Do I need an influencer marketing platform?

Our view, as people who sell a tool: do your first rounds of creator marketing by hand. Not because tools are bad, but because the first rounds teach you what no tool can. Which offer gets replies. Which creators' audiences buy. Whether a free product is enough or a fee is needed. What a post that sells looks like for your product.

Buy software before you know those things and you automate a process you don't have yet. A tool will send a weak offer to more creators, faster; it won't make the offer better. If you haven't chosen a platform to start on, our post on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok comes first.

One spreadsheet, a fixed slot in your week, and your own inbox. The workflow:

1. Search the platform the way your customer does, and add every plausible creator.
2. Fill in numbers from their recent posts, and cut anyone who doesn't fit.
3. Find the business email each creator publishes. No published email means no email, unless they offer another route.
4. Write to a few creators at a time, each about something specific they made.
5. Follow up once or twice on set dates, then stop. Record every no.

A tool earns its place when the work around the outreach, not the outreach itself, is what's slowing you down. The signs:

• Follow-up dates pass without a follow-up, because there are too many rows to watch.
• You write to creators in other time zones at whatever hour suits you.
• You've emailed someone who said no in an earlier round, because the no was in a different sheet.
• Searching and filling in numbers takes longer than writing the emails.
• You run outreach for several brands or clients, and their sheets have started to overlap.

If none of those is true yet, the spreadsheet is still the cheaper tool.

The word "platform" covers very different products. Roughly five kinds:

Creator databases with search filters

A large index of accounts filtered by niche, size, location and engagement. Quick for finding names. Ask how the data and any contact details were collected, and how often they're refreshed.

All-in-one suites

A database plus a CRM, contracts, payments and campaign reporting in one place. Useful when many partnerships run at once. Usually more than a small brand's first rounds need.

Marketplaces where creators apply

You post a brief, creators who've signed up apply, and you choose. Everyone there wants brand work, which helps. But the pool is whoever signed up, not necessarily the creators your customers already watch.

Agencies

People who plan and run campaigns for you. You pay for their judgement and relationships, and learn less yourself. Worth it when you have budget and no time.

The platforms' own marketplaces

TikTok One lets brands search, filter and invite creators to projects, and Meta runs a creator marketplace for Instagram inside Meta Business Suite. They draw on the platform's own data. Each covers only its own platform, the creators who've joined, and the countries where it's offered.

Whatever you look at, including us, these questions sort the options:

• Where does the contact data come from? Addresses creators published for business, addresses copied in bulk from profiles, or addresses guessed from name patterns? Only the first is worth writing to; we make the case in our post on buying email lists.
• Does it hand you addresses copied from profiles in bulk? A tool that exports thousands of creators' emails is a list seller with a search box, and the deliverability and data protection risk become yours.
• Does it explain its scores? A number without reasons is a ranking you can't check. Ask what each part measures, and whether the same creator gets the same score in every campaign.
• How long is the contract? Can you leave after one round if it didn't work?
• Who sends the emails? You from your own inbox, the tool from its own domain in your name, or an agency. Each puts the sending reputation, and the replies, in a different place.
• What happens after a no? Is it remembered across your campaigns, and across other brands using the same tool?

Nakodo covers the step between the spreadsheet and the suite: finding and contacting creators. It writes a brief from your website, searches YouTube, Instagram and TikTok with the same keywords, and scores each creator from 0 to 100 with written reasons. It emails creators on your behalf from an address of its own for each conversation, with your name as the sender: the best-scored fits automatically, or only the creators you pick. First emails wait for your approval by default. It follows up, answers what it can from your offer, and introduces you when a creator says yes. Creators' addresses are never shown to you; you get one through that introduction. The full method is on how Nakodo works.

It isn't the right fit if you need any of these, because it doesn't do them:

• Payments and contracts. After the introduction, agreeing terms and paying the creator happens between you and them.
• Campaign reporting. Nakodo doesn't track posts, clicks or sales once a deal is agreed. Your own links and codes do that.
• UGC production. If you want creators to make videos for your own ads rather than post to their audience, that's a different kind of service.
• Ad management. Running a creator's post as an ad happens in TikTok's and Meta's own ad tools; our guide to Spark Ads and partnership ads covers the rights you'd need.

If those are the hard part, a suite or an agency will suit you better. If the hard part is finding the right creators and keeping outreach polite and on schedule, that's what we built Nakodo for.