Partnering with influencers allows brands to reach targeted audiences and drive engagement. However, it’s critical to track the performance of influencer campaigns to ensure you’re getting the best ROI. This is where influencer tracking tools come in.
In today’s article, we’ll cover what influencer tracking is, factors to consider when choosing a platform, the top 10 tracking tools, and recommendations for selecting the right one based on your brand’s needs and budget. With the help of this guide, you’ll be able to find the ideal influencer-tracking solution to optimize your campaigns.
What is Influencer Tracking?
Influencer tracking refers to the process of monitoring and analyzing the performance of influencer marketing campaigns. This allows brands to identify which influencers are driving the most relevant audience engagement, measure true ROI, and gain insights to improve future campaigns.
Tracking tools allow you to:
- Discover new influencers in your niche
- Track mentions and engagement metrics across social platforms
- Identify influencer content resonating with your target audience
- Measure traffic, conversions, and sales from influencer posts
- Automate influencer communications and payments
- Uncover actionable influencer marketing analytics and insights
With comprehensive tracking, you can optimize partnerships and budgets for maximum ROI.
How to Choose the Best Influencer Tracking Tool
With many influencer marketing platforms available, it’s important to consider the following factors to determine the right solution for your brand:
Budget – Tracking tools have varying pricing models (free, monthly subscriptions, pay as you go). Outline what you can reasonably spend before comparing options.
Features – Determine must-have and nice-to-have capabilities based on your goals. This may include discovering influencers, tracking mentions, analytics, fraud detection, etc.
Ease of use – Look for intuitive platforms requiring minimal training and onboarding time for your team.
Integration – If using other marketing & analytics tools, ensure seamless integration is available.
Support – Check reviews and test out customer service channels to ensure timely and useful assistance.
Scalability – As your influencer program grows, ensure your platform can expand its capabilities.
By carefully evaluating these aspects, you’ll find the best platform matching your current and future influencer marketing needs.
The Top 10 Influencer Tracking Tools
Based on critical tracking features, ease of use, customer satisfaction, and cost-effectiveness, we’ve compiled the top 10 influencer tracking platforms:
BuzzSumo
Key Features: Influencer search/discovery, influencer content analytics, campaign management.
Pricing: $199/month basic plan up to $999/month for enterprise options
Free Trial: 30-day free trial
Best For: In-depth influencer content research and analysis.
Pros: Powerful filtering and sorting for influencer search, and content tracking across the web.
Cons: Doesn’t integrate with social platforms, steeper learning curve.
BuzzSumo is a robust content research and monitoring platform with powerful influencer tracking capabilities. It allows you to thoroughly research influencers in your niche with filtering tools to identify those generating high-performing content that resonates with target audiences. While it doesn’t integrate with social platforms directly, BuzzSumo provides deep analytics on content performance across the web.
The tool is ideal for brands focused on identifying and building relationships with top talent producing quality content. With strong search and analytics, BuzzSumo is a great choice for in-depth influencer research and tracking campaign content performance.
Upfluence
Key Features: Campaign management, tracking cross-platform engagement, fraud detection, relationship management.
Pricing: Custom pricing, contact for quote.
Free Trial: No free trail options.
Best For: Comprehensive tracking and automation for enterprise brands.
Pros: Automated tracking, fraud protection, unified influencer communications.
Cons: More expensive, potential data overwhelming if not fully utilized.
Upfluence is an end-to-end influencer marketing platform, making it easy to manage the entire influencer process from discovery to tracking and analytics. Key features like fraud detection, automated tracking across social platforms, and unified influencer communications centralize your efforts. Upfluence offers the ability to scale while maintaining organization as your influencer program expands.
The dashboard provides insights into campaign performance and engagement. While it is one of the more expensive tools, brands investing heavily in influencer marketing benefit from Upfluence’s enterprise-level capabilities, automation, and integration under one roof.
Traackr
Key Features: Influencer discovery/database, automated tracking, campaign performance reporting.
Pricing: Custom pricing options.
Free Trial: No free trial options.
Best For: Influencer discovery and integrated campaign performance tracking.
Pros: Robust influencer search filters, campaign tracking automation, custom reporting.
Cons: Expensive for basic plan, advanced features require steep learning curve.
Traackr is an influencer discovery and management platform providing automated influencer tracking and campaign performance analysis. Its robust database simplifies finding and vetting influencers in your niche using customizable search filters. Integration with major social platforms allows you to easily track campaign engagement metrics.
Traackr automates status reports, facilitates collaboration, and delivers real-time progress on key performance indicators. The tool is ideal for brands that take an analytical approach to managing a larger influencer program and want streamlined tracking with actionable performance data.
Klear
Key Features: Influencer discovery, relationship management, campaign tracking and reporting.
Pricing: Custom pricing options.
Free Trial: Free trial/ Live demo available
Best For: Streamlined influencer relationship management and campaign tracking.
Pros: User-friendly dashboard, CRM-like relationship management features.
Cons: Less advanced analytics and reporting compared to competitors.
Klear is an end-to-end influencer platform with campaign tracking and CRM-like features to simplify relationship management. After identifying and vetting influencers, brands can send collaboration requests, track campaign progress, and monitor engagement all within Klear. The dashboard provides at-a-glance insights into campaign performance.
While Klear offers solid functionality for mid-size brands, its tracking capabilities are not as advanced as competitors. However, Klear is easy to use and ideal for brands focused on building genuine relationships with influencers as part of their strategy.
CreatorIQ
Key Features: Influencer CRM, campaign tracking, progress reporting, payouts.
Pricing: Custom quotes
Free Trial: Free trial / Demo available
Best For: Simplified relationship management and campaign tracking.
Pros: Intuitive setup and tracking, user-friendly features.
Cons: Less robust analytics, and expensive enterprise-focused pricing.
CreatorIQ emphasizes simplified campaign management and tracking for enterprise brands working with larger networks of influencers. After discovering influencers, its CRM-like interface makes it easy to manage outreach, collaborations, content scheduling, transparent pricing, payments and more.
CreatorIQ’s tracking dashboards provide progress reporting and metrics on key performance indicators. While light on some advanced analytics functionality, it shines when it comes to efficient and streamlined campaign execution and progress visibility.
SocialBook
Key Features: discovering influencers, tracking mentions, sentiment analysis, analytics.
Pricing: $99/month basic plan up to $599/month for enterprise plan.
Free Trial: Free trial and basic free plan available
Best For: Affordable tracking of core social media metrics and mentions.
Pros: Budget-friendly pricing for basic tracking needs.
Cons: Less comprehensive features and analytics compared to competitors.
SocialBook is an affordable influencer tracking tool providing brands with core social listening and performance tracking capabilities. After discovering relevant influencers, SocialBook facilitates tracking campaigns across major social platforms to identify top performing content. The tool monitors mentions, engagement, and sentiment data with metrics focused on social media specifically.
While SocialBook lacks some of the relationship management and advanced analytics of costlier tools, it’s a solid option for entry-level tracking of influencer performance on social platforms only.
Mention
Key Features: Social monitoring, influencer tracking, simple reporting.
Pricing: $41/month basic plan up to $499/month custom enterprise options.
Free Trial: Free trial / Demo options available
Best For: Entry-level social monitoring and influencer tracking needs.
Pros: Easy to set up and user-friendly interface.
Cons: Light on analytics and lacks workflow automation features.
Mention is a social media monitoring platform with built-in capabilities to track influencer brand mentions and performance on social. It simplifies tracking campaign-related engagement and discussions happening on social media. Mention provides volume trends, sentiment analysis, and the ability to receive real-time alerts on influencer posts. Ideal for entry-level tracking needs, Mention is easy to use with a user-friendly dashboard.
However, it lacks advanced analytics on performance or relationship management functionality compared to other dedicated influencer tracking tools.
NinjaOutreach
Key Features: Influencer CRM, campaign management, tracking and reporting.
Pricing: $49/month basic plan up to $1,499/month enterprise options.
Free Trial: 7-Days free traial
Best For: Streamlined influencer relationship management and tracking.
Pros: User-friendly influencer CRM features.
Cons: Expensive compared to features offered.
NinjaOutreach is an end-to-end influencer marketing platform facilitating influencer identification, outreach, collaboration, and campaign tracking. The CRM-like interface helps brands manage relationships and communications with influencers. Tracking campaign progress is easy with automated alerts and reports on key metrics.
However, NinjaOutreach is more expensive relative to the influencer tracking capabilities it offers. It works best for brands focused on relationship building that want straightforward tracking and management in one interface.
NeoReach
Key Features: Identify influencers, manage outreach, track campaign performance.
Pricing: Custom quotes.
Free Trial: No free trial
Best For: Discovering micro and nano influencers and campaign tracking.
Pros: Specialized in outreach to nano and micro-influencers.
Cons: Expensive custom pricing model.
NeoReach is an influencer marketing platform focused on discovering micro and nano-influencers ideal for partnering with brands. Along with identifying hidden gem influencers, NeoReach facilitates effective influencer outreach and campaign management. The tool provides progress tracking on engagement, reach, and performance once campaigns launch.
While specific to the micro-influencer space, NeoReach lacks some of the depth in relationship management and analytics of other end-to-end platforms. But for its specialty targeting smaller influencers, NeoReach can streamline your influencer efforts.
HypeAuditor
Key Features: Influencer vetting for fake followers/engagement, campaign analytics.
Pricing: Custom pricing.
Free Trial: Free trial available.
Best For: Influencer vetting and fraud protection, with campaign tracking.
Pros: Powerful fraud detection capabilities.
Cons: Light on relationship management features.
HypeAuditor is an AI-powered tool providing in-depth influencer audits to identify fake followers, engagement and inflated reach. This helps brands vet and validate influencers before partnering. HypeAuditor also tracks campaign performance and engagement metrics. While light on some relationship management features, HypeAuditor shines when it comes to fraud protection.
For brands focused on authenticity, HypeAuditor delivers robust vetting and tracking to maximize the genuineness and ROI of influencer efforts.
How to Evaluate Your Influencer Tracking Needs?
With this overview of the top influencer tracking platforms, you can better evaluate the solution fitting your budget, features needs, goals, and existing marketing stack.
Here are key questions to consider:
- What are your primary goals – discover new influencers, simplify campaign management, identify top-performing content, or track sales?
- Do you need comprehensive analytics or simple engagement metrics and reporting?
- How large is your current influencer program and how quickly will it scale?
- Do you already use separate tools for social listening, CRM, etc. that need integration?
- How much time can you allocate to onboarding and learning a new tracking platform?
- What level of post-purchase customer support will your team need?
Once you’ve outlined your responses to these questions, match them against the pros, cons, and ideal use cases outlined for each tracking tool above. This will help you zero in on the 2-3 options that seem most aligned.
Comparing these closely against your needs and budget can lead to your ideal influencer tracking match. You may also consider signing up for free trials or demos to experience the tools hands-on before purchase.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Based on popularity, features, and capability to scale, we recommend exploring BuzzSumo, Upfluence, and Traackr if the budget allows. For entry-level needs, Mention and SocialBook offer solid tracking fundamentals at affordable price points.
Whichever platform you choose, take time to outline your goals, requirements, and metrics for success upfront. This will inform setup and ensure you utilize the tracking insights to optimize influencer campaign performance over time. Consistent tracking paired with the right influencer relationships will lead to stellar marketing results.
