If you’re going to run an influencer marketing campaign, you need to know about influencer marketing KPIs. Before you even start to find influencers, your campaign needs an objective and the framework for measuring how close you get to achieving it.
What are KPIs?
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are measurable values that allow you to track your progress towards your campaign objective. Measurable means that you can express the KPI as a number, percentage, or some other quantitative figure.
For example, think about the difference between brand awareness and impressions. Can you measure brand awareness with a number? No. It’s too broad. Awareness would be an objective, not a KPI.
Now, think about impressions. Can you track these numerically? Yes! You can check your social media insights to see how many impressions your content got, and influencers can do the same. So, if you were tracking impressions on a weekly basis during your campaign, you could put in a number for each week.
In this example, impressions would be a good KPI for the goal of brand awareness. KPI must always relate to your campaign objectives. First, choose your objective, and then think about what different pieces of data you can measure to see how you’re getting along with it.
Influencer Marketing KPIs
Let’s take a look at some common influencer marketing KPIs that you can use to measure your campaign performance. Just remember to choose the ones that make the most sense with your objective.
1. Impressions
Impressions are the number of times that your content is displayed on screen. Imagine an influencer creates a post about your brand and its products. Every time that post comes up on a screen, that’s an impression. Keep in mind that one person could generate various impressions if they revisit an influencer’s content more than once.
2. Reach
Reach relates to the number of people who see your content. While it’s pretty closely tied to the number of followers, take into account that people who don’t follow you could also see your content.
3. Engagement rate
Engagement rate is a key KPI for social media users, whether influencers or brands. It measures the level of interaction between you and your followers. When it comes to influencers, the idea is that a higher engagement rate shows that followers enjoy and trust in their content.
That being said, brands should also measure engagement rate to get a feel for how connected they are to their followers. This metric can be calculated manually with a formula or collected via social media insights. See the blog post linked above for more info about engagement rate.
4. Referral traffic
When you collaborate with influencers, you hope that their content inspires followers to investigate your brand further. Referral traffic is one way to see if the influencer is actually bringing visitors to your website.
You can see which traffic comes to your website through which sources by using tracking links. There are two ways to do this: UTM codes or link shorteners, which often have analytics built-in. The first is a free option that works with Google Analytics, and the second is a paid tool. If you’re interested in link shorteners, Bitly and Short.io are two options you can check out as starting points.
5. Clicks and CTR
Clicks are another way to gauge if followers are getting interested in your brand. More specifically, click-through rate can show you what percentage of users that see your content is actually clicking on it. This can give you a sense of whether or not the content is compelling.
6. Follower growth
Another KPI you could measure for your campaign, if it fits with your objective, is the growth of your social media audience. If you want to grow your audience, you could regularly track your new followers or subscribers.
7. Conversions
Conversions are a bit more ambiguous than the other KPIs on this list. This is because you set conversions based on the actions you want people to take on your site or with respect to your brand. Conversions could be sign-ups, downloads of an app, sales, or whatever else matters to your company’s growth.
8. Sales and revenue
Another important influencer marketing KPI for many brands is sales. Track the number of sales of your products, services, or whatever it is that people pay your company for.
As for revenue, this could take a few different forms, depending on what type of business you are. If you’re a B2C company, you’ll probably track the revenue made from the sales that come in. But, for example, if you’re a B2B SaaS company, you’ll probably instead measure monthly recurring revenue, or MRR, which is a model of your predictable revenue stream.
Whatever way you measure sales and revenue, make sure you have a clear method of attribution. You’ll want to know which profits came from your influencer marketing campaigns.
9. Uses of influencer discount codes
One way to attribute sales to influencers is to track influencer discount codes. These codes are unique to each influencer, and they incentivize sales by giving their followers a percentage off of your products.
Why should you track influencer discount codes as a KPI? Well, if your goal was to increase sales, you’ll want to prove that influencer discount codes are a viable strategy for you. Moreover, when you track them, you can identify which social networks and which influencers bring your brand the most sales.
10. ROI
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you want to track your return on investment, or ROI. When you measure the success of your campaign, you want to see how much money you made from your influencer marketing campaign compared to how much money you invested in it.
When working out ROI, make sure to think about all the returns on your campaign. Some will be obvious, like revenue. But some will be more difficult to quantify, like impressions or content creation. The article linked above will take you deeper into how to measure your campaign success.
Conclusion
Any marketing team’s goal is to increase leads and conversions and reduce the cost of acquiring and retaining customers. Influencer marketing campaigns are no different. So, it’s important to have a clear goal and a way to see your progress.
Influencer marketing KPIs do just that, so choose a few related to your goal and track them regularly. Then, at the end of your campaign, take all of that data to analyze whether or not you had a positive ROI.
