INFLUENCER MARKETING

10 Best Influencer Marketing Tools to Try in 2023

The right influencer marketing tools are the backbone of a successful influencer marketing campaign.

But you must choose correctly according to your needs – and this article will help you with that.

We’ll review the nine best influencer marketing tools below, based on your marketing goals and needs, discussing:

• Pros and cons for each tool
• How their features translate into benefits for your specific company
• How to use their most important features
• Pricing plans

Keep reading below.

TL;DR

• inBeat.co: Best overall creator tool with a vast influencer database, comprehensive features, and affordable pricing.
• Showcase: Best UGC markeplace with advanced search filters and transparent pricing.
• CreatorIQ: Ideal for large companies, offering accurate influencer discovery, fraud detection, and in-depth reporting.
• BuzzStream: Best for link-building and digital PR, streamlining influencer discovery, outreach, and email campaigns.
• SocialBee: Great for content optimization, offering a cost-effective solution, content creation tools, and campaign monitoring.
• GroupHigh: A tool for influencer outreach, providing precise website traffic data and influencer relationship management.
• Heepsy: Best for influencer audience analysis, with intuitive search features and extensive influencer filters.
• HypeAuditor: Ideal for influencer campaign management, offering market research, influencer discovery, and in-depth reporting.
• FameBit (now BrandConnect): Specializing in YouTube influencer marketing, it offers influencer discovery and performance tracking.
• Keyhole: A social listening tool with competitive analysis, influencer discovery, and campaign measurement.

1. inBeat.co: Best Overall Creator Tool

PROS:

• Fits different influencer marketing programs
• Massive database of influencers for brands
• A comprehensive stack of tools, such as fake follower checkers and engagement rate calculators
• An influencer marketing agency for full campaigns
• In-depth campaign reporting
• Unlimited searches

CONS:

• Best for nano- and micro-influencers
• Limited searches in the free plan

inBeat.co is the best overall influencer marketing tool because it ticks all the boxes:

• It’s versatile: You can use this platform to reach all your marketing goals. You can discover influencers, vet their profiles, check their engagement rates, and more. Content creators can even message the platform directly and ask to be included in the database.

Let’s say you want to find creators who discuss natural healing.

Set your filters and target keywords, looking at optimal engagement rates, location, number of followers, and hashtags according to your marketing objectives:

• It’s accurate and fast: inBeat saves you a lot of time and resources you can reinvest in your campaign.

The results below for our hypothetical natural healing campaign appear in under a second:

• It’s intuitive: inBeat allows you to compare the profiles above easily by displaying the most important metrics. You can add the most relevant influencers to a list and then download that document as a CSV file. You will see the creators' social profiles and email addresses so you can start your influencer marketing program.
• It’s comprehensive: inBeat gives you access to millions of influencers worldwide. Besides, this influencer marketing platform offers various other tools to help you plan, monitor, and improve your campaign. Our exhaustive toolkit includes fake follower checkers, engagement rate calculators for different social media channels, mockup ad generators, CPM, ROI and ROAS calculators, and many more.

Let's check one of these influencers’ profiles by adding it to the search field:

You can see the creator’s overall audience score, real and inactive followers, and impressions. This feature ensures you pick genuine influencers and build a successful influencer campaign.

More importantly, you can see how each creator stacks against the platform’s average.

Now let’s say you want to hire this creator but are unsure of the costs involved. Well, inBeat’s Instagram Money Calculator will show you potential prices for different types of collaborations.

Add this creator’s profile address in the search field and watch the magic happen:

Notice that inBeat allows you to adjust the number and types of content, from Instagram stories to posts and reels. And you can also see the influencer’s latest performance to maximize your budget.

You can also calculate your influencer marketing campaign's spending and estimate your results by adjusting variables such as:

• The average number of followers per influencer
• Number of potential influencers
• Number and types of creatives

• You can scale it for different projects: inBeat offers a stack of tools, options, and resources to accelerate business growth. If your budget is limited, you can easily start a campaign by simply using those features. But if you want more, inBeat boasts affordable pricing plans for all your needs - from affiliate programs to ad campaigns. You can contact the agency directly to set up your entire micro-influencer campaign or through the Creator Studio platform.

Price plans/month:

• Growth: $23
• Brand: $54
• Agency: $134
• Business: $267
• Creator Studio: Customized

2. Showcase: Best UGC Marketplace

PROS:

• Access to a curated network of vetted, top-performing content creators
• Clear, transparent pricing with no hidden fees
• Versatile UGC options, suitable for various marketing channels
• Direct and efficient communication with creators for seamless collaboration
• Secure payment system with client satisfaction as a priority

CONS:

• Specialized focus on UGC might not cover all digital marketing needs
• Might require initial learning to fully utilize its features and capabilities

Showcase stands out as a robust UGC marketplace, primarily designed for brands seeking quality and authenticity in UGC ads and paid campaigns.

It focuses on connecting businesses with content creators skilled in producing resonant UGC.

It facilitates direct collaboration, offers a transparent pricing structure, and guarantees content quality through a secure payment escrow system.

Here's how Showcase streamlines the process:

• Begin by setting up your project on Showcase.
• Navigate to the section for creating new content or campaigns.
• Input specific criteria of creators you want to work with (country, age, language, price, delivery dates, etc.).
• Showcase then presents a selection of content creators whose expertise matches your input criteria.
• Utilize additional filters to refine your search further and explore creators' profiles, ensuring they align perfectly with your campaign's needs and objectives.

While Showcase is adept at UGC creation and management, it may not be the go-to for broader digital marketing strategies beyond UGC.

Pricing plans: customized based on creator rates, specific client needs and campaign requirements.

3. CreatorIQ: Best for Large Companies

PROS:

• Accurate influencer discovery
• A huge database of influencers' email addresses and social profiles
• Extensive campaign management options
• Personalizable and in-depth reports
• Fraud detection

CONS:

• Usually works with larger companies
  

Creator IQ is one of the best influencer marketing tools for large companies.

Or small companies with large pockets.

To get a better idea, this powerful platform works with names like RedBull, Disney, Estee Lauder, Yeti, and Google.

But you will get your money’s worth:

This full-featured platform is incredibly high-tech and can help you with:

• AI-powered influencer discovery: CreatorIQ has access to over 15 million influencer accounts, but it can easily browse them in seconds thanks to its powerful AI algorithm. Besides, this amazing AI system pairs you with relevant influencers by crawling all their content – not just by indexing their names and bios. Creator IQ can understand photos, locations, and even emojis.
• In-depth fraud detection: CreatorIQ finds and eliminates creators that use fake followers. Similar to inBeat’s free fake follower checker, CreatorIQ boasts an “Integrity Quotient.”
• Influencer onboarding: After finding the right influencers' email addresses, this platform allows you to complete the onboarding process from their website. The advantage is getting rid of any associated bureaucracy because creators using this platform deal with their own payment options and tax forms.
• Precise information: This accurate influencer discovery tool uses a wide range of social metrics like engagement and impressions to assess your potential reach. By comparison, other influencer marketing tools rely on a creator’s follower count for reach-related estimations.
• Influencer marketing campaign management: CreatorIQ allows you to build a private influencer marketplace. These creators are your collaborators, so you won’t have any competition. And you can manage the entire campaign, from campaign briefs to influencer content approvals and payments, from inside this platform.
• In-depth monitoring and reporting: CreatorIQ keeps track of everything related to your campaign. The platform shows you insightful and dynamic reports directly from your portal, which you can filter according to the KPIs that interest you the most. Best of all, you can customize these reports by adding or removing specific fields.

Pricing: Customized

4. BuzzStream: Best for Link-Building and Digital PR

PROS:

• Fast
• Streamlines link-building discovery and outreach
• Easy to use
• Multiple resources and free campaign management tools
• Team management options

CONS:

• Not best for social media influencers

BuzzStream is one of the best email campaign tools if your goal is to find creators to power up your link-building efforts.

The influencers on BuzzStream are website owners (aka bloggers, journalists, or editors).

These people can review your products and post affiliate links, accelerating organic traffic and increasing sales.

So how does BuzzStream work?

This outreach tool helps you build relevant lists of influencers for brands and target them through effective emails.

Pro tip: BuzzStream streamlines influencer discovery by automatically grabbing data off the web. That means you have more time for in-depth qualifications.

Here’s how it works:

• Create your project on this influencer marketing platform.
• Choose the Research Lists tab to create new research.
• Pick the research option you want (the web, the news, or importing an existing list).
• Fill in the keywords by which you want BuzzStream to filter your results.
• BuzzStream retrieves a list of websites that discuss your topics.
• You can play around with filters like domain authority or post frequency to pick relevant websites for your link-building strategy.

You can also use this influencer search tool for:

• Breezy influencer outreach with personalized messages and automated follow-ups
• Creating templates
• Tracking important KPIs, such as click rates, open rates, and response rates for your outreach emails
• Team management and performance evaluations
• Campaign reporting
• Free tools for email research, finding link opportunities, building outreach lists, and more

Pricing plans:

• 14-day free trial available
• Starter: $24/month
• Growth: $124/month
• Professional: $299/month
• Custom: From $999/month

5. SocialBee: Best for Content Optimization

PROS:

• Clean interface
• Stack of tools for content optimization
• Ability to recycle top-performing posts
• Team management
• Influencer tracking

CONS:

• The slight learning curve at the beginning

SocialBee is a comprehensive social media management and campaign reporting tool that optimizes your influencer marketing efforts across all social media platforms. Whether you’re just starting or looking to scale your influencer marketing presence, SocialBee provides a wide range of features to help you succeed.

Here’s how SocialBee can help:

• An affordable approach to influencer marketing: With pricing starting at $19/month after a 14-day free trial, SocialBee is an affordable solution for managing your influencer marketing presence.
• Versatility: This influencer marketing platform includes various features designed to automate social media marketing, from content creation to publishing and analytics.
• Content optimization: Influencers can generate captions with an AI assistant, use integrations like Canva, Venngage, Unsplash, and Giphy, and organize their posts into different content categories. The tool also offers the ability to recycle evergreen content and monitor your inbox to ensure you leave no comment or mention unanswered.
• Campaign monitoring: SocialBee’s comprehensive analytics and campaign reporting capabilities enable influencers to track their performance across multiple social media platforms, gain insights, and optimize their influencer marketing strategy accordingly.
• Team management: The creator tool allows team members to collaborate by creating multiple workspaces.

Pricing plans:

• Bootstrap: $15.8
• Accelerate: $32.5
• Pro: $65.8

6. GroupHigh: Best for Influencer Outreach

PROS:

• A huge database of quality influencers
• Precise website traffic info
• Good relationship management
• Fast and accurate influencer discovery
• Accurate campaign reporting

CONS:

• Not the easiest platform to use

GroupHigh is an influencer marketing tool for outreach. And unlike BuzzStream, GroupHigh also finds social media influencers – not just bloggers.

You can use it for:

• Accurate influencer discovery: GroupHigh has 15 million influencer profiles that you can filter by blogs, traditional media, or influencers. Use the platform’s filters to create a list of influencers. You can filter by social metrics, content, recent posts, social platforms, traffic, and more.
• Website and content evaluations: GroupHigh doesn’t just find influencers. This influencer tool vets their blog posts, and social media pages to ensure you partner with the right creators. You’ll understand these influencers’ favorite topics, posting frequency, location, metrics, target audience details, etc.
• Influencer outreach: GroupHigh finds the right content info for your prospective influencers. Use the platform to create segmented influencer lists based on specific KPIs and customize your pitches.
• Influencer relationship management: GroupHigh allows you to manage all your influencer relationships, from outreach to sending notes and uploading relevant documents.
• Campaign reporting: This creator tool offers comprehensive reports based on tracking all your mentions. You can see the total number of posts, engagement rate, views, and reach.

Pricing plans: Customized upon request

7. Heepsy: Best for Influencer Audience Analysis

PROS:

• A huge database of social profiles
• Wide range of filters
• Intuitive
• Free trial available

CONS:

• Works on limited social media channels

Heepsy is one of the highest-quality influencer marketing tools for discovery and outreach, especially when it comes to audience analysis. Here’s how you can use Heepsy:

• Influencer search engine: Heepsy is easy to use and intuitive. Add your filters, such as audience, location, engagement, and category, and the tool will retrieve social media influencers across different channels. You can count on Heepsy to show you creators from Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube – alas, Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook creators aren’t on this database.
• Advanced filters: This influencer tool allows you to pick suitable influencers for your influencer marketing program by showing you essential details, such as:
• Audience demographics and interests
• Audience authenticity
• Number of followers
• Engagement score
• Keywords and hashtags
• Cost estimates
• And more
• Influencer outreach: Heepsy creates your list of influencers in seconds. You can then export it and start a conversation with your chosen creators.

As you can see, Heepsy is awesome for audience analysis and has a wide range of filters. That guarantees you can choose quality influencers.

However, the outreach process falls on you. You’ll need an additional CRM for this, and you’ll have to organize your campaign separately.

Pricing plans (paid yearly):

• Starter: $39/month
• Business: $135/month
• Gold: From $215.17/month

8. HypeAuditor: Best for Influencer Campaign Management

PROS:

• Massive database of quality influencers
• Fraud detection
• Competitive analysis
• In-depth filtering by target keywords
• Influencer tracking

CONS:

• Best for larger campaigns

HypeAuditor is one of the best influencer marketing tools if you need help managing your entire campaign.

That’s why HypeAuditor itself defines its platform as an all-in-one influencer marketing tool.

Basically, it’s like hiring an influencer agency at a lower price.

Here are the unique points:

• Market research: Understanding your audience and competitors offers a great starting point for an effective influencer campaign. HypeAuditor helps you with competitor analysis, market research, social media trends, and ranking analytics.
• Influencer discovery: HypeAuditor’s influencer database has over 72.3 million creators. You can browse this database using demographic searches, as well as audience quality filters.
• Influencer analysis: The influencer tool offers 35+ metrics to vet and choose quality influencers. And it has excellent fraud detection and brand affinity filters.
• Campaign management: HypeAuditor monitors and manages influencer campaigns, helps create media plans, and reports campaign performance. You can even keep track of your payments, organize your calendar, and get in-depth campaign reporting.

Here’s how intuitive the platform looks:

Notice that you have specific sections for each step in your campaign, both on the left and right-hand side of the dashboard.

This intuitive display will help you pick the right filters and variables to organize your campaign.

Pricing: Customized upon request

9. FameBit: Best for YouTube Influencer Marketing

PROS:

• Easy to use
• In-depth campaign management
• Trackable link generation
• YouTube influencer tracking

CONS:

• It needs more precise filters
• Works just for YouTube influencers

FameBit launched as a self-service platform for YouTube influencer marketing in 2013.

Brands could post their requirements, and influencers could send their pitches. But brands could also search for specific creators.

Things changed after Google purchased FameBit in 2016. First, FameBit became BrandConnect. Next, Google changed it from a self-service platform to a full-service intermediary.

Basically, you can connect with YouTube influencers but only through the YouTube team.

Here’s how it works:

• Influencer discovery: FameBit is best for influencer-led brand discovery than vice-versa. Once you create a campaign on the platform, YouTube influencers will find and reach out to you. You can also find creators by the following filters:
• Reach range
• Audience location and other demographics
• Creator’s location
• Channel category
• Influencer relationship management: BrandConnect streamlines your partnerships with influencers. Whether you’re reviewing proposals, producing, or reviewing content, you have all the necessary project info in your dashboard.
• Influencer performance tracking: FameBit produces personalized affiliate links for all your creators so you can monitor their performances easily. You can also see metrics such as engagement, click-through rate, and cost per engagement.
• Additional tools: This influencer marketing software boasts remarketing lists, add-ons, and promo tools like the Shopping Shelf to help you reach all your marketing goals.

On the downside, you can’t set more precise filters, such as a YouTube channel. That means you’ll have to review various profiles to find the most engaged ones in particular channels.

And influencers on BrandConnect cannot link their Instagram profiles on the platform.

They can only mention the existence of an Instagram profile in their bios. If you want to expand your influencer campaign on Instagram, you’ll have to spend more time researching your influencers. And that time can quickly add up when you’re vetting numerous creators.

Pricing plans: Per campaign basis

10. Keyhole: Best Social Listening Tool

PROS:

• Hundreds of influencers
• In-depth social listening for your competitors, market, and social channels
• Intuitive dashboard
• Personalized strategy optimization advice
• Influencer tracking

CONS:

• Somewhat slow customer support

Every influencer marketing campaign needs reporting and analytics tools – not just influencer discovery. Keyhole helps you with both.

Here’s what it can do for you:

• Social listening: Keyhole gives you access to those useful social media insights quickly and without hassle. You will see trending topics, brand mentions, and, even better – the audience sentiment behind each mention. Keyhole will also reveal how your audience’s feelings toward you change over time so you can create better interactions with prospects.
• Competitive analysis: This influencer marketing software compares your performance with your competitors, so you can improve your influencer marketing strategy.
• Influencer discovery: Input the right target keywords for your influencer marketing program, and Keyhole will help you find relevant influencers. You can then shortlist the best by average engagement rates, impressions, exposure, and followers.
• Campaign measurement: Keyhole monitors campaign performance thoroughly, from reach to engagement rate per influencer and overall growth.
• Strategy optimization: The platform reveals customized insights and optimization advice to hone your influencer marketing strategy.

Pricing plans:

• SMB & Freelancers: $79/month
• Corporate: $239/month
• Agency: $479/month
• Enterprise: Custom

Choose the Right Influencer Marketing Tools

As you can see, the tools for influencer marketing above fit different purposes.

Some are best for relationship management, others for social listening, and others for discovering email addresses.

If you need a comprehensive tool to help you get started, inBeat is your safest bet.

From influencer discovery to campaign planning, inBeat will help you meet all your marketing goals.

Take it for a spin now – it’s free.

Or even better, book a free demo to see how you can reap its full functionality according to your campaign objectives.

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