The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools

Revised February 9, 2023
Revised November 16, 2022
Revised December 13, 2021
Revised August 19, 2020

Interest in influencer marketing is skyrocketing. After bumping along at a low level for several years, searches for the term increased by a factor of seven over the past 18 months according to Google Trends.

Recent stats reported by Onalytica explain why marketers are rushing to incorporate influencer research and outreach:

• 84% of marketing professionals now use influencer marketing as a tactic.
• 59% of marketers planned to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2016.
• 31% of high-growth firms now have a formal employee advocacy program in place
• Why? Because “influencer marketing is more cost-effective than paid advertising and leads to more credible brand recommendations, which 92% of consumers are more likely to trust.”

But influencer marketing can be a waste of resources, or worse—actually damaging to a brand—if done wrong.

Influencer marketing tools can help marketers identify the most relevant and engaging bloggers, journalists, and media outlets in their specific industry segments; reach out to them more effectively; automate low-level, repetitive tasks; and track and monitor results. Here are 28 of the best tools for influencer research and outreach.

1) Klout
Google Review Count: 420

Klout was founded in 2008, and by autumn of 2016 had become the most popular social media analytics tool for rating online social influence. In spite of that, and despite paying $200 million to acquire  the company in March 2014, Lithium shut down Klout in May 2018. You may want to try Klear instead.

Sample review: “Klout allows you to track the impact of your opinions, links, and recommendations across your social graph. It collects data about the content you create, how people interact with that content, and the size and composition of your network. From there, it analyzes the data to find indicators of influence and helps you interpret the data.” — ViralBlog

Pricing: free, or API data by quote

Showcase reviews: InNetwork, ViralBlog

2) Buzzstream
Google Review Count: 273

Buzzstream helps you research, prioritize, and find contact information for top influencers on any topic. It also tracks your conversations and follow-up with influencers and supports team collaboration. The latest release gives users two outreach options: sending targeted, personalized outreach emails one by one, or sending less personalized emails in bulk.

Sample review: “BuzzStream enables you turn a website or blog post into a contact record in their database. Bookmark an article by an influential journalist, for example, and BuzzStream will automatically pull in any email addresses and social profiles associated with that journalist. You can even email influencers directly from the platform. ” — PR Daily (PR Tools)

Pricing: $24 to $999 per month

Showcase reviews: Online Marketing Institute, Social Media Today, BuzzBlogger, PR Daily (PR Tools), StoreYa Blog, Robbie Richards

3) Kred
Google Review Count: 210

Track and increase your own online influence, and connect with other influencers through the influence network and Kred communities. Use their inbound marketing platform to organize your most influential customers into communities, encourage engagement, and monitor results.

Pricing: individual tool is free; marketing platform is $999 to $10,000 per month

Showcase reviews: InNetwork

4) Crowdfire
Google Review Count: 210

Find relevant users to follow on Twitter and Instagram, keep track of how your social media updates affect your follower/unfollower stats, and check relationships between accounts.

Sample review: “If you follow lots of prospects and people who might be interested in sharing your content, you will find some will follow back. Others won’t. Crowdfire helps you painlessly ditch the ‘won’t”s.’ Just be careful not to also ditch people you want to follow for other reasons (Sorry, mom.)” — SmallBusinessNewz

Pricing: free to $19.95 per month

Showcase reviews: SmallBusinessNewz

5) Little Bird
Google Review Count: 185

Find influencers for any topic, explore their ecosystem to build additional connections and engagement, monitor activities, and spot trends.

Sample review: “Little Bird is a great tool for building influencer lists by topic. You feed it a few keywords, and it suggests powerful people to reach out to. It uses advanced data to help you find the perfect influencer. You can pinpoint specific geographic locations and languages. You can also find two (or more) networks with similar interests, and influencers that appeal to both. If influencer marketing is your main mission, it’s a great tool.” — Patrick Whatman on Mention

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: Mention, RazorSocial (World)

6) Onalytica
Google Review Count: 170

Upload or link any piece of content and let Onalytica’s algorithm find the top related influencers. Identify key influencers, engage them, and measure the results and impact of your influencer marketing activities. Onalytica demonstrates the capabilities of its tool by producing data-based lists like the top 100 B2B marketing influencers.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: ViralBlog

7) Muck Rack
Google Review Count: 170

Muck Rack helps PR pros and marketers find relevant journalists and bloggers, receive alerts, and build media lists. It also helps journalists, bloggers, and editors showcase their work, track shares, and grow their following.

Sample review: “If you want to maximize your media outreach, Muck Rack Pro is a great addition to a PR toolkit. The paid version of the online tool that helps journalists and sources connect also enables you to receive alerts, organize media lists, send pitches, and conduct unlimited searches. It also provides priority customer support. ” — PR Daily (PR Tools)

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: PR Daily (PR Tools), PR Daily (Digital Tools)

8) ContentMarketer.io
Google Review Count: 165

Find influencers and and monitor mentions. This toolset also lets you schedule and send personalized outreach emails via your Google account, using pre-built templates and automated follow-up sequences.

Sample review: “If you’re a regular visitor here, you have probably heard me mention Content Marketer a few times. It’s a browser based tool that’s designed to help marketers streamline their outreach efforts by offering a quick and easy way to find and contact relevant industry influencers. ” — Marketing Insider Group (Content)

Pricing: $9 to $66 per month

Showcase reviews: Express Writers, Marketing Insider Group (Content), Marketing Insider Group (Strategy), Robbie Richards

9) Inkybee
Google Review Count: 161

Find targeted industry influencers, manage your influencer engagement, track coverage, and measure and report on results.

Sample review: “This social-media tool provides a way for you to locate those influencers who can elevate your brand and attract more potential customers. It provides a way for you to search for bloggers and social-media celebrities interested in your industry, so you can connect with them.” — Entrepreneur

Pricing: $79 to $249 per month

Showcase reviews: Social Media Today, BuzzBlogger, Entrepreneur, StoreYa Blog, Rebekah Radice

10) GroupHigh
Google Review Count: 155

Search, sort, and filter by a number of criteria to create focused lists from a database of more than 15 million active bloggers, then conduct outreach and monitor results.

Sample review: “Grouphigh is a really powerful blogger research tool.  It has a very large database of bloggers with powerful search criteria. Search through the database, identify a short list of bloggers and then analyze each individual blogger. When you want to analzye a blogger you’ll be able to find their contact details, latest blog posts, social profiles and much more.” — RazorSocial (World)

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (World)

11) BlogDash
Google Review Count: 138

BlogDash offers both a tool to help find, filter, sort,  and pitch relevant bloggers individually or in collaboration with a team, and a service that performs custom blogger outreach on your brand’s behalf.

Sample review: “Connect your brand with bloggers with BlogDash. The tool allows users to search for content marketers based on target specifications such as demographic and influence. After connecting with a blogger, you can pitch them your new product or service to get others talking in the blogosphere. ” — Social Media Today

Pricing: free to $199 per month for the tool; outreach services by quote

Showcase reviews: Social Media Today,  Viral Blog

12) Newsle
Google Review Count: 130

Newsle has now been acquired by and integrated into LinkedIn as a new feature, “Connections In The News.” It lets you see when your connections and companies you follow are mentioned in the news.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Buffer Social

13) FullContact
Google Review Count: 129

Control your social, email, and mobile contacts from one dashboard. Manage contacts, keep track of activity, and view extended information about your contacts from within Gmail and your calendar.

Sample review: “If you have a list of influencer email address, but no social profiles, you don’t have to make a long date with Google search to enrich your data. Do it quickly, easily, and automatically with FullContact instead. Using it feels almost magical. Enter an email address or Twitter handle, and get back a list of all the social profiles associated with that email or handle.” — PR Daily (Digital Tools)

Pricing: free to $10 per month

Showcase reviews: PR Daily (Digital Tools)

14) Social Crawlytics
Google Review Count: 123

Identify key influencers in your market segment, discover where your competitors’ content is  being shared and promoted, and monitor your social sharing metrics.

Sample review: “Looking to spy on competitors’ blog post analytics? Social Crawlytics runs a crawl report of a website and tracks which content is shared on which social channels. This is a useful research tool to see what blog post topics are working and which aren’t. Apply this data to your own content calendar. Was a blog post about Twitter chats successful? Construct your own.” — PR Daily (Digital Tools)

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: RazorSocial (Technology), Social Media Today, BuzzBlogger

15) Gorkana
Google Review Count: 119

Owned by Cision, Gorkana offers one of the most comprehensive databases of media contacts in the U.K., along with media monitoring and filtering, social media tracking, and analysis.

Sample review: “The majority of the work we do is on the digital PR and content strategy and creation side and we would be lost without access to (#journorequest and Gorkana) as they make it much easier to find the right influencers to pitch ideas into.” — Simon Penson / Robbie Richards

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

16) Contactually
Google Review Count: 119

An influencer CRM tool, Contactually helps connect your work email to automatically create a relationship database, categorize your contacts so you know who to contact and when, craft messages using relevant information, and follow up on schedule.

Sample review: “Contactually is a handy tool that sends you automatic reminders to contact people on your media list to whom you haven’t reached out in a while. The tool also provides contextual information such as social updates and recent conversations, as well as email templates to help you know what to say.” — PR Daily (Digital Tools)

Pricing: $29 to $99 per user per month

Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, PR Daily (Digital Tools)

17) Impactana
Google Review Count: 118

Discover compelling content for sharing, identify key influencers (blogs and video), analyze social signals to determine what works best with your audience, and measure user engagement.

Sample review: “Impactana is the ultimate in content research with a focus on SEO. Instead of just showing content based on social sharing popularity, you can find content based on high number of backlinks, views, and comments. That can come in handy for outreach purposes when you are looking for relevant in-content links.” — Kristi Hines / Robbie Richards

Pricing: $99 to $699 per month, with enterprise pricing by quote

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

18) Pitchbox
Google Review Count: 114

Find influencers with contact information and social profiles, craft personalized outreach messages, automate follow-up, and track results. Includes an integrated email client.

Sample review: “I love this tool for pitching article topic ideas to high authority sites. It syncs with your gmail account, and sends up to 2 automated follow ups per campaign. It’s also great at tracking responses and can differentiate between an out of office reply versus an actual response.” — Kelsey Reaves / Robbie Richards

Pricing: $95 to $1,500 per month

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

19) eCairn
Google Review Count: 113

Find key influencers, identify trending topics,  engage with your community, conduct targeted influencer outreach, and measure results for your brand.

Sample review: “eCairn is a blogger and influencer outreach tool that has some robust collaboration and monitoring features. Community mapping and pre-populated community data sets are available at a Pro price.” — ViralBlog

Pricing: contact vendor

Showcase reviews: ViralBlog

20) Prezly
Google Review Count: 90

A “PR CRM” system, Prezly lets you create rich influencer profiles, organize and segment contacts, track engagement, craft custom multi-media emails, and build an online newsroom for your brand.

Sample review: “Building a multimedia press release is hard. Making it responsive and email-ready is even harder…Prezly solves this problem by combining multimedia email distribution with custom online newsrooms. Create a multimedia press release in your own custom-branded newsroom, and Prezly automatically generates an email version that you can pitch to journalists. Both the newsroom and the email are responsively designed to look great on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, and every email includes analytics to help you track response rate.” — PR Daily (Digital Tools)

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: PR Daily (Digital Tools)

21) PeekAnalytics
Google Review Count: 50

Sample review: “If you have a PeekAnalytics account, you can get a social pull score which measures how influential your Twitter audience is across 60+ social networks compared to the average Twitter user (this is a measure of the AUDIENCE, not the INDIVIDUAL – much better metric).” — InNetwork

Pricing: free to $200+ per month

Showcase reviews: InNetwork

22) Outreachr
Google Review Count: 45

Find key influencers on any topic across more than 40 countries, share content, and track results.

Pricing: free to $145 per month

Showcase reviews: Social Media Today

23) Discoverly
Google Review Count: 42

Instantly see detailed, visual social media influence and demographic information for anyone in your social network while browsing.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Mention

24) Journalisted
Google Review Count: 32

Specific to the U.K., find articles by subject, search profiles of journalists, compare and find similar articles, and set up alerts to know when selected journalists have published something new.

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: B2B PR Sense Blog

25) Cision Media Database
Google Review Count: 30

Identify influencers from Cision’s database of more than 300,000 social media contacts across 50 platforms and more than 1.6 contacts in traditional media. Fine-tune outreach with pitching tips and by scanning editorial calendars.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

26) Personapp
Google Review Count: 27

Sample review: “This app essentially puts a face to all those followers and friends in the social-media world. You can also create specific personas that then interact with this audience. Together, social media becomes more personalized and human.” — Entrepreneur

Pricing: free

Showcase reviews: Entrepreneur

27) JournoRequests
Google Review Count: 25

Another U.K.-specific tool, JournoRequests helps PR professionals find coverage opportunities through daily emails (similar to HARO in the U.S.), and helps journalists find expert sources for stories they are researching.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards

28) eGrabber Account-Researcher
Google Review Count: 9

Find influencers and decision makers, capture contact information from social profiles and append email addresses and phone numbers, research conversation-starters for smarter outreach, and track your email conversations.

Sample review: “Here are 5 little known tools every business should try…eGrabber’s Account-Researcher: One of the reasons LinkedIn works so well is that it tells us exactly how we’re related to the people in our network and the best ways of communicating with them (messages, invitations, introductions and InMails, in that order). LinkedIn’s limitation is with the folks who fall outside of our network; especially if we don’t have $10 for each InMail we want to send. ” — Nikki Woods

Pricing: $49 to $295 per month

Showcase reviews: Nikki Woods

More Tools

NinjaOutreach
Google Review Count: 250

All-in-one influencer marketing software featuring a searchable database of more than a million influencers, outreach management, link building, campaign tracking, and a CRM (contact relationship management) tool. It also offers tools for Instagram- and Twitter-specific influencer outreach, plus a free, categorized database of Instagram influencers.

Pricing: free; four levels from $52 to $599 per month

Traackr
Google Review Count: 247

An IRM (influencer relationship management) tool with an influencer search and analytics suite. Manage your influencer database, coordinate outreach activities across teams, track brand conversations, and validate influence.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Dealspotr
Google Review Count: 240

Many of the tools above are B2B-focused. Consumer influencer marketing is a different world. But if you’re a B2C marketer in that world, this is a site worth checking out. Dealspotr Marketplace is a low-cost platform where small/medium businesses can identify and evaluate consumer micro-influencers, provide selected influencers with personalized promo or discount codes, and  analyze the results.

Pricing: brands pay based on completed promotions

Izea
Google Review Count: 200

Search across blogs and social networks for influencers at all levels, develop influencer profiles, rank influencers, manage engagement, amplify content, track results, and more. The company’s self-service content amplification tool, ContentAmp, blends influencer marketing with an AdWords-type cost-per-click campaign platform.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Klear
Google Review Count: 144

A combination influencer marketing / social media monitoring / competitive analysis tool that lets you find influencers by subject area, analyze social profiles for qualifications, manage relationship, track brand mentions on social media, and report on results.

Pricing: free; $249 per month; contact the vendor for enterprise pricing

Paladin
Google Review Count: 100

Paladin is a leading influencer marketing platform for brands, agencies, and creator networks. It provides functionality for influencer discovery with a database of more than 50 million global media influencers; influencer relationship management for contact and engagement tracking; and influencer campaign management for outreach and reporting.

Pricing: starts at $1,000 per month / contact the vendor

Heepsy
Google Review Count: 96

Find influencers from a database of more than seven million influencers who have at least 5,000 followers. Analyze influencers by audience demographics, cost estimates, brand collaborations, and authenticity score. Create influencer lists, export data, and conduct outreach.

Pricing: free or $49/$169/$269 per month

Brandbassador
Google Review Count: 90

Created by the founders of apparel brand OnePiece, Brandbassador is a B2C-focused influencer marketing platform that enables you to centralize social media user-generated content, create social buzz, and track performance from impressions all the way to revenue generated. Choose from a large selection of tested creative campaign templates. Integrates with all major eCommerce platforms including Shopify, Woocommerce, and Magento.

Pricing: contact the vendor

HypeAuditor
Google Review Count: 88

An all-in-one solution for managing influencer marketing, HypeAuditor provides functionality to help find influencers from its database of more than 11 million influencers; account metrics and demographics across Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, with fraud detection to identify bot followers; create media plans and monitor the performance of your campaigns; and analyze competitor campaigns and industry trends.

Pricing: free; $399/month; enterprise pricing by quote

Humanz
Google Review Count: 83

An influencer marketing platform that enables marketers to identify relevant influencers (primarily B2C) and manage the entire process from brief to tracking sales, and allows influencers to join their network, co-create content, and earn money or free products from sponsors.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Influence.co
Google Review Count: 82

Influence.co is a platform for connecting influencers with brands, marketers, talent managers and agencies. Influencers can highlight their work and whom they’ve worked with; brands and agencies can find influencers.

Pricing: free

InBeat
Google Review Count: 74

TikTok & Instagram influencer database with a search engine to find Micro-Nano influencers in seconds based on metrics and keywords. Features include QuickSearch of the database to find influencers; DeepSearch to find lookalikes; a Creator Studio to accelerate campaign content creation; and export of all contact information for selected influencers.

Pricing: $35/$80/$200/$400 per month

Unbox Social
Google Review Count: 74

All-in-one data-driven influencer marketing platform to discover, evaluate, and track campaigns. Learn how your brand compares against industry benchmarks with key metrics like Share of Voice. Analyze your social media profiles to make strategic decisions. Measure end-to- end funnel analysis about your audience, reach, post interaction and engagement rate metrics.

Pricing: $99/$199 per month

Linking News
Google Review Count: 70

Linking News White Label Service delivers your press release to major news sites without a third-party distribution company label attached. The company guarantees coverage in top tier outlets including ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, Reuters, USA Today, MarketWatch, and more. It maintains a network of over 330,000 publications, 900,000 journalists, and 90 million social media influencers.

Pricing: $159/$369/$4,999 per release

InfluencerDB
Google Review Count: 55

Defunct. InfluencerDB was a community management tool which enabled brands to build, manage and activate their influencer community, manage inbound requests, organize campaigns, and activate their community, through an all-in-one software tool.

Pricing: multiple levels from free to $940 per month, based on number of users and influencers tracked

Promoty
Google Review Count: 44

An all-in-one influencer management platform that enables you to find, communicate with, and track influencers in one place. Find new creators from Promoty’s database of over 150 million influencers, filtering them keywords, interests, audience, and more, and then getting a detailed profile with social metrics for each influencer. Organize your influencers, add notes and labels, attach contracts, use the chat to negotiate details, and monitor branded content.

Pricing: $50/$150 per month, with enterprise pricing by quote

SARAL
Google Review Count: 43

Identify influential content creators or upload your own list and sync it with your email conversations. Track engagement and expected views to confidently negotiate pricing. Send personalized emails to your influencers in bulk. Track all stages of your influencer outreach to see full funnel conversion rates. Maintain email conversations, and store media kits, rates, notes, and tasks, all in one place.

Pricing: $149 per month

Grin
Google Review Count: 40

Find influencers with their searchable database, get verified contact information, ship product, pay fees, track influencer content, monitor performance, and test different versions of outreach emails.

Pricing: $600/$1,200 per month, with enterprise pricing by quote

BuzzGuru
Google Review Count: 39

An all-in-one B2C influencer marketing platform, BuzzGuru enables you to search for influencers in your category, analyze content creators’ performance, organize and manage paid campaigns, monitor campaign effectiveness, and analyze competitors’ influencer marketing strategies. See the top 100 influencers across Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Affable
Google Review Count: 30

Discover relevant influencers, manage campaigns and measure the effectiveness of your influencer marketing campaigns. Affable’s platform enables you to search for influencers; analyze the influencer audience before engaging them; manage campaigns (reach out to influencers and track your campaign content in real-time); and measure performance.

Pricing: contact the vendor

Respona
Google Review Count: 20

Respona helps you find and connect with key journalists and influencers in your industry, and send personalized outreach. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to study content created by those influencers and help you personalize each pitch for higher response rates. The tool also helps you find direct contact information for influencers, keep your outreach activities organized, and analyze results.

Pricing: $99/$499 per month

Babbler
Google Review Count: 12

Babbler offers features for both PR and content marketing professionals seeking to connect with journalists and influencers (research, categorization, messaging, collaboration) as well as influencers researching stories and topics (research, newsfeed, and engagement tools).

Pricing: $149/$399 per month, with agency pricing by quote

Dot Star Media
Google Review Count: N/A

A UK-focused influencer marketing tool makes it easier to monitor Twitter for the best journalist requests. The tool removes noise and spam, classifies requests into topics, and delivers them as notifications by email, or directly into Microsoft Teams or Slack. The process is fast, providing subscribers with a competitive edge in responding to journalists first.

Pricing: $55/$82/$109 per month

Social Junction
Google Review Count: N/A

Social Junction is a multi-platform influencer identification tool that allows you to perform real-time searches on keyword phrases and filters. Evaluate influencers on YouTube based on following, engagement, and trends.

Pricing: free

Soon Done
Google Review Count: N/A

Soon Done is a quick and easy tool that enables you to find websites that address specific topics or keyword phrases; scan those sites for email addresses; and send personalized email outreach. Although the tool could theoretically be used for link spamming, it goes with saying that’s a bad idea; always follow proper influencer marketing practices. But as long as you do that, this is a handy free tool for making the find-to-send process more efficient.

Pricing: free

Showcase Reviews

B2B PR Sense Blog
Buffer Social
BuzzBlogger
Entrepreneur
Express Writers
InNetwork
Marketing Insider Group (Content)
Marketing Insider Group (Strategy)
Mention
Nikki Woods
Online Marketing Institute
PR Daily (PR Tools)
PR Daily (Digital Tools)
RazorSocial (World)
RazorSocial (Technology)
Rebekah Radice
Robbie Richards
SmallBusinessNewz
Social Media Today
StoreYa Blog
ViralBlog

This was the 13th post in the Best Online Business Tools series.

#1: Best Online Business Tools Series Kicks Off Today

#2: The 12 Best Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Tools

#3: The Nine Best Facebook Marketing Tools

#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools

#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools

#6: The 24 Best Online Writing Tools and Apps

#7: The Six Best Google+ Marketing Tools

#8: The Four Best Online Education Tools For Business Pros

#9: The 14 Best Marketing Automation Tools

#10: The 17 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO and SEM

#11: The Seven Best File Sharing Tools

#12: The Five Best Infographic Creation Tools and Services

#13: The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools