Measuring Influencer Marketing
In this Adnews article Sharyn Smith, the director of The Influence Group and the chair of AIMCO, says campaigns are about influencing a community of people who are following a creator, about driving awareness of brand concepts.
"First you need to define what success looks like and the objectives of the campaign (like all campaigns) and then we need to really understand the metrics that matter to measure for those specific KPIs," said Smith.
"We define the campaigns based on awareness-driving metrics through to actual impact on behaviour. We often develop campaigns that have multiple objectives by activating different tiers - for example, macro influencers doing more awareness driving and micro doing more behaviour change."
Smith says the key things to consider when measuring influencer marketing campaigns is to make sure brands are looking at it from the perspective of who they are trying to influence and if it is reaching and impacting that community.
"We need to understand our measurement at a community level and at a total campaign level. Analysing individual creator performance is key to optimising campaigns and making sure we have ongoing performance from creator partnerships."
Sharyn outlined five key areas to focus on when looking to leverage success via an influencer marketing campaign, as follows:
Awareness: "Topline figures such as impressions (how many people say the content/post) or views (how many say the video/story) give an idea of how far it has been distributed (awareness driving)."
Engagement: "Engagement rates (comments and likes) to understand if the content is resonating (shifting opinions/attitudes). We might also look at saves and shares here as more active engagement."
Sentiment: "AI-powered sentiment and content analysis (analysis of the comments to understand the reactions to the content and if it is influencing people)."
Actions: "We measure actions through analysing what people have done with the content – did they click on a link, visit a page or buy a product? These can be measured through affiliate codes and unique links."
Share of Voice Benchmarking: "Another key measure we look at is what share of voice is the campaign driving on the select social platforms relative to competitors. This allows us to understand if the campaign is delivering a competitive advantage compared to non campaign time periods."