If you are planning to start working on an influencer marketing campaign with social influencers and bloggers, then this post will help you identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to assess the performance of your campaign.
Start at the end: the campaign goals
As with any PR or digital marketing campaign, the first step to measuring and evaluating success is to start by identify the goals.
The majority of influencer collaborations start with one or more of the following objectives in mind:
- Brand/Product awareness
- Direct sales
- Lead generation
- Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Selecting the measurement mix for your influencer campaign
Once you’ve established the key business objectives of your influencer campaign, you can then set out your KPI measurement mix; the metrics you’re going to use to help you identify if the campaign has been a success.
To demonstrate, we’ve included some examples of metrics that can be applied below.
Brand/Product awareness
Mentions
Images
Impressions (web visits, page views)
Engagement (comments, shares)
Social follows
Direct sales
Unique discount codes / offers
Lead generation
Sign-ups
Downloads
Conversions
Search engine optimisation
Mentions
Backlinks
Domain authority
Build your KPI metrics into your campaign
It is a good idea to select the metrics before you decide how you are going to carry out the campaign and with whom – read about how to validate influence. In doing so, you will be better placed to develop an approach which will drive and deliver the key performance indicators required.
Remember that influencer marketing is a two-way street… for a collaboration to have best effect, the influencer should be made aware of precisely what you are expecting from the collaboration. In addition, it’s important that they’re provided with all the necessary material/s to help them deliver. E.g. for lead generation this may include a link to a dedicated landing page or website.
Compile the data
For many PRs and digital marketers compiling the data for your KPIs is often the trickiest part. There are, however, tools that can help make this process easier.
Link shortener – If you don’t have access to your client’s web analytics, a link shortener like Bitly or Capsulink might be your next best solution. These tools not only help you create a customisable campaign short link but they also provide you with analysis of visitor behaviour, referrals, dates and locations.
Google Analytics Goals – This is an excellent way of tracking conversions. Goals in Google Analytics enables you to track specific user interactions. These user interactions can be anything including form submissions, button clicks, ebook downloads, and more.
Acebook – This reporting tool provides you with access to all kinds of quantitative data… from impressions and engagement, through to a backlinks count and domain authority. It’s really simple to use too, all you need to do is input the relevant URLs, whether it’s to a social post or a blog post and Acebook will do the data digging for you. It’ll also take a screen grab for you in the process. Furthermore, it then presents the data in a human-friendly report!
Tips & Hints 