As advertisements pervade many aspects of everyday life, less and less people are being influenced by the traditional ways of advertising past. In fact, according to Forbes, only 1% of millennials are influenced by advertising at all, placing a larger focus on authenticity over content.
Enter: influencer marketing. Influencer marketing means you’re letting other people tell your story. From niche brands to global companies, everyone can benefit from the influential mentions and reviews. They have a loyal, engaged audience that is more likely to trust their review than a company’s own advertisement.
Currently, the market is full of influencer marketing tools that help businesses large and small with influencer discovery, outreach, campaign management, and analytics.
Choosing the Right Search Tool
Just as the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, your influencer marketing journey begins with your influencer search. Every influencer marketing tool includes some type of search feature. However, one size does not necessarily fit all.
Your individual needs may vary, and much of that may have to do with the size of your business and the resources you have available to allocate towards influencer marketing.
From the size of budgets to the size of teams, the are many factors that will determine the features you’ll require. If you don’t know where to start, you’re in the right place. We have identified the best influencer search tools for small, medium, and large businesses.
Small Businesses
Influencer marketing can have a big pay off for small businesses. However, small businesses are usually limited by budgetary constraints. With the influencer marketing tools in this section, that doesn’t have to stop you from exploring the impact influencers can have on your business.
Whether you’re trying to connect with a specific audience or gain brand recognition, you need a tool that’s easy to use that doesn’t break the bank.
We’ve identified these four tools for you to try.
1. Shoutcart
Who’s behind it?
Shoutcart is a Portland, OR, company that leads influencer tools in the Instagram marketplace.
How it works
Businesses hand-select influencers based on information available in their Shoutcart profile and their price per post. Then, simply add the chosen influencers to your cart and checkout – just like online shopping.
The influencer will then post your desired content to their followers (a shout-out). Since you only pay for the influencers you want, you can easily control your costs. This way, small businesses with low budgets can align with more affordable people.
What types of influencers are on Shoutcart?
Shoutcart focuses mainly on Instagram influencers, though Twitter influencers are also present.
Why It Excels as a Search Tool
Shoutcart is an incredibly easy-to-use search tool that allows brands to browse from thousands of influencers across multiple platforms and in a variety of niche interests. For small businesses that are looking to get their feet wet in influencer marketing, this is a good place to start.
The ease of use, transparent pricing, and detailed information makes Shoutcart attractive for businesses that want a robust search service without all the bells and whistles that a more expensive platform offers.
2. BuzzSumo
Who’s behind it?
BuzzSumo is a relatively new company, founded in London in 2013. It has since risen in popularity.
How it works
BuzzSumo discovers content and influencers based on a keyword search. The results show the popular content’s shares and linkbacks so you can find influencers within your niche.
BuzzSumo is helpful to small businesses because it easily aggregates authoritative and engaging content written by bloggers and shared by social media influencers, all in one place.
To get started, simply choose a topic to search. Then, you instantly get the most popular articles on your selected topic ranked by total shares. Even better, you can view the sharers to learn who is amplifying content in your niche.
Once you’ve identified a few key influencers, you can use BuzzSumo build outreach lists.
What types of influencers are on BuzzSumo?
BuzzSumo crawls the web to find the most engaging bloggers and social media influencers by topics, keywords, and social media handles.
Social platforms supported
- Blogs
Why It Excels as a Search Tool
Many influencer tools focus on connecting influencers with a brand so that an arrangement can be made for services. However, Buzzsumo functions as a research tool that helps small businesses find relevant and authoritative content first, and the influencers who produce it second.
Rather than focus on finding an influencer to create content, Buzzsumo helps you discover content that is already generating engagement. The tool also helps you sort and export your discovery information. When it comes time to reach out, you’ll have your lists ready to go.
3. Ninja Outreach
Who’s behind it?
With two locations, one in the US and another in the UK, Ninja Outreach aims to make finding influencers and building relationships simpler. Ninja Outreach was founded in 2014 and is run by a team of 18 marketing ninjas. (Note: they’re probably not real ninjas).
How it works
Ninja Outreach searches thousands of influencers and helps you prospect, find contact information, conduct outreach, and more. It’s a great tool for small teams because it helps save time and money.
Start with blogger or social prospecting, browse results generated by keywords you enter, and easily manage contacts, notes, and campaigns in the dashboard.
Ninja lets you see key metrics like shares, SEO, traffic, and engagement so you can get targeted results. When it’s time to start connecting with influencers, Ninja Outreach helps you automate emails; customize templates; and track opens, clicks, and replies.
What types of influencers are on Ninja Outreach?
Ninja Outreach finds thousands of influencers across blogs and social media. Currently, they have more than 25 million websites in their database. Influencers are not opt-in, but you’ll gain access to a variety of authoritative sharers for nearly any topic.
Social Platforms supported
- Blogs
Why It Excels as a Search Tool
Ninja Outreach is built for finding and organizing influencers. There is a good amount of data to sort through as it pertains to the reach of the influencers and the content they produce/share.
While not a full-service platform, Ninja Outreach does make it easy to store and categorize influencers and includes an outreach component that allows you to easily contact and manage your influencer relationships.
4. BuzzStream
Who’s behind it?
BuzzStream was founded in 2008 and operates out of Austin, TX. The SaaS company employs 11 and it is well-known in the influencer marketing space. The advanced tool is used to find influential content creators, manage relationships, and build link backs.
How it works
Research influencers through keyword searches using BuzzStream Discovery. The tool gives you insights into engagement levels and key metrics like average shares per post, number of followers, and post frequency. It also discovers contact information and social profiles, allowing you to add contacts to lists and keep them organized.
You can also review recent content and other people that they are influencing or influenced by.
Use BuzzStream Outreach when it’s time to start contacting bloggers and social media influencers. Add contacts from other influencer marketing campaigns or import them from BuzzStream Discovery.
Create a project to start contacting influencers and email them right from the tool. This tracks all of your incoming and outgoing communication for easier campaign management.
BuzzStream is a good tool for small businesses because it allows you or your team to focus on other things. Teams can work from one centralized dashboard and share notes so that anyone can pick up a project.
What types of influencers are on BuzzStream?
BuzzStream finds content creators and social media influencers from many websites and most major social media.
Social platforms supported
- Blogs
Why It Excels as a Search Tool
BuzzStream excels as a small businesses search and connection tool due to the analytics available during search. Brands can view engagement metrics such as shares per post, followers, post frequency, and other detailed information.
For the business that likes to do their research, Buzzstream offers a lot of data for a relatively low investment.
Medium Businesses
Mid-size businesses have more opportunity to branch out in the world of influencer marketing. This is typically when you find yourself searching for a more robust solution that can help you create impactful, sustainable relationships with influencers.
Usually with a larger team and a slightly bigger budget, medium businesses are willing to take more risks with their marketing tactics.
Try one of these three tools to build out your influencer campaigns.
1. Klear
Who’s behind it?
Klear started as a Twitter analytics platform in 2011. Now, it includes both Twitter analytics proficiencies with influencer marketing features like finding and analyzing influencers, managing campaigns, and monitoring analytics.
How it works
Not straying far from its roots, Klear is best at data mining their large network of social media influencers. The platform is like a social media search engine, finding influencers in any category.
Klear also shows detailed insights into their audiences to see if they align with your campaign goals. Plus, it features some campaign options that help medium-sized businesses manage influencer relationships and monitor campaign performance.
What types of influencers are on Klear?
There are over 500 million social profiles on Klear. The influencers aren’t opt-in; instead, the platform lists influencers and their stats without a direct relationship. Klear finds influencers across all social media, from celebrities to everyday people.
Social platforms supported
- YouTube
- Blogs
Why It Excels as a Search Tool
Klear has a large database of influencers from large celebrities to industry-specific gurus. For the medium-sized business that have more resources than their smaller counterparts, Klear offers an array of options to choose from.
Klear excels at data, owing to their origins as a Twitter analytics company. Their discovery tools features a variety of engagement metrics, allowing brands a detailed look at the influencers on their platform.
2. HYPR
Who’s behind it?
HYPR is run by a team of 50 people in New York. Founded in 2013, HYPR targets small to medium companies and is mainly used for influencer discovery.
How it works
HYPR provides detailed statistics on an influencer’s follower base, including demographic and psychographic data. HYPR is not a marketplace and their platform does not provide campaign management tools.
Businesses shouldn’t treat this as a full-service solution for influencer marketing. Rather, it’s ideal for a team that has influencer marketing experience but needs more robust search tools.
What types of influencers are on HYPR?
HYPR is a web crawler and finds influencers in any category and in any place around the world. It finds influencers on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. It claims to provide analytics for every influencer in the world.
Social platforms supported
- YouTube
Why It Excels as a Search Tool
HYPR is one of the most powerful influencer discovery tools on the market. Its search capabilities can find more influencers than a medium-sized business would need for their marketing campaigns. This is a good option for influencer marketing teams with experience, but who need help finding the best influencers.
For medium-sized businesses that don’t want to skimp on research, HYPR offers a solution that is reasonably priced and offers detailed information. It stops short of being a full campaign management tool that helps control costs. This is ideal for a company that has the means to manage campaigns in-house but need help with discovering, qualifying, and contacting influencers.
3. Intellifluence
Who’s behind it?
Intellifluence is a startup based in Scottsdale, AZ. It’s built on the Saas model that removes the middleman and lets businesses interact directly with influencers.
How it works
Intellifluence specializes in helping businesses get more people to talk about them. You start by browsing affordable influencers and reviewing their performance upfront, helping you make informed decisions.
Once you find influencers you like, you can contact them directly through the platform with an offer, details about your product, and campaign requirements. Influencers accept and leverage their clout to review your product on their blog or social network.
What type of influencers are on Intellifluence?
Intellifluence features mostly micro-influencers or peer level influencers, which typically have fewer than 100,000 followers.
Social platforms supported
- Major social networks
- Blogs
- Review sites
Why it Excels as a Search Tool
Intellifluence is a great value for medium businesses with smaller budgets or teams without a lot of experience. This is a straightforward tool that puts the emphasis on finding impactful influencers at a savings.
Where Intellifluence does fall short of other options is the lack of detailed campaign analytics to track the effectiveness of your campaigns. However, as a search tool, this is not a factor.
Medium-sized businesses that want a turnkey solution without the associated price tag should consider Intellifluence at the top of their list.
Large Businesses
Big brands are interested in quality influencers, ones that can tell their story to a wide range of audiences through carefully chosen images and messages. Large businesses usually have larger budgets than their small and medium counterparts, so cost isn’t as much of a concern.
What they do want are the best influencers with the largest sample size of a specific target audience. If you’re experienced with influencer marketing and need a high-powered partner to sell your brand, try one of these three platforms.
1. NeoReach
Who’s behind it?
Students at Stanford University in central California started NeoReach with the purpose of automating influencer marketing. Currently, the company is based in San Francisco with 15 employees and they offer cloud-based software to Fortune 1000 companies.
How it works
A SaaS platform, NeoReach is an enterprise platform helps large businesses with influencer search, campaign automation, tracking and reporting. NeoReach puts a big focus on audience data for their more than three million influencers and comprehensive analytics and reports on marketing campaigns. It streamlines the influencer marketing process so you can build campaigns, relationships, and networks all in one tool.
What types of influencers are on NeoReach?
NeoReach finds influencers from around the web and puts them in a searchable database. They don’t opt-in to the platform or have a direct relationship. There are over three million people in the database and you can find and sort influencers by way of topic, social network, and follower demographics and psychographics.
Social platforms supported
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- Blogs
Why it Excels as a Search Tool
NeoReach is built for large enterprises that have one or more teams running influencer marketing campaigns. For businesses needing a high-powered influencer marketing tool, NeoReach is one of your best options.
Their search and data capabilities, combined with their campaign management and automation, make it easy to pick the best influencers out of their three-million+ network. In addition, NEOReach recently unveiled their Influencer Media Value metric, a method for analyzing the specific value of influencer media content.
2. Tapinfluence
Who’s behind it?
The Denver-based influencer marketing company started as a platform for bloggers called BlogFrog in 2009. In 2013, the company re-branded to Tapinfluence and currently has around 50 employees.
How it works
Tapinfluence is an influencer marketing engine designed to make influencer discovery and analytics manageable and automated. With more than 50,000 opt-in creators on the platform, Tapinfluence gives you an inside view into their audience’s psychographics and personality characteristics by using IBM’s Watson technology.
Tapinfluence is a full-service campaign management and workflow tool, making it a good end-to-end solution for large businesses. Search, contact, and work with influencers from around the world to promote your business.
What types of influencers are on Tapinfluence?
Influencers opt-in to Tapinfluence and the tool vets each one before bringing them on board. Influencers are mostly in the food, fashion, beauty, and lifestyle verticals.
Social platforms supported
- YouTube
- Vine
- Blogs
Why it Excels as a Search Tool
Unlike some search tools that curate influencers, Tapfluence focuses on opt-in influencers. With other discovery tools, you aren’t guaranteed that influencers are open to working with your company.
Tapfluence solves that by focusing on opt-in influencers, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation. Simply put, these are all influencers who are actively interested in connecting with brands they can work with.
Because of the detailed targeting, Taplfluence claims one of the highest ROI’s in the industry (11x higher, according to them). It is also features a complete suite of additional features.
Tapfluence is pricey, and businesses that are looking for a pure search tool may find themselves paying for features they don’t need. However, for the large business on a mission who wants a complete influencer marketing solution, Tapfluence is a great platform to explore.
3. GroupHigh
Who’s behind it?
Founded in Boulder, CO in 2012, GroupHigh is a SaaS company that employs less than 50 people.
How it works
GroupHigh offers blogger and influencer intelligence for powerful influencer marketing campaigns. Its blog search engine indexes 15 million blogs that can be sorted based on topic, reach, social audience, location, and more. Businesses select influencers, build lists, organize, and manage relationships in their CRM. You can track post performance and export reports to continue making informed decisions.
What types of influencers are on GroupHigh?
GroupHigh features bloggers as well as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube influencers.
Social platforms supported
- Blogs
- Google+
Why it Excels as a Search Tool
GroupHigh explores several platforms, but their main focus is on blogger discovery. Search through over 15 million blogs and view engagement metrics such as social shares and SEO rankings.
The built-in CRM tool is a welcome addition that makes outreach easy to manage from within the platform. GroupHigh claims to return more relevant search result than other discovery tools in their class.
If your intention is to reach bloggers, GroupHigh is a solution worth exploring.
Influencer Marketing Is at Your Fingertips
Studies have demonstrated that influencer marketing is more effective than traditional advertising when it comes to telling your brand’s story and driving sales. Choosing the right platform for your unique business needs is an important step.
Influencer marketing tools are available for businesses of all sizes, from small startups looking to establish their brand to large companies with a fully loaded team ready to go. The tools on this list represent some of the best options available. Choose what works best for you and start putting influencer marketing to work for you!
