Influencer marketing has yet to reach its peak and continues to show us why it’s here to stay. In fact, brands report earning higher ROI and greater brand value as a direct impact of influencers. But the only way to know for sure what these strategies will do for you is to know how you're going to handle influencer campaign tracking.
You can’t measure what you don’t monitor. With all the moving parts of influencer marketing — content creation, product seeding, posts on various channels, follower growth, hashtags, etc. — it’s not always obvious what’s driving results.
But when you know for sure what’s working in influencer marketing and what isn’t, you have a better chance of maximizing your ROI and getting the results you expect (or better).
Let’s look at how you can tackle influencer campaign tracking and how to use your findings to increase your ROI.
Contents:
Why Influencer Campaign Tracking Is Important
Choosing the Right Tools for Influencer Campaign Tracking
Setting Up Effective Tracking Mechanisms
Analyzing and Interpreting Influencer Campaign Data
Best Practices for Maximizing Influencer Campaign ROI
Case Studies: Successful Influencer Campaign Tracking
How to Do Influencer Campaign Tracking with Meltwater
Why Influencer Campaign Tracking Is Important
Influencer tracking helps you understand your influencer marketing impact. It includes monitoring metrics like engagement, reach, and conversions to see which influencers are creating the most value for your brand.
Campaign tracking also gives you direct insights into what your followers like. By seeing the influencers and content they engage with, you can double down on these insights and get better results across all your content and channels.
These trends and insights aren’t just beneficial in influencer marketing, but also your marketing strategy as a whole. You’ll learn more about your audience and find new ways to connect with them, including choosing influencers they’re most likely to follow and trust.
Choosing the Right Tools for Influencer Campaign Tracking
To track influencer marketing, you need to have the right tools. Influencer tools collect insights, analyze findings, and show you why your data matters and what to do next.
When choosing influencer tracking tools, you’ll want to look for a few key features:
- Influencer recruiting tools to help you find (and ideally attract!) influencers to work with
- Influencer analytics to streamline vetting and make sure you know who you’re partnering with and why
- Campaign management tools to centralize content, communication, and campaign activities
- Content calendars to track deadlines, who’s meeting them, and who’s not
- Analytics to show you performance metrics per post, per campaign, and per influencer
- AI tools to help you find common denominators between successful posts (e.g., AI-powered image searches, hashtags)
Also, consider the other tools and systems you’re using and how your influencer tracking tools can integrate with them. Integrations can help you create a well-oiled influencer marketing machine where all the parts work together seamlessly.
Lastly, balance your needs and wants with your budget. Influencer tracking tools can range in price and functionality. It might make more financial sense to choose an all-in-one platform that includes influencer tracking rather than piecing together various tools and software.
You also don’t want to pay for more than what you need. Get specific about what you want from your influencer campaign monitoring, then explore options that meet those needs.
Setting Up Effective Tracking Mechanisms
Influencer marketing is metric-heavy, but the metrics you track need to mean something to your campaign and your greater business goals.
When setting up influencer tracking, your first objective should be to choose the right methods to get the insights you need.
Here are three areas of opportunity to give you a complete picture.
Campaign objectives and KPIs for accurate tracking
What you track ultimately depends on what you want out of your campaign. For example, if your goal is to raise brand awareness, you can track follower count and website visits. If you want to sell a specific product, you can look at website visits and product sales. Engagement metrics like likes, shares, views, and comments can add context to your campaigns and show how people are receiving the influencer’s content.
Your campaign objectives and KPIs may vary from campaign to campaign. It’s beneficial to use influencer tracking tools that can adapt to your evolving needs and track whatever KPIs make the most sense for each campaign.
Unique tracking codes and links for each influencer
Engagement and reach don’t tell the full story. Those likes and shares need to translate into something, and you can more easily calculate ROI by looking directly at sales.
Tracking codes and unique links can attribute website visits and sales to each influencer. This makes it easier to see which influencers are driving the most impact.
Custom landing pages and tracking pixels for data collection
Taking tracking links and codes a step further, you can set up influencers with their own landing pages. This not only helps you attribute website visits to individual influencers, but also lets you track potential customers after they leave the site. This is a great opportunity to learn more about their needs, interests, and preferences.
Landing pages infused with your influencers’ branding lets the influencer continue to engage them and stay top of mind. Retargeting becomes a team effort; your influencer partners can help drive potential customers back to the landing page to complete the conversion.
Analyzing and Interpreting Influencer Campaign Data
Once you launch an influencer campaign, your next objective is to analyze the data you collected. You can measure basic metrics like shares, likes, and comments without any special tools (just check the posts!). But campaign tracking tools make it easier by combining all of your influencers’ content in a single place.
You’ll likely need a variety of data sources to get the full picture.
- Check each social media platform’s built-in analytics to see tags, mentions, and new followers.
- Use influencer analytics tools like Klear to view engagements and other metrics per post, per influencer, and per campaign.
- Review Google Analytics or other website analytics tools to view traffic patterns, clicks, and conversions.
If you aren’t using separate landing pages or tracking links as part of your influencer campaigns, you can look for spikes in website traffic that align with the campaign. It’s a little more difficult to attribute exact numbers to the campaign, but you’ll have a good idea as to whether your influencers’ content made an impact.
Use this data to optimize future campaigns, such as choosing specific influencers to work with, targeting a specific demographic, or running campaigns on certain social networks.
Best Practices for Maximizing Influencer Campaign ROI
Successful influencer campaigns not only reach your target audience but also deliver a significant return on investment. Follow these best practices to maximize your campaign ROI.
Choose influencers based on fit, not following
Follower count isn’t the end-all metric when choosing influencer partners. What matters more is that your influencers align with your brand image and can connect with your target audience. Ideally, your influencers will have an engaged audience relevant to your target market.
Develop clear campaign objectives
Before launching an influencer campaign, decide what you want to accomplish — and which influencers can help you achieve those goals.
For example, do you want to engage a specific niche or demographic? If so, you’ll choose influencers whose audience aligns with that niche. Do you want to increase sales? Some influencers are better suited for sales-related content than others.
Clear objectives will guide your strategy.
Collaborate with influencers to instill authenticity
Don’t just hire influencers; collaborate with them to help them learn more about your brand, audience, and goals. This allows influencers to create more authentic content and ensure a clear connection between their content and your brand. They can maintain creative freedom while helping to put you in a positive light.
Take a multi-platform approach
Unless your audience is overwhelmingly on a specific channel, don’t limit your influencer campaigns to just one network. Using multiple social platforms can help you expand your reach and impact.
Budget creatively
Celebrity influencers command thousands of dollars or more per post, which makes many businesses feel like influencer marketing is out of reach. But there are lots of smaller influencers who charge lower rates. In fact, some will even collaborate with brands in exchange for free products.
Be creative in your budgeting and understand the current market rate for various influencer types. You might be surprised at how affordable influencer marketing can be.
Tip: Not sure where to start with your influencer strategy? Download our free Influencer Marketing Strategy Template!
Case Studies: Successful Influencer Campaign Tracking
Brands that have a solid system in place for tracking influencer campaigns also tend to have the best success stories.
Take Domino’s Pizza, for example. Using audience segment data within Meltwater, the pizza company discovered content creators who fit perfectly with its brand values. The company used location and interest filters to partner with influencers on a user-generated content campaign. In-house teams could view creator profiles on social media, find their contact information, and connect directly with them, all from a single platform.
World Wildlife Fund also uses Meltwater’s influencer marketing features to drive awareness and raise funds. Influencer marketing played a big role in its hashtag campaign, #NewDealForNature. Using Meltwater’s campaign tracking, the brand saw a 12x increase in followers, 1.9 million Twitter impressions, and five new categories of influencers to help in future collaborations.
Learning from industry-leading influencer campaigns can inspire your strategy and help you experience a faster time to value.
How to Do Influencer Campaign Tracking with Meltwater
Meltwater makes it easy to track influencer performance with end-to-end influencer management. Find, vet, and hire influencers from directly within the platform, then gain real-time insights into their campaign content. Get essential insights at a glance, such as engagement rates and conversions, and watch as their contributions to your brand grow over time.
Learn more when you request a demo by filling out the form below.
