The Top 15 Influencer Marketplaces for Your Next Influencer Campaign

For those of you who have read my post on influencer marketing tools, you may have been surprised that I included influencer marketplaces in that article as a type of tool.

You see, there are many ways to find and activate influencers as part of a comprehensive influencer marketing program, but if you think about it, it really comes down to these three methods:

• use various influencer marketing tools to find influencers and engage with them yourself (takes time)
• hire an influencer marketing agency to do all of the work for you (costs money)
• use an influencer marketing marketplace to find influencers and engage with them yourself (more limited supply but quick to market)

If you want to experiment with influencer marketing and want to activate a campaign to see what is possible, using one of the influencer marketplaces below is an easy way to get started.

That being said, it’s still a tough area to navigate, because there are so many potential influencers out there, including ones that you will find in these leading influencer marketplaces. Ensuring the right “match” takes a lot of time and effort, and this is tough for those of us who have heavy workloads. While these influencer marketplaces can help with discovery and engagement, there is still a lot of work to do.

I have tried to compile this post of the leading influencer marketplaces that exist in hopes that these will provide you your greatest chance for influencer marketing success. I have also scoured the Internet looking for as many tutorial videos on each marketplace that I could find.

What Exactly is an Influencer Marketplace?

Let’s first make sure we understand what is an influencer marketplace and how it differs from an influencer marketing platform or an influencer marketing agency.

An influencer marketplace is essentially a meeting place for influencers and marketers to create mutually-beneficial relationships. Influencer marketplaces allow influencers to post profiles or portfolios, of sorts, in order to demonstrate what they are capable of producing and what types of brands and companies they will best work alongside. Brands use marketplaces in much the same way: to essentially advertise who they are, what they do, and what niche market they fit into, in order to help influencers determine whether or not they are a good fit for the brand or company. Although influencer marketplaces are not social media platforms, per se, they serve a similar function, and are often utilized by the same (or similar) demographics. 

Without further adieu, here are my recommended influencer marketplaces you check out, together with videos when available from each of the influencer marketplaces to give you a good feel as to how each of them work and the ins and outs of their user interfaces.

ACTIVATE

How would you like an all-in-one influencer marketing solution? With ACTIVATE, you can do a lot more than just meet influencers.

Certainly, matching influencers and brands is one of the main activities of ACTIVATE, but they go far beyond this basic task. Search for influencers in your field, and the Activate search engine will return relevant results. In fact, they brag that there are some major influencers here, such as Olympic athletes.

Once you find an influencer that looks suitable you can negotiate directly with the influencer, and pay for their influencer marketing services through Activate’s online payment portal. With their campaign measurement and analytics, Activate will show you how effective your campaign has been. This saves time, and cuts through a lot of the confusion surrounding influencer marketing.

Major brands use this service, including Reebok, Olay, and Walmart.

Influencers: over 150,000.

afluencer

afluencer is broken down into sections for influencers and brands, in order to create an easy-to-use and navigate platform. This influencer network pairs relevant influencers and brands to create relationships that can continue to bring in larger audiences and potential new customers. It is among the smaller influencer marketplaces, with under 1,000 influencers and under 1,300 brands. Nevertheless, afluencer is a useful networking platform, as it allows smaller influencers, such as a micro – influencer, to interact with brands they know and are eager to collaborate with. This platform also allows brands to reach out to influencers easily and directly, without the hassle of trying to contact them via a social media platform. 

afluencer is ideal for smaller brands and influencers–such as a micro – influencer, or a recent startup–because the platform does not boast a large array of brands or influencers. afluencer can be viewed as a training ground, of sorts, for people and brands who may not have as large a follower count, but are still looking to improve engagement rates and get their names out there. 

Influencers: Around 9,000

Brybe

Are you looking to do package deals with influencers?

You know, something like:

• Delivery Within 1 day
• Post a Photo & Video of Your Product on [pick your social networks]
• Tag Your Social Media Account on Each Post
• Swipe Up to Your Product on [pick your social networks]
• Leave It Forever on Facebook
• 3 Free Revisions

Brybe is one of the only marketplaces I know that allows influencers and creators in their marketplace to create these custom gigs, which they appropriately call “brybes.” This allows influencers to create a packaged solution to your needs based on how they want to work with you. It is a great way to start a friction-free relationship for creating content across social media channels.

Brybe also has a transparent business model of allowing for direct communication between Brands, Influencers and Creators.

Major brands: Adidas, Garnier, Cadillac, GMC, Adobe.

Influencers: around 8,000

Creator.co

Creator.co is another platform for certain types of influencers to reach out to and be contacted by brands. This small influencer marketing hub is unique, in that it functions as a one-stop shop for not only influencer marketing campaigns, but also functions as a source of income via referral programs, team selling options, and even storefront options, in order to allow you to move from content creator to product creator and back, al within the same platform. The most significant difference in Creator.co’s platform? It is filled with micro and nano – influencers, with audiences as small as 1,000 followers. 

With Creator.co, you can search for campaigns based on niche, price, and follower count, as the different campaigns available are clearly identified by the dollar amount being offered, the amount of followers the individual must have in order to qualify, and the engagement rate influencers must have to qualify (in order to weed out fake followers). 

Creator.co has a brand section and an influencer section in order to clearly delineate the different sides of the campaign. The influencer side of the site allows you to browse campaigns and begin speaking with brands, while the brand side of the site is a more involved influencer marketing tool, with a much more substantial series of features to make creating and publishing marketing campaigns easy and straightforward. 

Influencers: 500 million micro and nano – influencers.

Dealspotr

Want to create an influencer marketing campaign that’s totally cash free?

On Dealspotr, you have the opportunity to meet popular influencers who are willing to engage for just the cost of the product. Other influencers will charge fees on Dealspotr, and in that case you pay the influencer through their platform.

The catch: In return for access to Dealspotr’s influencer marketplace, you have to offer discount codes on your site to be distributed across social platforms. To be precise, it needs to be your best deal on the Internet. You might say that Dealspotr is doing influencer marketing the old-fashioned way: give something away for the privilege of getting publicity and promotion.

Major brands: Adidas, Too Faced Cosmetics, Pier 1.

Influencers: around 4,000.

ExpertVoice

Tired of seeing supposed “influencers” who know nothing about the type of products and services you’re selling? With ExpertVoice, you won’t have this problem with influencer discovery.

That’s because ExpertVoice is an influencer platform that “qualifies” potential influencers on various topics. Potential influencers join communities of experts, which in turn have access to brands within that specialty. This way, brands are only introduced to people in the right field.

Think about it: everyone you’d come across is somehow qualified to work with your brand and boost your success. Then, you give experts discounts on your products, hoping for their recommendations. Best of all, they’ll give you metrics on your campaigns, so you know your efforts are working.

Major brands: Mammut, Lenovo, Skull Candy.

Influencers: over a million.

Fohr

Like to know exactly who you’re dealing with?

Fohr was started in New York City back in 2013. As a company based in NYC, they’re all too familiar with the types of things people will do to be famous. So, they created a platform that vets influencers thoroughly. According to their website, they get everyone’s name, address and phone. Plus, you can find out up front how many followers they have (real ones, as Fohr carefully checks audience demographics) and how much money they make. In other words, you have a pretty good idea how much to spend on an influencer before you even contact them to avoid swimming in a database of influencers without a basic guide.

While the platform was originally self-service only, Fohr now will do campaign management for you, with a minimum spend of $5,000. Certainly this isn’t the cheapest option out there–but hey, at least it’s convenient. If you’re using the self service option, Fohr still provides analytics and detailed information on who does what among your active influencers.

Influencers: over 80,000.

#paid

#paid is billed not as an influencer marketing industry tool, but a creator marketing tool. Despite the differentiation in titles, #paid is effectively a place to increase access to influencers and brands, in order to develop ideal partnerships for marketing campaigns across social media platforms. By making a platform for creators, rather than social media influencers, #paid claims to improve the direction of influencer marketing and up the game of content creation from influencers on social media platforms. 

#paid attributes much of its popularity to the simplicity of its process, with some brands crafting and releasing campaigns in a single day. #paid may not have your favorite influencers, but the creators on the site can create powerful content within the same influencer marketing budget you already have set aside. 

Brands: Ikea, Starbucks, Philips

Influencers: Over 20,000

Influence.co

While the majority of channels for influencer marketing are more brand-centered, Influence.co is made for the influencers. In part, this is because influencer members are allowed to talk to each other and network with their influencer profile. At the same time, businesses and agencies can go onto Influence.co and strike deals with the influencers.

Essentially, the idea here is that influencers and brands can all learn from each other, and jointly profit. Businesses can get either free basic service, or a paid plan with more features and access. All business members get an influencer’s profile and know how much they charge upfront.

Major brands: Amazon.com, Dyson, Ralph Lauren.

Influencers: over 20,000.

Influencity

Influencity is different from many of the offerings here, in that it is geared toward brands and agencies, rather than brands and individual influencers. Influencity pairs influencer agencies with brands and companies to fulfill the expectations of both influencers with specific agencies and the brands that prefer to speak with agencies rather than interacting directly with influencers. 

The platform allows you to create marketing campaigns and publish them, then manage them and complete everything from start to finish in one convenient place. Influencity also allows users to thoroughly vet the influencers that might be joining your agency or marketing campaign in order to avoid the common pitfalls associated with social media marketing campaigns using influencers, such as inflated follower counts, unfulfilled promises, and low-quality images and copy. With 70 million influencers to choose from, Influencity is a large platform that allows brands and influencers of all sizes to come together. 

Major Brands: Samsung, Nestle, BRICK

Influencers: Over 70 Million

Intellifluence

Want to pay just a monthly fee to pitch your campaigns to influencers?

With Intellifluence, brands pay for access to the influencer network. Brands can search the influencers available from a large pool of influencers, and find great matches to carry out a social media influencer marketing campaign. Pitches are made through the platform, as well. In return for the fees, you get analytics for your campaigns, and a promise of safer transactions. That’s because Intellifluence collects the agreed-upon contract amount and won’t release it until the influencer can demonstrate the campaign has been published. Of course, it also means your work won’t begin until you’ve funded the campaign. Bad actors are removed from the platform to make way for high-quality content creators. This way, nobody gets scammed and there’s a referee if needed. Influencers are vetted, and Intellifluence campaigns can be on a wide variety of forums rather than just offering space for an Instagram influencer campaign.

Major brands: 1-800-petmeds, HomeAdvisor.

Influencers: 50,000.

Izea

Not sure how much support you need starting out? With a large network of influencers and a wide variety of services available, Izea is a great place to start out in the world of influencer marketing.

From the brand or agency point of view, Izea has three service options.

First, their creator discovery software allows you the most self-service features. For a monthly fee, you can search the Izea list of influencers and creator catalog, and negotiate directly with them. However, you’re going to have to do most tasks manually.

Second, the Unity Suite allows you to manage those influencer campaigns within the Izea ecosystem. Most of the manual tasks become more automated, and it’s easier to see what’s working best for your company.

Third, Izea offers managed services. These can include everything from full-blown influencer campaigns to smaller initiatives like an occasional sponsored post. With managed services, you basically tell Izea what to do (and your budget) and they’ll take care of the rest.

Brands: Wendy’s, NBC, Petco.

Influencers: over 4 million.

Shoutcart

Unlike most influencer marketplaces, Shoutcart works by using content you’ve already generated and is really focused on Instagram shoutouts.

Its tagline is that you get a “shoutout” from selected influencers. Basically, you log onto the platform and find influencers that interest you. Then, you provide the influencer with your advertisement, and tell them when you need it published.

One advantage of this approach is that you don’t have to worry that content an influencer creates doesn’t meet your standards. You’re also able to get multiple influencers to publish the same content, which isn’t generally done if the influencer creates the content. After content is published, the Shoutcart platform gives you analytics data about the campaign, so you can see how well it worked for your company.

Major brands: Microsoft, The North Face, Garmin.

Tomoson

Think product reviews are awesome? So does Tomoson, so they created an influencer marketing software that’s based on reviews.

Generally, brands provide products for free or at reduced prices to influencers, who then agree to post reviews on their social media. Another way you can leverage this platform is by finding and reposting material that influencers have already created, and by taking advantage of the content crawler.

Want to have custom content created? Tomoson offers an escrow payment service, as well as verified influencer information, to keep everyone safe.

Tribe

For a unique “content first” approach, try Tribe, where brand owners create a campaign and solicit content. Then, influencers will create content and pitch it to the brand. Influencers whose content is chosen will be paid a license fee by the brand, and then post the content to their social media channels. The approach is unique, because it allows brands to choose influencers based on the quality of the content. They also offer the option of buying content from the creator, and publishing it on your own channels. Cool.

What has your experience been with any of the influencer marketplaces above? Any influencer marketplaces missing? Please let me know in the comments.

Hero photo by Joel Mott on Unsplash