Influencer is someone who helps other people buy from you. How do they do this? Influencers have a combination of three assets: Reach, contextual credibility and salesmanship.
- 86% of marketers are unsure how influencers calculate their fees
- 75% of marketers claim to have allocated money for influencers in their marketing
- 59% of marketers intent to increase their influencer marketing budget in the next year
- 38% of marketers say they are unable to tell whether influencers activity actually drives sales
How to determine if influencers are going to deliver a return on investment for your business?
Here’s how 10 experts calculate the ROI of influencers.
- UNIQUE CODE: If you sell products online and want to measure ROI of your influencer campaign by direct sales, give influencers a unique code to give to their audience that they can use at checkout for a percentage off their purchase. A good amount is 15%-20% off. Calculate the amount of sales you earned from your influencer’s unique discount code and divide it by the dollars you spent on the campaign. – Kristen Matthews, Social Media Examin
- INFLUENCER LANDING PAGE: You must tie your influencer campaign into a branded landing page in order to measure the ROI of that influencer. The influencers can have as much free reign as you’ll permit, as long as they drive their audience where you want them to go. Once on the landing page, you, as the brand, can incentivize the users and capture their lead info for measurement data and future communication. – Kenny Eicher, The CSI Group
- SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITE ANALYTICS: One of the easiest metrics to track when using an influencer is social engagement. Track your social accounts for changes in total followers as well as new unfollows. Monitor your website traffic for an increase or decline in website visits from the social network. Are there spikes that align with the influencer’s activity? Do you see an increase in sales (or inquiries) directly following their activity? – Korena Keys, KeyMedia Solutions
- HASHTAG CAMPAIGN: You could tailor your social media campaign to use a specific hashtag encourage influencers to use your hashtag with their followers. You can then tally uses of the hashtag, considering its use to be part of your influencer marketing campaign. – Influencer Marketing Hub
- KPI DEFINITION AND TRACKING: Establish metrics for measuring the performance of your campaign. This means identifying your campaign objectives and metrics (KPIs) for tracking these objectives. The following KPIs are the most common for gauging influencer campaign success: 1) Engagement, 2) Reach/Impressions, 3) Follower growth and 4) Traffic. – Magda Houalla, Revfluence
- PIXEL TRACKING: TapInfluence partnered with a Fortune 500 Food Brand and Nielsen Catalina Solutions to complete the first ever Influencer Marketing Sales Effects Study. Special NCS tracking pixelautomatically inserted by software into blog content for every post. 1000 people viewing influencer contentgenerated $285 of incremental sales over the control group. Influencer Marketing delivered 11X ROI over all other forms of digital media. – Bill Carmody, CEO, Trepoint
- CONVERSIONS: One of the simplest ways to do this on Instagram is to track direct conversions through the “comment to buy” feature. This allows consumers to comment directly on an influencer’s post expressing their interest in purchasing the product or products featured in the post. Consumers then receive a personalized link via email. Tracking “comment to buy” not only provides revenue information for the campaign, it’s also an excellent source of brand demographic information. – Andrew Higgins, Product Marketing and Product Management, Pixlee
- COMPARE VS OTHER INVESTMENTS: Be sure to track wherever possible: custom links, landing pages, influencer promo codes, giveaways, anything you can. Consider an influencer marketing campaign’s performance against your other marketing strategies. How much would you have to pay on Google PPC to gain the same exposure? Keep things in perspective and consider lifetime value. – Bernard May, National Positions
- ENGAGEMENT: If your campaign focuses on social media exposure with influencers, look at engagement on your social channels after the influencer initiative. Do you have an increase in engagement on your channels? New followers are important, but it’s key to have the right followers. If your engagement increases, you know you reached your target audience who actually wants to engage with your content. – Lisa Arledge Powell, MediaSource
- LIVE EVENT: A live experience is the ultimate influencer ecosystem. Getting like-minded people together who have a passion for a particular subject matter creates an environment for influencing, whether it be comics, cars or causes. Once at a live event, the social amplification through influencers is exponential and can be measured in real time through social posts, brand activation and word of mouth. – Chris Cavanaugh, Freeman
Does the advice of these experts help you in calculating the ROI of influencers? Are you looking for help in how to effectively use influencers for your company?
