Five years ago, it seemed that “influencer marketing” was just a business buzzword. And it was difficult to imagine that in 2019, the influencer marketing industry would be worth $8 billion.
But it has happened. Today, big and small companies consider influencer marketing as a primary advertising channel. And the experts suggest that the influencer marketing industry will keep growing and will be worth $15 billion by 2022.
If you are reading this article, it means one of two things. Either you have already invested in influencer marketing and want to know whether it was the right decision. Or, you haven’t collaborated with influencers yet, because you have no idea how to measure the results of the advertising campaign.
In any case, we got you covered. Here are four practical ways to measure influencer marketing campaigns.
Measure reach
Let’s start with the basics. If you want to know whether your influencer marketing campaign works well, you should calculate your campaign reach.
Reach is a metric that shows how far your brand message has traveled and how many prospective buyers it has reached. To calculate influencer reach, you should take into account the following key performance indicators (KPIs):
Influencer Follower Count
Since some of the followers are brands and bots, influencer follower count can’t be considered as a reliable reach indicator. But still, it can give you an idea of the proximate number of users your sponsored post can reach.
This indicator shows a number of times your sponsored post gets in front of your target audience. For instance, if your post got 1,000 impressions, it means that your post was seen 1,000 times.
Traffic data
It’s the most reliable indicator. It shows the precise amount of traffic that comes to your website from the link in the influencer’s profile or account.
Measure engagement and calculate CPE
The next step you should take is to measure the engagement of your influencer marketing campaign. To do that, you should analyze the statistics of every sponsored post and every sponsored Story. You should pay attention to the following indicators.
- Clicks
- Likes
- Comments
- Reactions
- Shares
- Brand mentions
- The number of saved posts (applicable to Instagram)
There are two simple ways to get this data. If you partner with an Instagram influencer, you can ask him to provide you with the post insights.
That’s simple. It will take an influencer just a few seconds to make a screenshot of the post insights and send it to you.
If you collaborate with bloggers and Facebook influencers, you can use a specialized marketing tool such as BuzzSumo. The tool will give you a comprehensive overview of how well your sponsored posts are performing.
All you need to do is to enter the URL of a specific blog post or Facebook post in a search bar and click the search button. In a second, you will see how many reactions, likes, comments, and shares your post has generated.
Once you know the number of engagements, you can calculate the cost per engagement (CPE). The formula is simple. You just need to divide your total ad spend by the number of engagements.
Let’s imagine that $4,000 is the total amount of money you have spent on your influencer marketing campaign. The influencer has posted four posts that generated 15,000 likes, 4,000 comments, and 1,000 shares in total. If we divide $4,000 by 20,000 engagements, we find out that CPE of your influencer marketing campaign is $0.2.
Use coupon codes and affiliate links
If you want to track which influencer gets which transactions, you should use coupons, affiliate links, and UTM parameters. It’s the simplest, yet the most effective way to measure the results of your marketing campaign and to find out which of influencers brings you more money.
All you need to do is to add UTM parameters to URLs using the Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder. If you do everything right, the system will allow you to track your influencer campaign in Google Analytics.
By using designate promo codes, you will be able to track not only initial sales but also repeated purchases. By generating affiliate, you will get access to such insights as click-through rate (CTR) to your site, the number of sales, and the average value of each purchase.
Let’s imagine you’ve collaborated with three influencers and used coupon codes. To find out how much money each influencer brought you, you should divide total sales generated by coupon by the amount of money you paid to the influencer. For instance, if you paid $1,000 and made $5,000 in sales, it means that one dollar invested in the influencer marketing campaign brought you five dollars in sales.
Calculate target audience growth
When it comes to influencer marketing, demographics always matters. “If you want to achieve high results, you should check whether your sponsored posts are reaching the right target audience. You should use Google Analytics Demographics report to analyze whether influencer delivers your brand message in the right way,” says Nicole Prescott, a digital marketer and reviewer of the world’s leading translation service at TheWordPoint.
Let’s say your brand sells lipsticks and mascaras for teenagers. To boost sales, you need to reach parents who are interested in buying specialized cosmetics for their teenage children. There is no sense to target teenagers because they don’t have money to pay for your products. If you check Google Analytics Demographics report and see that most of your website visitors are 13-15 years old girls, then you will understand that it’s necessary to incorporate some changes to your influencer marketing campaign.
Be patient
Keep in mind that you need to give it a 30- to 60-day window after the campaign start to measure the results.
As a rule, sponsored posts generate the most sales within the first few days after the start of the campaign. But sometimes it happens that customers start checking affiliate links and using promo codes weeks after the initial publication. So if you want to get the precise results, you should wait.
Wrapping up
Now you know how to measure the results of the influencer marketing campaign. So go ahead and check how effectively your current campaign is performing. Apply the tips given, and you will see that everything is not half as tricky as it seems.
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