The Kolsquare Guide on how to track your Influencer Marketing campaigns

Influencer Marketing is no news in the field and, with $1 investment and an average of $5.78 return, a highly profitable method for the next campaign to e.g. promote a new product. Yet, many brands still need to figure out how to measure the probability of the return of an investment.

Tip: Marketers might tend to be attracted to work with creators who have a large following. That is one of the biggest misconceptions around influencer marketing, as the ROI is likely to be very low with celebrities. Therefore, marketers should consider working with micro influencers and brand ambassadors. Their average engagement rate is likely to be between 1.7% to 4%.

However, before we move on to the tips on how to track your influencer marketing campaign, we need to establish a basic understanding of what ROI actually means.

Key Takeaways: Return on investment (ROI)

In order to measure the probability of gaining a return from an investment, marketers want to use the financial metric ROI. The ratio is a method to compare the gain and loss of an investment relative to its cost. The ROI is typically expressed as a percentage rather than as a ratio. However, ROI is less suitable to measure the duration of investment period.

Good to know: Other cash flow measures in business analysis are internal rate of return (IRR) and net present value (NPV).

ROI is an easy to calculate and easy to understand method, which is why it is now a standard to measure profitability within the field of marketing. Marketers can use these two different methods to calculate their brand’s ROI:

First method:

Second method:

Source

Set the goals for your brand’s campaign

Setting goals for your business is one of the most essential things to do. Therefore, it is evenly crucial to define the right goals for your (influencer) marketing campaign. Be ambitious, but realistic! Think about where you want to go and what your business is aiming at, then start planning backwards from there and work out the necessary steps to get to your goal(s).

More precisely, set SMART goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. These marketing goals are set according to the overall goals of your business. You might want to consider putting in numbers even if you have to adjust them later. The more precise, the better. Your goals include your brand awareness, the engagement rate you are trying to reach, and the sales you want to generate.

When you are in the process of defining your goal, always think about your target audience(s). Do you want to attract individual consumers and businesses? However, B2C and B2B marketing are of course two different methods that demand different approaches.

Unless you have set your goals, you are not ready to develop a campaign goal and key performance indicators (KPIs). This makes it easier to track influencer marketing campaigns according to specific objectives, whether you focus on traffic, engagement, brand awareness, or conversion.

Accordingly, impressions and views ensure brand awareness; likes, comments, DMs, or views facilitate engagement; and downloads promote conversions.

Track and analyze your influencer marketing campaign

This is clearly the core part of this guide. Marketers can choose between two metrics: Either page visitors or number of signups and paid conversions. The former tracks how many people your influencers are sending to your website/webpage. Additionally, it is obviously important that these visitors are relevant for your brand. Find out as much as you can about them. The latter tracks how many people that visited your site actually signed up on the platform and how many also converted into paid users.

Google Analytics own Campaign URL Builder gives you the opportunity to append parameters to URLs in order to determine which campaigns are used to access your website. This is generally known as urchin tracker modules (UTMs) which help you categorize the traffic you have. You simply add tags to your links that show you the data of every link and tag you make.

Up to five parameters can be selected here:

• the source, where people are redirected from, e.g. Google
• the medium, e.g. the Newsletter
• the campaign, e.g. a specific slogan or coupon code
• the term(s), aka keywords, but only recommended for paid ads
• the content, e.g. in order to distinguish similar content within a campaign

While the source is mandatory for most reporting, the medium and campaign tag are very commonly used. It is fairly simple as it is effective to use UTM for your next campaign.

Tip: Be aware of the cases as capitalisation and special characters matter. Moreover, do not use them internally on your site, because UTM tags are to keep an eye on the traffic that comes to your website. Although there is no official word count on UTMs, stick to short and identifiable tags that are one of a kind.

Influencer codes can be another great way to generate traffic to your site and make consumers think and talk about your product. In fact, a statista survey showed that in 2020, 88% of the survey respondents in the US used coupons for shopping. And even if the coupon does not lead to the sale of the specific product, it can achieve brand awareness in general or consumers might just keep scrolling and find another item they want to buy.

For instance, fashion retailer NA-KD is using this strategy with a lot of micro-influencers. The retailer gives influencers an individual code which in turn gives their followers 20% off the whole site for 48 hours. Most influencers add a little haul and upload a few posts and stories with their new favorite items.

What NA-KD also exemplifies is that the online shop often creates a landing page for some influencers, which then shows either the respective collection or selection of a few items.

Affiliate marketing in general is great to incorporate in your influencer marketing strategy as both tactics overlap anyway because they center brand advocates to promote products and services.