Influencer marketing is becoming popular day by day and almost 80 percent of brands are dedicating a sizeable budget to it.
It is expected that in the year 2020 $8 million will be spent on Instagram marketing alone.
Of course, this means that there is a massive growth in influencer marketing, but it does not show whether the desired results are being achieved.
In order to determine whether your influencer program is successful, you should track the performance of the campaign and make sure that the return justifies the investment.
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Let us look at how brands can calculate the influencer marketing ROI
Set the Accurate Goals for Proper ROI Tracking
You should set clear goals and objectives in any influencer marketing program. This will help you in deciding what kind of influencers you should work with, the types of content, distribution platforms, and others. Some of the common goals of influencer marketing that every brand should have are as follows:
- Increase brand awareness
- Improve advocacy of the brand
- Reach new target audience
- Increase sales
Manage the Brand Image
However, you need to bear in mind that the goals mentioned above are broad ones and you need to delve deeper to set goals as a more micro level. This helps you track the ROI of influencer marketing.
Measure Campaign Performance with the Right Metrics
Once you have set the goals for the campaign you will have to decide the metrics to measure the goals. These goals should be:
- Specific – if your goal is to increase revenue then you need to decide the percentage of the actual amount
- Set timeline – you should track the increase in traffic every week or every fortnight after the launch
- Be achievable – if you set an unrealistic criterion for determining the success of the influencer campaign then it is bound to fail
It is not necessary to pick a single metric to understand whether you have achieved your goal. For instance, if your aim is to increase brand awareness then you should look at the number of clicks, impressions, follower growth, brand mentions, strengthen brand engagement, etc.
if you are not sure about which metrics you should choose then you can check the common metrics that all marketers use. According to studies, engagement is the most popular metric to measure the success of influencer marketing platforms and programs. This is followed by clicks, impressions ad conversions. You can also look at metrics like reach and sales.
For Individual Influencers Develop the Performance Metrics
It is necessary to understand which influencers are successful and which are lagging behind. This will help you to focus on the influencers that are contributing and stop spending money and resources where the influencers are not successful.
The goals that you set for individual influencers should be aligned with your campaign goals. For instance, if the main goal of your campaign is to generate a particular revenue. The goal for the influencer should be the minimum amount the person generates within the same time frame. The common metrics for individual influencers include:
- Total impressions
- Average engagement rate
- Number of clicks to the website or landing page
- Conversion to customers
- Revenue
This data can help you to assess the performance of each influencer and take informed decisions on whether to continue with them or not.
Choose the Platform for Tracking Influencer
Instead of using manual methods to track the ROI of your influencer campaign it is advisable to look for influencer marketing platforms. They will make the task of tracking your campaign accurately along with the performance of the influencers. This will also save your time, to invest in tasks that require manual involvement. Some influencer programs that can help you to track your campaign ROI include:
- Neoreach – this platform has a reporting and tracking feature with which you can measure the performance in real-time. This will help you to track impressions, engagements, and ROI along with your cost per impression and cost per engagement. This platform allows you to monitor the performance of influencer, campaign or post.
- Tapinfluence – This will allow you to analyze the ROI in real-time. The performance of each influencer can be tracked based on metrics like reach, ROI, total media value and engagement.
- Grin – this platform is the most comprehensive when it comes to the list of KPIs to measure the performance of your campaign. With this platform, you can use metrics like content pieces, conversions, ROI, media value, cost per click, engagements, and impressions.
Measure the Influencers
Usually, most brands look at the performance of the entire campaign, but that is not enough. You should start by picking the first group of influencers to start the campaign. Track the performance of each of the influencers initially. You should also document the engagement rates of the posts of each influencer and compare it to the entire group of influencers.
Assess the Results
If you have information on the performance of the individual influencer then you can pick out the poorly performing ones and retain the top influencers only. Add some new influencers and run the program for a short duration with this new mix of influencers.
This will help you to improve the effectiveness of your next campaign and run a successful influencer program for your brand. IT is always better to be on the safe side and run multiple campaigns and remove the influencers whose performance is poor. Do not make the mistake of a long-term campaign with a fixed set of influencers.
Go Ahead and Measure the ROI
If you intend to run a successful influencer program then you require a proper plan and proper execution. At the same time, you also need a detailed measurement strategy.
With the help of the guide mentioned in this article, you can easily assess your influencer program and improve the ROI. This will ensure that you do not waste money and other resources on an influencer campaign, but instead get maximum ROI from it.
