How can you measure the impact of an influencer campaign beyond likes?

Reach and impressions are the primary measured values when working with a B2B influencer. Depending on the brand, it is very difficult to measure the measurable benefits of reach and response to a given content/post. A common practice especially on business platforms like LinkedIn, compiling a list of people who have responded to a post and fit the ICP criteria - you can generate a list of 'cold leads'. Or treat as such, people who comment positively or share our post. Numbers aren't everything, there has to be a business driver from these numbers!

To truly measure an influencer campaign's impact, start with a strategic intent. Align influencer choices with your target subculture, ensuring your brand becomes an integral part of the conversation from the campaign's outset. During the campaign, engagement metrics like comments, reshares, and TikTok stitched video responses offer insights. But go further. Monitor mentions in blogs, earned media like articles and industry awards (both nominated and won), and secure a spot in editorial lists and year-end summaries. These comprehensive metrics unveil the campaign's reach and resonance, ensuring you gauge its influence beyond mere likes.

A good influencer will establish the specific goals of their clients. Often its not the quality of general growth but a more nuanced type of potential customers they are looking to reach. Just like the customer journey it often takes strategic steps to reach those core customers. Influencers should establish an ongoing dialogue and report on not only gross impressions, likes , and shares, but also utilizes many A/B tests to find the most productive results against those goals. As an influencer you become an extension of your clients marketing strategy and should build on your clients goals on and ongoing basis.

Reach and impressions are essential KPIs, particularly when gauging the performance of organic content. They provide a snapshot of the potential exposure and how platform algorithms are interacting with the content. However, when it comes to paid media campaigns, CPM becomes an equally valuable metric. It offers insights into the cost-effectiveness of the content distribution. Ultimately, the choice of metric—be it reach, impressions, or CPM—should align with how the brand chooses to distribute their influencer content for their campaign. Each metric has its own significance and can provide valuable insights when used in the right context.

Alternative metrics include engagement rate, which gauges audience interaction; CTR for assessing content's ability to drive traffic; conversion rate to link influencer efforts with actual results; content quality in terms of aesthetics & authenticity; audience demographics for alignment with the target market; audience growth rate for gauging engagement; relevance and alignment with your brand; content resonance and genuine audience interest; brand mentions and sentiment analysis for reputation management; the potential for long-term partnerships; and content authenticity, which is crucial in influencer marketing.

While tracking general sentiment is beneficial, diving deeper into the specifics of what aspects of the campaign resonated positively or negatively can offer actionable insights. For instance, if a product feature highlighted by the influencer generated significant positive engagement, it could be a selling point to emphasize in future campaigns. Moreover, tracking how the sentiment shifts over time and across different influencer campaigns can inform long-term strategy adjustments.

If you put yourself in the shoes of the content consumer, you will agree that you are mostly likely to comment on the influencer’s post if you want to appreciate it, ask a question or form an opinion. But that means you actually paid attention to what they put out. And if you really resonated and related with the content - found it useful, funny or inspiring - you will share it with your inner circle or save it for future reference. These metrics, in my opinion, are gold when it comes to metrics that should be reported. Pay attention to the quality and quantity of comments and shares. Meaningful comments and shares indicate a deeper connection with the content.

If you aren't tracking links clicks, engagement is your go to metric. This tells you how the influencer's audience received the content and is the best predictor of action in the future. The internet is really a collection of niches these days and as such, engagement is the top metric we look at. Follower count is great, but smaller creators typically have higher engagement rates.

Sentiment can be a great metric to measure success but you have to be sure you're not taking sentiment at face value. You have to be sure you dive deeper and understand the keywords and phrases that are fueling positive and negative sentiment. Take the time to look closer at each post that is driving the sentiment. If you have a tool that allows for emotional insights and themes (such as buyer intent), this can help take you further into understanding why people are responding or not responding to your campaign.

As many pointed out, taking a deeper dive into the specifics of comments is key. Furthermore, to further validate the impact of toxic comments (i.e. negative comments at the extreme) specifically, running A/B tests with/without proactive comment management (including hiding/deleting detracting comments) is key. Proactive moderation can both greatly improve real time sentiment ("visible sentiment") and provide valuable insights on how to support future campaigns for success and mitigate the adverse risk these comments pose. After all, 47% of consumers/followers believe comments on brand’s advertising are an indication of their values. Brands don't allow aggressive customer behaviour at brick + mortar stores so why allow them on social?

It all comes down to sales at the very bottom of the funnel and when your client/boss asks. So what was the Cost per Acquisition: This metric lets us see how effective the campaign was from a finance perspective. The formula is (total campaign cost)/ (total new customers or conversions). And, what was the ROAS? (aka Return on Advertising Spend). The formula for ROAS = Revenue Generated from Advertising / Advertising Cost. You'll have to understand the industry and benchmark to see whether your ROAS was bad, average, good or amazing, as each industry is very different.

Conversions - the core criterion for performance-driven marketers. To accurately track them, monitor these metrics: - Purchases (Always use a unique promo code for each influencer in the campaign) - Cost per conversion - Click-through-rate (CTR) - Number of target actions on your website It is important to remember that campaigns on platforms like YouTube can give long-term effect. So do not forget to track conversions up to 6 months after integration went live.

Outcomes are what most people are looking to achieve. I love drawing to a customers website or company page as a key way to know your messaging is hitting the best people

Conversions and sales stand as pivotal metrics in assessing an influencer campaign's impact on your business's bottom line. Conversions measure the tangible actions users take, be it signing up, downloading, or making a purchase, providing a direct indicator of user engagement and intent. On the other hand, sales reflect the campaign's monetary success, whether generated directly through referral links or indirectly through heightened brand visibility and trust. These metrics are vital for calculating the campaign's return on investment and gauging the overall efficiency of your influencer marketing strategy. Yet, achieving accurate attribution is essential to connect your campaign efforts with such outcomes.

Beyond direct conversions, consider the journey your audience takes after engaging with influencer content. Perhaps they didn't purchase immediately, but did they join your mailing list? Did they explore your site and spend a significant time there? These "micro-conversions" can be early indicators of a customer's journey towards a sale or becoming a brand advocate.

Its important to chose an influencer who has a loyal following. This means they have a powerful base to draw from and translate that into bringing loyal followers to their clients as well

In addition to traditional measures of brand awareness, consider tracking how often your brand is mentioned organically in discussions or forums related to your industry. This can be an indicator of your brand becoming top-of-mind for consumers. For brand loyalty, track not just direct recommendations, but also repeated engagements from the same users over time, indicating a sustained interest in your brand.

Awareness & Loyalty are great metrics for brands who have reached scale. You can defend you market share (and still grow it) focusing on these metrics. Smaller brands need awareness, but really they need an introduction to the the market. Influencers are a powerful tool to help your brand grow into new spaces & communities. Breeding awareness & loyalty.

Brand awareness and loyalty aren't just buzzwords; they're the long game in influencer marketing. 🚀 While immediate sales are fantastic, the real magic lies in how influencer campaigns shape the way people perceive and stick with your brand over time. 🔄 A memorable influencer post might plant your brand in someone's mind, setting the stage for brand recall later. 🌱 And if they love what they see? That's where loyalty begins, turning casual viewers into passionate brand advocates. 🙌 But measuring this? It's both an art and a science, blending hard data with insights into human behavior. 📊❤️ Always remember: Strong brands aren't just recognized; they're cherished and championed.

Influencer satisfaction reflects the partner's contentment, motivation, and their perception of compensation and recognition within the campaign. These metrics play a pivotal role in enhancing influencer partner performance and retention, while also bolstering the authenticity and credibility of the campaign. However, fostering these metrics necessitates open and constructive dialogue and continuous evaluation with your influencer partner to nurture a successful long-term relationship.

Relationship building is key. No doubt. Our approach is very test & learn oriented. On your first campaign, we try a lot of things to see what sticks. We take those high performing influencers and make them ambassadors / long-term partners. Building the relationship & satisfaction at the same time.

Building a relationship with influencers goes beyond the current campaign. Engage with them as partners rather than just promotional tools. Regular check-ins, even outside of active campaigns, can foster trust. Also, seeking their insights about audience reactions can be invaluable. They might have received direct messages or comments that offer deeper insights into audience perceptions, which can be gold for tweaking future campaigns.

In the world of influencer marketing, relationships matter—a lot! 🤝 It's not just about metrics and numbers; it's about ensuring both brand and influencer align in vision and feel valued. When both sides vibe well, it shines through in the campaign's authenticity.🌟 And satisfaction? It goes beyond just compensation. It's about mutual respect, understanding, and ensuring influencers feel their voice and creativity are honored. 🎙️🎨 Bottom line: A satisfied influencer is more likely to bring passion and authenticity to a campaign. So, keep those lines of communication open, and remember, it's a partnership first and foremost! 🔄💬

If you aim to engage influencers, the key is simple: HELP THEM MAKE VIEWS. Give them tools that allow them to reduce their production time. Don't add unnecessary layers of approvals for a campaign with them. The time of full-time professional content creators simply creating content out of passion is gone, they are professionals with revenue goals at the end of the month, operational costs, data-driven decisions to make, and an audience to entertain. Understand their business model and help them get to their goals through you and your product.

Influencer collaborations are business partnerships - when agreements are respected, deadlines met, deliverables done - that's the closing statement of a successful influencer campaign in my experience.

Consider the diversity of your influencer partners. You want to reach as many people as possible in as many authentic ways as possible, and the data shows that consumers are more likely to buy from brands who feature someone from their own identity group. So be intentional about this in your campaign sourcing and your brand will realize untapped market potential, which is typically not reflected in ROI metrics because most campaigns only measure against what was done as opposed to what was possible.

There's some things not covered here, which are important to measure for the impact of influencer campaigns including 1) Your own brands social media follower growth before and after the campaign. Big spikes away from the trend indicate successful exposure 2) Your own website analytics - like traffic to your site, sign-ups, submissions, etc (things that you track) 3) Overall ROI on the campaign. One ROI for the cost of the influencers and another on the total cost of the campaign, including content production, ad spend, etc.

While the given information and metrics are useful but they cannot be an exhaustive list of measuring ROI of an influencer campaign. We need to take a lot of things into consideration to consider KPIs which includes but is not limited to answering the question that what is the broad objective or goal of the campaign. One example could be if a brand is trying to understand the brand awareness by establishing a new category and promoting it through influencers, along with metrics such as reach engagement, sentiment etc., to calculate how well the campaign performed tracking paid vs organic data, indirect impact on brand’s existing assets are also extremely vital. One other feature that hasn’t been discussed here is the use of benchmarks.

There are many ways to measure the impact of an influencer campaign beyond likes, which are often considered a superficial and unreliable metric. Some of the most important influencer marketing metrics to track are: -Return on investment (ROI) -Cost per acquisition (CPA) -Brand awareness -Brand sentiment

Influencer campaigns work best when viewed as part of a long-term strategy rather than a one-off effort. Instead of expecting immediate results, focus on building sustained engagement over time. Recognize that influencer campaigns can be costly, and measuring key results in the short term may only sometimes be feasible. Consider these campaigns as part of your brand-building efforts rather than quick ROI generators. The impact of influencer campaigns varies greatly by industry. In sectors like e-commerce, tracking ROI via promo codes might work. In others, brand positioning might be the primary objective. Look for correlations with KPIs that matter to your business, e.g. improved conversion rates, website traffic, or social engagement.