It's no secret that influencer marketing is taking the world by storm, with brands investing billions of dollars in influencer campaigns each year. The influencer marketing industry is set to grow to approximately $21.1 Billion in 2023 and over 80% of marketers are planning to increase their influencer marketing budget this year. But with great power comes great responsibility, and measuring the success of your influencer marketing campaign is essential to ensure your investment is paying off. Don't worry, we've got you covered! In this article, we'll explore seven essential ways to measure your influencer marketing success.
1. Set clear goals 🥅
Before you start running your campaign, it is essential to have clarity on what you are trying to achieve. Higher brand awareness among a specific niche audience? Increased sales among an already-engaged audience?
Establishing clear and measurable goals is the first step towards measuring the success of your campaigns. If the brand manager is focused on conversions and the influencer is only counting likes, confusion and disagreements are inevitable. Making sure you are all on the same page can save a lot of bother later on!
2. Track the right metrics 📈
Whether your goal is awareness, sales or something else, you will need to figure out which KPIs matter to you. It is best to select quantifiable metrics that are easily measurable, such as:
- Online revenue
- Website traffic
- Brand mentions
- Engagement (likes and shares)
- New followers
3. Set up accurate conversion tracking 🕵️♀️
Tracking conversions enables you to measure high-value actions that users have taken on your website, such as registering for your newsletter, signing up for an event, booking a demo or buying a product online. But how can you work out whether those conversions came from your influencer campaign?
You have three options:
Create a specific landing page
If you provide your influencer with a link to a landing page created specifically for their campaign, you will be able to attribute any conversions which occurred on that page back to your collaboration with them.
Use UTM Tags
UTM tags are parameters at the end of your URL, such as landingpage.com/utm_source=instagram or landingpage.com/utm_medium=influencer_name.
You can create UTM tags for free using the Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder. This enables you to track website visits and conversions via Google Analytics or your web analytics platform of choice.
If you skip this step, and the user simply enters your website address in the search bar of their browser or clicks on a normal link, the traffic will most likely show up as anonymous. This means you will be unable to identify where the traffic came from and which channels are driving engagement and sales.
Offer discount codes
A popular tracking method for e-commerce brands is using discount codes.
Let’s say you are the marketing manager of a sportswear brand and are working with an influencer to promote your new sports shoes. If you see a sudden increase in sales, it might be because of your collaboration. However, it might also be down to your TV commercial or print ad….
Encouraging users to apply a discount code, such as INFLUENCERNAME10%, in return for a 10% discount will make it a whole lot easier to figure out whether your influencer marketing strategy is effectively driving sales. This is particularly effective if you are partnering with several different influencers at the same time – all you need to do is create a different code for each influencer and compare how often each code was applied.
4. Monitor all platforms – including Instagram stories and TikTok 🤖
For a long time, “dark social” made it difficult for brands to accurately measure the results of their social media marketing. Traffic that really came from a social media platform would show up as anonymous in their web analytics software. So you need to have all your bases covered.
For example, 80% of brand mentions happen on Instagram Stories – yet they disappear after 24 hours. Storyclash is one of the few influencer marketing platforms which saves Instagram Stories to a database. Storyclash applies text recognition to images and videos, so you can track and download every story where your brand was mentioned. Learn more about tracking Instagram Stories here.
Similarly, TikTok has become an incredibly popular platform for influencer marketing. However, it's not enough to simply partner with popular TikTok creators and hope for the best. To make the most of your TikTok campaigns, it's essential to track metrics beyond views, like reach and estimated media value. This enables you to identify top-performing influencers, optimize your strategies, and ensure that you're seeing a positive ROI from your investment. Get our guide to TikTok analytics or learn more about how Storyclash approaches TikTok monitoring.
5. Explore influencer marketing technology 💽
Whether you are an agency or an in-house marketer: to do a good job, you need the right tools. By now, most brands have realized the value of influencer marketing and are increasing their budget accordingly. As such, it becomes even more important to track the results effectively.
After all, if your boss asks, “What benefit do we have from influencer marketing?”, it is better to be able to hand over precise data rather than getting red-faced and saying, “Um, not sure.”
That’s where influencer marketing software comes in. A good platform will enable you to track influencer campaigns, create reports and measure the KPIs that matter – within minutes instead of hours, no screenshots or spreadsheets needed!
6. Benchmark your performance against competitors 🤏
Benchmarking is a key element of measuring your success. For instance, let’s say your interactions grew by 10%, and your total fans increased by 0.5%. That might be quite good. But what if your competitor is experiencing even more interaction, and their fanbase, while currently still smaller than yours, is growing faster? Storyclash makes it easy to see where you stand in comparison with your competitors.
It is critical to monitor your competitors on social media. What's working for them? Which content is driving interactions on which platforms? Learn from and replicate their tactics, and measure your performance against theirs to see how well your brand is really doing.
7. Share the insights with key stakeholders 🤝
If influencer marketing is delivering outstanding results for your company, then make sure everyone knows what a fantastic job you and your team are doing.
While manual reports using Google Analytics and Microsoft Excel might be okay to get started, most brands reach the point where they need a more automated solution. An influencer marketing platform will enable you to compare campaigns, and quickly put together customized reports for meetings and presentations.
Ready to start tracking your influencer marketing performance?
If you are serious about measuring the impact of your social media and influencer marketing efforts, investing in the right technology can make all the difference to your brand. Learn more about Storyclash’s analytics capabilities or book a demo to see Storyclash in action.