A sponsored deal can be a game-changer for YouTube creators. It’s a great way to monetize your channel and make your dream of being a full-time content creator a reality. But how do you get these lucrative brand partnerships? First, you need to get good at working with sponsors. That means learning how to get sponsored on YouTube to impress your first sponsor and secure future deals. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about getting hosted on YouTube so you can nail your first deal and go on to become a pro at working with sponsors.
What Is CreatorIQ?
CreatorIQ is an influencer marketing platform hosted on the cloud that helps businesses of various sizes manage influencer campaigns from one portal. It boasts a wide selection of influencer accounts that can be searched in real-time using its AI search feature.
This software provides influencer marketing functions such as influencer management, campaign management, social media monitoring, payment tracking, multiple campaign tracking, and more. Additionally, you can deliver any influencer marketing campaign statistics ranging from content attribution and awareness to ROI.
CreatorIQ helps big brands track and manage influencer marketing campaigns. It said it is joining the artificial intelligence gold rush by adding AI tools to its software platform to help track trends and mentions across social media for more than 9,000 brands.
Tracking those conversations is an otherwise Sisyphean task involving culling through millions of hours of video, audio, and text-based posts, understanding what’s being said, and adjusting campaigns based on resulting trends. As more audience attention is focused on social media, social video, and streaming video, tracking those conversations has become increasingly important for corporate success, the company said.
The AI tools now built into CreatorIQ’s Creator Intelligence Suite are designed to make the process considerably less complicated for brands and influencers while providing a predictive understanding of the future.
“The most predictive metric for growth in creator conversation is creator retention and we have found creator conversation to be an accurate forward-looking indicator of overall market share gains or losses,” said CreatorIQ Chief Strategy Officer Conor Begley. “As you can see across organizations like LVMH, Red Bull, and Netflix -0.3%, creator conversation is now moving hundreds of billions of dollars of market capitalization and we’re excited to be at the center of that.”
The company uses natural language processing tools to understand the difference between an apple you might eat and Apple, the electronics giant. Based on a decade of tracking online posts from 450,000 of the web’s “most impactful” creators, the company built data models for around 9,000 brands.
Key Features of CreatorIQ
Influencer Search
When you use its search engine for an influencer, it uses AI to discover good influencers using metrics like total followers, related interest areas, and connections. Furthermore, you can utilize previous campaign performance data to compare selected influencers and discover new brand ambassadors.
CreatorIQ enables you to leverage your existing client data to find influencers who have previously posted about your business. Additionally, you can access numerous profiles across social networks due to its native links to all major social media APIs like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many more.
Positive Review
“It also includes a search engine within the platform that allows search for content creators, celebrities, and influencers which helps to guide client-facing recommendations for projects. The metrics per creator are also robust, allowing for even more insights into the creator’s worth and profile.”- (Rating ⭐5/5, Emily D.)
Negative Review
“The influencer search tool is very difficult to navigate and often doesn’t produce accurate results”-(Rating ⭐3/5, Majah C.)
Campaign Development
You can develop influencer campaigns on CreateIQ based on your organization’s goals. Use campaign settings to tailor your objectives, like revenue tracking and influencer partnerships. Resultantly set clear success standards for your business organization.
CreatorIQ helps you know how to achieve your business targets in advance through campaign metrics. Using this information, you can decide where and when to take action and work clearly with your business teams and influencers.
Positive Review
“Every part of the influencer partnership journey is well thought out and executed. It makes every stage, from discovery and planning to execution a breeze. I love that it’s able to smoothly report back campaign metrics without having to have partners sign up.”-(Rating ⭐4.5/5, Yasamin V.)
Negative Review
“The scale at which our team works is so large that it’s difficult for us to see CIQ as a true influencer CRM that holds all of our campaign information. Our organization moves at such a speed that creating one-sheets and campaigns isn’t an option for us and I do wish that it were a little bit easier to create snapshots of the creators we’re currently working with”-(Rating ⭐3.5/5, Lauren S.)
Influencer Marketing and Reporting Insights
Highlight your organization’s success through marketing metrics to present key insights to viewers. Emphasize your organization’s crucial performance indicators by developing custom reports using automated templates.
CreatorIQ’s activity dashboard helps you make correct organizational decisions using data analysis. Likewise, make your team understand your decisions using CreatorIQ’s customized visualizations.
Positive Reviews
“The tool is brilliant for setting up campaigns in minutes. Easy to monitor and approve/reject influencer posts. The reporting also compliments this area as it automatically populates a digital report using all the information from the campaign so you don’t have to do much manually.” – (Rating ⭐4/5, Eni A.).
Negative Reviews
“Requires more data from other platforms. We sometimes would like to be able to customize some parts of the platform to help us better serve some of our special clients when it comes to reporting.”(Rating ⭐4/5, Mohamad F.)
Is CreatorIQ Free?
No, CreatorIQ is not free. The company does not publicly disclose pricing on its website. Instead, costs are custom-tailored for each company based on their size and unique business needs. However, our research and trial demos suggest plans typically start around $2,350 per month with an annual commitment.
This pricing structure reflects CreatorIQ's comprehensive and advanced features, making it suitable for large enterprises with extensive influencer marketing needs. Prospective users must clarify how many influencers they can manage during the demo to avoid surprises regarding limitations or additional costs.
In addition to customized pricing, CreatorIQ offers potential users free trials. This trial period allows businesses to evaluate the platform's capabilities before committing to a subscription. Companies can gain valuable insights into how CreatorIQ can enhance their influencer marketing strategies and drive better results by taking advantage of the free trial.
Aha Creator simplifies brand partnerships for creators. The platform handles the heavy lifting of brand deal negotiations, ensuring you get fair value for your influence. Their matching system helps pair creators with relevant brands, maximizing the potential for successful collaborations. Sign up for their waitlist today, and they’ll connect you with partnership opportunities that align with your content and values.
13 Best CreatorIQ Alternative Tools for Influencer Marketing
1. Aha Creator: Helping Creators Get Sponsored on YouTube
Aha Creator streamline brand partnerships for creators. We handle the heavy lifting of brand deal negotiations, ensuring you get fair value for your influence. Our matching system helps pair creators with relevant brands, maximizing the potential for successful collaborations. Sign up today, and we'll work to connect you with partnership opportunities that align with your content and values.
2. Ainfluencer: A Free Alternative to CreatorIQ
Ainfluencer stands out as a primary alternative to CreatorIQ. It offers an AI-driven platform that allows marketers to filter through Instagram and TikTok influencers using over 20 criteria at no cost.
Key features include
Unlimited Campaigns: Users can create as many campaigns as they wish without restrictions.
Smart Filtering: Influencers can be located based on follower size, platform, gender, etc.
End-to-End Contact: An integrated chat feature enables direct communication between brands and influencers.
Escrow System: Payments are securely held until the job is completed.
Rating & Review System: Users can review partnerships, providing insights for future decisions.
Ainfluencer is particularly beneficial for small businesses and newcomers due to its free service model.
Pros
Anonymity and Privacy: Ainfluencer allows users to engage in influencer marketing without revealing their identity or acting on camera, imparting a level of privacy and anonymity that traditional strategies lack.
Versatility and Customization: Users can create AI influencers tailor-made to specific niches, demographics, and marketplace segments, enabling enormously centered advertising campaigns and content creation.
Scalability and Automation: With Ainfluencer, users can effortlessly scale their online presence by creating a couple of AI influencers to symbolize one-of-a-kind brands, products, or offerings. They can also leverage automation to streamline content generation and engagement.
Cons
Limited social platforms to Instagram and TikTok (for now).
3. Upfluence: A Comprehensive CreatorIQ Alternative
Upfluence excels in influencer finder, CRM, automated outreach, reporting and analytics, gifting, content and UGC collection, and affiliate payments, though it needs more direct support for Snapchat. It is praised for its comprehensive feature set, which closely matches CreatorIQ. However, it requires an annual commitment, and its pricing is slightly higher, starting at $2K/month. It suits businesses looking for a rich feature set focusing on major social platforms, minus Snapchat.
Pros
Large influencer database.
Easy integration with social media platforms.
Simplify promo code generations.
Cons
Complex user interface.
Weak customer support.
Limited campaigns.
4. Later Influence: A Unique Approach to Influencer Marketing
Later Influence is an influencer marketing platform that helps brands connect with influencers, run campaigns, and track results. It offers tools for finding influencers, collaborating on content, and tracking performance, all aimed at fitting influencer marketing into a brand’s social media strategy. The platform uses intelligent workflows and data-driven insights to identify influencers and optimize campaigns. It’s beneficial for brands that want to easily manage influencer relationships and boost their marketing impact across social media.
Another aspect of Later Influence is its ability to measure ROI and earned media value, allowing for data-driven decisions on your influencer marketing budget. You receive real-time metrics to identify the strategies and creators contributing most to your success. Plus, it provides up-to-date, accurate estimates of your campaigns' dollar value, helping you evaluate and forecast profits, which is excellent.
Pros
Using ROI.
You are helping to make decisions based on your marketing budget.
Up-to-date value of your ongoing campaigns for evaluating profits.
Cons
High pricing.
Late on customer support.
5. AspireIQ: Feature-Rich But Costly
AspireIQ is another alternative that excels in client support and ROI calculation for influencer initiatives.
Its features include
Connection Management: Integration with Outlook or Gmail facilitates communication.
ROI Tracking: Users can assess the return on their influencer partnerships.
Automated Processes: Streamlines content approval and product delivery.
However, it comes with a monthly fee of $2,500 and is better suited for mid-sized businesses looking to establish long-term relationships with influencers.
Pros
Their Support team is among the best in the market.
You are using ROI to show the benefits of your partnerships.
User-friendly.
Cons
Technical issues with loading time and website.
Problems with recordings about influencers’ actions.
Limited filtering options.
6. Traackr: A Specialized Alternative to CreatorIQ
Traackr offers an influencer finder, CRM, reporting, and analytics but does not support automated outreach, influencer gifting, content, UGC collection, or affiliate payments. It takes a different approach, focusing more on influencer discovery, analytics, and relationship management, making it a more specialized tool for brands prioritizing these aspects. Its lack of certain features like gifting and UGC collection distinguishes it from CreatorIQ, catering more to businesses that value depth in influencer relationships and analytics.
Pros
Traackr provides competitive analysis for the norm of the market.
Organic and paid influencer activities.
Easy to use Interface.
Cons
The first program starts at $20,000/year.
It takes time to navigate new businesses.
High pricing.
7. Grin: An E-Commerce Influencer Marketing Tool
An influencer marketing platform specifically designed for eCommerce, Grin provides excellent workflow tools and integrations but limited influencer discovery. One of Grin's standout features is its "Human Touch" approach, which allows brands to build authentic relationships with influencers and maintain them at scale. Grin also offers a 360 creator view — a comprehensive overview of each influencer's performance metrics and content, making it easy to track their progress.
Grin's CRM enables you to manage and track influencer relationships, including communication history and payment information. You can also ship products to creators, generate unique discount codes and UTM links, and track sales for affiliate commissions. Grin lets you repurpose influencer-generated content into videos, Reels, or mood boards to increase reach.
Pros
Intuitive portal: A single portal that provides visibility into all aspects of influencer marketing.
Report builder: A tool that summarizes activities.
Relationship management Built-in outreach templates, email tracking, and partnership status tracking.
Payment system: A built-in system for sending payments and discount codes to influencers.
Cons
GRIN's high-cost custom pricing starts at $10,000+ per month, which can be prohibitive for smaller businesses or startups.
GRIN may have contractual obligations every year.
8. Captiv8: The Largest AI-Powered Influencer Marketing Platform
Captiv8 is the largest AI-powered influencer marketing platform that connects creators with brands to tell stories and increase brand advocacy. Captiv8’s social listening tool lets you explore three categories: accounts, hashtags, and location. Searching for an account provides a detailed analysis of its content and audience. Looking up hashtags reveals data on who is using them and their effectiveness. The platform's discovery database includes over 1.5 million profiles across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.
You can also add and index influencers that are not already in the database. With Captiv8's content and communication workflow, you can build and distribute campaign briefs, send contracts, and collaborate with creators directly on the platform. You can also give content feedback, schedule posts, and amplify content within one singular hub. The platform’s analytics and reporting provide a comprehensive overview of each campaign — detailing the number of creators and posts, overall reach and engagement, a breakdown of organic versus paid reach, engagement by platform, top-performing posts and creators, and sentiment analysis.
Captiv8 offers excellent customer support and training resources, ensuring users can utilize the platform’s features effectively.
The platform provides comprehensive analytics, including insights into competitors influencers have previously worked with, enabling brands to make informed decisions.
Cons
Some users have noted that the influencer database is less extensive than desired, often requiring the manual addition of influencers and multiple searches to find suitable candidates.
The platform's analytics for YouTube influencers are reportedly less robust than those for Instagram, limiting its effectiveness for YouTube campaigns.
9. #paid: A Personalized Approach to Influencer Marketing
#paid is an influencer marketing platform that connects brands with creators using a personal touch. Its "Handraise" tool lets creators apply to your campaign, and the #paid team carefully reviews each applicant before presenting them to the brand. With "Whitelisted Ads," you can automate paid ads directly through an influencer's account.
You can also review posts, give feedback, and stay informed about when content will go live. The platform's messaging feature keeps all your conversations organized and stored for future reference. Plus, #paid offers a "Creator Wallet," allowing influencers to get paid quickly and securely without manual invoicing. The downside is that #paid has a minimal database of only 20,000 creators — which doesn't provide you with many influencers to work with.
Pros
Targeted Reach: Access to niche audiences.
Credibility: Leverages influencer trust.
High Engagement: Personalized content boosts interaction.
Measurable Results: Metrics track ROI effectively.
Cons
Costly: It can be expensive, especially with big influencers.
Authenticity Risks: Overly promotional content may alienate audiences.
Uncertain ROI: Results can vary based on influencer choice.
10. Klear: The Social Listening Influencer Marketing Tool
Klear focuses on influencer finder, CRM, automated outreach, reporting and analytics, gifting, content and UGC collection, and affiliate payments, with the unique addition of social listening capabilities. With its advanced social listening and analytics features, Klear sets itself apart, allowing for more nuanced campaign analysis and influencer vetting. This focus on data-driven insights could offer businesses a more strategic approach to influencer selection and performance tracking than CreatorIQ's broader feature set.
Pros
Social listening and competitive research features also “teach” the AI about your brand.
WYSIWYG editor for creating influencer recruiting landing pages.
An improved Campaign Manager can easily handle campaigns at scale.
Cons
It takes more work to find YouTube-only creators.
11. Impact: A Comprehensive Influencer Marketing Platform
Impact is a comprehensive influencer marketing platform offering tools to find, analyze, track, and pay influencers. Its competitive discovery feature allows you to search by brand to see which influencers drive your competitors' traffic. You can also use search rankings to identify influencers by their content to ensure the best collaboration. Impact’s email workflows let you create drip campaigns and automate communication-based on recipient responses.
The platform’s cross-device identity graph helps you link multiple devices to the same user for a more accurate analysis. With the "Forecasting" tool, you can predict performance for up to 90 days and track KPIs. You can also identify anomalies and prevent future failures with "Anomaly Detection." Impact's payment module lets you automatically adjust partner commissions, give bonuses to upper-funnel partners for their contributions, and pay influencers at any point in the conversion funnel.
Pros
Comprehensive Tracking: Robust analytics for tracking influencer performance and ROI.
Partnership Management: Streamlines contracts, payments, and collaboration.
Scalability: Ideal for managing multiple influencers or affiliate partnerships.
Automation: Simplifies influencer recruitment and campaign management.
Cons
Complexity: Steep learning curve for new users.
Cost: Premium pricing may not suit smaller businesses.
12. Meltwater: A Powerful PR Tool for Influencer Marketing
Meltwater is a media intelligence platform offering tools for media monitoring, social listening, influencer marketing, and social media management. It enables businesses to track media coverage, gauge public sentiment, and gain insights into customer behavior. Through real-time monitoring of news, social media, and other online sources, Meltwater helps organizations manage their brand reputation and make data-driven decisions. It also provides a centralized space to find, assess, manage, and measure influencers. With access to 30 million profiles, brands can quickly discover creators that fit their specific needs.
Pros
Extremely powerful media monitoring: Meltwater is one of the best media monitoring tools. This key feature allows you to monitor unlimited keywords and access deeper features like sentiment analysis, volume spike detection, and custom mention scoring.
Thorough reporting: Offers custom PR reporting on all areas related to your PR KPIs. From the app, you can make interactive dashboards. They also have a team of analysts to hire for help if you need something extra complex.
All-in-one PR platform: If you buy their full suite, Meltwater can act as an all-in-one PR platform for your team, enabling you to manage all your PR work from one place.
Cons
Steep learning curve: While familiar with complex solutions, Meltwater’s learning curve is known to be specifically steep. Often, getting set up won’t be possible without some initial hand-holding from their onboarding team.
Hidden pricing: No matter how hard you search their site, you will not find a concrete price for Meltwater. Instead, you need to contact them for a quote.
Pros and Cons of CreatorIQ
The Good Stuff: Pros of CreatorIQ
Create a Private Portal to Work with Your Influencers
Unlike most influencer marketing platforms, CreatorIQ allows you to create a private, customizable portal to work with your influencers. This is particularly useful if you want to build a long-term relationship with specific creators. You can invite them to your portal, and they can create content for you, and you can review and approve their output before anything goes live. You can also easily communicate with them through the portal, making it easy to keep all your project-related messages organized.
The discovery tool is impressive. It uses AI to find influencers that fit your campaign’s needs and to uncover highly relevant creators that may not have popped up on your radar. For example, it analyzes the content of influencers’ posts to find those that align with your brand’s niche. This means you can expect to find influencers to make great partners for your project.
Influencers Show Up Ready to Create
When you find influencers to work with on CreatorIQ, you won’t just see their follower counts and engagement rates. The platform also provides comprehensive information about individual creators, including their previous brand partnerships, audience demographics, performance metrics, and more. This means you can get a good picture of who they are as creators and find someone who aligns with your campaign goals. This comprehensive approach means you’ll be better informed before you reach out to your chosen influencers, and they’ll show up ready to create. All forms, information, and so on are completed before you ever contact the influencer.
The Bad Stuff: Cons of CreatorIQ
Discovery Tool Can Be Overwhelming at First
There’s no doubt that the discovery tool on CreatorIQ is robust. However, this means it can be a bit overwhelming at first. The sheer volume of data and filtering options can make it difficult to know where to start.
Many Sub-Product Names Cause Product and Pricing Confusion
Another downside of CreatorIQ is its many sub-products with different names (like Creator Core and Creator Pay). This can create confusion about understanding each product's capabilities and pricing.
Sign Up for Our Waitlist to Get Connected with Your Dream Brand Partnership Deal
Aha Creator streamline brand partnerships for creators. We handle the heavy lifting of brand deal negotiations, ensuring you get fair value for your influence. Our matching system helps pair creators with relevant brands, maximizing the potential for successful collaborations. Sign up for our waitlist today, and we'll work to connect you with partnership opportunities that align with your content and values.