How do you measure influencer marketing metrics and KPIs without common mistakes?

1 Define your goals and KPIs

Before you launch any influencer campaign, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. Do you want to increase your brand awareness, engagement, traffic, conversions, or loyalty? Depending on your goal, you need to define the specific KPIs that will help you evaluate your success. For example, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you might use metrics such as reach, impressions, mentions, and sentiment. If your goal is to drive conversions, you might use metrics such as clicks, leads, sales, and ROI.

2 Choose the right tools and platforms

Measuring influencer marketing can be a challenge, so it's important to find the right tools and platforms to collect and analyze data. Depending on your budget and needs, you can use influencer marketing platforms such as AspireIQ, Upfluence, or Traackr. Additionally, social media analytics like Facebook Insights, Instagram Insights, and Hootsuite can help you monitor and measure the performance of your posts and accounts. Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics can track and measure traffic and conversions from influencer campaigns. Lastly, survey tools like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, and Qualtrics can gather feedback from your audience and customers.

3 Use UTM parameters and tracking codes

Making sure to use UTM parameters and tracking codes is key when measuring influencer marketing. These codes are added to URLs and landing pages to track where your traffic and conversions come from. Without them, it will be impossible to attribute results to specific influencers and campaigns. To use UTM parameters and tracking codes, you must first create unique URLs for each influencer and campaign with a tool like Google's Campaign URL Builder. Then, ask your influencers to use these URLs when they promote your brand or product on their channels. Additionally, add tracking codes to your landing pages using a tool like Google Tag Manager. Finally, monitor and analyze the data in your web analytics tool.

4 Compare different influencers and campaigns

A common mistake in measuring influencer marketing is not comparing different influencers and campaigns, which can prevent you from gaining valuable insights and optimizing your strategy. To compare different influencers and campaigns, it's important to use a consistent and standardized method of measuring metrics and KPIs across all influencers and campaigns. Additionally, benchmarks and industry averages can be used to assess performance and identify gaps or strengths. A/B testing and experiments can also be utilized to test different variables, such as influencer types, content formats, platforms, offers, and calls to action. Finally, dashboards and reports should be used to visualize and communicate findings and recommendations.

5 Adjust and improve your strategy

The final step of measuring influencer marketing is to use the data and insights you gathered to adjust and improve your strategy. This process should be continuous, involving regular reviews of your goals and KPIs, identification of what works and what doesn't work in your campaigns, implementation of changes and improvements based on your findings, and repetition of the cycle. Therefore, measuring influencer marketing is not a one-time activity.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?