Statistics and data are important while measuring the success of a marketing campaign. When it comes to influencer marketing, the important metric that decides its success rate is the return on investment of the business.
For the marketers to know if their influencer marketing strategy is working out or not, they need to measure the KPIs of their influencer marketing technique. KPIs or key performance indicators help in analyzing and measuring the success of influencer marketing strategy.
KPIs are defined as a “set of quantifiable measures that the company uses to gauge the performance of its marketing strategies against time.”
Influencer Marketing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators):
The KPIs of influencer marketing helps the brands to connect with their specific goals, and they tend to vary between one brand to another. But the key indicators are discussed below,
1.Traffic Generation:
One prime goal of any influencer marketing strategy is to attract the audience and drive more and more traffic for the website. KPIs here would include new website visitors, repeat visitors for the same website, time spent by the visitors on the page etc.
Traffic KPIs indicate the number of people who have been diverted towards the client website by a particular influencer. The time these people spend on the website also would indicate, how much they value the website and the content posted on it.
The best way to measure website traffic is to use tools such as Google Analytics. It could be used to measure the following data ranges,
The number of new users: It is possible to measure the number of new users who are visiting the web page for the very first time. This is also an indicator that shows if brand awareness is improving or not.
The number of sessions: The total number of sessions that are been recorded on the website within a specified time period could be assessed through this tool.
Time spent on the site: This is the record of the average time duration that users have spent on the website. This helps to figure out the bounce rates of the web page as well.
Page views: This is the record of the number of pages that were visited during the same time period. This is an analysis that shows the pages that the users spend for a majority of their time.
Visits by referrals: This is a record of the number of visits being diverted by a particular influencer towards the product’s website.
Visits from Referrals – This helps you track which of your influencers are driving traffic to your site.
Google Analytics tool also helps in running a comparative analysis of website performance before and after the indulgence of influencer marketing. If the influencer marketing is leveraged appropriately, it is possible to enhance the website traffic by at least 200%.
2. User Engagement metrics:
These are the same as social media KPIs, while the former shows metrics on new followers, engagement KPIs indicate the level of influence the particular post has created. The more the likes, shares and comments on a post, great is the engagement level and the popularity of the brand.
The amount of engagement that the content attracts is a measure of success, engagement is not merely the reach of the content but is the actual interaction the content gets. It could be measured by the following metrics.
Clicks: This is the figure that points out the level of interest of the target audience. The more the clicks, greater is the interest of the audience towards that particular content.
Likes: Likes are the measure of content appreciation by the audience. Likes also quantify the interest and buzz around the content created by the influencer.
Shares: Shares are the indicators of the quality of the content, more the people recommend the content among their social media circles, better is its quality measure. It is more likely that people who recommend the content would recommend the products as well.
Reactions: emoji is one of the best features of social media platform as it allows people to express their inherent emotions over the content. They are way better than simple likes and reflect the sentiment associated with the content among the minds of the participants.
Comments: These are the verbal feedback that audience offers for content, and indirectly the product, the influencer is trying to propagate.
Mentions on the brand: Measuring the quantity and quality of brand mentions allows brands to track the quantum at which the brand has been amplified and discussed among the public.
When Engagement is been tracked, another influencer KPI that has to be borne in mind is tracking the company’s cost per engagement. This metric would give an idea of the money that is been invested per click or mention.
3. Social Media KPIs:
Another important advantage of influencer marketing is that influencers would enhance the social presence of the business and would improve its social media following. Social media KPIs would indicate if the influencer is driving enough traffic towards the social media pages of the brand, the number of followers, shares, views, likes and comments within a speculated time frame are also the key indicators.
Social media is a huge ocean and the influencer for a business could be on any social media platform, but the marketing content that is been prepared in collaboration with them should positively impact the social media pages of the brand. Brand awareness is the key element of marketing and brands should measure their own social media growth which is an important Influencer Marketing KPI to measure.
This could be done either by manual tracking or by using the analytical features of the social media platform. Another important aspect to measure is the growth in the number of the target audience and their demographics as well.
4. Conversion rates:
The process of converting traffic into consumers is called conversion. Conversion KPIs shows the marketers the metrics on how many people take the action of making a purchase as a result of influencer marketing. One way to track this is to offer a coupon code to each influencer which could be distributed among the followers. Calculating the number of times the codes were used at the time of check out could help to ascertain the number of conversions made by that particular influencer.
Lead generation and conversion rates are the results of enhanced visibility of the brand and the engagement of the audience. Identifying the channels that are responsible for generating most of the leads for the business is critical so as to enhance the return on investment for a business. The analytical tools to measure conversion rates and lead generation are Google Analytics without any surprise.
It uses the customer acquisition report to check the channels through which traffic is been generated, it is also possible to evaluate the performance of the campaign on social media and the base of the leads that are been generated. More than tracking lead generation, it is the conversion tracking that needs more speculation. Because, the entire purpose of influencer marketing is to boost sales, even brands that use influencer marketing to enhance brands visibility should concentrate on boosting its sales as well.
5. Sales:
The next most important metric to measure the success of an influencer marketing campaign is the quantum of sales it has chunked out. This is the ultimate goal of any marketing campaign and some of the brands have used it to their advantage to boost their sales up to 14 times in a span of just 4 months.
There are a number of ways to promote sales through influencer marketing such as using affiliate links, using promo codes, coupons and vouchers etc. To measure the sales that are queued through influencer marketing, unique codes, UTM parameters and trackable links could be used.
Brands could make use of affiliate links as well, as they have the additional advantage of showing the number of sales, quantum of click through rates and the average value of every single purchase. When promo codes are used through influencers, then it is possible to predict the future sales as well.
6. Return on Investment:
After measuring the sales that is been generated by partnering with an influencer, the next key metric to measure is the return on investment. Influencer definitely would help in creating a huge follower base for a business, this may be enough for brands that are looking only to create brand awareness, but for brands that need to equate large amount of sales through influencer marketing, KPI to measure ROI is mandatory. The key metrics to measure ROI are as follows,
Budget: Brands have to set a clear budget picture of how much they could spend on the influencer campaign.
Calculate the worth of the influencer: Brands have to calculate the worth of each influencer before partnering with them so as to calculate budget allocations appropriately.
Setting goals: The goals of the campaign should be set in advance so as to alter the marketing efforts appropriately.
Measuring cost: A proper record of how much is been spend on influencer marketing would help brands to tally it against the profits earned by it through influencer marketing.
7. Behavior of the followers:
The behavior of the followers of a social media post is an excellent indicator of the influence of influencer marketing. Loyalty is measured through specific engagement types such as writing positive comments of a brand’s sponsored post.
An increase in the number of followers for a brand after influencer marketing is alone not the indicator of its high performance but the comments posted by them matters as well. Comments such as,
‘I would love to use the product’,
‘would surely recommend this,’
‘this is what I was waiting for’
are a welcoming note for a good influencer marketing strategy.
Importance of measuring influencer marketing KPIs:
Strategic marketers say that anything that is been measured in a business, is been managed well. If the brands marketers are not paying good attention to the various performance indicators of their marketing strategy then they won’t be able to understand what is happening in the process and they won’t be able to identify their areas of improvement.
Tracking the metrics periodically would help marketers to adjust their course of action or to try something different, also KPIs helps them to see how well the strategy is working and what they should continue doing.
Some renowned examples of Influencer Marketing KPIs:
The Daniel Wellington Watch Company:
The company is known for using influencer marketing to enhance its brand. One of the ways is used to track the effectiveness of the campaign by giving promo codes to its influencers to be shared with their followers. The promo codes are unique for different influencers and it allowed the brand to calculate how many people end up buying their product from a particular influencer.
Fashion Nova:
The brand claims to enhance its business by at least 600% with the help of a network of its 3000 influencers. The brand tracked the number of Instagram followers it had before and after indulging in influencer marketing. It was pursued that the brand doubled its amount of followers on the social media channel.
Rescue:
Rescue, a renowned brand wanted to create brand awareness through influencer marketing. They created a coupon and asked their influencers to circulate it using the hashtag #StressLess2BMyBest. The campaign also encouraged the followers to share their own stories with products of Rescue through the hashtag. The brand was able to generate more than 6000 likes on the page and an increase in the followers’ base up to 250%.
Final words:
Influencer marketing is capable of doing wonders for a brand but it has to strike its chord against the appropriate audience. The only way brands could tell if influencer marketing is working or not is by measuring and monitoring its key metrics. There are a number of influencer marketing KPIs to track and are to be carefully chosen based on the goals set by the brand for its influencer marketing campaign.