Skills and tools any influencer marketing manager needs

An influencer marketing manager needs a wide range of skills and tools to manage campaigns with content creators. Learn more about this job on our blog.

‍In today's digital age, influencer marketing has become an integral part of many brands' marketing strategies.

As a result, the role of an influencer marketing manager has gained significant importance. I just ran a search on Indeed for “influencer marketing manager,” and in the United States alone there are 2,692 results for open jobs.

This blog post will delve into the core responsibilities of an influencer marketing manager, as well as the essential skills and tools that are crucial to succeed in this dynamic field.

What does an influencer marketing manager do?

It's important to note that the specific tasks and responsibilities of an influencer marketing manager may vary depending on the size of the organization, industry, and scope of influencer marketing activities. You'll need to adapt and prioritize tasks based on the unique needs and goals of your brand.

That said, here’s a breakdown of what the core responsibilities and ongoing tasks generally look like.

Strategy development and resource management

An influencer marketing manager has to design the influencer marketing campaigns that their company will run.

This includes:

Collaborating with the marketing team to understand brand objectives and target audience.
Conducting market research and competitor analysis to identify opportunities and trends.
Developing influencer marketing strategies aligned with overall marketing goals.
Creating campaign briefs and guidelines for influencers.
Tracking expenses and ensuring that campaigns are executed within the allocated budget.

Influencer discovery and analysis

Influencer marketing managers are also responsible for finding the influencers who will work on their campaigns. This also includes analyzing their profiles to make sure they’re appropriate to partner with.

Things like:

Utilizing influencer platforms and tools to identify relevant influencers.
Evaluating influencers based on their audience demographics, content quality, engagement metrics, and brand alignment.
Running a fake follower check to make sure influencers didn’t buy fake followers.
Maintaining a database of potential influencers and their contact information.

Source: Heepsy's influencer discovery and analysis tool.

Outreach and relationship building

Another core component of the influencer marketing manager role is outreach and relationship building. Your first impression is important, and so is how you treat the influencer throughout the lifecycle of your collaboration.

This looks like:

Establishing relationships with influencers through personalized outreach, often done with templates, variables, and a mail merge tool.
Pitching collaboration opportunities to influencers, highlighting the benefits for both parties.
Negotiating contracts and compensation terms with influencers.
Managing ongoing communication and providing support to influencers throughout the collaboration process.

Campaign management

Once the campaign launches, someone needs to stay on top of it. The influencer marketing manager is the person who oversees the campaign throughout its duration, making sure that everything runs smoothly.

Campaign management includes:

Coordinating the logistics and timelines of influencer campaigns.
Ensuring that influencers receive necessary information, products, or services for their content creation.
Reviewing and approving influencer content to ensure alignment with brand guidelines and messaging.
Monitoring and responding to influencer questions or concerns in a timely manner.

Performance measurement and reporting

If you can’t measure something, it’s not marketing. Like any marketing campaign, influencer marketing campaigns come down to their results.

Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) for influencer campaigns.
Tracking and analyzing campaign metrics, such as reach, engagement, conversions, and ROI.
Creating performance reports to evaluate the success and impact of influencer collaborations.
Identifying areas for improvement and providing recommendations for future campaigns.
Identifying high-performing influencers to work with on future campaigns.

Compliance and legal considerations

Another important responsibility of an influencer marketing manager is making sure that your campaigns follow the legal and regulatory requirements set out by different countries.

This involves:

Ensuring compliance with regulatory guidelines, such as FTC regulations, when working with influencers.
Reviewing and updating influencer marketing contracts and agreements as needed. (Get a free influencer contract template here).
Monitoring influencers' adherence to disclosure requirements and providing guidance if necessary.

Source: Disclosures 101, FTC.

Industry monitoring and trend analysis

Apart from managing campaigns, a good IM manager needs to stay on top of an ever-changing industry.

This means:

Staying up to date with industry trends, changes in algorithms, and emerging influencer platforms.
Monitoring competitor influencer marketing activities and identifying opportunities for innovation.
Researching new tools, technologies, and best practices in influencer marketing.

Skills needed to be an influencer marketing manager

Now that you’ve seen the core responsibilities of an influencer marketing manager, let’s look at some of the skills needed to be good at this role.

Communication

Communication plays a huge part in influencer marketing. First, you need to have a good grip on the communication strategy of your brand to make sure that the campaigns you run highlight the brand message you want to share.

Second, you need to be great at communicating with people via all forms: in person, on video calls, through emails, through DMs, etc. It’s also important to be able to tailor your communications depending on who you’re speaking to. For example, a tech influencer and a beauty influencer might not really speak the same language.

Data analysis

Another important skill needed to be a good IM manager is data analysis. While you have tools to help you, you still need to know what to look for.

Analyzing campaign results, looking for trends, and seeing where you can improve are critical parts of the influencer marketing process. So to be successful as an influencer marketing manager, you need to be comfortable analyzing data.

Ability to iterate

Along with data analysis, the ability to iterate is also important to make your campaigns the best they can be. Iteration is when you repeat the same process various times. In the context of marketing, these repetitions usually have a small variation in process or content.

In influencer marketing, iteration can come into play with the influencers you choose, the links you give them to share, the way you write your brief, and so on. Whatever the case, use your data analysis to see in which spots you can iterate and improve your campaigns.

Creativity and a good eye

Influencer marketing requires creativity, too. Most importantly, an influencer marketing manager has to review and approve influencer content. If you don’t have a good eye and a creative streak to understand what constitutes good content, you risk your brand getting portrayed in a bad light.

Creativity also helps when thinking about specific angles for your campaigns. While influencers are content experts, it helps to have some ideas of your own for what type of content you’d like to see created for your brand. Think challenges, trendy TikToks, placements in a Twitch stream, etc.

Organization

An influencer marketing manager has to tackle a ton of different tasks each day, and it can be difficult to keep track of everything when constantly jumping from one thing to the next.

You’ll also have to manage various influencers, which means keeping track of their handles, fees, deadlines, and the content they’ve agreed to post. Being organized is a necessary skill if you want to get everything done.

Curiosity

Social media is an ever-changing industry. There’s always a new network, feature, content format, trend, or controversy. An influencer marketing manager needs to stay on top of these to make sure they’re running campaigns that will hit right in the current climate.
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Thus, it’s important to be curious and want to keep learning as social networks undoubtedly keep evolving.

Flexibility and adaptability

Another important skill for an IM manager is flexibility and adaptability. Even the most careful planning can lead to unexpected turns, especially when your work depends on a team of people.

Influencers get sick and might not be able to post. Gifted products get lost or delayed in the mail. People drop out, stuff happens, and things sometimes go wrong. Being able to pivot at a moment’s notice is therefore essential.

Tools every influencer marketing manager should know

Influencer marketing managers have a lot of responsibilities, as we’ve already seen. Thankfully, there’s a wealth of tools that can help them do their job more efficiently and effectively.

Here are some tools all influencer marketing managers should have on their radar. I’ve only included tools that offer either a free version or a free trial, so that you can try them out before committing financially.

Heepsy for influencer marketing management

Heepsy is an influencer marketing platform that helps you manage your campaigns from start to finish. With Heepsy, you can search for influencers based on criteria like location, category, followers, engagement rate, and more. And then you can reach out right on the platform.

You can also post your campaign brief and let influencers apply. The platform also offers distribution services so that your campaign gets sent out to even more influencers—without you lifting a finger. When influencer applications come in, you review and can accept, reject, or negotiate their proposals.

Some other features Heepsy offers are:

Chat with influencers right on the platform.
Pay securely through Heepsy (payments only get released to influencers once the team has confirmed they’ve upheld their part of the bargain).
Upload your customer info to connect with existing customers who are also influencers.
Connect your social media account to connect with influencers who are interacting with your brand.
Get personalized links for influencers and track their clicks.
Review your collaborations, and get reviewed by them. This helps build social trust for your brand, and also helps you see which influencers have been good partners to other brands.

Heepsy has a free plan, so you can try out the platform and only pay when you're ready to scale.

Yet Another Mail Merge for sending emails in bulk

Yet Another Mail Merge, or YAMM, is a godsend for all types of marketers. It’s a free add-on that works with Gmail and Google Sheets and lets you send personalized emails in bulk.

It works like this:

Create your template in Gmail drafts.
Add variables like to your templates.
Fill out your Sheet with columns that match the variables, plus their data.
Activate the add-on through Sheets to send emails with just a few clicks.
See who opened, clicked, and responded to your emails, plus other stats.

On the free plan, you can send up to 50 emails per day, and paid options let you send more.

Asana for managing your tasks

If you’re like me, you write down your to-do list every day and get satisfaction from physically checking off tasks as you finish them. And if you’re like me, that’s great for today’s task, but not really feasible for managing tasks across weeks or months.

‍Asana is a project management tool that lets you keep all your tasks tidy. You can give them due dates, create different sections, and assign them to different teammates.

Asana can also be used for campaign management. For influencer marketing managers working with teams, Asana helps everyone stay organized and more importantly, on the same page.

Asana has a free plan, and you can upgrade to paid options once you’re ready and understand which features you need.

Google Analytics for analyzing data

There’s no bigger player in the game when it comes to analyzing data than Google Analytics. It lets you track pretty much everything about your website, like traffic acquisition, conversions, and user demographics.

Using Google Analytics in conjunction with the insights provided by social networks is a pretty complete—and free—way to track and analyze all the data related to your influencer marketing campaigns.

The downside is that if you’re completely new to the analytics game, GA has a steep learning curve. Thankfully, Google has lots of free resources, including courses, to help you get up to speed.

Hootsuite for social media management

Hootsuite is a tool that does a bit of everything related to social media. It lets you plan content, analyze that content, evaluate hashtags, and run targeted ads with your social media content. For influencer marketing managers, it can be a good central hub for managing the content influencers create for your brand.

Hootsuite isn’t free, but you can get a 30-day free trial.

Conclusion

An influencer marketing manager has a lot of responsibilities and ongoing tasks related to the management of influencer campaigns. To be good at this role, you should be someone who can blend creativity and analysis, and who’s comfortable with communication and thinking on your feet. Thankfully, there are lots of tools and resources to help you on your way.

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