5 Ways To Measure The Effect Of Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

Influencer marketing dominates the digital marketing sphere for a good reason. It is one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics. Statistics say that almost 50% of customers depend on influencer suggestions, while more than 40% of them have bought something after seeing it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube. Influencers are particularly popular among the Millennial audience. According to a recent study, 70% of Millennials trust influencers over traditional celebrities.

Influencer marketing also generates a high ROI. The Tomoson Influencer Marketing Study claims that, for each $1 spent on influencer marketing, you get $6.50. Given these figures, it’s not surprising that the influencer marketing industry is expected to jump to $10 billion by 2020.

Now, in the sea of social networks and influencer platforms, finding the right influencer and reaching out to them is simple. Unfortunately, just because you’re collaborating with a top industry influencer doesn’t mean your campaign is a success. To generate greater profits and increase brand awareness, you first need to measure the results of your influencer campaigns.

In this article, you will learn how to set clear goals for your campaigns and track their effectiveness.

#1 Monitor The Campaign Reach

Reach is a fundamental aspect of any successful influencer marketing campaign. By measuring the reach of your campaigns, you actually want to see how far they traveled. Logically, the higher the campaign reach, the more sales you can make.

Simply put, by measuring the reach of your influencer marketing campaign, you want to see how many people saw it.

Start by monitoring the number of followers an influencer has. Then, check how many times your brand message was displayed in front of your target audience. This is what we call impressions. Finally, analyze your traffic data to understand how much traffic an influencer drives to your site.

You can do so manually, by harnessing this data directly from your social media profiles and entering them into a spreadsheet. Alternatively, you can use digital marketing reporting tools that read social media metrics to create a comprehensive dashboard, track your reach metrics, and compare them with other relevant social media KPIs.

#2 Analyze Your Target Audience Growth

When starting an influencer marketing campaign, your main goal is to connect with the reputable people within the same niche. Those are people that target the same groups of people but have a greater following. For you, this is an amazing opportunity to cast your net wider, put your brand in front of larger audiences, and build an engaged following.

That’s why tracking your social media follower growth rate is important. It helps you check whether an influencer understands who your audience is and whether your brand message reaches the right audience. Only by targeting the right people will you be able to increase their engagement with your brand and build stronger relationships with them.

This is exactly where Google Analytics’ Demographics and Interests Report can help. With it, you can analyze the influencer’s target audience by their age, gender, interests, behaviors, and technology, and see whether it matches yours.

#3 Measure Audience Engagement

Creating high-quality content and working with the most popular social media star means nothing if your campaigns don’t resonate with your target audience. This is exactly why you need to set the right engagement KPIs and track them continually.

Start by tracking some basic metrics like likes, comments, and shares. These metrics give you insights into how your users feel about your content and whether their reactions are positive.

You should also measure clicks to see how many people found the influencer content relevant enough to click on it.

Brand mentions are also an amazing engagement metric because they tell you how popular your brand is among your target customers. Most importantly, monitoring both direct and indirect brand mentions, you will see how influencer marketing contributed to your brand awareness over time. This is where social listening tools like Social Mention, Mention, or Hootsuite can help you.

BuzzSumo is an awesome marketing tool, allowing you to track your posts’ performance in real-time. All you need to do is enter the URL of the page you want to analyze and this tool will show you content engagement and shares across different social networking platforms, as well as gives you the opportunity to see your backlinks.

#4 Track Social Leads

Now that you’ve connected with the right influencer, analyzed your campaign reach, and started engaging your customers, it’s time to convert them into leads.
Ask yourself how many of your followers are now ready to buy from you. Most importantly, which channels bring you the greatest results?

For example, if you’re receiving more leads from Instagram than from Facebook, then rethink your content creation tactics and have an influencer create more quality content for Instagram. By rechanneling your content creation efforts to the platforms that resonate with your audiences, you will increase their engagement and generate more qualified leads.

To measure the effectiveness of your social channels, use Google Analytics. Go to the Overview section and hit Social, where you will see all social media channels you use, listed according to the acquisitions they’ve generated.

#5 Use UTM Parameters & Promo Codes To Track Sales

Any solid, user-centric influencer marketing campaign generates sales and helps you boost profits. So, you need to know how many sales an influencer marketing campaign generated, as well as what the sources of these sales are. This is where you should use affiliate links, UTM parameters, and promo codes that help you track whether an influencer is generating enough sales.

• Affiliate links are probably the simplest way to stay on top of your sales. Namely, an influencer uses this link and receives a commission for driving a user towards your site. For you, this means a simpler process of tracking your CTR, sales, and the average value of purchases.
• When you create specific promo codes for an influencer, you will be able to see where exactly your sales come from. This gives you an opportunity to calculate your ROI easily and see how exactly an influencer contributed to your bottom line.
• UTM parameters represent tags that appear within an URL. So, once a user clicks on one of these links, you will be able to collect the data and analyze it in your Google Analytics account. To add UTM parameters to your URLs, Use Google’s Campaign URL Builder. If you’re, for example, working with more influencers, then you can prescribe a different link with a different UTM parameter to each of them. This way, you can get the information about the site where your ad displays, the campaign name, the keywords used, and so forth.

Over To You

Working with an influencer can give your digital marketing efforts a significant boost. However, to get the most out of it, you first need to do some prep work.
Get to know your audiences and try to understand what their needs, expectations, and problems are. Then, connect with an influencer they trust and listen to.

Once they start promoting your brand and creating awesome content around it, you should start measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns. Observe the reach of your campaign. Track how fast your audience grows and how engaged they are. Most importantly, make sure the influencer helps you generate qualified leads and make more sales.

Only this way will you be able to assess the true effectiveness of your influencer marketing campaigns and boost your ROI.

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