A Guide to Influencer Marketing: Measuring Campaign Success

A guide to influencer marketing is every marketer's dream when measuring campaign success. But, what is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is when a brand collaborates with a social media influencer to promote their products. An Influencer is someone who has a significant social media presence and has the power to impact consumers buying behaviour. Many influencers work with brands to showcase their products on their social channels in the hope that their followers will then purchase the product. Did you know the influencer marketing industry is now estimated to be worth a whopping $5 -10 billion? Check out this Big Commerce blog for more interesting statistics on influencer marketing. 

However, influencer marketing can be expensive for businesses and it can be tricky to know if it has worked or not. Therefore, in this blog post, we will explain how to measure the success of an influencer marketing campaign. How you track your success ultimately depends on the campaign goals.

Increasing Brand Awareness With Your Influencer Campaign

If your campaign goal is to increase brand awareness some key KPI’s you should be measuring include:

• Page views 
• Impressions
• Social media followers 
• Social media mentions

Pageviews are important as you need to know if the page views have increased and if the traffic to your site is coming from the influencer’s content. Pageviews, and where the traffic is coming from, can be easily tracked through Google Analytics. Impressions show how many times someone has viewed the content and can be requested from the influencer themselves. It can be found in their profile analytics.

Furthermore, an increase in social media followers for your business accounts is a clear sign more people are hearing about your brand. These can be tracked through your own social media profiles.

Lastly, an increase in social media mentions whilst you are running an influencer marketing campaign can indicate your brand awareness is increasing. By conducting social listening you can understand what people are saying about your brand and how brand awareness is increasing. 

If Your Aim is to Increase Engagement 

If the aim of your campaign is to increase social media engagement key KPI’s include:

• Engagement rate
• Shares 
• Likes 
• Comments 

All engagement KPI’s can be measured through social media analytics. However, you will not have access to the influencers analytics the full time. But, you can request a report to show whether the campaign is going successfully. However, your own engagement should see an increase as the influencer drives traffic to your channels by tagging you and showcasing your products or services. You can also repost the influencer's content or conduct an influencer takeover to drive more traffic to your own social channels.

Increase Conversions with Influencer Marketing

Ideally most businesses hope influencer marketing will increase their sales. Conversion KPI’s to measure include:

• Conversion Rate
• Number of Sales

Both of these KPI’s can be tracked through Google Analytics. A surge in sales whilst you are running an influencer campaign could be an indication that it is working. But, it’s important to remember to check where the traffic is coming from. Furthermore, you could create a UTM parameter for the campaign. This means you can track when a customer makes a purchase through a link provided by the influencer. Lastly, creating a unique discount code for the influencer to share with their followers can again be useful. This means you can see how many people are purchasing because they have seen your brand on the influencers social channels. 

We know it can be a bit more tricky to measure success rate when it comes to influencer marketing. Nonetheless, we hope this guide to influencer marketing has given you an insight into how to measure the success of an influencer campaign. Like any great marketing strategy, it is important to set achievable goals and to track the data. If you need more tips and tricks on working with influencers, check out this blog on Influencer Marketing Regulations.

Written by Emma Sheddon