Influencer analytics is the analysis of data related to influencer marketing and influencer marketing campaigns. It involves the collection, measurement, and benchmarking of various metrics to gauge the effectiveness of collaborations between brands and influencers.
With influencer marketing analytics, businesses gain valuable insights into the performance of their creator-driven campaigns and can make data-driven adjustments to enhance their strategies.
Keep reading to find out why influencer analytics matters, and how you can use it to level up your collaborations with creators.
Why is influencer analytics important?
There are many reasons why you should analyze influencers. Here are a few of the main ones:
- Decide which influencers to work with
Before kicking off a collaboration, it’s important to thoroughly vet potential influencers. You can do this by checking their content and previous collabs, and the results they generated. There are a few KPIs to consider when choosing influencers. Some of the main ones are follower count, engagement rate, the number of postings per month, and the estimated media value.
While follower count is important, engagement rate is important for distinguishing between genuinely popular influencers, and those with lots of bot traffic. Here you can see what those metrics look like for macro influencer Kendall Jenner:
- Measure your ROI
Let’s be honest: brands are pumping significant amounts of money into influencer marketing.
57% of brands spend more than $10k per year on influencer marketing. 25% of brands spend more than $50k, and 11% spend more than $500k!
With those kinds of investments, it’s essential to measure the business impact of the results. Businesses can do that by assessing metrics such as influencer media value, conversion rates, and return on investment (ROI).
By analyzing influencers and quantifying the impact of influencer partnerships, brands can allocate resources more effectively. Influencer marketers who can prove positive ROI will also have an easier job internally when it comes to asking for more budget.
- Get audience insights
Understanding audience demographics is crucial to ensure that brands can reach their target audience.
Influencer analytics provides in-depth insights into the age, gender, and location of the influencer's followers. This information helps brands decide who to work with and how to tailor their messages to strike a chord with specific groups of consumers.
- Optimize influencer content
With influencer analytics, brands can identify the type of content that generates the most engagement. They can then provide constructive feedback to influencers, helping them to create content that aligns with both brand identity and audience preferences.
- Evaluate performance
Not all influencer partnerships yield the same results. Analyzing influencers enables brands to assess the performance of individual influencers or campaigns. By identifying top-performing influencers, brands can cultivate long-term relationships with those who consistently drive positive outcomes.
Types of Influencer Marketing Analytics & KPIs
Within influencer analytics, we can identify several key sub-categories:
Audience Analytics
This category deals with the demographics, preferences, and behaviors of an influencer's follower base. By analyzing audience data, businesses can gain a comprehensive understanding of the users engaging with the influencer's content and see if they are a fit for the brand’s target audience.
For example, let’s say you’re a cosmetics brand and you’re considering working with German beauty influencer Julia Beautx. Storyclash makes it easy to access audience insights for any influencer.
You just open Storyclash, and search for “Julia Beautx”. Then, you navigate to the “Audience” tab. You’ll get valuable insights into her followers, including their age, gender, language, and location. You’ll also see an Audience Quality Score and see the breakdown of real people vs. suspicious accounts, helping you judge the value and authenticity of her audience.
Most important KPIs: Audience Quality Score, real people %, median age, top gender & top country
Content Analytics
Content analytics involves assessing the performance of different content pieces published by an influencer. Metrics such as engagement rates, likes, shares, and comments provide businesses with insights into the effectiveness of various content formats.
Going back to our beauty brand example, let’s say you’re still interested in working with Julia Beautx and want to take a closer look at her content.
In the overview tab, you can check all of her content on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. You can even see Instagram Stories after the 24 hour limit.
Then, you can check key reach and engagement KPIs for her posts:
These insights will give you an idea of the kind of reach and engagement you could expect if your brand worked with her.
You can use the same method to track and measure the content performance of influencers you are already working with.
Most important KPIs: Engagement, Estimated Reach, Estimated Media Value
Campaign Analytics
Campaign analytics means evaluating the success of influencer collaborations in relation to campaign goals, like sales and brand awareness. Metrics like conversion rates, click-through rates, and return on investment, enable brands to measure the impact of their partnerships.
You’ll want to keep track of who your top creators are, which content performed best, and the overall results. For example, we ran an analysis checking the performance of Louis Vuitton’s campaigns over the past 12 months. You can see that their campaigns involved 15 active creators and 312 posts, generating an engagement rate of 1.3% and an estimated media value of €2 million.
Most important KPIs: This will depend on your campaign goals. For awareness, the number of posts, engagement and estimated reach are helpful. For sales, you’ll want to look more at your conversion tracking data.
Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking measures the tangible actions taken by the audience after engaging with influencer content. This includes tracking conversions such as website visits, sign-ups, downloads, and purchases – essential data for assessing the impact on business goals.
You can track conversions by giving influencers special discount codes or affiliate links. So you’ll know which influencers to attribute the conversion to.
In this example, fashion brand Oceans Apart provided Instagram influencer @die.doris97 with the code “doris15”, so her followers could get 15% off and the purchases could be attributed to her:
Most important KPIs: conversion rate, number of conversions, return on investment (ROI)
Competitor Analysis
This analytical approach involves monitoring the influencer collaborations of competitors. By understanding their influencer strategies and performance metrics, businesses can refine their own approaches to gain a competitive edge.
Going back to our beauty example, let’s say Charlotte Tilbury is a competitor and you want to check out their collaborations and the results.
With Storyclash, you can check out who they work with and the kind of results they’re experiencing:
You can see an overview of all their collabs, and do a deep-dive into the performance of any individual creator:
If you don’t have access to Storyclash, you can use our free tool. Just type the name of the brand and you’ll see some of the influencers they work with. You can then do your own research on Instagram to see how the content resonated with the creator’s target audience.
Most important KPIs: Collaborating creators, number of posts, potential audience size, engagement rate
Analyzing Influencers: A Step-by-Step Guide
Selecting the right influencers for your brand requires a deep dive into their online presence and audience. This ensures you partner with people who genuinely share your brand values and whose content resonates with your target market. Follow these steps to effectively analyze influencers:
- Evaluate audience authenticity and demographics: Check if an audience’s followers seem to be real people or bots. Then, dive into the demographics of the influencer's audience, including age, gender, location, and interests, to ensure they align with your target market.
- Assess engagement rates: Consider the number of likes, comments, shares, and saves against the total number of followers. High engagement rates typically indicate a strong connection with the audience. You can gauge the quality of engagement by reading through comments to see if they are meaningful and not just generic responses.
- Evaluate the percentage of branded content: Consider the ratio of branded content to organic posts.If it’s low, this indicates limited experience with brand partnerships. On the other hand, a high percentage of branded content could signal to the audience that the influencer’s platform is too commercialized, which can cause audiences to disengage.
- Analyze content quality: Check if the images, videos, and other content types posted by the influencer are high quality and original. Content should be relevant to your brand or industry and exhibit a consistent style and voice. Pay special attention to their past collaborations. This gives you an idea of the quality you could expect if your brand works with them.
By following these steps, you'll be better equipped to select influencers who not only align with your brand's values and goals but also have the potential to engage your target audience effectively.
Here’s what that could look like.
Let’s say you’re considering a collab with megastar influencer Selena Gomez. First, you check out her audience. According to Storyclash data, her audience is made up of 63% real people, 3.7% other influencers, 13.3% mass followers, and 19.5% suspicious accounts (possibly bots).
Her audience is predominantly female (60%), and the median age is 34.
You notice she has an engagement rate of 1.2% on Instagram. And 34.9% of her posts are branded content.
Finally, you do a deep dive into the brands she has worked with, and what the branded content looked like.
Selena works with many brands in different industries, spanning beauty, fashion, and entertainment. Most of her branded posts are for her own brand Rare Beauty, followed by Sephora:
Based on these insights, you can decide whether Selena would be a good fit for your brand or not. We used Storyclash for this analysis. While you can get some of these insights manually by checking her Instagram feed, it’s much easier to do it with an influencer analytics tool.
Influencer Analytics Tools
There are many tools available that can help you with your influencer analytics needs. The exact features depend on the tool, but most of them can handle the categories we covered above, like audience, content, and campaign analytics.
Let's explore some of these tools and their features in more detail:
Storyclash: Storyclash is the AI-powered Influencer Marketing Platform that helps your team discover authentic creators, measure the impact of your campaigns and manage all your data in one place. Fast-growing DTCs like Bears With Benefits, Junglück or Kapten & Son, as well as large, established companies like Vodafone, Lululemon or Kaufland use Storyclash to get more out of their influencer marketing.
Of course we’re biased, but we really feel Storyclash gives you the highest level of insight when it comes to analyzing influencers’ content, campaigns and audiences and spying on competitors.
Grin: Grin is an influencer marketing platform headquartered in California, established in 2014. Primarily catering to eCommerce and DTC brands, Grin offers integrations with major shopping platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento. It focuses on influencer discovery, relationship management, campaign coordination, analytics, and content amplification, supporting various social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube.
Grin's unique approach centers around building direct relationships with influencers, potentially appealing to brands seeking such connections.
HypeAuditor: This tool focuses on audience authenticity, providing an in-depth analysis of an influencer's follower base. It identifies fake followers and engagement, ensuring brands collaborate with influencers who have genuine reach.
AspireIQ: Formerly known as Revfluence, AspireIQ is a comprehensive influencer marketing platform. It offers features like campaign management, content approval workflows, and robust analytics to track campaign performance.
Traackr: Traackr emphasizes the identification of influencers that align with a brand's values and goals. It offers advanced search and discovery capabilities, enabling brands to find influencers who truly resonate with their target audience.
Upfluence: With a focus on data-driven decisions, Upfluence provides tools to find, contact, and track influencers. Its campaign tracking features help brands monitor the success of their influencer collaborations in real-time.
Get started with the art and science of influencer analytics
By now, you should have a solid understanding of how influencer analytics works and why it’s important. From decoding audience demographics to fine-tuning content strategies and evaluating campaign impact, businesses can leverage influencer analytics to gain data-driven insights and make informed decisions.
Ready to take a deeper dive into what influencer analytics can do for your business? Schedule a demo with one of our influencer marketing experts to see our analytics capabilities in action.
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