One of the challenging issues businesses face when implementing an influencer marketing campaign is how to measure their return on investment.
Influencer marketing is becoming a full-time profession for many Internet stars. Brands are increasingly adopting this type of marketing as they look to take advantage of this new sensation. The real appeal of this type of marketing and the motive for its rapid rise in adoption among brands is its authenticity and ways in which campaigns can be created and used to accomplish a range of projects with varying objectives.
Fruitful influencer marketing programs demand that brands dedicate budget. This is because social media influencers charge a fee for partnering with a brand on a sponsored post for instance.
As brands increasingly invest in influencer marketing stakeholders are also demanding for budget justification. Advertisers who have run an influencer marketing campaign often agree that influencer-generated content outdid brand-created content, and hence why they keep investing in creators.
However, measuring return on investment (ROI) has been a challenge for marketers working with influencers. ROI gives a clearer picture of how much returns is generated on each shilling invested in a campaign.
Influencer marketing campaign goals largely fall into two categories: brand awareness or direct response. This means that it is almost impractical to exclusively measure success based on one measurement across the board. But it can be done.
To successfully measure the performance of a campaign and determine returns, one has to factor in the costs spent during the setup and running of the campaign. There is also need to factor in the costs of all free products and demos and the cost of researches and content creation for the influencer campaign.
One of the key ways to measure returns could be measuring sales. This is definitely the most direct objective in terms of evaluating the value and it could also be the closest yardstick that can be attributed to specific monetary ROI. Brands can capture value when product purchases are made as a result of a direct reaction to an influencer campaign. However, there is a need to consider purchases made later or influenced by the campaign but not purchased through the campaign link.
Another measure would be Website Traffic. This involves measuring the number of people an influencer pulls to your landing page for instance, without much emphasis on their activities when they visit. The most effective way to do this would be to assign an abstract value to a visitor’s worth. For marketers looking to take their brands to as many people as possible, then measuring the Audience reach is the metric they would want to measure or track. However, measuring reach is tricky to obtain your ROI, but this will enable you to measure the number of loyal followers and clicks from the influencer.
Another measure closely related to audience reach is Engagement. Measuring engagement reveals how potential customers respond to your brand. Basically, it represents the measure of the cost-per-engagement (CPE). This means that marketers can be able to track how much they spent per like, comment or views.
In conclusion, here are some guidelines for achieving a positive ROI on your influencer marketing campaign. First marketers should conduct thorough research and vet influencers. This is to ensure that they are not working with an audience that isn’t suited to their brand. Allow your influencer creative freedom. This will make them produce quality and more quality organic. Finally, test campaigns on various influencers, learn from successes and failures and embrace trial-and-error as part of the process.
Do you have further questions about how what ROI means and how to determine the ROI of influencer marketing? Lets chat. We would love to hear from you.