Imagine you’re visiting a new city and looking for a place to eat. What would be more helpful: a billboard advertising the best pizza in town or an enthusiastic review from a local friend?
Authentic personal endorsements tend to carry more weight, which is why launching an influencer marketing program has so much potential. Tapping a social media influencer to promote your product is akin to sending personal recommendations to potential new customers.
If you’re ready to harness the power of social media personalities, here’s how.
What is influencer management?
Influencer management is the practice of implementing, monitoring, and maintaining an influencer marketing campaign. The process includes the scouting and screening of partners, relationship management, and campaign tracking. Keeping tabs on your social media partnerships will ensure you effectively leverage influencer marketing.
6 tips for effective influencer management
- Assess your target audience
- Research your partners
- Provide guidelines
- Set clear goals
- Monitor performance
- Use an influencer management platform
To build winning influencer marketing campaigns, you need a robust influencer management plan. Here’s how to develop a strategy—from identifying relevant influencers to keeping track of success.
1. Assess your target audience
Start by learning as much as possible about your target audience. Consider who your product might benefit and who makes up your existing customer base. Create customer profiles based on different audience demographics to better pinpoint your ideal customer.
This step is necessary to find influencers with a relevant following. For example, if your product is a low-cost alternative to expensive skin care items, you may consider partnering with content creators who focus on budget beauty.
2. Research your partners
The creators you partner with should have solid reputations. Do your due diligence and research potential influencers before you onboard them. To gauge if they’re a fit for your brand, identify whether they have been a part of any controversies, what they’ve said about your company in the past, and whether they have worked with your competitors.
3. Provide guidelines
Develop a detailed creative brief describing your product, brand values, and campaign objectives. This will give partners a better idea of how you are positioning your product and what is and isn’t off-limits.
4. Set clear goals
Create a set of campaign goals for your influencer marketing efforts. Potential goals include increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and driving sales.
Defining your goals will give you a way to measure your campaign’s success. It can also help you identify the right influencers. For example, if you set a goal of increasing your male audience, you may choose to prioritize partnering with social media creators with a large male following.
5. Monitor performance
Keep track of key metrics related to your goals. Monitoring performance statistics including engagement rates and return on investment (ROI) can reveal whether your influencer marketing campaigns are working. If you aren’t meeting your goals, it may be time to revise your strategy.
6. Use an influencer management platform
Influencer management platforms have all the tools you need to effectively manage your influencer relationships. These platforms support influencer discovery, creator payments, and content approval. The right campaign management tool will save time and help you develop successful campaigns.
8 top influencer management platforms
The right influencer marketing platform can help your team with every aspect of your influencer programs. These are the best tools to start:
1. Shopify Collabs
Shopify Collabs is free for Shopify users and integrates with the platform. With Shopify’s customer service team at your disposal, you can access professional help 24/7. Shopify Collabs features in-platform communication tools to support relationship management, product seeding (sending free products to influencers in hopes of a review), and analytics. It also includes an influencer application form. Content creators who like your product can reach out about potential influencer collaborations or brand ambassador roles.
Channels: Instagram, TikTok, and X
Integrations: Shopify
Features: Campaign analytics, product seeding, influencer application pages, and affiliate marketing software
Pricing: Free for Shopify users
2. Meltwater
Meltwater, formerly Klear, is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that works with all major social media platforms and offers Shopify and WooCommerce integrations.
With its searchable library of indexed creator profiles, Meltwater is a powerful tool for influencer discovery. Users can apply filters to identify influencers who fit their exact needs. It also offers in-depth reporting tools for monitoring campaign performance and tracking ROI.
Channels: YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok
Integrations: Shopify, Salesforce, Magento, WooCommerce, Slack, and Bitly
Features: Influencer search tool, campaign analytics, ecommerce integrations, campaign management, and social listening tool
Pricing: Contact the sales team for more information
3. Creator.co
With Creator.co, users set their objectives, define the type of partnership they’re looking for (such as paid product promotion or user-generated content), and search for relevant influencers. This tool has a network of influencers across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram and offers in-depth insights that can help you choose the best partners and identify fake influencers.
Channels: YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok
Integrations: Shopify
Features: Creator discovery, affiliate management, creator insights, social listening, email support, and content-only campaign (gifted and paid) creation
Pricing: Creator.co offers four pricing tiers: the Serve tier at $460 per month; Start-Up at $1,795 per month; Trailblazer at $2,695 per month; and Bespoke from $3,495 per month
4. Grin
Specifically designed for ecommerce companies, Grin can search your current customer base for potential partners and gather social media account information for all your registered users. This can help you identify content creators who have both already purchased your product and have a following. Collaborating with existing customers can nurture authentic brand relationships—partners can genuinely speak of their experience with your product.
Channels: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube
Integrations: BigCommerce, DocuSign, Klaviyo, Slack, Instagram, Magento, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, WooCommerce, Shopify, MS Outlook, and Gmail
Features: Content management, reporting and analytics, relationship management, discovery and recruitment, product seeding, and payment processing
Pricing: Grin designs customized pricing plans for each client; contact the Grin sales team to learn more about pricing
5. Aspire
Aspire is an all-in-one platform with an impressive suite of tools. Users can create profiles for specific marketing initiatives by inputting campaign details such as target audience, campaign timeline, goals, and influencer eligibility content.
Aspire’s search feature identifies which influencers can support the campaign’s objectives. The campaign lifecycle management tool tracks how many influencers you’ve contacted and where your relationship stands. Supervise content creation and approve campaign content directly in the platform.
Channels: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and blogs
Integrations: Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Gorgias, Shopify, WooCommerce, Impact.com, ShareASale, Klaviyo, and PayPal
Features: Campaign creation, campaign tracking, payment processing, campaign analytics, contract management, content management, content library, and Meta-branded content ads
Pricing: Aspire offers three customized pricing tiers: Basic, Pro, and Enterprise. Contact the sales team for more details
6. CreatorIQ
CreatorIQ uses AI-powered technology to assign an Integrity Quotient to each of its more than 20 million indexed creators. It evaluates data points including the influencer’s engagement rate, image quality, caption quality, and comment quality to match influencers to brands.
Channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitch, and blogs
Integrations: PayPal, Shopify, Amazon, Tipalti, Google Analytics, DocuSign, Looker, Tableau, AvantLink, Impact.com, CJ, and Awin
Features: Influencer discovery, automated recruiting, influencer relationship management, content approval, campaign management and reporting, audience analysis, product seeding, contract management, fraud detection, and payment processing
Pricing: Contact CreatorIQ to learn more about pricing and request a quote
7. Upfluence
With Upfluence, you can use detailed search filters and individually weighted keywords to find the right campaign partners. Upfluence’s native communication tools enable teams to manage influencers together—every user has access to all of the correspondences between your team and your selected influencers.
Channels: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, and blogs
Integrations: Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Hootsuite, Klaviyo, Zapier, MS Outlook, Gmail, and PayPal
Features: Influencer search, campaign and influencer management, third-party analytics, lifecycle management, recruiting, content approval, reporting, product seeding, payment processing, social listening, and affiliate management
Pricing: Upfluence offers custom pricing plans. Contact the sales team for more details.
8. Brandwatch
Brandwatch aids in every step of the influencer marketing process. Users can search its database of indexed creators to find partners, manage contracts, monitor campaign performance, and complete influencer payments. Brandwatch can also manage multiple brands or campaigns at once.
Channels: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok
Integrations: Shopify, Salesforce, Zendesk, Neurons, Sociuu, QBank, and StoryStream
Features: Influencer discovery, network creation, network management, campaign management, and automated reporting
Pricing: Contact Brandwatch to learn more about its custom pricing plans
Influencer management FAQ
What is influencer management?
The influencer management process involves identifying and managing influencers, building campaigns, and monitoring marketing success. Effective management helps teams build successful influencer marketing programs.
What is the role of an influencer manager?
Influencer managers are members of marketing teams that manage influencer campaigns from beginning to end. Responsibilities may include the vetting of social media influencers, creator management, and campaign execution.
Are there influencer management platforms that integrate with Shopify?
Yes, many influencer marketing platforms, including Shopify Collabs, integrate with Shopify. Using an integrated tool makes it easier to track sales attributions and monitor campaign success.
