As social media platforms continue to grow and increase in popularity, so has influencer marketing. Take a look at the following statistics from The State of Influencer Marketing 2023 Benchmark Report:
- More than 60% of brands surveyed work with more than 10 influencers
- Over 80% of those surveyed intended to have an influencer marketing budget in 2023
- In 2023, influencer marketing was projected to grow by about $21.1 billion, a significant increase from $16.4 billion in the previous year.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is when a business teams up with an individual who has a relatively large following or engagement on social media. You’ve most likely seen this type of marketing on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms. The individual posts content on their social media platform mentioning the product or service. In return, the business pays the individual an agreed-upon amount of money.
When used strategically, businesses can make a steady profit from partnering with influencers for their marketing efforts. To know whether or not your business has benefited from the influencer marketing campaign, you need to measure its success by tracking the right metrics.
Metrics to Measure the Success of an Influencer Marketing Campaign
The influencer marketing metrics to measure vary depending on campaign goals (e.g. reach, traffic, sales, and conversions) for your business. Having a clear understanding of the metrics will help you develop a successful campaign and choose which ones are worth measuring. According to Agency Analytics, the following five metrics are commonly tracked for influencer marketing: \
- Conversions: Measuring conversions (the desired action you want your audience to take) is a way to track growth. This could be growth of sales, sign-ups for a newsletter, clicks on a specific link and more. A skilled marketer tracks conversions before, during, and after a campaign to compare and contrast data.
- Referral Traffic: Being aware of the amount of traffic an influencer marketing campaign leads to your business’ site will help measure the success of the campaign because conversions aren’t always reliable if barriers get in the way of prospective customers completing your desired action. Marketers can track new visitors, referral sources, total page views and time spent on the site to get a better view of the campaign.
- Reach and Awareness: A main benefit of influencer campaigns is the opportunity to boost brand awareness and build new relationships thanks to the influencer’s large community. Marketers track reach and awareness through impressions data on posts created specifically for the campaign.
- Audience Growth: Audience growth allows marketers to see how the influencer campaign affected their own business’ social media platforms or email signups. Marketers monitor the amount of new followers their organization gains for each platform, as well as for their email list. They can then compare these numbers to pre-campaign numbers.
- Engagement: Your audience engages with content in several ways that can be measured. These ways include likes, comments, video views, shares, reactions and more. Engagement is critical to measure, because it illustrates how your brand is being received, your relevance, and the strength of your audience relationship.
Are you wondering how to exactly measure these influencer marketing campaign metrics? Don’t worry — there’s tech for that!
How to Measure Influencer Marketing Campaign Metrics
To gather the correct data, digital marketers always have a toolkit of tech. Measuring influencer campaign metrics is no different. Common tools to collect all the data you need are:
- Google Analytics: This is a free way to track and report your business website traffic, including traffic obtained and conversions generated from an influencer campaign.
- Spreadsheets: This would be the “old school” way to record numbers from before, during, and after the campaign. Although this method may take more time and effort, it isn’t necessarily less effective than using software.
- Software: Influencer marketing platforms were created to help businesses find, manage, and track influencers to work with. They can also give businesses detailed insights and analytics to track campaign performance. Examples of influencer marketing platforms are Upfluence, Grapevine and CreatorIQ.
Some digital marketers use all three of these tools to support their influencer marketing campaign efforts and prove the return on investment (ROI).
Become A Digital Marketing Leader at Concordia-Chicago
Influencer marketing is not going away anytime soon. The reasons businesses invest in influencer marketing include:
- the ability to reach new audiences
- younger generations trust influencers
- people tend to buy more from real people
- the declining effectiveness of traditional ads
In Concordia University Chicagos’s online MBA in digital marketing program, you’re equipped with the knowledge and skills to strategize and create impactful marketing campaigns to drive business for your organization.
Visit Concordia-Chicago’s MBA in digital marketing overview page today and take the next steps to become a top marketing leader in your organization.
