Attribution is critical to measuring the ROI of the social media influencer marketing campaign, but it can be challenging.
Brands can promote their star products, improve overall sales as well as drive brand awareness with the help of multi-channel social media influencers marketing.
However, the biggest challenge that brands face when working with influencers is attributing sales to specific influencers and other creators along with measuring campaign effectiveness.
To determine the accurate ROI from a social media influencers marketing campaign and to optimize campaigns in the future, attribution is paramount.
Accurate attribution is crucial in determining the return on investment (ROI) of an influencer marketing campaign and optimizing future campaigns.
What is Social Media Influencers Marketing and Why is it Important for Brands?
Influencers are social media stars with a lot of followers who trust on their words and social media posts. By partnering with them, you can tap into their audience base and spread the word about your brand in an effective way.
Think about it – wouldn’t you trust a recommendation from a trusted person more than a flashy ad?
That is exactly what social media influencers marketing does.
Studies show, almost 90% of affiliate marketers are using influencer campaigns as their key strategy, and many are even increasing their budgets!
Why?
Because it works!
Brands are actually able to see results like increased sales and brand awareness thanks to influencer partnerships.
What’s more, you don’t need a celebrity endorsement to vouch for your brand.
Even collaborations with micro-influencers can be super effective since they have smaller yet highly engaged audiences.
In fact, some marketers said that they are earning over $20 for every $1 they invest in social media influencers marketing! Now THAT kind of return is pretty hard to ignore.
So, how do you make sure your influencer campaign delivers?
The answer is influencer marketing analytics.
Effectively tracking influencer marketing analytics helps you understand how your campaign is performing. With influencer marketing metrics you are able to see exactly how well each influencer is working out for your brand.
With this data, you can tailor your strategy, ditch partnerships that aren’t working, and focus on the influencers who are bringing the most ROI.
Measuring The Impact of Your Influencer Marketing Campaign
In influencer marketing you team up with some well-reputed creators to convince your target audience to take a desired action.
But how do you know which ones are truly driving results for your brand?
This is where influencer marketing attribution comes in.
It helps you understand the real impact of each influencer partnership. Forget just counting likes and comments – we are talking about diving deeper to see which influencer is generating the sales for your business.
Earlier, influencers relied on methods like discount codes and unique affiliate links to promote a brand’s products or services, and brands could see which ones led to the most purchases.
It was a decent strategy, however there were a lot of loopholes, for e.g. outside factors like coupon websites share coupon codes without any way to track them and this skews the stats.
The truth is, many brands struggle with tracking their influencer campaigns.
They are unable to understand which influencers are truly helping their campaigns run effectively and offering the best results. This makes it difficult to improve their brand’s campaign strategy.
This is why influencer marketing attribution is crucial.
It takes a more holistic approach and helps track influencer marketing metrics such as how many people view a post (reach), what the audience engagement looks like (likes, comments, shares),and how well is your brand message being promoted.
This bigger picture helps you see which influencers are really performing and bringing the most value for your marketing campaign.
Influencer marketing attribution works for everyone, whether you are a B2B business or a B2C one.
By looking at all the data, you can understand which platforms your audience uses the most, which influencers resonate most with them, and what kind of content is actually relatable and valuable for them.
With attribution, you can get the answers to important questions like:
- Which influencer is bringing in the most sales (or whatever your specific KPIs for influencer marketing are)?
- Are there specific platforms that work better than others for your brand?
- Which influencers are getting people to take desired actions (like visiting your website or downloading your app)?
- Does your audience respond better to funny videos or in-depth reviews?
By having access to the right data, you can answer these questions with ease.
This lets you pick the influencers that work best for you, create content that resonates with your target audience, and ultimately, achieve your marketing goals.
Influencer Marketing: Understanding What Really Works (and How to Prove It!)
Here’s the rundown on how to track your influencer marketing success and prove that it is working for your brand:
1. Brand Awareness-
To get your brand name to reach a wider audience, tracking some key influencer marketing metrics that show how many people saw your campaigns and how they reacted is crucial.
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Reach:
‘Reach’ is the metric that tells you many people saw the influencer’s content that mentioned your brand. Impressions refer to the number of times your content popped up in the feed or timeline of your target audience. Both these metrics show how visible your brand became with the help of the influencer partnership.
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Branded Hashtags:
Branded hashtags allow you to track your campaign performance through hashtags. They contain your brand’s name along with other elements such as the name of a product, a slogan or tagline for your campaign. Branded hashtags allow you to collect user generated content such as reviews or posts made by users who tried your product and want to recommend it to other people too.
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Followers:
Track your follower count before, during, and after the whole campaign. This helps you analyze whether your brand gained new followers during the campaign. Track how much the influencer partnership boosted your brand’s presence on social media.
2. Conversions-
Did your influencer campaign inspire people to take action, like buying something or signing up for a trial?
Conversions are the ultimate test of success for many campaigns.
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Tracking Links & Discount Codes:
Links and codes act as bridges that lead people from the influencer’s post to your website or landing page. Special coupon codes or unique trackable links embedded within the posts allow you to establish exactly how many sales or sign-ups came from a specific influencer campaign.
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More Ways to Convert:
Don’t limit yourself to just purchases! Consider offering trial subscriptions, newsletter sign-ups, or app downloads as additional ways for people to engage with your brand. This gives the audience more options to interact and lets you measure the campaign’s effectiveness much more accurately.
3. Content is King-
It is crucial for brands to understand how different types of content connect with their audience.
It helps you create even better campaigns in the future.
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Engagement Rate:
Engagement rate is much more than just the number of likes. It takes the total number of interactions such as likes, comments, shares, etc and divides it by the number of people who saw the post. A higher engagement rate indicates that your content offered value for the audience.
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Not All Interactions Are Equal-
Not every like or comment is equal. Likes show basic awareness of your brand, while comments give you a glimpse into how people feel and how interested they are. Shares are golden – they show organic growth and increased viewership surpassing the range of the influencer’s immediate followers. Click through rates (CTRs) show that the audience was compelled to learn more about your brand.
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Content & Repurposing:
Track the total amount of content generated during the campaign. After analyzing the engagement metrics, revisit your most successful content pieces. Review and check whether they can be used on other marketing channels or for future influencer collaborations?
4. Google Analytics-
The ultimate goal is to see if your influencer marketing efforts are driving people to your website.
Here Google Analytics can work wonders for you.
It provides insights into website visits, where those visitors came from, and how long they spent on your site (bounce rates).
With these influencer marketing metrics at hand, you can analyze the engagement and the potential customers that may be interested in your product or service.
By tracking these influencer marketing analytics, you will have a clear picture of how your campaign is performing.
Attributing Sales to Your Influencer Marketing Campaign
Have you ever wondered how much an influencer’s posts actually contribute to your sales?
It is a tricky question, but fear not!
We are here to help you confidently track the impact of your influencer marketing campaign on your bottom line.
1. Setting Goals and KPIs:
As the first step, think about what you want to achieve from your campaign.
Do you want to increase brand awareness among the target audience?
Spark conversations on social media to boost engagement?
Drive website traffic that leads to sales?
Defining specific goals and KPIs for influencer marketing will shape the metrics you track, like the number of people who see the influencer post (impressions), how many unique individuals are exposed (reach), and how many people click on their links.
Don’t forget to set realistic timeframes and budget – these will help you calculate your ROI.
2. Choosing Your Attribution Model:
When a customer sees a product on an influencer’s post, clicks the link, checks out your website, and finally buys something, each step right from the initial post to the website visit plays a unique role in the sale.
This is where attribution models come in.
These models basically decide how much credit each step gets.
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First Touch:
This model gives all the credit to the initial touchpoint, for e.g. the influencer’s post.
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Last Touch:
This model gives all the credit to the final step, for e.g. the click on your website.
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Multi Touch Model:
This model recognizes that all the steps contribute and shares the credit accordingly. This is often the best choice for influencer marketing.
Choose the model that best fits your goals.
If brand awareness is key, the “First Touch” model might be helpful. But for measuring sales, the “Multi-Touch” model gives you a clearer picture.
3. Tracking Tool Features:
To really see how your influencer marketing is impacting sales, we need tools to connect the dots between your campaign and your sales data.
Here are some popular features you should look for in your tracking tool:
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Unique Coupon Codes:
Give each influencer a special code their followers can use at checkout. This lets you track how many sales each influencer generates and allows you to offer targeted discounts efficiently.
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Influencer Landing Pages:
Create special landing pages for each influencer campaign. This allows you to track the traffic, engagement, and sales specifically driven by the influencer.
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UTM Parameters:
These are tags that are attached to your website links that track where traffic came from (like an influencer post). Tools like Google Analytics help you analyze this data.
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Affiliate Links:
These special links have a unique code for each influencer, allowing you to track who referred the customer and potentially pay them a commission.
By using these methods, you gather valuable data to understand the true contribution of your influencer partners.
4. Analyzing and Optimizing:
Once you have collected all the data, it is time to analyze it and see what’s working best. Did you achieve the level of brand awareness you hoped for? Did the influencer content translate into website traffic and sales?
Calculate the ROI and cost per sale for each influencer and campaign to see how well they did compared to your budget and industry standards.
Tools like Google Data Studio can help you visualize this data for easy understanding.
Based on your analysis, you can tailor and adapt your strategy accordingly.
Maybe you need to adjust your budget, refine the content focus, or choose different influencers.
By optimizing future campaigns, you can improve attribution and ultimately boost your sales.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Examples – Real People, Real Results!
Here are a few examples of brands with some of the best performing influencer marketing campaigns and what they did right!
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The Farmer’s Dog – WeRateDogs Campaign with Pawsome Influencers:
Pet owners, we all know that our furry companions are more than just pets; they are practically family!
The Farmer’s Dog understands this deep love connection. Instead of going with the same boring, faceless corporation approach, they opted for a more collaborative strategy.
By teaming up with social media influencers who are just as obsessed with dogs as you are.
These “pawsome” influencers, along with their fan base of fellow dog lovers market The Farmer’s Dog meals through product reviews, unboxing videos, and heart-melting scenes of their pups happily chowing down on The Farmer’s Dog products.
The influencer behind the account of Luna, the golden retriever, (someone you already follow and trust) mentions how Luna has more energy and a shinier coat since switching foods. Suddenly, people are curious to learn more about The Farmer’s Dog and how their products could benefit their own furry friend.
The Farmer’s Dog partnered with influencers who genuinely loved their product and have a loyal following within their target audience.
Their authentic reviews and content resonated deeply with viewers, making them want to spoil their own pets with their products too!
And this is how The Farmer’s Dog experiences grows and expands a remarkable 100% in business size every year.
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Glossier – Regular Women Campaign:
Glossier is a brand that celebrates natural beauty and the makeup that enhances it.
Their approach to influencer marketing is refreshingly down-to-earth. Instead of chasing big-name celebrities, they build relationships with micro-influencers and everyday women who already are fans of Glossier products.
These micro-influencers create content offering their real experiences with Glossier, building trust and a sense of connection with the brand’s target audience.
For instance, if you were looking for some new makeup tips and stumbled upon a post from a girl who seems to have the same style as you. She’s raving about Glossier’s mascara and shows how it looks on her everyday face. Now you are genuinely intrigued – this product might actually work for you too!
Glossier doesn’t underestimate the power of micro-influencers.
They often have highly engaged followings and can create content that feels more relatable to the brand’s target audience, making them feel like they are getting beauty recommendations from a trusted personality.
This approach is one of the key reasons Glossier is now valued at more than a billion dollars and is one of the most loved and cherished beauty brands out there.
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Gymshark – 66 Days – Change Your Life challenge:
Gymshark is a sportswear brand that joined TikTok early on and totally crushed it.
Their “66 Days: Change Your Life” challenge leveraged popular fitness influencers and the platform’s focus on short, engaging videos.
Their campaign majorly included fun workout routines featuring influencers wearing Gymshark apparel, all while encouraging viewers to join the challenge and share their progress using the hashtag #Gymshark66.
This strategy generated a wave of user-generated content (workout selfies and progress videos) and organic brand mentions that helped boost Gymshark’s reach and got everyone excited about getting fit.
They created a campaign that encouraged user-generated content. This helped boost brand awareness and engagement in a fun and organic way, making people feel like they are part of a fitness movement.
The hashtag #Gymshark66 has over 250 million views on TikTok and on Instagram it has more than 785,000 posts.
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HelloFresh – #hellofreshpartner Campaign:
HelloFresh understands the struggle of busy schedules that often collide with healthy eating goals.
With their influencer marketing strategy they partner with micro-influencers in the lifestyle, parenting, and cooking niches.
These relatable online stars share their experiences using HelloFresh kits on social media and blogs, offering tips and tricks for preparing delicious meals without any hassle.
This allows HelloFresh to reach specific audience segments with content that feels like, well, coming from someone who’s ‘been there, done that’.
However, HelloFresh doesn’t underestimate the power of a celebrity.
They partnered with actress Mindy Kaling for a series of short videos titled “Meals with Mindy.” This celebrity collaboration helped HelloFresh reach a wider audience and leverage Mindy’s loyal fanbase.
HelloFresh ensures all influencers, including celebrities, create content that aligns with their brand and is relatable for their target audience base.
They also work smart with unique coupon codes for each influencer. This lets them track which collaborations bring in most sign-ups, allowing them to tailor their influencer marketing strategy for maximum effectiveness.
Their campaign created more than 300% extra content and 270%+ impressions.
At the 2020 Influencer Marketing Awards, HelloFresh won an award for the Best Food and Drink Campaign.
Remember those hours spent playing with Barbies?
The iconic toy brand proves that influencer marketing can be a powerful tool for pre-launch campaigns too.
To promote their live-action Barbie movie, they partnered with a diverse group of influencers across the globe, including celebrities like Dua Lipa.
These influencers participated in an Instagram campaign using a “This Barbie Is” template, allowing them to share their personal interpretations of what Barbie represents.
This sparked a viral trend, encouraging fans of all ages to join in and share their own versions using the hashtag #BarbieTheMovie.
This user-generated content (UGC) fueled a massive hype for the movie’s release.
Suddenly, your social media feeds were flooded with creative takes on what Barbie means to you, from childhood memories to fierce career goals. It was a blast from the past with a modern twist, and everyone wanted to be part of the fun!
The hashtags #BarbieTheMovie and #BarbieMovie crossed over 1.5 million posts, that too just on Instagram.
As of today, more than 1 million users have created Barbie related content due to this campaign.
Tracking Your Influencer Marketing Campaign With Trackier
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Keep Things Running Smoothly
Share conversion and click data across all your platforms seamlessly and streamline your workflow. Let automation handle the busywork so you can focus on the big picture and keep your business moving forward.
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Discover New Revenue Streams
Expand your earning potential by partnering with a variety of affiliate programs and influencers. Trackier helps you explore fresh opportunities to grow your income.
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Build Stronger Relationships
Efficiently manage your partnerships and collaborations with Trackier. Better communication means smoother operations and stronger connections.
