With influencer marketing being almost a 14 billion dollar industry – and that is in 2021 alone (!). Specialized influencer agencies and marketing platforms have been popping up left and right. In this crowded landscape, we imagine it must be confusing to pick and choose where to take your campaigns. That’s why we wanted to make it a bit easier for you, and compare ourselves against our biggest competitors: Stellar, Efluenz, and Join. 

We’ve taken an in-depth look at all of their services, from planning to reporting. At the end of this article, we’ve poured the most valuable information into a comparative table. 

It’s important to note that every platform has its own benefits and we all want to see you grow your business, but this way the difference becomes a bit clearer, making it easier to choose the right match for your specific brand.

Scraping

Before we go on, it’s necessary that you know about ‘scraping’.

See, most influencer marketing platforms use the scraping technique to collect data. Meaning: they take public social media profiles and upload this information to their site to create a database of influencers, often adding additional data that they purchased from a third party. Most of the time, these influencers don’t even know that their information is put out there and that they’re being advertised. While it’s not technically illegal, scraping is not qualitative – as you don’t know how correct, transparent or truthful the information actually is – and certainly not ethical in terms of data transparency.

To find out how it can be done in a completely legal, respectful and transparent way… Keep reading until the end because we’ve organized this list according to the level of influencer involvement. From low to high, or in other words: from a lot of scraping to no scraping.

Efluenz 

Efluenz is a creative agency focused on digital strategy, storytelling and influencer marketing. They offer services to B2C and B2B companies and influencers. In their own words: “Efluenz will help you get in touch with your target audience in a creative and personalized way.”

As they don’t have their own platform, Efluenz offers a more traditional agency approach. This also means that Efluenz can’t offer the usual benefits – like efficiency, availability, and transparency – that come with using non-scraped (or API-based, more on this later) technology. 

Stellar

Stellar is a comprehensive toolbox that will help you find the right influencers. They help with discovery, analytics, project management and reporting. In their own words: “We build solutions that make influencer marketing smarter, easier and more efficient for everyone.”

That is not 100% true though, as their software is accessible for brands, agencies, and agents – but not influencers. An unfortunate consequence of this exclusion: you can’t directly contact the influencer(s) through their platform, meaning all communication still has to happen through another external medium (e.g. mail). 

Join

Join is an influencer marketing platform accessible to everyone: companies, influencers, agencies, partners and talent agencies. In their own words: “Join’s platform makes influencer marketing accessible to everyone.”

Join works like a marketplace. While they may be ‘the largest platform in Europe’ (according to themselves), outside of organizing campaigns there are no real features to maintain, improve or follow up on your connection with the influencer(s). And what’s the benefit of quantity if you can’t ensure quality?

Influo

And then it’s our turn. Influo is a platform for influencer marketing management, available for influencers and creators, as well as brands and agencies. We offer one centralized system, tailor-made service, and a curated network of creators. 

The latter, especially, sets us apart the most.

While our competitors might boast about the number of influencers they can ‘offer’ (so to speak, as you now know), you’ll notice that Influo doesn’t do that. That’s because our focus lies on the quality we can offer, not the quantity. The way we gather data is truly what divides us from our competitors, which is no small feat. At Influo, we explicitly ask all our creators’ permission to work through API connections. Meaning: they actively choose to give us access to their data by connecting to Influo’s platform. On top of that, after they choose to connect, we perform quality control. If a creator doesn’t meet our standards, we let them know why we can’t accept them at that time and provide them with info on how they can improve their application in the future.

Why choose Influo?

In summary: at Influo, you get exclusive access to a highly curated network of registered and qualitative influencers. All checked, all right, all ethical. Again – quality over quantity. This is all because our general goal is to produce the best brand campaigns possible and build strong influencer communities, rather than becoming ‘the biggest possible influencer network’. The way we see it, a brand doesn’t need a thousand influencers, they need a small amount of really dedicated ones. Influo would rather focus on the strength of those connections.

Of course, we want to be honest as well: the flip side of the medal is that you do need to have more direct contact with the influencer compared to other platforms, in order to organize everything. But time spent in creating and communicating with your community of ambassadors is time you win in efficiency during the long-term collaboration.

In our eyes, all of the above makes Influo stand out way above the rest. Curious? Find out more here. From self-service to full service. Let Influo and our team of experts be your co-pilot to your destination in influencer marketing.