The best influencer marketing tools share several essential characteristics, but some of them try to differentiate themselves by offering a unique advantage.
So, let's take a look at the most important features an influencer platform should offer, as well as the questions you should ask during your evaluation.
1. Search and discovery engine
There are influencers of all sizes, from celebrities to nano-influencers, and spread over thousands of different fields, from video games to education, yoga, gardening, and the circular economy.
Influencers will all differ in their approach, tone, and content format within a community.
2. Analysis of influencer profiles
Your search does not end here! After a pre-selection via the search engine, you must be able to qualify the most suitable influencers by analyzing different qualitative and quantitative criteria, thanks to your platform.
This step allows you to avoid collaborating with influencers who publish content contrary to your values , or whose audience is simply not in line with yours.
3. Contact and relationship management
An influencer marketing platform should facilitate tasks such as creating and sending briefs, signing contracts, or validating content, and help you monitor the progress and quality of your relationships with influencers.
4. Campaign analysis and reporting
A good influencer marketing platform should allow you to monitor the progress of your campaigns and analyze their impact and return on investment.
To follow the smooth running of your campaign, it is important to be able to follow the content published by the influencer and its performance. Real-time monitoring of this content allows you above all to ensure the quality and compliance of the publications, and whether the influencers have fulfilled their part of the contract by publishing the number of contents planned.
The influence marketing tool must then be able to provide you with measurements on the performance of the content: number of impressions, engagements (reactions, comments). This allows you to identify in the blink of an eye the best performing content or the influencers who have best relayed your campaign.
5. Teamwork
An influencer campaign is rarely the work of one person. It involves communication managers, community managers, editors, and designers. To be effective as a team, your tool must be able to facilitate collaboration between members.
6. Human support
Being able to get technical support quickly and efficiently is key to ensuring your influencer marketing tool benefits your brand.
Make sure there are ways to access help materials (guides, tutorials) when you need them, not just when things go wrong.
The key is to make sure your team can understand and use all the features available, help you set up complex research, and generally use the platform to their best advantage.
You should know which channels customer service is available on (phone, email, live chat) and that support is available in the appropriate languages for your team.
Human support is therefore essential, especially if you are about to launch a campaign and want everything to be well configured!
7. Pricing models
Finally, the price will play an important role in your choice of tool. And on this point, there are many different models.
Some platforms charge according to the number of campaigns, some offer a fixed subscription, and still, others charge according to the number of influencers activated.
The key is to find the model that best suits your needs. For example, if you plan to do many campaigns with ten influencers during the year or a single campaign with many influencers.
