Attribution is the most crucial aspect when measuring the ROI of a social media influencer marketing campaign but is hard.
However, the significant problem brands encounter while dealing with influencers is attributing sales to specific influencers and other creators and also measuring the effectiveness of a campaign. Thus, attribution is extremely important in calculating the actual ROI from a social media influencer marketing campaign and optimizing further campaigns.
What is Social Media Influencers Marketing and Why is it Important for Brands?
Influencers are social media stars who have a lot of followers and are trusted by people for 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 that – don’t you trust a recommendation from someone you know and trust more than a fancy ad?
That’s precisely what social media influencer marketing does.
Why?
It works!
The thing is brands are indeed getting results including increased sales and brand awareness because of collaborations with influencers
But also you don’t need a celebrity to endorse your brand.
Even collaboration with a micro-influencer can be very powerful because they tend to have a smaller but a very engaged audience.
Fact: some marketers claim they earn more than $20 for each $1 dollar that is invested through social media influencers in their marketing. Now THAT type of return is pretty tough to ignore.
So how do you make sure your influencer campaign works?.
This will enable you to understand the performance of your campaign through effective tracking of influencer marketing analytics and hiring tracking tools. You will be able to see just how well every influencer is working out for your brand with influencer marketing metrics.
You can now calibrate your strategy, drop underperforming partnerships, and focus on the influencers who are bringing the most ROI using this information.
Measuring The Impact of Your Influencer Marketing Campaign
In influencer marketing, you collaborate with some of the most popular creators to nudge your target audience toward that desired action. But do you really know which of them are driving results for your brand?
That’s where influencer marketing attribution comes in.
It lets you understand the real impact of each influencer partnership. Forget just counting likes and comments are talking about diving deeper to see which influencer is generating sales for your business.
Nowadays, with this system, the influencer relies on methods like discount codes and unique affiliate links to promote a brand’s products or services, and brands can see which ones led to the most purchases.
They cannot tell which influences are really contributing to their effective running campaigns and which give the best results. This is challenging to improve their brand’s campaign strategy.
This is why influencer marketing attribution is important.
It takes a more holistic approach and enables tracking of 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 performing and bringing the most value to your marketing campaign.
Influencer marketing attribution works for everyone, whether you are a B2B business or a B2C one.
Now, by viewing all the data, you can tell which platforms your audience uses the most, which influencers resonate the most with them, and what kind of content is relatable and valuable for them.
With attribution, you get answers to all those questions that are of real importance:
Which influencer is driving the most sales, or whatever your specific KPIs for influencer marketing are?
Which platforms work better than others for your brand?
Which influencers are driving people to take desired actions, like visiting your website or downloading your app?
Do your audience members respond better to funny videos or in-depth reviews?
With the right data, you can answer these questions with ease.
This enables you to select the right influencers, who best work for you; create content that works well with your target audience and help get you to your marketing goals.
Influencer Marketing: Knowing What Really Works (and How to Prove It!)
Here’s the lowdown on how to track the performance of your influencer marketing success so you can prove that it does indeed work 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.
Reach:
Reach is the metric that measures the number of people who have viewed the content of the influencer who has talked about your brand. Impressions are the number of times your content has appeared in the feed or timeline of your target audience. Both of these metrics measure how visible your brand has become through the influencer partnership.
Branded Hashtags:
Branded hashtags enable you to monitor how your campaign goes well by using hashtags. A branded hashtag is where the name of your brand appears with other details, be it the name of a product or the slogan/tagline of the campaign. By means of branded hashtags, you are able to collect user-generated content like reviews or posts from users who have made use of your product and would now want to endorse that product to others too.
Followers:
Follow the follower count prior to, during, and after the entire campaign. This will help you determine if your brand gained followers because of the campaign. Track how much the influencer partnership boosted your brand’s social media presence.
2. Conversions-
Did your influencer campaign motivate people to take action, such as buying something or signing up for a trial?
Conversions are the ultimate test of success for many campaigns.
Tracking Links & Discount Codes:
Links and codes are bridges that will take people from the influencer’s post to your website or landing page. The posts can contain special coupon codes or unique trackable links so you know exactly how many sales or sign-ups came from that particular influencer campaign.
Other ways to Convert:
Do not limit it to purchases only! Free trials for subscriptions, newsletter sign-up, or app download are some of the alternatives through which people can interact with your brand. This presents the audience with more possibilities to engage and allows you to measure the campaign much more accurately.
3. Content is King-
Knowing how various types of content connect with your audience is pretty important for brands.
This gives you an idea of creating campaigns much better than these for the future.
Engagement Rate:
This is so much more than just a count of likes. The number of all those engagements- likes, comments, shares, and what have you-is taken, then divided by how many actually viewed the post. With a high engagement rate, you can assure your content made sense for them.
This isn’t just a good old like-a-mare:
Not all likes nor comments are the same.Likes give you a base level of awareness of your brand, but comments make you know how people are feeling and how interested. Anytime something’s been shared with their audience, that’s when you get to see natural growth and increased viewership beyond the reach of that influencer’s immediate following. Click through rates can illustrate that your audience was indeed driven to learn more about your brand.
Content & Repurposing:
Track the total number of content created 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 helps understand who visits the websites, where those visitors come from, and how long they spent on your site (bounce rates).
With such influencer marketing metrics in your hands, you can study the engagement and potential customers who may be interested in your product or service.
With the tracking of these influencer marketing analytics, you will be able to have a clear picture of how your campaign is doing.
Attributing Sales to Your Influencer Marketing Campaign
Ever wonder how much of the influencer’s posts contribute to your sales?
It is a tricky question, but don’t worry!
We are here to help you track confidently the impact of your influencer marketing campaign on your bottom line.
1. Setting Goals and KPIs:
As a starting point, think about what you want to achieve from your campaign.
Do you want to raise brand awareness among your target audience?
Do you want to spark conversations on social media to boost engagement?
Do you want to drive website traffic that leads to sales?
Defining specific goals and KPIs for influencer marketing will shape the metrics you track, like impressions, reach, or unique people exposed, or people clicking 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 views 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.
First Touch:
This model gives all the credit to the first touch point, for example, the influencer’s post.
Last Touch:
This model gives all the credit to the final step, for example, the click on your website.
Multi Touch Model:
This model gives credit according to the contribution of all the steps. It is generally the best option for influencer marketing.
Select the model that works for you.
If brand awareness is the main goal, the “First Touch” model may be useful. But if it’s for the sale measurement, then the “Multi-Touch” model gives a clearer view.
3. Tracking Tool Features
To really see how your influencer marketing is affecting sales, we need to have 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:
Unique Coupon Codes:
Give each influencer a unique code at checkout. This tells you exactly how many sales every influencer has driven for you so that you can deliver the appropriate discounts.
In terms of Landing Pages, each influencer gets its separate landing pages. You will be getting exact traffic, engagement and sales from every influencer
UTM Parameters:
These are the tags you attach to your website links. They track where the traffic came from, like from an influencer post. Google Analytics helps you analyze the data.
Affiliate Links:
These special links have a unique code for each influencer, allowing you to track who referred the customer and possibly pay them a commission.
Using these methods, you gather valuable data to understand the true contribution of your influencer partners.
4. Analysis and Optimization
Now that you have all your data, it’s time to find out what works best for you. Did you attain the level of brand awareness you were hoping for? Did the content from the influencer work to convert into website traffic and sales?
Calculate your ROI and cost per sale for each influencer and campaign so you know how each did relative to your budget and industry standards.
Tools such as Google Data Studio can make it easier to visualize this data.
Using your analysis, you can adjust and adapt your strategy to fit your needs.
Perhaps you need to realign your budget, the focus of your content, or select different influencers.
Through optimizing future campaigns, you will be able to increase attribution and therefore increase sales.
Influencer Marketing Campaign Examples – Real People, Real Results!
Here are a few examples of brands having some of the best performing influencer marketing campaigns and just what they did right!
The Farmer’s Dog – WeRateDogs Campaign with Pawsome Influencers:
The pet owners, we all understand that our furry friends go beyond being pets; rather, they are practically more like family!
The Farmer’s Dog gets this deep love connection. And instead of opting for the same boring, faceless corporation a
approach, they chose to go with a more collaborative strategy through 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 Luna, the golden retriever account (someone whom you already follow and with whom you trust) also says that Luna has an increase in energy and shinier coat since changing food. Now a person becomes interested in exploring more about The Farmer’s Dog and how its offerings can benefit his own pooch.
The Farmer’s Dog partnered with influencers who passionately loved their product and maintained a strong following among that target audience.
Their authentic reviews and content really resonate with viewers, and they are persuaded to spoil their pets by using their products too.
And this is how The Farmer’s Dog experiences 100% growth in business size every year.
Glossier – Campaign Regular Women:
Glossier is a brand that celebrates natural beauty and the makeup that enhances it.
They do an approach to influencer marketing refreshingly down-to-earth: They don’t care about celebrities but care for the relationship with micro-influencers and the woman-next-door fan base for the product range from Glossier.
Micro-influencers share their experiences while using Glossier. By this, they generate more trust and a connection sense that will be built within the target audience with the brand.
For instance, you are searching for some new makeup tips and find a post from a girl who looks like you do. She is talking about Glossier’s mascara and how it looks on her everyday face. Now you are really interested – maybe this product will work for you too!
Glossier does not underestimate the power of micro-influencers.
They tend to have very involved followerships and can make content that feels more relatable to the target audience of the brand, so they feel like they’re getting beauty recommendations from a trusted personality.
This is one of the primary reasons Glossier is now valued at more than a billion dollars and is one of the most loved and cherished beauty brands out there.
Gymshark – 66 Days – Change Your Life challenge:
Gymshark is a sportswear brand that came onto TikTok early and really thrashed the platform.
The brand’s “66 Days: Change Your Life” challenge used some of the fitness influencers popular on the site and also played off its focus on short, exciting videos.
Their campaign heavily consisted of fun workout routines with influencers in Gymshark gear, all urging viewers to join the challenge and share their progress under the hashtag #Gymshark66.
This created a wave of user-generated content in the form of workout selfies and progress videos that helped enhance the reach of Gymshark and made everyone excited to get fit.
They created a campaign where they challenged people to make user-generated content. The campaign helped in enhancing the brand awareness and engagement, which was fun and organic, making people feel as if they are part of this fitness movement.
The #Gymshark66 has over 250 million views on TikTok and 785,000+ posts on Instagram.
HelloFresh– #hellofreshpartner Campaign
HelloFresh calls this universal problem of too little time for healthy eating. Everyone has a rather busy schedule that conflicts with healthy meal preparation.
HelloFresh makes use of its campaigns in terms of influencer marketing, working with micro-influencers who might be in lifestyle, parenting, or cooking.
These relatable online celebrities are sharing their experiences in social media and blogs through HelloFresh kits, offering tips and tricks for preparing delicious meals without much hassle.
Doing so, HelloFresh engages with specific audience groups where content feels, well, as if it comes from someone ‘who’s been there, done that’.
Still, HelloFresh does not undervalue a celebrity.
They partnered with the actress Mindy Kaling for a series of short videos titled “Meals with Mindy.” This celebrity collaboration brought them to a wider audience and took leverage on the fans following the talented actress Mindy Kaling.
HelloFresh makes sure that all influencers, even celebrities, create content suitable for their brand and as relatable to the target audience base.
They also work smart with unique coupon codes for each influencer. It lets them track which collaborations bring in most sign-ups, which is how they can tailor their influencer marketing strategy for maximum effectiveness.
The campaign made more than 300% extra content and 270%+ impressions.
HelloFresh won the award for Best Food and Drink Campaign at the 2020 Influencer Marketing Awards.
Barbie Campaign:
Remember hours spent playing with Barbies?
The iconic toy brand proves that influencer marketing can be a strong pre-launch campaign tool as well.
To promote their live-action Barbie movie, they partnered with a diverse group of influencers around 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 interpretations of what Barbie represents.
This created a viral trend, in which people of all ages joined and started to come up with their versions under the hashtag #BarbieTheMovie.
This UGC fueled massive hype for the movie’s release.
Social feeds went viral and suddenly full of creative takes on what Barbie means to you- childhood memories, and also great career goals. This is a combination of being brought back in the blast with a modern twist, and everybody wanted a slice of the action!
The hashtags #BarbieTheMovie and #BarbieMovie crossed over 1.5 million posts just on Instagram.
Today, thanks to this campaign, more than 1 million users have created Barbie-related content.
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