Are you looking for a new Influencer Relationship Management System? Or are you so desperate that you plan to build your own? Wait a second. What if I tell you that there is something in the middle?

A system you can adjust 100% to your needs but doesn't cost a fortune like a bespoke solution? If it sounds like something for you, keep reading!

About This Article

In this article, you will learn why Salesforce is an alternative to standard Influencer management products and custom solutions. I'll explain  Salesforce and what it gives you in the influencer management field.

Additionally, you will learn what extra powers you get by choosing this product. This being said you will also learn about its downsides. Lastly, you will find in-depth comparisons and recommendations on when to select Salesforce and when not.

Standard Influencer Management Tools
Can Limit You

You thought you had made a great deal when you purchased your standard Influencer management system license.

1. You have a lot of valuable features for a subscription fee
2. You launched it fast with the vendor's help
3. You carry no maintenance costs or risks
4. You get product updates

But you have grown since then and might feel constrained now.

1. You can't adjust the system the way you want anymore
2. You lack important features
3. You can't integrate with the tools you use
4. You don't get product updates you need
5. It all starts to cost you a lot with a growing user base

When this is you - don't worry. You should actually be happy. It means that your business has evolved! This is a common trait for clients who decide to use standard software.

When they start their operations, they select something super easy to use. But as they grow, they need more features, integrations, and security options.

You are reaching the point where your current solution is getting too small for you, and you are looking for options.

What Options Do You Have?

You probably came up with 2 options on the opposite ends of the spectrum:

1. Get another standard Influencer management product for a subscription fee
2. Get a fully custom Influencer management solution built with code that is 100% yours

Let me introduce you to the third option, which is:

3. Salesforce CRM - a solution in the middle. Salesforce Platform allows you to quickly build an Influencer Management system that is 100% adjusted to your needs without spending a fortune on product development.

Salesforce CRM? - It Was A Client's Idea!

I didn't even know that Influencer Management software existed until March 2022. At that time, I was implementing Salesforce for B2B clients.

Then I got that call from Mexico. It was Jacek, a co-founder of Health Labs Care. Their e-commerce supplement business grew like crazy (you might have already heard that story from my other article). He wanted to implement Salesforce as … an Influencer Management System.

I was confused. But, when you are a freelancer starting your own business, you don't question your clients' ideas. You accept them. So did it.

We launched the first version of the solution in 5 weeks. Within the first 12 months from that launch, their Influencer base grew by 315%.

Today, they successfully manage hundreds of influencers using Salesforce.

When I think about this backward, I understand it was a clever move.

Salesforce as Influencer Management System? It Makes Sense!

What is Salesforce CRM? Salesforce is a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management system (CRM) that sales and service teams typically use. 

For example, your mobile provider uses a CRM to keep information about you. This might include your personal details, current contracts, payments, and services you subscribed to. They also use it to sell you an upgraded plan or to handle your support tickets when something goes wrong.

Salesforce CRM can be used to manage business partners as well. For example, if you produce and sell cosmetics online, you might also want to sell them at local shops. So, you partner with beauty shops, drugstores, and supermarkets, who become your distributors.

If you follow this analogy, you will soon realize that Influencers are nothing more than your sales partners! This means you can use a classic CRM's principles for Influencer sales.

You Can Do Anything 'Influencer' With Salesforce

You ask yourself - but what can I do with it? The answer is - (almost) everything . Below are a handful of modules, features, and processes you can get when using Salesforce for the Influencer Marketing Team. Those are just examples - trust me, you can get more than that!

Influencers sign up using a form, or you can import them from another system. Salesforce creates a profile of a potential influencer for you. You must go through a list of steps to qualify that person, such as social media profile checks, brand fit, and interviews. An AI tool helps you select the best candidates. Once qualified, you move to the next step, which is signing.

Sign Influencer

You can sign new influencers by pushing them through a defined process. You add a contract type and send it via an e-signature tool like DocuSign. The contract circulates from Influencer to Head of Influencer Marketing to a Board Member—or in any other order you want. Once all sign the document, Salesforce attaches it to the Influencer Profile and supplements it with the data from the contract. You can easily handle contract updates later.

Collect All Influencer Details Under One Roof

Once the influencer gets signed, it's time to collect all the data about her. In other words, we create a so-called 360-degree view. What does it include? For example:

1. Influencer personal details
2. contracts and collaboration terms
3. promo codes
4. sales results
5. social media stats
6. email history

Add Promotional Codes

Add a new Influencer with a new promo code to Salesforce. Then, Salesforce adds this promo code to an e-commerce back office. There is no need to do that manually. You can add many codes. Salesforce can activate and deactivate them as per your instructions. It will also check if you are not adding any duplicates. When someone adds a code directly in an e-commerce back office, it's not a problem—that code will sync to Salesforce!

Communicate Campaigns

Inform your Influencers about new promotions and seasonal offers by sending them emails with personalized promotional codes. Coolly, you don't need to create those codes and send emails individually. You can mass update codes and send them in bulk communication. You can use other channels than email if you want.

Settle Commissions

How to settle commissions with Influencers? Here is how. Salesforce gets the sales numbers of a given month from e-commerce and multiplies them with the commission percentage amount from the contract. Voila. Next, your finance team looks into Salesforce to double-check invoices sent by influencers and, if correct, mark them as paid. Thanks to that, you see how much you paid month by month, individually and in total. No confusion. No delays. No bad experience.

Give Influencers Access to Self Service

Assume an Influencer asks you again how much she made last month. Answering the same questions over and over again can be tedious. You can give them live access to their data via an Influencer portal (web, mobile, or both). They can preview their details, contracts, invoices, and sales stats. Moreover, they can get up-to-date promo codes and content that helps them sell.

Give Support

When your influencers have questions or issues, and they can't solve them via the Influencer Portal, let them submit support tickets. These tickets get directly to Salesforce. Salesforce will automatically assign that ticket to an agent, notify her, and guide her through the support process. It will offer knowledge base articles and template messages that increase productivity. In the end, you will see all support stats, incl. the number of tickets, their status, resolution time, and age. Most of all, you will see what causes the main problems for your influencers.

Monitor Performance

Finally, you can measure everything in custom reports and dashboards that you can build and change using drag-and-drop methods. For example, you can report on the recruitment process, sales numbers and commissions, support tickets, influencer stats, and more. You can eventually make strategic decisions based on data presented in an attractive visual way. You can also share them with your CMO in seconds. Did I ask seconds? Wrong! Your CMO can see them in real-time without bothering you!

Salesforce Is Extremely Adjustable

How can Salesforce be turned into an Influencer Relationship Management System so easily? Let me explain. Typical CRMs are just CRMs. They help your team better serve your customers. They are very often oriented toward Business-to-Business (B2B) sales.

For example, when you sell cosmetics to distributors, you keep a distributor as an Account in your CRM. Each distributor has people responsible for buying your products - these are Contacts. When you start talking to a new distributor, you classify it as a Lead or Prospect. Once you start negotiating, you create a Business Opportunity or Deal. Once the deal is signed, you will make a Contract and place an Order.

Salesforce allows you to do all of that (this is why you can use it for distributor sales as well). But, unlike other CRMs, Salesforce offers a platform on which you can develop business apps around your customers and partners.

To do that, you use primarily visual editors and drag-and-drop methods. Of course, you will need some coding for more advanced stuff like integrations.  

From my experience, nearly 80% of work can be done without writing a single line of code. This means that, in the end, you are in control of the solution—not your vendor or your IT department. You, the Influencer Manager, can adjust the tool and build reports and automation!

You can think of it as Lego bricks. You don't need an engineering degree to build something impressive. You either follow simple instructions and a template or use your imagination and… build an app that gives you an edge over your competition.  

Like Lego, it ensures that all the elements will stick together, the structures will be stable, and the whole will last for generations. From a technical perspective, we are talking about a no-code development approach (although some code is also an option!)

This means that Salesforce gives you the CRM plus the Low-Code Platform to build anything you like on top of it, including an Influencer Relationship Management system that 100% meets your needs.

This compound gives you an edge you will never get with any other software. Soon, you will learn more about those secret weapons.

Go Beyond Standard Features

Unlike other standard Influencer Management Systems, Salesforce gives you a broad palette of tools that make you a productivity beast. Let me throw a few examples:

Create Automation

You can freely build automation. An example is when you add an influencer with a promo code to Salesforce, Salesforce checks if this is not a duplicate. Next, it sends a welcome email informing that influencer about promo codes. Then, Salesforce will add her code to e-commerce. On the last day of the month, Salesforce will ask e-commerce about the sales made with that code. Next, it will add those sales metrics to the influencer profile. Sounds exciting, right?

Integrate Like Crazy

You can integrate Salesforce with other tools without significant limits. You can connect it to your internal systems via Salesforce's APIs. What's super cool is that there is something called AppExchange—a marketplace with business apps from other vendors already integrated with Salesforce. You can compare it to the App Store or Google Play. You grab an app and use it without integrating it using code.

Get Slack Conversation into Salesforce

You've probably heard of Slack by now. Did you know that Slack is a Salesforce product? If the Influencer management system is based on Salesforce, then all team conversations in Slack can be easily pushed to Salesforce. By doing so, you build an influencer's complete history and context without copying and pasting data from your chat into CRM.

Use AI Features

Imagine you could pick the best influencers based on AI algorithms. Salesforce provides predictive models that tell you what influencers will work best for you. These algorithms have been primarily developed for sales teams to predict what Leads will convert or what Deals will be closed. However, you can use the same principles to configure the predictions for the most promising influencers.

Build Other Apps

Now, you are looking for an influencer management app. But after some time, you will need another business app. Why buy another system when you can build it on Salesforce? Thanks to Salesforce, you can then keep all data under one roof (and pay fewer license fees :)

Use it Together with the B2B Team

Is your company selling products via distributors? If yes, they can use Salesforce as well! They can manage accounts and their orders directly in CRM, as Salesforce was originally a B2B CRM. Why is it so important? Having one system instead of two can save your company money and make reporting much easier!

Use It as an Agency

If you are an (internal) agency, you can benefit even more from Salesforce! The traditional CRM features help you manage your accounts, deals, and projects, just to name a few. You can also run many brands on it. Salesforce will help you clearly separate influencers from brands so that you will see exact metrics per brand.

Work from the Salesforce Mobile App

Do you need to work away from the desktop? Salesforce offers a mobile app with the same features as the desktop version. This means you won't have to log in each time to a web service that looks terribly on mobile. Instead, you get an excellent, adjusted interface you can access in one click.

Add Some Steroids

You can implement Salesforce and stop there. However, you can expand it by adding other Salesforce products. I already mentioned Slack, but there are more products on the menu. You can, for example, implement various marketing tools for e-commerce and BI products such as Tableau. For instance, Tableau will help you find out the relationship between influencers' sales and products you give them as free samples. As a result, you will give only free samples that will boost your sales and won't be unnecessary costs.

Be Secure

Let's be serious for a moment. Everybody in your department can see and do everything in your system (or a spreadsheet), right? You work with people you know and trust. But when your team grows, allowing everybody to do and see everything is not very smart. You have or will have many NDAs. You can get acquired by a policy-driven corporation. Or you basically have a lot of sensitive information, and sharing it with everybody can even be illegal.

Salesforce will help you control what people see and do. This will be possible by assigning people to roles and profiles and managing exceptions to those rules. Salesforce is very flexible in this field, so your data will be safe, and you will pass every due diligence process or ISO certification.

Salesforce Has It Downsides

I want you to see the complete picture. Salesforce does have its downsides. For example:

1. Salesforce does not have built-in influencer management features—you need to build them, which is an additional cost (but also a chance).
2. The Salesforce interface might seem a bit complex at first glance, but users will soon get used to it, especially when it is optimized.
3. You can integrate it with anything, but you must mind Salesforce technical limits. This means that developers will need more time on solution optimization.
4. Salesforce’s price reflects its benefits. If you cannot use them, then Salesforce might seem pricy. But this, of course, depends on your budget.

Salesforce vs. Standard Influencer Management Product

How does Salesforce compare to Standard Influencer Management Systems?

A standard solution gives you a kick-start. It comes with many built-in features that focus on influencer management. However, these features may be limited in the long run, and you can't change them. Moreover, it does not offer a platform to configure and develop features. Last but not least, such products typically have limited integration capabilities. You won't be able to connect it to any system, especially your internal tools, however you want.

On the contrary, Salesforce does not come with influencer-oriented features, but it gives you tools to build them relatively quickly. In the end, you can create exactly what you want and need. On top of that, Salesforce gives you CRM features that are outside your reach when using a standard product. Salesforce also has an open API and an App Market, meaning you can integrate it virtually with any of your systems. This means that Salesforce will take a bit longer to launch but will 100% meet your requirements, and you won't depend on the vendor's roadmap and its releases.

What do those two products have in common? You get them for a fee; maintenance and security are on the vendor's end. Vendors are also responsible for updating the product. However, standard influencer products will go in the influencer direction, while Salesforce will improve the platform and tools that can be widely used.

You can preview a more structured comparison table below.

Salesforce vs. a Custom Solution?

Let's look into the difference between Salesforce and a custom-built system, which you build with code from scratch that is 100% yours.

When you hit the limits with standard influencer management software, it's very tempting to decide to build your own product. And sometimes, it totally makes sense—but only sometimes. It can give you great power. But with great power comes great responsibility—as someone said. This responsibility means a big development effort and cost.

The only thing that Custom Solution and Salesforce have in common is that both can be fully customized.

Differences? A custom system will cost a lot and come with no out-of-the-box features. You need to do everything yourself, which typically takes a long time. There will be no free product updates or vendors who care for maintenance and security.

But there is also a bright side to it. The system will belong 100% to you. So, this gives you the option to resell the solution, or when you attempt to sell the company, it will increase its value (by the way, Salesforce will increase its value since it's so widely used). And, as you pay no license fees, it can bring you some savings later, assuming the product isn't growing that much and has a large user base.

Summary Table

Your Ultimate Benefits

When you decide to go for Salesforce, you will get the following benefits:

1. The solution built on Salesforce will 100% meet your business needs without spending a fortune on a custom solution.
2. You can change the system with an easy drag-and-drop editor - you won't depend on the software vendor. You will move fast!
3. You can build integrations with any system or use one of the existing apps on AppExchange, which can increase your productivity and save on development costs.
4. Your people gain productivity and will grow your influencer marketing business without increasing the team size.
5. This system will grow with you - no need to get a new one anytime soon.
6. You don't need to worry about system maintenance and security - Salesforce handles it.
7. You will benefit from all the cool features brought by Salesforce three times per year, such as AI features.
8. It offers a safe, corporate-ready infrastructure. You can easily manage who can access the system, from where, and what she can see and do there. It's secure and stable.
9. It's well known. So what? If you plan to sell your company, you will be valued more since you have a system that other parties know and trust. Moreover, it will be easier to find specialists for further development.
10. If you are an e-commerce or agency company, you can use it in other departments to manage distributors, accounts, and projects.

Summary & Recommendations

I believe that Salesforce is an excellent alternative to standard Influencer Management products.If the comparison table makes you feel dizzy, I'd recommend this rule of thumb:

1. If you are starting with Influencer Management and you need to launch it fast without thinking too much about processes - go for an Standard Product.
2. If you already have an Standard Product , but it does not meet your needs anymore, and you can't find a solution that does - go for Salesforce
3. If you have mature processes, a big influencer management team and you are considering reselling the system or selling it as part of the company, go for a Custom Solution.

Next Steps

When you decideIf you are interested in building a solution and Salesforce seems like an option, but you need some more of information on that, contact me using the form or directly at michal.hawrasz@emfire.io.

Let's connect on LinkedIn

I'm happy to share more in-depth details of this approach with you. By the way, we also develop custom CRM products for clients - we write them from scratch. So, we can discuss these both ways.

Who are we? I almost forgot. We are Emfire, an app development agency focused on CRM solutions. We use Salesforce as the underlying app platform, but we also build custom web and mobile apps using React and React Native technologies.