Last Updated on June 8, 2020

Some businesses operate their influencer marketing efforts out of spreadsheets and email outreach plans. What starts as a small operation reaching out to a few people can quickly balloon into multiple columns, an overwhelming number of email threads, and an impossible mess of analytics. At this point, many people turn to online tools to help them get organized and take control of their campaigns.

Regardless of your business size, from small businesses working with a handful of influencers to enterprises targeting niche markets, you can find the best social influencer marketing platform for your needs relatively easily. You simply need to know what to look for in the online tools available and what features you can get based on your specific budget.

Number of Influencers Available

Influencer marketing is a numbers game. You need to research the influencers available and find the best ones to reach your target audience. If you’re relying on a tool that has only a few hundred reviewers available, then it’s unlikely that you will be able to develop a strong campaign around them and find the best product reviewers for your niche. Let’s say you’re looking to partner with a top influencer in the UK… You need a service that allows you to filter by popular users in specific localities.

When you work with a platform that offers tens of thousands of engaged users, you can find multiple lists of connections that meet your needs. You can also locate different types of influencers, from niche celebrities to small bloggers with only a few thousand followers. This approach allows you to tailor your campaigns and segment personalities by size and budget.

Multiple Campaign Options

Many influencer campaigns don’t follow cookie-cutter processes. You likely have multiple campaigns running for your business with different business goals and requirements for each. An essential part of your campaign software needs to be differentiated campaigns and multiple campaign options.

Some SaaS platforms let you run only one or two campaigns at once, while others allow dozens or don’t put limits on your campaign needs. With these options, you can also save campaigns after they end to study what worked and what did not.

Clear Information Regarding Rates and Influencer Requirements

One of the hardest steps in the process is working through influencer payment rates and requirements. You may reach out to a prospective reviewer via email, only to discover that their rates are out of your budget.

Look for a social influencer marketing platform that allows you to sort potential partnerships by their rates. This arrangement can help you stay on budget and limits your outreach efforts to people you can already afford to work with. The ability to filter your partnerships alone can save your team several hours of work from not reaching out to overpriced dead ends.

Ease of Campaign Pitching

Filtering is not the only step that can reduce the time spent developing relationships with influencers. Some platforms make it easy for marketers to pitch ideas to influencers and start working with them. They offer form emails you can use and adjust to your needs and allow brands to connect with reviewers with only a few clicks. You no longer have to look for email addresses and hope that the people you reach out to respond to you. Active and engaged product reviewers are at your fingertips.

Reporting and Aggregation Tools

As you start launching campaigns and working with individuals, you need to track what works and what does not. With the right reporting and analytics options, you can see which personalities drove the most traffic to your social pages or website and which ones contributed to the most sales or generated the most leads.

With this information located all in one place, you can start to grow your relationship with some reviewers while ending it with others. You may learn that certain bloggers are better for your brand and drive more sales than others. You can easily see where your campaigns succeed and fail with a dedicated influencer analytics tool.

Campaign Scalability

As you start to use the various features offered by your influencer marketing platform, you will be able to scale your social media marketing efforts and reach new audiences. While you may have spent days or hours developing a strategy and partnerships previously, you can reach out to influencers and form an agreement in shorter periods of time. This approach is why you want to find ways to scale your production as your efforts and budget grows.

While you may only work with a few product reviewers today, you may have more than 10 campaigns with dozens of personalities involved in your promotions process in the future.

Choosing the right platform can make your job easier and help your marketing department get organized. Knowing exactly what tools you need to succeed can help you grow an effective influencer marketing campaign. If you’re in the market for an online influencer platform, check out our pricing today or sign up for a free walk-through of our products and services.