As mentioned in Part 2 of our Influencer Essentials Series, being able to measure the success of your tactics is crucial for justifying the spend and to collect learnings for the next strategy. Here, we’ll introduce you to some of the basic metrics for measuring the success of online strategies.
Objectives & corresponding metrics
Brand Awareness
- Impressions – The number of times your content has been viewed (regardless of whether it has been interacted with). It’s easily tracked but do remember that one viewer may account for multiple impressions. You can instead measure Reach, which are unique views.
- Growth rate – Simply the change in number of followers. This can also be indicative of a change in perception, if you see a sudden drop once a campaign is underway.
- Website traffic – Ideally, your campaign will draw more traffic to your website. Referral traffic is particularly useful measuring the success of influencer campaigns as it lets you see where new visitor are coming from.
Changing Perception
- Mentions – Ostensibly, the more people talking about your brand on a channel, the better, however…
- Sentiment – While more labour-intensive, a manual, qualitative examination of sentiment is crucial to finding out what people think of your brand as well as the influencer partnership. If following closely, you can course-correct a campaign if the messaging is slightly off before the whole thing goes off the rails and negatively impacts your brand image.
Increasing Engagement
- Likes – While it may seem as if ‘likes’ are a lower value metric than comments when it comes to engagement (after all they are easy and fast, they can actually be a secondary assistance in terms of awareness, as liked content will show up in other people’s feeds.
- Comments – A more highly engaged audience will comment and tag friends, though as above, sentiment should not be ignored.
- Engagement / follower ratio – Also called ‘engagement rate,’ this is simply the number of interactions (likes, comments, shares) compared to the number of followers. It’s also a useful method of seeing what type of content resonates best with your audience.
Driving Conversions
- Affiliate links – You can set unique links for an influencer to embed in their content so you can further track exactly which clicks are paying off. Or, your links could be campaign specific (by channel, perhaps) to see which tactics performed strongest.
- Discount codes – Similarly, you can create codes unique to each influencer and compare how often they’re being used.
Depending on the channels used and where you’re sending the audience, you may need to rely on reports from your influencer, but generally they (or their agent) are more than accommodating, as the end of the day they need to show that they have held up their end of the arrangement. Your objectives and the type of content that your influencer has created will create different results, ranging from Traffic, Reach, Click Rates, Likes, Comments, etc.
Amplifying your message
Given how pervasive influencer marketing has become, platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have methods of paid promotion so your message can reach those beyond just your influencer’s current followers. Here’s what some of the options look like for the different channels:
Facebook Ads are great to quickly reach a lot of eyeballs and to either raise awareness or generate Click Through – or both. Therefore, if you have an influencer giveaway solely running on Instagram, why not do a paid ad shout out on Facebook and send traffic to the giveaway? This way, you’ll help increase not just your brand’s growth but also your influencer’s.
Instagram:
Making the most of your organic posts via Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads:
YouTube
Whether they’re TrueView (i.e. skippable) ads before a video, non-skippable pre- or mid-roll ads, or shorter, 6 second bumper ads, there is a lot of versatility when it comes to promoted YouTube ads. And, as YouTube takes Google search history into account, you can essentially combine your audiences for the two biggest search engines on the internet.
However, limiting your influencer collaborations to just social media and other digital channels is a bit stale. Influencers can become brand ambassadors as you involve them in wider brand activities, like PR events. Taking the influencer from their digital environment into the core of your brand is a big step, but done right can bring a lot of positivity to both parties and will act as a breath of fresh air in the world of traditional ads. Influencers assure diversity when it comes to marketing strategy and communications and, as stated, bring insights into the target that your team may not have.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing and the channels they operate on are still developing, so over time we are seeing the platforms give us new ways to invest our marketing money. If you decide to incorporate an influencer into your strategy, there are a wide variety of considerations, but an equally wide range of possibilities when it comes to leveraging their connection to your target. And, just as quickly as it has become a large part of online marketing, the landscape is sure to shift again, so it pays to keep plugged in, even if influencer marketing isn’t right for your brand now.
Want to know more about how your brand could benefit from influencer marketing? Reach out to a member of our team today!
