Influencer marketing campaigns are making waves as a marketing strategy since they provide third-party credibility and brand awareness to the right audiences. An influencer can enhance a brand's visibility and social reach, usually beyond the capabilities of traditional media outlets.
Tapping into influencer marketing requires planning and budget, so it's important to confirm that influencers are making a positive impact on the brand in terms of return on investment. It's impossible to determine if an influencer marketing campaign is actually improving a business without measuring the campaign's effect. Here are four ways to track how successful an influencer marketing campaign is.
Start with a clear goal in mind for what the campaign should achieve. Goals should be measurable and specific: increasing web traffic by a set percentage, or growing following by a set amount every week. A data-driven approach defines quantitatively what success means before the campaign launches.
Engagement Rate
Social media tracking tools can measure engagement rate post by post for every piece of content an influencer publishes about a brand. Best practice is to measure engagement post by post to evaluate what works and what doesn't. Cost per engagement (CPE) and cost per action (CPA) measure how much a brand pays for each comment, click, or other action a post generates.
Track Mentions and Hashtag Frequency
Social listening tools reveal whether a campaign is creating conversation on social media by tracking mentions and hashtags tied to the brand. This also allows a qualitative read on whether the resulting conversation is positive or negative, not just how much of it there is.
Set Up UTM Parameters
UTM parameters are tags added to a URL that get recorded in Google Analytics whenever the link is clicked. For a campaign running multiple influencers at once, a brand can assign a distinct tagged link to each influencer to see which one drives the most website conversions.
Use Promo Codes
Personalized promo codes tied to each influencer show exactly where sales are coming from, making it possible to calculate the return on investment for each individual partner rather than the campaign as a whole.
These four measurements make it possible to evaluate whether an influencer marketing campaign is working, and to run a post-campaign analysis of which type of influencer performs best for a given brand. For the complete framework on creator tiers and campaign structure beyond measurement alone, see 5W's complete guide to influencer marketing.
