5 Must-Have Influencer Marketing KPIs - Complete Guide
Influencer marketing is fast becoming one of the most powerful tools for growing your brand and expanding your audience reach. In fact, 80% of consumers have purchased something due to an influencer recommending it.
What’s more, 41% of consumers now discover new brands through influencers every week – that’s nearly half of us regularly actively searching and investing in products and services because an influencer told us to. Influencer marketing may have grown into an industry now worth $17.3 billion – but is this money being well spent? And if so, what influencer metrics are businesses using to measure the success of their campaigns?
To help you maximize the success of your own influencer marketing strategies, we here at Collabstr want to throw some light on five must-know influencer marketing KPIs that’ll keep track of how you’re progressing and whether you’re meeting campaign goals. After all, we know a thing or two about making stellar branded content that brings big results. So let’s get into it.
What is An Influencer Marketing KPI?
KPI stands for ‘Key Performance Indicator’ – these are metrics that businesses use to measure performance and quantify whether you are achieving objectives in the way you set out. So for example, in a YouTube influencer campaign, you’ll need to use KPIs that work out how many people are watching their videos and how many customers you are getting from the views (but more on this later!).
Why Is Measuring KPIs So Important?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty details of the KPIs themselves, let’s list a few benefits of measuring influencer marketing KPIs:
Discover and solve issues
If your campaign doesn’t seem to be working, you can use a combination of KPIs to gain analytical insights and identify where the problem lies – whether it’s a lack of social media engagement, not getting the number of views you were expecting, or anything else. Once you know the problem you can then tackle the issue head-on.
Analyze patterns over time
Calculating KPIs at regular intervals allows you to detect patterns in your campaign – and knowing these patterns comes in handy when predicting changes and responding accordingly. Suppose that your influencer campaigns seem to dip in the post-Christmas slump, you can then use that time to invest in other things or adjust the content being created.
Spend your money wisely
Being aware of how much money is coming in, compared to out, is an integral part of any campaign management. Knowing whether you’re over or underspending also means you can adjust your budgets accordingly. The aim is to stay on track and make sure things are running how they’re meant to.
Making money is simple with Collabstr. Our easy-to-use platform keeps track of exactly how much you’re spending. Plus we store your money safely until we know you’re 100% happy with the content that influencers send you. Find out more about how it works.
5 Must-Know Influencer Marketing KPIs:
Whether you’re investing in brand deals on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, or any other social media platform, these are the influencer metrics you need to be measuring. After all, you don’t want to be wasting your precious time, money, and resources on influencer content that’s not quite working.
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Brand awareness
Brand awareness refers to the level a brand or campaign is recognized amongst your target audience. As an influencer marketing KPI, it most commonly measures the reach and impressions of a post, whether it’s a YouTube video featuring a promotion segment or a dedicated Instagram post reviewing a product.
Reach = the number of unique individuals who see the post
Impressions = the number of times the post is displayed to your audience
Although this KPI won’t measure engagement or what people think of your brand, it’s still super important for grasping the scope of your audience reach, ie. how many people are seeing the post and how effectively the campaign is working for getting your name out there. Visibility is key!
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Referral web traffic
Calculating your referral web traffic is one of the most important influencer metrics, if driving traffic to your site is the main objective. Referral traffic refers to how many people land on your site from an affiliate link, eg. the ones influencers will link in their Instagram bio or mention in the description of a YouTube video. It’s all well and good having consumers know your name. It’s another thing to have them check you out and browse your products.
Google Analytics is a great way of tracking your referral web traffic. The platform has plenty of influencer metrics you can measure, including:
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Referral link sources
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Total page views
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Time spent on site
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Total sessions (the no. of times one unique user visits your site within a specific amount of time)
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Audience growth
You’d be forgiven for thinking audience growth and brand awareness are the same thing – they’re similar, but there are a few key differences you should know about.
Let’s say someone clicks on your link and has a quick scroll through your home page, this would be something that meets brand awareness KPIs. Why? Well, the site visitor may be aware of who you are, but they might not necessarily think about your brand or have any intention to buy from you.
On the other hand, audience growth would be if they check out your site, read your blog posts, follow you on Facebook, and then sign up for your newsletters, ie. a whole multitude of actions that grow your audience of consumers who are actively taking notice of who you are and what you do.
That makes sense, right? After all, you don’t just want to be seen by as many people as possible, you also want to turn them into devoted followers of your brand. You can measure audience growth by looking at social media analytics and site interactions like:
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Number of followers
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Shares, likes, comments
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Brand mentions
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Use of campaign hashtags
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Email list subscribers
It’s best you compare these numbers pre and post-campaign. If they’ve soared, chances are you’re onto a winner!
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Conversions sales
Although conversions refer to all sorts of desired actions (eg. clicking on a link or downloading an eBook), it’s the sales of your products/services that matter most. Ultimately, isn’t the whole point of marketing campaigns to make money?
Unique coupon codes and affiliate links are the best way to find out how much of the directed traffic from your influencer campaigns is actually being converted to paying customers. Trackable codes and links will show you the exact number of customers who’ve purchased something after seeing an influencer recommending or promoting it on their page.
To give an example, SurfShark has now featured in over 2,500 integrated YouTube segments promoting unique codes that can be used to access offers and discounts, such as 83% off their first month. These codes usually include the influencer’s name, meaning it’s easy to track where customers came from. It’s not rocket science but these codes work a treat for knowing just how valuable an influencer’s content is.
[Novympia YouTube channel, SurfShark discount code]
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Return on investment (ROI)
Last on our list of influencer metrics is perhaps the most crucial: return on investment. 78% of marketers see earning a positive ROI as the biggest challenge of any marketing campaign, but luckily calculating an ROI is a little easier.
The simplest way is a formula that compares the marketing cost (ie. how much you’re spending on a campaign) with your sales growth (ie. how much revenue you’re generating because of it). Here’s how it goes:
(Sales Growth - Marketing Cost) / Marketing Cost = ROI
So let’s say your sales grew by $2,500 and the influencer marketing campaign cost $1000, your ROI will be +150%. Pretty good going if you ask us!
Wrapping up
The benefits of influencer marketing are loud and clear. That’s why we make finding suitable and fully vetted influencers a piece of cake. We make it easy to connect with talented content creators so you can focus on keeping track of the all-important influencer marketing KPIs like brand awareness, audience growth, and your return on investment. Calculating influencer metrics like these are vital for monitoring whether you’re achieving a campaign’s goals. It’s all about maximizing its success.
We’ll help you do just that. Join 20,000 other businesses by signing up as a brand today. You can find and hire influencers in seconds with our network of connections.
