The advertising and marketing world has changed dramatically since the world made a shift to become more digital. While traditional advertising still has a place, more modern approaches are leading the pack for successful campaigns.
Among the main ranks of this ‘pack’ is influencer marketing, which grew massively over the past few years.
In 2016, the influencer marketing industry was worth $1.7 billion and grew to an impressive $9. 7 billion in 2020. The expectation is that the industry will continue to perform so well, reaching a worth of more than $13 billion in 2021.
WHY KPIs ARE IMPORTANT IN INFLUENCER MARKETING
There’s no denying that influencer marketing can drive sales and help your brand reach a wider audience.
The return on investment you get from influencer marketing is impressive and makes this form of advertising worth the time it could take to get it right. But before you fork out massive amounts of money for the biggest influencers of your industry, consider this: smaller influencers deliver better ROI.
Influencers with between 250,000 and a million followers offer 20% more ROI than those with more than a million. And influencers with 50,000 to 250,000 influencers have 30% better ROI.
Why? Simply because the smaller influencers’ audience is more valuable. It’s more likely that their content will actually be seen and appreciated by their followers than compared to more prominent influencers.
Right, so how do you determine if your campaign is achieving all the goals you’ve set for it?
By properly tracking your KPIs (key performance indicators), of course. There are several KPIs that you should be keeping an eye on, but the ten discussed here are the most important.
Through constant monitoring of these indicators, you will know what ideas get the best results and which marketing approaches need some polishing.
TOP INFLUENCER MARKETING KPIs TO KNOW
You can track all of the following key performance indicators to see how well your influencer marketing campaigns are doing or just monitor the ones that feel most important to you. The more you’re tracking, the better your understanding of your campaign performance will be, though.
1. Brand Reach and Awareness
Brand reach and awareness are indicators of how well-known your brand is to your target audience. These elements are important because you have to have a good idea of whether the right people know about your brand or not.
You must track your influencer marketing campaign’s performance to determine how many new potential customers have been made aware of your brand.
One of the primary motivators behind influencer marketing is reaching a wider audience. If you’re not achieving this, you may have to give your campaign a scrutinizing look to find out why not.
In some cases, you may have to consider using other influencers or asking them to change their marketing methods.
You need to know how many people were reached with the campaign, and there are a few ways you can determine this.
Keep an eye on the impression data of your social media posts during the campaign. Compare their performances to that of your older content to see if there is an improvement. You should be able to use your social media platforms’ analytical tools for this purpose.
2. Engagement Rates
This is one of the most critical KPIs to check for influencer marketing. Engagement is a great way to find out if your campaign is giving back what you put in. You should monitor your own and your influencer’s social media content to see how many people have taken note of your brand.
You can measure engagement rates through the actions of followers and social media users. Here are a few actions you should be looking at, depending on the platforms you use:
- Reactions
- Comments
- Likes
- Shares
- Clicks
- Video Views
- Pins
- Votes
- Brand Mentions
You can calculate the exact engagement rates you’ve gotten by taking the number of interactions and dividing it by the number of followers you have, and then multiplying the result by 100%.
For example, let’s say you shared a post related to your influencer marketing campaign (such as an announcement of your partnership). You have 10,000 followers and your post got 100 comments, 200 likes, and 50 shares.
To determine the post’s engagement rate, you will add them all together, which gives you 350. Divide 350 by 10,000 and then multiply by 100%, and you’ll see you have an engagement rate of 3.5%.
3. Website Traffic
Many marketing campaigns endeavor to get people to go to a brand’s official website and make a purchase or take some kind of action. It’s essential that you track the amount of traffic your website gets if that’s the case for your campaign.
This KPI is indicative of how good your influencer is at getting people to do more than just like a post — they’re able to motivate them to action.
You can give your influencer custom URLs that they use for the campaign and then measure how many visitors that specific page gets. You could also keep an eye on bounce rates, device type, page views, and location, among other metrics.
Just make sure that you’ve got a well-designed website and that you’re using the highest quality website design software, so people will remain interested after arriving on your site.
All the hard work you and your influencer put into a campaign could be for naught if your website can’t keep people wanting more.
4. Lead Generation and Conversion Rates
Another popular use for influencer marketing is improving lead generation and conversion rates. To get leads from your campaign, you’ll need people to provide you with their information.
An easy way to do this is by getting them to sign up for your newsletter or leading them to your landing page. (Pro tip: if you’re hoping to attract people to your landing page, consider roping in the help of a professional landing page builder for higher conversion)
Google Analytics offers an effective way to track the number of leads your campaign generates. Alternatively, you can also use tools such as Leadformly, Qualaroo, or Unbounce to track your lead generation data.
Of course, once you have determined your lead generation achievements, you need to examine how many of those leads converted into sales. This is especially important if you’re using influencer marketing for your e-commerce business.
Again, you can use Google Analytics or the conversion tracking software of your choice to have a clear picture of your campaign’s progress and end results.
5. Audience Growth
When you’ve got an influencer marketing campaign running, you’ll likely (hopefully) attract new people who’ll check out what your brand is all about.
If you get them to sign up for your newsletter or blog, for example, you’re getting good audience growth, which could lead to sales.
Audience growth is very similar to brand awareness and reach, with one difference: someone who was reached was impressed enough to take action.
If those you reached decided to follow your social media account or sign up to your email list, your campaign shows success in audience growth.
Once again, your social media platforms’ analytics will help you monitor your follower count and see how many new followers you’ve gained since the launch of the campaign.
You can compare the growth to a similar time frame before your collaboration with an influencer to get an idea of how much growth your campaign delivered.
6. Number of User-Generated Posts
Working with an influencer offers many different and exciting ways to do marketing. For example, you can come up with a branded hashtag that is uniquely linked to your business. You can use hashtag generator tools if you’re running low on creative juices.
The influencer will then use this hashtag and ask their followers to include it when sharing posts related to your brand.
Doing this will go a long way towards increasing your reach and gaining new followers. It can also help you access creative user-generated content that you can share to give people a fresh perspective of your brand.
Track how many times the hashtag is used and how on-brand the posts with the hashtag are. Although not all the content will be ideal for you to use (with permission!), you’re bound to find something worthwhile.
If not, at least you’ll have made more people aware of your brand.
7. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
The click-through rate of your influencer marketing campaign is what will tell you how many people listened to your call to action and clicked on the provided links.
Your call to action can be anything that makes sense for the campaign and your brand, like ‘click here for more information’ or ‘sign up now.
CTR matters because it can give you a better understanding of your audience. It can tell you what content and call-to-action wording works and what doesn’t. If you have a low CTR, it could be that you’re not speaking the right language, or you’re not targeting the right people.
The kind of CTR you need will depend on your industry and business. It’s best to research CTRs for your industry and find out what the average is.
When you understand what to expect, you can compare your own results and see if it’s good or not.
To measure your CTR, divide the click-throughs by the number of impressions the post had and multiply the answer by 100. For example, if your post was seen by 200 people, and 10 of them clicked on the link, your CTR is 5%.
8. Cost per Click (CPC)
It’s important that you know how much your influencer marketing campaign is costing you. When the cost you incur is more than what you get out of the campaign, it’s not successful, and you’ll have to head back to the drawing board.
You can calculate the CPC of your campaign by dividing how much you’re paying the influencer by the number of clicks you received.
The lower the cost of every click, the better the campaign is performing.
9. Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
Customer acquisition is the process of getting new customers. When your campaign can bring in new customers and make them loyal and increase your revenues in a cost-effective way, you can say that campaign (and your influencer) was successful.
Calculating your CPA is similar to CPC; you divide the amount you spend on the campaign by the number of new acquisitions it was able to bring in.
10. Revenue Generated
Probably one of the most important KPIs for an influencer marketing campaign is how much revenue was generated. Unless you’re entirely focused on brand reach and awareness at any cost, it will matter how much money your business earned during the campaign.
When planning your campaign, remember that every lead you get could potentially become a customer, and every lead is different. Make sure you have a well-planned conversion marketing funnel to guide your leads and drive your sales during your campaign.
The revenue that your influencer was able to help your business generate with the campaign will help you determine if influencer marketing is a good route for you to take.
To calculate your revenue generated, subtract the cost of your campaign from the overall amount of money that the campaign brought in.
For example, if your business revenue for the campaign period was $20,000, and your campaign budget was $5,000 (and you stuck to it), the revenue was $15,000.
TRACK THE SUCCESS OF YOUR INFLUENCER MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Keeping a close eye on your campaign with the use of the KPIs you’ve learned about here will make it much easier to determine if it was worth your time and money.
If your influencer could pull off a great campaign, you should consider a long-term relationship with them. If not, dig into the information you have and find out if the problem lies with the influencer or your approach and planning.
Track the success of your campaigns proactively and see your business grow!
Author’s Bio:
Mark Quadros is a SaaS content marketer that helps brands create and distribute rad content. On a similar note, Mark loves content and contributes to several authoritative blogs like HubSpot, CoSchedule, Foundr, etc. Connect with him via LinkedIN or twitter.
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