As the influencer marketing market continues to grow, brands are increasingly looking for effective platforms that help streamline their campaigns and leverage the return on investment they have their money allocated to in campaigns run with influencers. With the global influencer marketing platform market set to expand from $12.92 billion in 2023 to more than $122.75 billion by 2031, it's time for brands to make the right choice of a suitable platform catering to their exact needs.
A strong search and discovery engine is the bedrock of any influencer marketing platform. Brands need the ability to find the right influencers who best fit the target audience and campaign objectives. The great platforms provide vast databases and filters for demographics, engagement rates, niche categories, and audience insights.
According to research, 61% of marketers say the biggest hurdle with influencer marketing is finding the right influencers. For example, the ease with which Upfluence features over 2.7 million profiles makes it a goldmine for brands wanting more influence variety.
Campaign management allows brands to create, launch, and monitor a campaign professionally. Such features include scheduling posts, timelines, and mass influencing. Brands that employ campaign management tools are said to achieve 30% higher efficiency in campaigns because the orders streamline the processes.
Analytics help a brand understand whether the influencer campaign has been effective or not. The analytics feature has to be very robust, giving a result on engagement metrics, reach, impressions, and ROI. Campaigns with the most elaborate analytics can be increased up to 25% since brands are given a chance to change their strategies with actual campaign data. This increases measurement accuracy since platforms provide custom tracking pixels or affiliate links.
Efficient payment processing systems help a brand to complete transactions easily with its influencer. Support for multiple payment methods, as well as automatic invoicing, should be enabled to ensure timely payments to the influencer. Businesses using automated payment systems have a 40% reduction in administrative workloads on payments to influencers.
Audience analysis is considered necessary to ensure the influence's audience matches your brand values and demographic. Audience analysis tools will be very essential since they can be able to improve understanding according to followers' demographics, interests, and all engagement activities. Studies revealed that activities being performed that are well-matched campaigns could face engagements that are up to 4.7 times more compared to mismatched engagements.
This content management system allows brands to easily review, approve, and monitor any content produced by influencers. This makes all posts align with brand guidelines before publication. Brands using a content management system have a 20% increase in the quality of content owing to proper control.
The way to successful collaborations is through the actual building of a relationship with influencers. Platforms must provide the necessary tools for tracking communications, managing contracts and carrying on long-term development. Brands engaging with influencers' relationship management can work with them on repeat collaborations up to 50% of the time.
A good influencer marketing platform should also integrate and work effectively with other social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and so on to reach more audiences for the success of campaigns. The average percentage of marketers using the service is about 72%, and they use Instagram as the primary influencer marketing channel. This is because of its visual appeal and higher engagement rates.
Platforms should provide areas of business so that compliance is made with all the regulations that have to do with disclosures and transparency on the sponsored content. Since only 25% of Instagram influencers follow the FTC guidelines about disclosure, compliance features should be provided for the brands so that no legal problems arise.
The responsiveness of the customer support service in solving any arising issues in campaign execution is final, but training resources will help maximize the utilisation of the features possessed by the platforms. Brands that receive proper support experience 35% higher satisfaction than those brands that do not get enough support for their chosen platforms.
A brand's capacity to execute the proper campaigns widely depends on the capabilities of the influencer marketing platform chosen. By focusing on these ten features, the brands would understand which would best meet their current needs while adapting to the influencer marketing landscape.