Influencer marketing is the latest trend in brand promotion strategies, and it is becoming increasingly popular among companies compared to traditional strategies. A recent study shows that $570 million was spent on influencer marketing campaigns in 2016 alone, and this spending is expected to increase in 2017.
The main reason behind its popularity is the cost effectiveness and the improved targeted customer outreach that it provides. But if the customer outreach process is not implemented correctly, it will be a waste of resources and effort. As a result, one of the most crucial factors to consider in influencer marketing campaigns is choosing the right influencer. The campaign will fail to reach the right audience if you don’t work with the right influencers.
There are a variety of influencer marketing tools available for marketers to help them find the right influencers for their campaigns. Many of these tools can also help you reach out to influencers in an efficient manner. These tools can also track the number of views, shares, and likes on a published social media post or article.
Here is a list of some of the most popular influencer marketing tools today:
Assembly
Assembly is a cloud-based software that helps launch and manage influencer marketing campaigns effectively. Not only does it help you streamline the influencer onboarding process, it also helps you track your ROI with efficient reporting mechanisms.
Redbrick is the company that has developed this software platform and with it, they’ve made campaign management a hassle-free experience for businesses.
Assembly makes it extremely easy to track the progress of your campaign, and helps you gain more insights on the effectiveness of your campaign with the help of detailed reports.
Klout
Klout helps you measure responses to your posts, links, and articles on various social media platforms. It accumulates data from a number of sources with respect to the article or post you have created, the interactions with your readers, and the reach of your social network.
Klout issues a score between 1-100 that shows how influential you are. A higher Klout score indicates that you are more influential. So you can even use it to find influential experts in the relevant industries. This image shows some statistics about the services Klout has provided.
Kred
Kred is known as the home of online influencers. It helps you find relevant influencers, and connect with them using Kred communities. Kred also allows you to monitor results and encourage influencer, user, and organization engagement through communities for easy identification. Shira Lazar, co-founder and host of @whatstrending shares her experience of working with Kred:
BuzzStream
BuzzStream helps brands reach out to influencers and gain insights about them through research. It also helps them to keep track of their conversations and follow-ups with the influencers. It is very effective in increasing word-of-mouth promotions and an exceptional tool for generating good links.
Seer, Rackspace, Clearlink, and Blueclaw are some of the major clients of BuzzStream among many others. The most important uses of BuzzStream are:
- Digital PR
- Link Building
- Content Promotion
This image shows a list of some of the influencers associated with BuzzStream.
GroupHigh
GroupHigh is a tool for finding relevant influencers for your brand. The database for influencers offered by GroupHigh consists of more than 15 million active bloggers. It also helps in conducting research and monitoring the results of your influencer marketing campaign.
GroupHigh was founded in 2012 and has been a leading public relations provider since then. Some of the major clients of GroupHigh are Sony, Levi’s, Jo-Ann stores. Here are some more of them.
Muck Rack
Muck Rack specializes in PR and helps you find suitable bloggers and journalists. It also helps send alerts and build media lists. It is most effective to grow the fanbase of bloggers, journalists, and editors and helps them showcase their work to the rest of the world.
Muck Rack is revolutionary public relations software. Some of their major clients are Pfizer, Comcast, Nike, and many more. Muck Rack users have reported enhanced efficiency and productivity in managing their campaigns as the screenshot below shows.
Inkybee
Inkybee helps you find industry-specific influencers. It also helps you manage your interaction with influencers, track coverage, and measure the outcome with the help of reports.
Some major clients of Inkybee are Beekeeper Group, Polaris, Anvil Media, and more. Inkybee also publishes various blog posts that give valuable insights into the world of influencer marketing.
Gorkana
Gorkana is a leader in media intelligence. Founded in 1980, it was later acquired by Cision. They help organisations control and manage their reputation across various media platforms and connect them with critical insights and information. They work with more than 4000 customers including 65 of the top 100 FTSE companies.
The image below shows all the media solutions that Gorkana provides.
Contactually
Contactually is a CRM tool that helps you manage your contacts efficiently. It connects your work email directly with the relationship database thus enabling you to contact relevant influencers directly from your work mail and helps you categorize your contacts as well. It can even send reminders and follow up notifications for any pending work. Some of the major clients of Contactually are Google, Netflix, IBM and more.
Pitchbox
Pitchbox is an influencer outreach and content marketing platform. It enables brands, publishers and SEO agencies in creating outreach messages, tracking campaign progress and preparing reports of such activity. It also provides an integrated emailing feature.
Below are some comments from some of the leading clients of Pitchbox.
