How to track your influencer marketing success

Influencer marketing has existed since 1970. However, it earned popularity in the last decade due to the rapid success of social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

The Instagram influencer market alone was expected to reach $5 billion by the end of 2020.

For most businesses, influencer marketing has become a primary channel of advertising. A survey by the Influencer Marketing Hub suggests that businesses are successfully making $5.20 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.

So it’s crucial to measure the performance of your campaigns because, without proper tracking, you can’t optimise and innovate the critical aspects of your campaigns.

Here are some of the best yet easiest ways to track the success of your influencer marketing campaigns:

Measure the reach of the influencer

If the reach of the influencer is massive, your campaign has higher chances of success. Hence, you must consider it as a significant parameter to track influencer campaign success. Here are a couple of ways to determine the audience reach of an influencer:

• Followers: Check the number of followers. It is a determining factor to know how many people will view your brand message. Remember that there is always a credibility issue with the actual number of followers an influencer has. You should check for bots, fake and ghost followers on different platforms using audit tools like Neoreach and Social Auditor.io before selecting any influencer.
• Impression: Check the number of impressions the influencer receives for their posts. Impression count is the number of times the users see the content. The higher the impression count, the greater will be the reach of the influencer.

Check referral traffic from influencer campaigns 

Checking the referral traffic your campaigns are generating is a great way to determine how many people saw your message and took action to visit your site.

Google Analytics is the preferred tool to check the referral traffic source. However, you can use other analytics tools such as Sitechecker, Clicky, and Woopra. These tools provide the traffic source along with useful insights like info about the visitors, their demographics, the most liked content, time spent on pages, and more.

Evaluate influencer engagement

One of the best metrics to determine whether your influencer marketing campaign is working is engagement.

Engagement happens when an influencer receives any sort of action on their posts, for example, clicks, likes, reactions, comments, shares, scroll depth, and brand mentions.

The actions taken prove that the audience have read your message and are willing to take the next step.

To identify the total cost per engagement, you can divide your entire influencer ad spend by the number of engagements. Alternatively, you can use this CPE calculator to calculate your cost per engagement.

Track conversions 

Conversions are your ultimate goal. It is easy to track your influencer marketing success if you are aware of the conversions your campaigns are generating.

If your product or service is new, you might not see conversions right away because people take time to evaluate a new product. Gaining trust takes time, and even if an influencer is promoting your products, people don’t shy away from searching themselves before buying anything.

Gaining conversions is a continuous and long-term process, and therefore, your expectations should be realistic.

Here are some ways to track conversions on your campaign:

• Coupon codes: You can provide unique coupon codes or discount coupons to each influencer. When they share the codes with their followers, it becomes a source of the traffic to your site that you can track. You can track sales via coupon codes using tools such as FirstPromoter.
• Trackable links: These links are unique URLs that are given to every influencer. This way, you can find out the number of clicks driven by each influencer. It is easy to create trackable links through URL shorteners like COM, Bitly and Rebrandly. You can also use a UTM parameter tracking tool such as Google Campaign URL builder to track links.
• Facebook pixel: Use Facebook pixel on your website or landing page. It is code that collects data to help you track conversions from Facebook posts. The pixel will follow only those visits who visited and took actions on your site via influencer posts. Moreover, you can also see the products that your audiences like the most when they visit your site so that you can optimise the content of your site accordingly.

Track mentions and hashtags

Expert influencers use different types of hashtags to get their content noticed. They use hashtags wisely to amplify their content’s reach and visibility. It can be based on brand, location, and trend depending on your product niche.

Often influencers discuss the hashtags they would use for their posts. Now, if the audience is accepting your hashtag, your influencer marketing is definitely on the right track. You will notice, the audience is tagging and mentioning your brand in their posts.

You can record the numbers for tags and mentions on social media, before and after adding or changing hashtags to weigh the difference. Tools like Talkwalker lets you track hashtags and offers powerful hashtag analytics software to identify top influencers and measure engagement in real-time.

In conclusion

Tracking the influencer marketing success is an excellent way to improve your branding and increase your sales. You can also measure whether the money spent on influencer collaboration is amplifying your brand. By following the suggestions above, you’ll be able to track your influencer marketing and optimise your marketing goals.