data, including:
- Average number of video likes
- Median engagement rate
- Average comments per 10,000 views
If the influencer looks like a good fit, click “Add to lists” to shortlist the profile. Later, use your lists for exporting data, launching a campaign, or to review and campaign your final selections.
Influencer Analytics also has features for:
- Competitor Analysis: Check which apps and brands are being mentioned by YouTube and Twitch influencers
- Campaign Management: Keep track of live and scheduled influencer content, total influencer video views, total spending, cost per mille (CPM, or cost per thousand impressions), and more
- “Tops”: Get ranked lists of the top influencers per social channel or country. By subscriber count, view count, or engagement rate.
What We Like
Influencer Analytics is a beginner-friendly tool. It requires no training to use, there’s a free trial, and monthly pricing is accessible for small businesses starting out with influencer marketing.
Pricing
Pricing for the Basic plan is $169/month. Available add-ons include:
- Competitor Analysis for $129/month
- Campaign Management for $69/month
Modash
Modash is an influencer marketing tool for finding, analyzing, managing, and tracking influencers.
Use cases:
- Influencer discovery
- Analysis
- Outreach
- Client relationship management (CRM)
- Campaign tracking
The discovery feature lets you search for influencers in four ways:
- Filter through over 250 million influencers using criteria like audience demographics and engagement rate
- Find lookalikes of influencers you already work with
- Check your brand’s Instagram followers for influencers
- Import a list of customer emails to see if any are influential
Once you find relevant influencers, the analysis tool lets you review their audience, performance, and content. Without having to reach out first.
It looks like this:
Image Source: Modash
Modash also has an influencer tracking tool.
Instead of manually grabbing links to live influencer content, the tool automatically collects it. It saves all your influencer content to one dashboard. Ready for reporting, analysis, or repurposing.
Image Source: Modash
There’s a Shopify integration, too. So you can see discount code redemptions per creator for return on investment (ROI) data.
What We Like
For influencer discovery, Modash’s influencer database isn’t limited by size. It’s an “open-network” database, which means it collects public data. You can filter through every creator with over 1,000 followers on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok.
It’s not a limited database of pre-vetted influencers, so you won’t run out of potential candidates. Regardless of location or niche.
Pricing
Modash has a14-day free trial, and paid plans start from $99/month (paid annually) or $120/month (paid monthly). Pricing scales up to enterprise based on usage.
(Disclaimer: I’m employed by Modash.)
GRIN
GRIN is an influencer marketing platform specializing in ecommerce workflows.
Use cases:
- Influencer marketing automation
- Managing affiliates
- Product seeding/influencer gifting
GRIN’s strength is improving influencer marketing workflows for ecommerce brands.
Some of its features include:
- Creator approvals: It provides a portal through which influencers can submit their creative concepts for the brand team to give feedback
- Contracts: GRIN integrates with Docusign to keep influencer contracts in one place
- Influencer gifting: Sync your ecommerce store, let creators choose products, and ship them from within the GRIN interface
GRIN also has a feature for creator payments. You can add funds to GRIN and pay out through PayPal. GRIN handles creator 1099s and helps you to analyze your influencer spend.
What We Like
GRIN has great coverage in ecommerce integrations like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and Klaviyo.
Pricing
GRIN’s pricing isn’t publicly available. An annual contract is required, and professional services are available as an add-on.
Upfluence
Upfluence is an all-in-one influencer marketing platform.
Use cases:
- Influencer discovery
- Analysis
- Gifting
- Tracking
- Payments
There are a lot of overlapping features with the previous tools. Upfluence features include:
- Influencer discovery: For Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Pinterest, and blogs
- Influencer analytics: To get audience and performance data for influencer selection
- Sales tracking: Through promo codes and links
Upfluence also has an end-to-end affiliate management feature. You can find potential affiliates, create their tracking links, report on activity, and handle the payouts.
Image Source: Upfluence
What We Like
While Upfluence’s discovery database is smaller overall, it covers many platforms. For example, some other tools in this list won’t help you to find influencers on Pinterest or X (while Upfluence does).
Pricing
Upfluence’s pricing isn’t publicly available. They offer a hybrid agency-SaaS model, with professional services available as an add-on to platform plans. An annual contract is required.
Pitchbox
Compared to the all-in-one influencer marketing tools above, Pitchbox is a more specialized solution for outreach.
Use cases:
- Influencer outreach
Pitchbox is built primarily for link building use cases. Which means it works best when looking for influential websites, bloggers, and journalists. However you can import your own contact list to leverage the features for social media influencer outreach, too.
It has several useful features that make influencer outreach more efficient:
- Schedule the optimal send times to maximize deliverability
- Automate follow-up sequences
- Use conditional logic in email templates
Conditional logic lets you customize emails depending on various factors. For example, you might create a template that sends “Sentence A” if the recipient is an ecommerce site and “Sentence B” if the recipient is a SaaS site.
There are also lots of helpful integrations, including Semrush. That means you’ll get Semrush data like blog traffic and backlinks to verify and prioritize outreach prospects.
Other integrations include Zapier, Looker Studio, and Slack.
What We Like
Pitchbox has great template features. You can customize and save templates for your team with personalization and conditional logic.
It also offers analytics to help you compare the performance of each template.
Pricing
Pitchbox pricing starts from $550/month (paid monthly) or $495/month (paid annually). They also offer an enterprise tier starting at $1,500/month (paid monthly) or $1,350/month (paid annually). Pricing scales based on the number of outreach emails.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content marketing tool. For influencer marketing specifically, use it to find the most shared content in your niche, who created it, and who shared it.
Use cases:
- Influencer discovery
- Content and trends research
There’s an influencer search feature with various ways to discover influencers depending on the platform. It works for Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and YouTube.
For example, with X, you can search based on things like topics, keywords in Twitter bio, influencer location, and more.
There’s also a “Content Analyzer” feature that lets you find the most shared content by topic. From there, you can look through the list of authors for potential influencers. BuzzSumo also provides a “Top Sharers” list to let you find influential people who shared that content, too.
What We Like
BuzzSumo is good for finding journalists. Which is helpful if you’re using influencers as part of a digital public relations (PR) strategy.
There’s a large journalist database, and the tool offers features throughout to help with finding journalists. For example, the influencer search tool lets you separate the results to show only journalists.
Pricing
BuzzSumo’s pricing starts from $199/month (paid monthly) or $159/month (paid annually). Pricing scales based on features needed and user seats. There is a 30-day free trial.
Collabstr
Collabstr is a marketplace for influencer marketing. It connects brands with influencers and content creators who are actively seeking brand collaborations.
Use cases:
- Influencer discovery
- Influencer payments
- Managing influencer communications
- Getting user-generated content
On Collabstr, you can search for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube influencers. There are thousands of pre-vetted creators. Search by platform, topics, location, price range, and gender.
Creators can list off-the-shelf packages that brands can buy. Or make a custom offer.
All outreach and conversations with influencers happen directly within the platform. Collabstr processes the influencer payments, too.
What We Like
The advantage of using a marketplace like Collabstr is that the creators are proactively looking for collaborations. And their pricing is often publicly listed. Together, those two things make recruitment much faster.
The flip side is that the potential pool of influencers is much smaller, and they’re likely working with similar brands already. But if you need to move quickly, it could be a good option for your brand.
Pricing
Collabstr has no upfront cost. The platform charges a 15% fee on the creator’s earnings and offers optional managed services for brands.
Storyclash
Storyclash is a multi-purpose influencer marketing platform.
Use cases:
- Influencer discovery
- Influencer campaign tracking
- Reporting on influencer marketing
- Influencer CRM
Like some of the tools above (Modash, Grin, Upfluence), Storyclash is an all-in-one tool.
It has features for:
- Influencer discovery: Including AI search to find influencers using natural language. For example, you can get influencer suggestions by typing “Instagram influencers with curly hair.”
- Influencer campaign tracking: Instead of screenshotting live influencer content, Storyclash collects it and saves it to a dashboard for convenience
- Influencer marketing reporting: Create and share reports showing data like content output, promo code redemptions, ROI, and more
Image Source: Capterra
What We Like
For each creator in their database, Storyclash offers a brand collaboration timeline. It shows the brands the creator has published sponsored content with, when it went live, and how frequently they’ve worked together.
Pricing
Storyclash pricing starts at €899/month (around $975). It scales up based on features you need, team seats, level of support, and more. An annual contract is required.
Awario
Awario is a tool for tracking brand mentions across the internet.
Use cases:
- Social listening
- Influencer discovery
Using Awario to find organic mentions of your brand on websites and social media is a great influencer discovery tactic.
Why?
Because creators who mention your brand organically are likely to perform well.
You know they already love your brand (if the sentiment is positive). So if you reach out to build a paid relationship, you’ll know their content is authentic.
If you already have live campaigns with influencers, use Awario to report on some performance metrics. Like reach and engagement rate (broken down by locations), share of voice, and more.
Awario also offers white-label reporting, which allows agencies to deliver on-brand reports to clients.
What We Like
The social listening feature offers a lot of filtering options to help you find the most relevant conversations about your brand. For example, you can add negative keywords to remove irrelevant conversations. Or, filter by platform or country.
Pricing
Awario pricing starts from $49/month (paid monthly) or $29/month (paid annually).
How Influencer Marketing Tools Fit Into Your Strategy
Influencer marketing tools can’t create a strategy for you. But they help you to execute tasks more efficiently.
That means you need to have a basic strategy in place before onboarding a tool. Once your strategy is clear, you can better discern which influencer marketing tools align best with your needs.
Here are some key considerations you should address:
Goals for Influencer Marketing
What do you want to achieve with influencer marketing? Is it:
- A performance channel measured by directly attributable sales?
- A brand awareness channel measured by reach and engagement?
- A mix?
Your answer could change your tool requirements.
For example, if your goal is sales, you’ll need a tool that supports link clicks and promo code redemptions for attribution.
How to Compensate Influencers
There are several ways to compensate influencers. Like:
- Gifting free products
- Affiliate commissions
- Flat fee payments
- Free trips and experiences
(It’s common to use a mixture.)
The type of compensation you plan to use will impact your tooling decisions.
For example, some tools can support affiliate links and payouts, while others can’t. Similarly, some tools help with shipping products to influencers—while others don’t.
The Type and Size of Influencer You’ll Collaborate with
Your budget and strategy will change the type of influencer you aim to collaborate with (which, in turn, changes your tool requirements).
For example, if you’re compensating via affiliate commissions or free products, you’ll probably need to find a high volume of nano influencers (1,000-10,000 followers). Since larger influencers are more likely to require upfront fees.
You should also think about which social platforms your target audience hangs out on. Not every tool in this list supports every social platform. Some can’t find Instagram influencers, others can’t find Twitch influencers (etc.).
Accelerate Your Influencer Program with Tools
You might not need influencer marketing tools from day one. But once you’re starting to gain traction with influencer collaborations, tools quickly become a no-brainer to scale your program.
The best tools for you depend on your strategy and budget.
If you want to find and work with YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok influencers, try a free trial of Influencer Analytics. It has everything you need to research competitors, find your first influencers, and manage the campaign.