One of the mistakes businesses make when finding an influencer is thinking that the best one has the biggest following, comments, cool pictures, and more. After hiring the influencer, they later realize the influencer’s content strategy does not align with their brand message. To get a good influencer, you must consider many factors, such as your brand messaging and goal.

Influencer marketing platforms make it easier to find and hire an influencer. Since they are a hub for influencers, they provide brands with a wide range of options to meet their needs. If you need an influencer on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you can find one on the top influencer marketing platforms.

Definition of an Influencer Marketing Platform

It is a marketplace where brands are connected with influencers in their niche, enabling them to implement their social media marketing strategies. These platforms also help brands and influencers track and communicate their campaign analytics. These platforms are usually agencies with specialists that enable brands to enter into an influencer partnership.

An influence marketing platform can also make it easier to manage your campaign from beginning to end. It can enable you to do various things, such as finding and connecting with new influencers relevant to your brand, managing communication, driving sales, and monitoring analytics to track the ROI of your influencer marketing campaign.

A top influencer marketing platform should save you from the manual process of finding an influencer. Thus, you can focus on strategic work and improve your relationship with the influencer. These platforms can be helpful to brands that are new to the world of influencer marketing or those with small teams that do not have the time and resources to find the right influencer.

How Influencer Marketing Platforms Can Help Your Brand

Before we list the top influencer marketing platforms, let us look at how these platforms can help your brand.

Find the Right Influencer Fast

You can imagine a situation where you must use different social media platforms to find the right influencers. That can be a tiresome and painful process. On the other hand, an influencer marketing platform enhances your search efforts for the right influencer for your campaign. You can use various factors to find a campaign, such as location, industry keywords, engagement metrics, audience demographics, etc.

On some platforms, you can get a wide range of features such as a creator marketing place, integration with ecommerce, and social listening tools to discover the people talking about your brand online. You can then invite them to generate user-generated content. Therefore, influencer marketing platforms can be great options for finding potential collaborators with your brand.

Campaign Process Streamlining and Automation

Manually tracking and executing your strategy for social media marketing in this technological era doesn't make sense. An excellent social media strategy will enable you to create a customized workflow so that you can track each stage of your campaign. You can use the platform to reach potential influencers, send them products, and even pay them.

Many influencer marketing platforms also enable you to automate your transactional emails. They will inform you when you need to get back to someone so you don't miss anything. You can automate your influencer marketing tasks to have more time to complete other projects.

A One-stop Roof for all Your Influencer Management

If you are working with several influencers simultaneously, managing them and maintaining a good relationship with them can be challenging. This is despite the fact that influencer marketing involves investing in the right persons and relationships. You will need a tool to help you track how your relationship with the influencer is working. 

Fortunately, nearly all influencer marketing platforms have a CRM, which is a contact database of your influencer. You can use it to organize the contacts of your influencers to understand your well-performing relationships. If you have an email list, you can bulk email it or just some segments to keep it updated. You can also use the tool to maintain your previous relationships so that you don't lose some contacts.

Easier Content Creation

The top influencer marketing platforms also have features that streamline and organize your content easily. This is important as there are many steps in content creation, from watching the ownership rights to organizing the content so that you are aware of the content you have permission to use and the one you don't. This kind of content streamlining helps to improve efficiency.

A good content strategy also allows you to look at your content to ensure that it comprises different types of content. This can also ensure that you are working with diverse influencers. You should, therefore, check out the features of the tool that allow you to file content according to various variables, such as campaign type, SKU, and whether you are ready to boost the content using paid ads. Doing that can enable you to reach a bigger audience. Good content creation will enable you to tell your brand story and build a community. The right influencer marketing platform will make it possible to do that.

Use Codes and Coupons to Drive Sales

Any marketing strategy has one goal: to drive conversion and sales. This applies to influencer marketing, too, and this is why top influencer marketing platforms have a strategy to help you increase sales. This strategy often includes promo codes providing discounts or affiliate links to enable commission-based influencer marketing. The platform also allows you to create commission structures for your affiliate marketers. It can be an essential tool for starting your affiliate marketing on TikTok.

Some brands continue working with influencer marketing platforms even after their campaigns. This is because the platform allows them to integrate with ecommerce platforms such as WooCommerce and Shopify, streamlining the sales process better.

Tracking Progress and ROI

To know if the influencer marketing campaign works, check your analytics and compare them over time. A top influencer marketing campaign will enable you to track critical data to make more informed decisions. It will show you metrics such as ROI on clicks, total reach, promo code usage, and more.

This data can benefit beginners looking for an effective way to measure their impressions and reach. For instance, if you are trying to build awareness, you can check engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares. You will likely get more leads when people consistently engage with your brand. After this, you can focus more on direct sales. With time, you can use a unified dashboard to track trends, content performance, and the best influencers for your brand.

When to Find an Influencer Marketing Platform

You will likely be doing things manually when getting started with influencer marketing. However, this will no longer be feasible with time, and you should find an excellent platform to scale your influencer marketing campaign. Investing in an influencer marketing campaign can also help you tie sales accurately to the campaign. This can be particularly important for tracking ROI.

By the time you are doing that, you should have shown that you can get a good return on the money, time, and energy you spend on a campaign. That indicates you can get an ROI from paying for an influencer marketing platform. Finally, the right platforms are essential for taking your campaign to the next level.

Best Influencer Marketing Platforms

Now that we have understood what an influencer marketing platform is and why you need one, let us look at some of the top options you should consider. These are:

Afluencer

Afluencer is one of the most reputable influencer marketing platforms. It connects brands and influencers for sponsored content and partnerships. The platform allows you to find the right influencers using various criteria, such as their number of followers, channels, interests, and more. 

It is easy to find an influencer who meets your needs. The tool will enable you to:

• Add a brand listing to enable influencers to learn more about your brand.
• Search for the right influencer for your project using specific criteria.
• Use one dashboard to manage influencer conversations.

Grin

This is another AI-powered influencer marketing platform that enables brands to manage their partnership with influencers seamlessly. The tool will allow you to manage your influencer marketing strategy from the campaign's discovery to its launch, reporting and analyzing results. Some of the top features of the platform include:

• Website extension allows you to get more data on an influencer when browsing a social media site.
• Better management of product seeding and influencer gifting from one dashboard.
• Better relationship management and seamless paying of influencers.

Finding an influencer on this platform can be one of the strategies for growing your Instagram account.

Influencity

Unlike the above platforms, Influencity is a collaborative influencer marketing platform that aims to enhance communication between influencers and brands. It has an intuitive dashboard with over 200 million influencers and content creators, making it an excellent option for your brand. The platform also enables you to:

• Search and filter influencers depending on the needs of your brand and campaign.
• Curate an influencer list and improve relationship management.
• Integration with top e-commerce stores such as Shopify. This improves product gifting and seeding.

Later Influence

Previously known as Mavrck, Later Influencer is another integrated influencer marketing software enabling seamless relationships between brands and influencers. As a sign of its popularity, this service has been used by top brands such as Disney, Express, Netflix, and Croc. This is an indication of the credible list the software has built. The tool will enable you to:

• Research influencers to build better market research and launch greater products.
• Launch an ambassador or referral program to improve your sales even further.
• Find the best influencer based on an influencer index.

Conclusion

You must work with the top influencer marketing platforms for a successful campaign. These essential resources can help you streamline the entire workflow. From finding the right influencer to communicating with them and even paying them, there is a lot you can do with the right influencer marketing platforms. If you are searching for one, consider one of the above options. We recommend you also read our guide on TikTok's influencer marketing steps.