Why Using the Right Tool Matters for Campaign Tracking
There’s a common challenge in influencer marketing: using the wrong tool for the job. Many brands still rely on social listening tools to measure the success of their influencer campaigns, often without realising the limitations. This leads to missing data, underreported results, and misleading conclusions.
Campaign tracking requires precision. When teams rely on tools that aren’t built for influencer workflows, things slip through the cracks, and it becomes harder to justify the investment made.
A 30% Visibility Gap That Matters
Take, for example, a year-long ambassador programme recently run by Billion Dollar Boy and measured using both a well-established earned media tool and Companion influencer marketing platform.
Companion identified over 30% more relevant content than the earned media tool.
This gap is not a rounding error – it’s a strategic blind spot. It underscores the reality that tools built for different purposes deliver very different results for the same campaign.
Social Listening Tools vs Influencer Marketing Platforms: What Sets Them Apart
Let’s break down how these tools differ.
Social Listening / Earned Media Tools:
- Capture public, organic mentions at scale
- Depend on hashtags, brand tags, and direct mentions
- Ideal for trend analysis, competitor tracking, and brand sentiment monitoring
Examples: Brandwatch, Meltwater, Sprout Social, CreatorIQ’s Tribe Dynamics
Influencer Marketing Platforms:
- Designed to track predefined lists of creators
- Detect both tagged and untagged content
- Analyse performance by campaign, influencer, and platform
- Provide content breakdowns and clear ROI metrics
Examples: Companion and other dedicated platforms
In short, social listening tools are invaluable for understanding the wider conversation. Influencer platforms are essential for accurately managing and measuring the work you commission.
Why This Matters for Influencer Campaigns
Even structured influencer campaigns – with briefs, approvals, and scheduled posts – can still result in missed content. Creators might tweak messaging, forget tags, or share content outside the agreed scope. That’s normal. But it also means brands relying on social listening tools risk underreporting their results.
Companion takes a different approach. By tracking a pre-approved creator list, it identifies all relevant content – whether tagged, hashtagged, featuring a brand logo, or even without tags at all. This ensures campaign reports are complete, accurate, and aligned with the true impact.
What Changes When You Use the Right Platform
Imagine you need to run a six-month influencer campaign with 100 approved creators.
With a social listening tool, you risk missing:
- Stories and other time-sensitive content
- Posts with missing or incorrect tags
- Mentions in other languages or brand name variations
With Companion, you gain:
- Automated tracking for every creator on your list
- Capture of all content formats, including feed posts, Stories, and Reels
- Reporting directly tied to campaign goals and deliverables
The benefits for brands are immediate: reliable measurement for both short-term activations and long-term programmes, zero manual searching, accurate data and comprehensive, presentation-ready reports.
Optimising Your Influencer Marketing Toolkit
Social listening tools are powerful and important in marketing, but they aren’t designed for influencer campaign measurement. When accuracy matters, specialised influencer platforms deliver the clarity and control needed to make informed decisions.
If you're using earned media tools to track creator content, consider trying a platform built specifically for influencer marketing. You’ll immediately see the difference in campaign results reported by a tool – it’s more accurate, more efficient, and frankly, more enjoyable to use, because it’s designed specifically for your needs during an influencer campaign.
Why Companion is Built for This Work
Companion is designed by influencer marketers for influencer marketers. From product seeding to post-campaign reporting, every feature is built to make your campaigns easier to manage and report on.
- Companion tracks all creators in your campaign list automatically
- Identifies tagged and untagged content, including AI-powered text recognition
- Delivers clear, stakeholder-ready dashboards and reports
When campaigns wrap, Companion ensures no results are left uncounted. The outcome is a complete, data-driven picture of performance – every time.