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Influencer marketing means high ROI on your marketing budget. How high, you ask? Well, according to this study, 11 times that of other digital marketing strategies.
Everyone is talking about influencers. But whilst you may know that influencers won’t be ignored in the contemporary marketplace, learning how to tap into their power can feel somewhat elusive. Luckily, as influencer marketing has grown as an essential methodology in the digital economy, so have the tools available to engage with it effectively.
Before I introduce you to the top influencer marketing tools that will become indispensable to your business, let’s take a moment to look at what influencer marketing is, and why it has grown so rapidly.
What is influencer marketing?
We live in a world where 74% of people use social networks to guide their purchasing decisions. But what (or who) are the sherpas on these platforms that are sending your potential customers in one direction or another? You got it – influencers.
But, as Gerardo A. Dodo writes for Forbes, influencers are not simply social media users with a large following. It goes deeper than that. He explains that an influencer “is someone who has the power to influence the perception of others or gets them to do something different.”
Influencer marketing then, is a strategy that places emphasis on targeting influential people rather than a target market as a whole. By getting your brand adored by the right people, and having them create their own content (so-called influencer-generated content) around it, you will by proxy get it into the hands of their flock. Make sense? Now, onto the how…
Here are the top influencer marketing tools to get your business aligned with the most important digital marketing trend of our time.
The 5 top influencer marketing tools on the market
NeoReach is a comprehensive tool that will help you create a direct connection between your brand and the optimal social media following. This solution mines influencer data on a range of social media platforms, and then catalogues it on their platform for companies to discover.
It goes further than simply providing a database of influencers, however. Neoreach allows you to manage your relationship with relevant influencers on the platform so as to build up your unique influencer marketing campaign.
While NeoReach could become indispensable to your business, it is not free. Pricing structure is based on how you use the platform (from number of influencers you engage to how you engage them), and varies greatly between users. If you are a startup, this may not be the first port of call when it comes to getting going with your influencer campaign. If however, you are a larger business that has budget to spend, NeoReach is an excellent avenue to both access and manage top influencers in your niche.
Fun fact: Founders Jesse Leimgruber and Misha Talvera were still teenagers when they first pitched the idea to their Technology Entrepreneurship class at Stanford.
Kred is, at its core, a metric system that creates and monitors your social influence. It allows you to track (and improve) your own social influence, connect with other influencers in your niche, and track your impact on social channels. It is being used more and more in hiring practices where companies track prospective employees social clout – a practice that is carried out with controversial results.
What is particularly interesting about the platform is that they pride themselves on their transparency in creating their own scoring guide. Based predominantly on your Twitter and Facebook activity, it’s not hard to understand how they have come up with their metrics and what they might mean in the context of your own influence or that of people you would like to engage with.
If you are looking to focus on Twitter as a central element of your influencer marketing campaign, this platform is very helpful. Allowing you to track multiple Twitter accounts from a central dashboard, Tweetdeck is the essential tool for monitoring conversations and influential voices in the Twittersphere.
Using Twitter-owned Tweetdeck is a low-risk means to kick off your influencer tactics. It can help you track key influencers in your target niche, meaning you can get involved in the conversation and start to build a relationship. From there, you can start to put together a more comprehensive strategy. It’s free to anyone with a Twitter account, and is available as a web, desktop, or Chrome browser app.
Whether you are a sponsor or are in need of sponsorship for your original content, FameBit can be very useful. FameBit is YouTube’s “marketplace for Influencers.” Through sophisticated metrics based on deep audience analysis, they are able to provide a tool that connects brands and content creators in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Because it is created and owned by the platform itself, their tools of measurement have been created with invaluable insider knowledge. It’s free to sign up, but they do take a 10% service fee. There is also a VIP option that can be obtained by offering up a 30% cut of your wares. Brands can invest as little as $100 for influencer endorsements; meaning that this isn’t just for the big multinational corporates.
FameBit offers symbiosis in the influencer marketing industry. Influencers and brands alike come to the platform to give each other what they have to offer, and then help the other party thrive in return.
BuzzSumo is one of my favourites. It reveals detailed content sharing data, consolidating key information and influencers into one intuitive dashboard. BuzzSumo is focused on digging out the most prominent content on the web, according to its niche and interest area. It tracks profiles, keywords, hashtags, and more. This is a brilliant method to spot your target audience’s biggest influencers. For PRs, it is an excellent tool to find journalists who are prime for outreach.
Here’s a bonus tool.
Xtensio is a collaboration platform where users can easily create and share living documents. It allows teams to collaborate on presentations, proposals, reports, sales sheets or any online documents in real-time.
Xtensio works like a web builder so it’s easy to add images, videos, tables and other interactive modules. Users can drag and drop, resize, change backgrounds, set colors and fonts to match brands. Living “folios” can even be protected as access levels can be controlled.
Summary
The catalogue of available marketing tools is growing in line with the reach that influencers have. Influencers have a say in what people buy, when, and why. Depending on the size of your operation and your marketing goals, some tools might be more appropriate than others. Regardless of which tools you choose, the simple truth remains…
The contemporary consumer feels more than a little saturated with being on the receiving end of direct advertising. Rather than be inundated with ads, consumers want to enjoy agency in the decisions they make. They want to engage in research that will allow them to come out informed by those in the know.
Influencers are people who have impact within their specific niche. They’re the go-to-guides, providing the definitive word on what should trend. Using some of the tools above, you can identify and target the best influencers in your industry, and get ahead of competitors during critical stages of business growth.
AUTHOR BIO: Charlie Carpenter is the co-founder and CEO of Kite. He is a mobile advocate with over ten years of industry experience. After working for large and small agencies for many years, he co-founded Kite; a software solution for print-on-demand, zero inventory merchandise, and personalised photo print goods. As well as an entrepreneur, Charlie is a seasoned product strategist with experience of various types of digital projects which include: Responsive and Adaptive Websites, Mobile & Tablet Apps, Hybrid Apps, Cross Platform App development. You can connect with Charlie on LinkedIn, and follow him on Twitter.
