If you want to boost brand awareness, drive web traffic, or even increase your sales, a great strategy to try out is influencer marketing. This means you find influencers who align with your brand, and then pay them some type of incentive in exchange for publications on social media.
However, an influencer campaign isn’t quite as simple as that. Like any marketing campaign, it also requires careful preparation beforehand, as well as thorough monitoring and analysis afterwards. Thankfully, there are some great tools available to help you out along the way. Today we’ll look at 5 of them and explain how they can help you in your campaign.
Google Analytics
This comprehensive data collection and analysis platform allows you to get all types of insight into the people who visit your website and how they behave once they’re there. In influencer marketing campaigns, Analytics is useful for tracking how many users visited your site via influencer content, or to check your conversion rate on specific goals.
A screenshot of the Analytics dashboard for a demo account created by Google for training purposes. The screenshot shows the channels that bring in traffic, what countries users come from, as well as times of day that the site is most active.
The best part about Google Analytics is that it’s completely free (although there is also a premium, paid version). Further, Google offers a ton of training about how to set it up and start using it, so even beginners can get on board.
Campaign URL Builder
This is another free tool from the folks at Google, and it works in tandem with Google Analytics. The Campaign URL Builder allows you to create trackable links thanks to something called UTMs, or urchin tracking modules. Urchin was the predecessor of GA, and despite the rebranding, the old name survived here.
UTMs allow you to see information about the specific link they’re attached to. See things like clicks, what traffic entered your website through that link, and if any of those users converted. UTMs are especially useful for influencer marketing campaigns because they let you compare influencers and social media channels so you get insight into what works best for your business.
When constructing UTM links with the Campaign URL Builder , there are 3 mandatory fields:
- Campaign source – the site that sent the traffic to you
- Campaign medium – the medium used to send the traffic
- Campaign name – the name of the campaign or promotion
So imagine your fashion label wants to collaborate with Kylie Jenner to promote your spring line on Instagram. You could go to Campaign URL Builder and plug in the following:
When you put in these parameters, plus your link that you want to use, the tool automatically generates the full version of that link with the UTMs attached. You just have to copy and paste it wherever you want!
Heepsy
Heepsy is an influencer marketing platform, which allows you to search for Instagram, Youtube and soon up, TikTok influencers. Search through over 11 million influencers, and get detailed analytics about each of their profiles. Heepsy also gives you some tips along the way about what to look out for when analyzing influencer profiles.
Heepsy showing results for a search query for beauty influencers from Paris with 5-50K followers and high engagement.
Heepsy streamlines your influencer discovery process due to three core components:
- Search engine – set filters like category, location, followers, engagement, contact, audience and authenticity
- Influencer analytics – see metrics like follower growth rate, engagement rate, audience demographics, audience authenticity, and more
- Customizable lists – add influencers to lists, compare stats, and download a spreadsheet to help with automated outreach
This platform requires a paid subscription to use, although there are various price levels and the option to do a free trial or a live demo with a customer support specialist.
Yet Another Mail Merge
If you’re only working with a few influencers, you might not need this tool. But for those campaigns that are working with many influencers at once, automating your outreach can save you time and energy. Yet Another Mail Merge, also known as YAMM, helps you do just that.
This is yet another free tool from Google, and connects with Google Slides and Gmail. YAMM lets you send out mass emails, but with certain personalized fields, like names. The other great feature of YAMM is its tracking. See who opened your emails, who clicked on a link, who responded, and which emails bounced all in the same spreadsheet.
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A short video from YAMM explaining the tool’s features.
When you’re contacting influencers for your campaign, keep in mind that not all of them will want or be able to collaborate with you, and some may not even open your email. So as a general rule of thumb, contact more influencers than you think you need. YAMM helps you do this, and keep track of who’s paying attention to you.
Mighty Scout
When running campaigns with influencers, it’s important that you’re able to see all the media they publish as well as the performance metrics for that media. You can do this directly on social media, but it means you have to stay on top of checking influencer profiles, and later on, ask them for their internal metrics on their posts.
Or, you can use a campaign monitoring tool like Mighty Scout. Mighty Scout lets you input the influencers, mentions and hashtags you want to monitor, and then the program automatically collects influencer media and updates metrics. You can also download reports once your campaign finishes, and use it in your analysis of which influencers performed best for your brand.
A redacted view of the Mighty Scout tracking panel.
Mighty Scout, like Heepsy, is also a subscription-based service. There are three plans, or the option to customize a plan. They also offer a 30-day risk-free trial, so you can make sure that the program works for your needs before you commit.
Conclusion
There are a lot of moving parts in influencer marketing teams. You have to find the right influencers for your brand, and then manage the communication between them and your team. You also need to stay on top of your campaign, making sure you glean results from all the content that influencers post. Fortunately, these 5 tools, plus many others that are out there, can make the burden a bit lighter.
