You're struggling to track influencer campaign success. How do you identify the most effective KPIs?

Understanding core business objectives is an apt place to start before outlining the most important KPIs to track — and these can be vastly different: you might want to launch a new product, increase awareness, enter a new market, drive sales, and so on. When working with a client, a good thing to do is to hold a strategy session to jointly work out the project’s strategic vision. This then becomes a solid basis for SMART goals, which by definition will bring you closer to clear-cut KPIs.

When you struggle to measure influencer campaign success, most of the time it is not an issue of analytics, but of missing campaign objectives. SMART goals are mandatory to understand which KPIs you need to analyse and whether your campaign was a succcess

It’s important to clearly outline your goals—whether it's brand awareness, website traffic, or sales—and track corresponding KPIs like social media impressions, CTRs, or promo code usage. Aligning KPIs with specific objectives ensures that the data collected provides valuable insights, driving more effective strategies and outcomes.

Metrics like likes, comments, shares, and interaction rates reveal how well the content resonates. High-quality engagement, characterized by thoughtful interactions, often signifies deeper interest and potential for further actions, such as website visits or purchases, making it more valuable than mere quantity.

Different social media platforms offer unique metrics that can be valuable for tracking campaign success. For Instagram, metrics like likes, comments, shares, and saves are relevant. On YouTube, watch time, views, and subscriber growth may be key. Tailor your KPIs to the specific platform(s) where your influencers are active and where your target audience is engaged.

Conversion tracking is essential for assessing the direct impact of influencer campaigns on sales. Using UTM parameters in URLs shared by influencers allows you to trace consumer actions back to the source. Analyzing conversion rates provides insights into the ROI of your influencer partnerships and identifies which influencers drive tangible results, ensuring more informed and effective investment decisions.

Above all other KPIs, content reach is the best measure of your influencer campaigns. It demonstrates who/how many and where you are reaching your target audience. Establish other KPIs on the content reach: engagement, awareness, likes, comments, conversions. With any campaign, and especially influencer campaigns - keep this in mind: not all influencers can influence your audience. An influencer may be famous to some or your target audience. If they don't align with your brand or have respect of your shared audience, conversions won't come. Tracking ROI/ROAs, engagement, shares, and authentic engagement metrics are vital KPIs. Some HUGE brands go for awareness vs. conversions. They want their "commercials" running on all media.

Measuring the financial efficiency of influencer partnerships is essential. At Tru, we calculate metrics like the cost per engagement and cost per acquisition. For instance, dividing the campaign expenses by the number of interactions provides insight into cost-efficiency. Lower acquisition costs indicate more effective use of resources, helping us optimize future investments in influencer marketing.

A powerful tool to integrate into campaign analysis is sentiment tracking that allows you to gauge the audience’s emotional response to your action. By identifying what content and which formats generate the most positive sentiment towards your company, you can be quick to adjust your strategy. The market is booming with AI-powered tools that use natural language processing to come up with clear-cut conclusions and make precise predictions.

Earned Media Value (EMV) is another great KPI to measure to understand the success of your influencer marketing campaigns, as it correlates with brand awareness and preference