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Influencer marketing is the hottest thing in 2021. For every dollar a company spends in influencer marketing, they make back more than 5dollars on average. If the products you are selling visually appeal to the younger demographic, then the chances of success are even higher through influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing is a pretty new method of marketing when compared to the other marketing concepts, which implies that we are still in the Wild West era of influencer marketing. Many well-known brands and businesses are still just figuring out how to work their way into influencer marketing. We will go deep into the details of how an influencer marketing campaign can be tracked. These concepts will help you gain further insight and better understand how influencer marketing works, if it’s working for you and whether you should be choosing one influencer over the other for your brand.
Below you will find 8 tips to track and measure your campaign for influencer marketing.
1. Have a campaign objective
One useful thing to keep in mind is that you can always reverse engineer a campaign objective and KPIs to align that with your influencer marketing campaign.
Tracking marketing campaigns based on single objectives can be helpful to assess the effect it has on the overall operation. It does not matter whether it is a traffic concern, engagement, conversions campaign, brand awareness, whatever the case may be, tracking the most relevant KPIs will let one analyze how successfully a campaign performs.
Before you are about to begin the process of tracking, take notes. Note down all the present data, and only then can you successfully and accurately measure KPIs that can be credited to the campaign once you have launched the ship.
The most useful KPIs to include are- engagement, reach, impressions, follower growth, traffic, link clicks, conversions, page visits, and app downloads. Some of them may vary if your objective varies as well. The idea is to track all of these factors with different tools at your disposal.
2. Align your strategies with the influencer marketing campaigns
You have to link your influencer marketing campaigns to bigger goals that you are hoping to achieve. If raising your brand awareness is a goal, track different metrics such as post reach, social media content impressions on the branded posts of the influencer’s post. Then compare those to the metrics of your social media posts.
Increasing sales is another goal you might have, and to accentuate the likelihood of an increase in your sales, provide the influencer with a discount code. The influencer can share the code or link to his audience, and the result might surprise you. The measurement should start with goal alignment for campaigns involving bigger sale cycles (B2B influencer campaigns in this case) that require influencers who have substantial credentials.
3. Assessing the traffic gained from an Influencer marketing campaign
We have already discovered the potential of influencer marketing at this point, and influencer campaigns can help drive relevant traffic directly to your website in various ways. When you receive this boost in traffic, it will help with sales, lead generation, and brand awareness. It’s essential that you monitor the clicks on the website that are coming from the campaign.
Through the following metrics, you can accurately assess the results of the aftermath of an influencer campaign.
The first metric to look into is Page visitor. How many users or audiences are being sent to your website through an influencer? Are they relevant, do they convert, what demographic do they belong to?
The second metric is paid conversions and signups. Of all the people sent over by an influencer, how many of them are signing up on your platform? How much of this traffic is turning into paid users?
Using a referral anchor can help you understand which influencer these users are coming from. A URL shortener can be used to help you to brand and track links.
4. Referral Traffic
Acquisition>Traffic>Referrals, the line that Walter Wertz of JungleTopp utilizes in Google Analytics, is a method that enables various interesting assessment options. The referral pages help you to understand exactly where the traffic is coming from. This is the same thing as a referral anchor. Depending on what you are asking the influencer to help you with, you can assess most of the results and track them back to that influencer.
5. Coupon Codes
The process of tracking sales before, during, and after the influencer campaign helps you better analyze the results, which enables you to assess whether you should invest in the same influencer again or not.
Dedicated discount coupons are amazing to help you which of the converted audience are coming from which influencer. This is considered the best way to get REAL data in terms of your ROI. Things like the cost of acquiring the influencer and the generated income/.revenue from the coupon code and finally the results help you get to the bottom of the matter in a few minutes.
If you are someone who wishes to collaborate with various influencers at the same time, then using unique coupons for each can help you track everything effortl4essly and flawlessly. The influencers will provide the coupon to their audience, and the audience will have an incentive to use the coupons to get discounts, and all that will help you better assess the results.
6. Providing the Influencers with an affiliate link
While a number of different tactics exist to track an influencer marketing campaign, the most simple tactic is to provide them with an affiliate link. By offering a product that influencers affiliated can share, the link will help you track influencer-based traffic without having to have different coupons. Using trackable links can also provide a clear assessment of the performance metrics. Using a built-in analytics tool to examine the numbers is highly recommended.
7. UTM parameters
By giving unique links to micro-influencers during your influencer marketing campaign helps you keep this organized and execute a good tracking methodology. Create a unique URL for the influencers you are collaborating with. You can choose to use a URL shortener or create a UTM. This makes things easier for you. Within the CTAs, it is recommended that you are using as many tracking metrics as possible.
8. Automation
By using a different application, you can automate most of the process of your influencer marketing campaign. Using Bit.ly, you can track clicks. It will provide you with a basic idea of the estimated reach of an influencer. You can also utilize a Shopify app by the name of GoAffPro. It will help you track revenue from links that you might give to your influencers. They would usually add those links in their post or video description. Some people also use Upfluence, and others opt for BuzzGuru, an all-in-one solution for influencer marketing campaign analysis.
Conclusion
These tips mentioned above can be implemented individually and in combinations. Depending on the business you run and the influencer you choose, some of the factors may change, and usually, the change is minor and does not require too much of a hassle. That said, the most important thing, perhaps, is finding the right influencer to collaborate with, and everything comes after that.
You may also like: How Instagram Influencers Can Boost Your Marketing Strategy
Image source: Shutterstock.com
