Finding influencers and setting up influencer marketing campaigns is a tall order, but well worth the effort (for most brands, at least). But what's the point of getting those campaigns up and running if you don't know how well they perform or where there's room for improvement?
Some companies may not even bother with influencer marketing at all because they're unsure of how to track it, which could mean missing out on a huge opportunity to reach new leads.
By analyzing the right metrics and ignoring the ones that don't matter, you can make your campaigns more effective and your budget stretch further.
Decide Which Influencer Campaign Metrics to Track Based on Your Goals
Before you can decide which metrics to track, you have to be clear on your goals for the influencer marketing campaign.
For example, do you want to increase sales, or are you more interested in letting people know your brand exists (brand awareness)? Do you want to generate more leads, or is there another type of engagement you're focused on right now? Maybe you want people to share a post rather than click through to a landing page.
Knowing what you want out of your influencer campaigns will help you determine which metrics to track, and whether they're working in your favor.
Influencer Campaign Awareness Metrics
Three awareness-related metrics you can track are reach, impressions, and audience growth:
- Reach tells you how many people potentially saw the influencer's post. It's a reflection of how many followers the influencer has.
- Impressions can give you a better idea of how often audience members actually saw the post, since reach can be difficult to track and potential viewers aren't the same as actual viewers.
- Audience growth tells you how many new followers your social account received as a result of the influencer marketing campaign. It's a bit difficult to track exactly why you have new followers, but if you get an influx of followers while an influencer campaign is running, that's a good indication it's working.
Awareness metrics, along with engagement metrics (which we'll get to next) usually can be tracked using social data from the social platform itself or from a third-party tool.
The influencer's social data—which the influencer should share with you for the posts you've sponsored—along with your own account's social data, will give you all the information you need to track awareness metrics.
Influencer Campaign Engagement Metrics
Engagement metrics to consider tracking include engagement rate, clickthrough rate (CTR), and cost per click (CPC).
Overall, engagement metrics tell you how well your audience received the campaign and what it did as a result. If an audience is inspired to act, your campaign is doing its job.
- Engagement rate is the percentage of the audience that somehow interacted with the influencer's post. It includes people who liked, commented on, and shared the post, for example.
- CTR is the percentage of the audience that clicked on your ad (or on the link the influencer included in the post).
- CPC is how much you pay for every click on the link in the post. The lower the CPC, the better.