For B2B marketers, tracking and measuring both the ongoing progress and the results of their campaigns is key. After all, sharing the success of campaigns is crucial in justifying marketing spend to senior management, and demonstrating alignment with company goals. As a non-traditional marketing channel, influencer marketing doesn’t seem as straightforward when it comes to tracking influencers’ activities and setting overarching objectives. However, with this medium giving 11 times more ROI than banner advertisements, it’s clear that this is something B2B businesses will need to tackle sooner rather than later.
Firstly, brands should set objectives for influencer marketing activity – whether it’s boosting brand awareness, increasing share of voice, or driving lead generation. Following this, it’s necessary to plan the specific metrics you want to track. Here are five metrics we recommend you consider:
1. Within reach
Regardless of your overall objectives, a key metric to track is campaign reach. By tracking follower numbers and impressions for each post, it’s possible to get a good overview of how far your message is spreading. However, it’s important to remember that utilising influencers with a larger following won’t necessarily equate to better ROI – their audience may not be as targeted, and they typically have less interaction and lower rates of engagement with their followers.
2. Does this resonate?
It’s all very well to get your message out in front of more people, but if there isn’t sufficient audience engagement, is it really worth it? This is why it’s crucial to set the right engagement KPIs and track them continuously. Engagement can be measured through basic metrics such as likes, comments and shares, which should give you an indication of how well-received your content is, as well as click-through rates – to see how many people found it relevant enough to find out more. If an influencer has 30,000 followers but only 10 likes per post and an average CTR of 0.25%, for example, they may not have the right audience for your messaging.
3. Are leads converting?
Once you’ve found the right influencer, commenced activities, and have started to get some good engagement rates for your posts, it’s important to track just how many lead conversions have occurred as a result of this activity. This can be done easily by tracking leads which have come via social, on platforms such as Google Analytics – so you can see which social media platforms are generating the most engaged traffic, and allocate your budget accordingly. Another way to track conversions is through affiliate links, which can show which influencers – and which individual posts – have contributed most to your business’ revenue.
4. Boosting SEO
A common consequence of a successful influencer marketing campaign is a spike in website traffic from organic search, as it indicates that engaged users are undertaking their own research about your brand. By tracking your branded search traffic, you will be able to see how the volume of visits to your website, that arrived via a branded keyword, fluctuates. This is a great way to measure high-intent brand awareness, as not only are these people aware of your brand and interested in discovering more, but they also want to potentially make a purchase.
5. Cut through the noise
It’s important to capture the above metrics, but what about the bigger picture? What are the effects of your influencer marketing activity on other channels, and overall revenue targets? Share of voice acts as a gauge for brand visibility, and demonstrates how much you dominate the conversation in your industry. Measuring share of voice is trickier than tracking metrics, such as CTR, as it is more holistic and spans several channels. However, tracking organic search and PPC is useful for positioning your brand against competitors, whilst monitoring social media share of voice, for example, mentions and tags, gives a more accurate picture of brand awareness.
Would you like to learn more about the benefits influencer marketing could bring to your business? Download our guide to influencer marketing, available now on The Knowledge, and take your marketing to the next level.