How to measure an influencer marketing campaign

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Over the past few years, influencer marketing has become one of the most effective tools for promoting brands. Google Trends shows this increase as well as many other channels.

graphs showing high rates of influencer marketing by comparison with print marketing according to Google Search Trends

The main advantages of influencer marketing are a quick return on investment, an increase in the quantity of orders, and enhanced audience loyalty.

Working with influencers does not end with your business appearing on their profile. From here, you will start to track statistics and analytics: the most important part of the campaign. In this article, we will cover the basic steps to measure influencer marketing KPIs.

Define your campaign goals

If your goal is to increase awareness, then focus on the following KPI metrics for influencer marketing:

Brand awareness or market reach

Better coverage means more mentions and greater recognition.
Traffic received or fan activity

For example, how many people followed a blog link to your site?
Target action

This can be registration, use of a promotional code, subscription to a newsletter, or purchase. This is usually a key metric of the effectiveness of collaboration with influencers.

Identify key metrics that reflect the achievement of your marketing goal

Depending on the purpose of the strategy, focus on the following influencer marketing KPI indicators:

Quantity of likes, comments, and reactions

Track user reactions to your content, especially negative reactions. There are negative comments under the posts of almost all bloggers, and the greater the blogger's reach, the greater the likelihood of dissatisfied followers. If more than one third of the total responses are negative, you should work with another influencer for your campaign. If the publication hasn't collected many likes, look into changing the advertisement. You may need to consider not encouraging readers to purchase, include more product information, offer a trial or test drive, and so on. Arrange in advance that, based on the results of collaboration, they share statistics screenshots from their account.

Traffic to a business website or corporate account on social networks

This metric helps to understand consumer interest in your products. If, together with the previous indicators, the figure is not enough, then you either choose the wrong blogger or you should work on the product.

Brand content distribution

Special tools, such as the Talkwalker virality map service, help you track where your media is shared. On the map you will see the dynamics of the distribution of a post through various channels: social networks, blogs, forums and so on. The program will highlight other possible points of contact with users who were not considered in the campaign.

Brand mentions

Track branded queries on Google Trends or similar tools. If the company's mentionability has grown and you aren't running other marketing activities, then growth is most likely the result of your influencer campaign. However, data doesn't appear instantly, so this assessment is best done 2-4 weeks after publication.

Possible mistake: betting on extensive subscribers. Quantity does not mean quality, and sometimes less popular accounts have more active followers. In addition, microinfluencers are not spoiled by advertising offers, they can take promos on trade and are better suited to products from narrow niches.

Cash indicators

CPE (Cost Per Engagement): the cost of user participation (involvement) in advertising events

People often perceive working with influencers as being exclusive to company image. In fact, cooperation with influencers can both popularize the brand and motivate purchasing. The question is how to calculate the monetary impact of the campaign.

"Expensive" influencers are not always able to provide the best conversion. Your task is to reduce the cost of advertising while achieving excellent performance.

To measure how much each conversion costs, we use the following formula: campaign budget divided by total engagement (usually likes, shares, comments, etc. are considered here).

slide with CPE formula which calculates the cost of user participation in ads

For example, posts collected 50,000 likes and 200 comments (total conversions 50,200). We spent $10,000

Based on the formula above, each conversion cost us:

$10,000 / 50,200 = $0.19

Return on investment ratio

Return on investment is a coefficient reflecting the level of profitability or loss-making of a business, taking into account investment in advertising. If your indicator is 100% or higher, then you have achieved a positive result or paid back the investment. Otherwise, you need to identify the weaknesses of your strategy, or find another influencer and launch another campaign.

Return on investment calculation formula: (profit - costs) / costs * 100%

For example, a blogger was paid $ 1,200 for an advertising post, and purchases from his advertising amounted to $ 7,670. We need to calculate the profit from sales and use this figure to calculate the return on investment. For example, the profit was 50%, i.e. $3,835 Now we substitute the numbers in the formula:

ROI = (3835 - 1200) / 1200 * 100% = 219.5%

For each dollar invested, the return amounted to more than 2 dollars. This is considered a good result.

Amount of affiliate purchases

In an affiliate partnership with a blogger, you can track the number of orders received using an affiliate link with a UTM tag. Google analytics will measure how much traffic has been directed to your site. Comparing them with the amount of purchases, you can determine the effectiveness of the collaboration and any shortcomings of the process. For example, if lots of people visited your site but didn't buy anything, it's worth checking the site's performance, whether you're leading to the correct pages, and how well your site matches your campaign.

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Purchases from individual promotional codes or landing pages

This method is good if you run campaigns with several influencers at once. Create a unique promo code for each influencer so it will be easier to track by campaign.

"Working with influencers is a marketing tool like any other, for which it is important to track effectiveness. Depending on the brand's scale, goals of the advertising strategy, and promotion platforms, key metrics may be different, but they should be focused on business indicators. When selecting an opinion leader, it is important to pay attention to both quantitative and qualitative metrics. We at Topface Media analyze post coverage, views, site traffic, audience activity, and pay attention to the feedback from the influencer's followers: how do users react to content, how do they respond to ads? We consider whether the influencer shares the brand's values and whether it is ready to defend the brand in the event of a negative user reaction. Such an analysis even at the selection stage allows one to roughly predict the effectiveness of the campaign and choose the most suitable opinion leader."

Evteeva Inna

Senior Project Manager Topface Media

Base metric set by website

YouTube

Quantity of views
Quantity of likes
Quantity of dislikes
Quantity of comments
Tonality of reactions (what do the viewers say?)
Viewer Engagement: How many seconds of ads did viewers see?
Advertising Cost Per View (CPM)
Amount of clicks on profile links
Quantity and cost of leads
Quantity of purchases
Return on investment

Special services to track the effectiveness of an advertising campaign

To facilitate tracking influencer marketing KPIs, you can use special tools such as "iFluenz". It shows statistics of running campaigns on social networks. In addition, the service allows you to find new influencers for your niche. You submit an application and select from responses.
You will have access to the profiles of bloggers on social networks to familiarize yourself with the content and coverage of their posts. You can read how to choose the right influencer for your business in our other article.

Conclusion

Everything described in the KPIs for influencer marketing article will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign. Which points are most important for you will depend on the ultimate goal of your advertising strategy.

To assess brand recognition, focus on ad coverage and views. To attract targeted traffic to your site, focus on the quantity of clicks. To increase sales, focus on the return on investment and the amount of orders generated by affiliate links, promotional codes, and so on.

Do not forget that influencer marketing is the evolution of product placement, one of the most effective types of promotion. Designate a responsible employee who will monitor the effectiveness of advertising campaigns with influencers. This can be an in-house employee or you can use the services of SERM agencies.