Influencer Marketing & Analytics: How To Monitor
Influencer marketing is a great option for success. Influencer marketing raises awareness for a business and can lead to sales. Of course, while many business owners know that influencer marketing works, they may not know how well. There is a high margin for success, but how do you know your marketing strategy is reaching its highest potential? To answer this question, businesses must track their marketing strategy and its success. Tracking means paying attention to influencer marketing analytics. These analytics return data that shows how well your marketing strategy is doing. It also helps businesses improve, tweak or revamp their strategy.
All About Influencer Marketing and Analytics
Influencer marketing relies on the right kind of influence to drive sales. Rhe social media platforms you use every day are a goldmine for business influence. When used correctly, influencer marketing bolsters your business. The better your influencers are, the more your business can grow.
But what makes an effective influencer?
Influencers are regular people on social media. They don’t have to be deep within your business’ industry, but they should have some connection. This is because your influencer has to have some credibility. The first sign of a potential influencer is their follower count. This is not the only criteria to look for, but it is a good first sign. A large follower count means that your influencer likely gets many likes per post. Each of those likes equals a potential customer. When you team up with an influencer and they begin showcasing your goods or services, more people will see what your business has to offer.
Besides a large follower account, your influencer should fit into your industry’s context. For example, if your business sells clothing and accessories, you would want an influencer who is fashionable. They might have a social media feed where they promote their outfit of the day, sales and great fashion finds. Due to the aesthetic of their feed, their followers are likely to be fashion forward people as well. When you team up with this influencer, you can have them model clothing and accessories from your business. This will immediately raise the interest of their followers. If you were to team up with an influencer who has a different aesthetic, such as sports or food, your brands would not match up well. While they may still offer some influence, it won’t be as effective as an influencer who fits with your company’s context.
Understanding Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is like social media marketing, but more focused. While social media marketing relies on the platform, influencer marketing relies on the person. One of the reasons influencer marketing works so well is that it is much more personable. The human factor in marketing offers more trust and reliability for the customer, establishing a stronger bond in less time.
Influencer Marketing Analytics
Analytics adds another dimension to influencer marketing. A place of data and statistics that help you measure your marketing strategy. You gain a better understanding of how people are engaging with your business thanks to your influencer.
Analytics show how much business is growing. For example, you can see the exact number of people who reacted to a post from an influencer. Next, analytics can reveal how many people took action after seeing your influencer’s post. This data shows you the direct result of hiring an influencer on the growth of your business. When talking about influencer marketing analytics, there are a few factors that are always involved:
- Number of Shares (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
- Number of Views the Post(s) Received
- Amount of Published Posts and Content (Articles, Blogs)
- How Far Published Posts and Content Reach (Sales, Site Visits)
- Volume of Post Engagement (Views, Likes, Comments)
- Measured Return of Investment
Measure your influencer marketing analytics many ways. Before you begin measurements, however, you have to know what you’re looking for. To find out what you’re looking for in your measurements, it is a good idea to return to your business plan. What do you want to accomplish? What goals did you set? Have you met them?
If you measure specific criteria, you have a better chance of finding exact answers. Always look at analytics that reflect your goals. If your goal is to transform social media users into loyal customers, focus on conversion rates.
But how do you look at analytics in the first place?
Many businesses turn to software programs and tools to get the job done. The most effective tool tends to be Google Analytics, but there are other options. Some businesses lean more towards an influencer marketing platform to measure analytics. Google Analytics is best for manual measurements, while influencer marketing platforms come with a full set of services. Among these services are key performance indicators, or KPIs. KPIs are the measurements that let you know if your influencer strategy is working, and how well.
How You Know Your Influencer Marketing Strategy is Working
Once you have an influencer marketing strategy place, how do you know it works? The answer lies in the data. Key Performance Indicators are an excellent way of measuring effectiveness. They show in plain black and white what works and what doesn’t. Yet, there are other ways to measure success. These other measuring rods are less analytical and more impressionistic. Though they seem more abstract, they also offer a concrete look at your brand’s success. So what are these measuring rods?
- Increased Brand Awareness: Increased brand awareness relies on impressions. Impressions refer to the number of people who viewed a piece of content on your site or social platform. While it is good that people viewed content, impressions don’t always mean they engaged with it. They might not have read the article, watched the video or liked the post.
- Increased Brand Engagement: Instead of just looking at content, brand engagement takes things to another level. Brand engagement means that people are interacting with your business by liking and commenting on posts, sharing and retweeting posts, reacting to content and even reaching out to the brand.
- Social Media Growth: How much your personal social media presence has grown thanks to influencer marketing. This is most effectively measured by how many new followers you gain over time.
Influencer marketing is popular and effective because it really works.
The growth of brand awareness and engagement are just some side effects of proper influencer marketing. If you are a new business looking to grow your brand, influencer marketing is the thing to try. Through easy monitoring and focused growth, your brand and ROI and grow almost overnight!
Guest Post By Alahna Fiveash:
Alahna has over 5 years experience in the online retailing and marketing industry with a passion for startups, growth and creativity.
After living in London, France and Melbourne she is now in Brisbane working as Marketing Manager for Scrunch, one of Australia’s fastest growing, data-driven Influencer Marketing platforms.
Alahna is a lateral thinker with a keen eye for opportunity responsible for strategic collaborations and marketing ventures and loves a glass of Pinot Noir in the evening!
Scrunch Enterprises Pty Ltd
Scrunch.com