5 Free Tools to Use In Your Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Over the last few years, influencer marketing has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry.

16:16 10 July 2021

Brands of all sizes find influencers to promote their products or services on social media.

 

However, influencer marketing campaigns require a lot more behind-the-scenes work for brands. You have to thoroughly plan your campaign, negotiate with influencers, and then monitor their work and track the results it brings in.

 

Thankfully, there are a ton of tools out there to help you with the various tasks you have to accomplish throughout the campaign. And some of the best of them are free!

 

1. Google Analytics

 

From the very beginning of your campaign, you should be thinking about your objective and the key performance indicators (KPIs) that can help you track your progress towards it. And when it comes to KPIs, well, you need a tool to measure them.

 

Google Analytics is a free analytics software that can help you get insights into your website’s performance, the users who visit it, and the behavior patterns those people usually follow. Get info about your traffic, clicks, bounce rate. Set specific goals, like sign-ups or sales, and track how many you achieve over time.

 

A screenshot of the Google Merchandise Store, an account created for demo purposes, in Analytics. Here you can see traffic channels, user countries and most popular times of day.

 

Analytics can be a bit overwhelming at first, and it takes time to get used to using the platform. Google recognizes this, and has therefore made available a wealth of free courses and materials to help you get up to speed.

 

2. Campaign URL Builder

 

Want to know how many people arrived on your website thanks to a specific link? Want to compare influencers to see which brought in the most visitors, sign-ups, or sales? You can do this in Google Analytics using something called UTMs.

 

UTMs are parameters that you add to the end of a URL, which then tell Google Analytics information about that link. When using UTMs, there are 3 mandatory fields:

 

• Source - the referrer, like email, Instagram, etc.
  
  
• Medium - the marketing medium, which could be a newsletter, or an influencer
  
  
• Campaign - the name of your campaign

 

How do you code these onto the ends of your URLs? With Campaign URL Builder, another free tool from Google. Simply plug in your UTMs and URL, and the tool generates the full link for you.

 

An example of how you could fill in UTMs for an influencer marketing campaign with Campaign URL Builder.

 

In conjunction with Campaign URL Builder, you should keep a spreadsheet of the UTMs your business uses, so that you make sure you have standards and stick to them.

 

3. Instagram Insights

 

90% of marketers include Instagram in some way in their influencer marketing campaigns. With so many media formats and connectabilities like Instagram Shopping, it’s no wonder the social network is a star in the influencer marketing world.

 

If you’re running campaigns on Instagram, you should enable Instagram Insights. The tool, which you access directly from the Instagram mobile app, shows you data related to your followers, and the impressions and interactions your content gets.

 

Insights can help you monitor your own account during a campaign, perhaps to look for new followers or interactions with a giveaway post. It also helps you get familiar with the type of data available. This way, when you find influencers you’re interested in collaborating with, you can request their Insights data to get a good sense of their profile before closing the deal.

 

4. Yet Another Mail Merge

 

When you want to contact various influencers at once, it can get tedious to write out every email individually. But, you also don’t want to send out robotic emails that make it clear you’ve spent no effort personalizing them.

 

Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM) can help you resolve both these problems. YAMM is a mail merge for Gmail and Google Sheets that lets you send out automated yet personal emails. You can also track who’s opened your email, who’s clicked, and which emails bounced.

 

While YAMM has paid versions, the free version allows up to 50 contacts per day, which works for most smaller influencer campaigns. The below video offers a brief introduction to how to send out a mail merge with YAMM.

 

 

YAMM works with Gmail templates. When drafting these, keep in mind that you want to make your initial proposal to influencers as exciting as possible. Explain your brand, tell them why you like their profiles, and how you think they could be the right fit for your campaign.

 

5. Display Purpose

 

Hashtags play a big part in social media, and it can be tempting to just use whatever hashtag comes to mind when uploading a post. However, your hashtag strategy should be more developed than that.

 

Display Purposes allows you to type in a hashtag, see related hashtags and their popularity/relevance. You can discover new hashtags, or choose the ones that have the highest relevance to your topic.

 

Display Purposes showing related hashtags to #vegan.

 

You can also register with their partner IQ Hashtags (free and paid options) and analyze your brand’s Instagram profile and get advanced hashtag search and metrics.

 

Bonus: Heepsy Free Trial

 

Heepsy is an influencer marketing platform that lets you find and analyze Instagram influencers, Youtube influencers and coming soon, TikTokers. The platform requires a subscription, but you can try it out for free to get a feel for how it works. You can also book a demo with the Sales team to ask any questions you may have and see how Heepsy works before committing to a plan.

 

Heepsy lets you search for influencers with filters for category, location, and more.

 

Conclusion

 

These are just a few of the tools out there to help you out with your influencer marketing. And even though the tools in this list may be free, that doesn’t mean they’re not powerful resources for your campaign. So if you don’t already know them, check them out!