7 Ways to Track ROI for Influencer Marketing

July 8, 2019
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Calculating return on investment (ROI) isn’t so cut and dry when it comes to influencer marketing. In fact, over 75% of marketers find tracking ROI for influencer marketing strategies to be an industry challenge.

Because influencer marketing doesn’t always result in immediate sales it’s important to track and measure the full consumer’s path to purchase journey as well as properly assigning earned media values (EMV) to your social media metrics.

Below are 7 ways to track ROI for influencer marketing campaigns that markers should review in order to gauge success:  

 

1. Use Trackable Links (Affiliate Links)

Make sure you partner with influencers who agree to use unique trackable links per social media platform. This provide data around the number of clicks, impressions and activations to the brand’s website and the order value for those sales.

For determining influencer performance and for optimization, you should be passing in SUBID or AFFID’s dynamically into your links.  The advertiser can record and associates the SUBID’s with the action and can provide you with reporting broken out by the SUBIDs.

Don’t forget that affiliate links do have some limitations.  Sometimes a purchase can occur months after a shopper sees a product on an influencer’s platform and the lifecycle of a trackable affiliate link is normally 30 days. If a shopper buys the product online or in-store, you won’t be able to trace the purchase to influencer content, even if that was what drove the sale.

 

2. Review ALL Social Media Analytics:

  • Clicks
  • Comments
  • Shares
  • Reach
  • Engagement Rates
  • Impressions/Views

 

3. Promotional Codes:

Assigning specific promo code allows you to track ROI for influencer marketing from individual influencers posts.

If an influencer is driving lots of engagements and activations through their promo code, they’re clearly doing something right. It may simply be a sign that their audience is a perfect fit for your brand. Or it could indicate that they are exceptional at promotion, in which case you can copy some of their strategies in your own marketing or encourage adoption by other influencers.

Promo codes offer two distinct advantages over using tracking links alone:

  • Promo codes track your influencer’s offline promotion efforts, whether they mention it on a podcast or YouTube video or simply in the context of a live video stream.
  • Promo codes also help you track subsequent purchases. After their first purchase, a customer is likelier to go directly to your site than to go back and click through on the link from your influencer’s original social post. However, they’ll remember that promo code and use it again to score the discount.

 

4. Earned Media Value:

Earned Media Value (EMV) is a metric used to measure the cash value of a social media campaign and it’s a way for marketers to judge the value of their investment on their influencer marketing campaigns. It’s an excellent guide to how much an influencer is worth while providing accountability for influencer spending.

An influencer with many genuine and engaged followers will undoubtedly generate a better (EMV) than somebody with less of a proven record.

The value of the influencer’s EMV could represent how much a brand would have to pay if they were to reach that influencer’s followers using paid advertising.

The calculation of EMV can be complicated. You need to make allowances for a range of factors.  However, a good place to start is using a reputable EMV scale such as the Social Index to calculate EMV.

 

5. Google Analytics:

Google Analytics is another incredibly powerful tool for tracking page visits, bounce rates, engagements and online sales. By setting up an “Event” goal, you can see which of your online customers visited your e-commerce site from an influencer’s blog or social channel, giving you a reliable assessment of ROI on e-commerce sales.

 

6. Share of Voice:

Share of voice has a direct correlation to market share.  For example, 10% increase in share of voice can potentially lead to a 10% increase in overall market share.  Looking at your brands share of voice before your influencer marketing campaign will give you an idea of where your brand stands. As you launch influencer campaigns, track this metric to analyze the impact of your campaigns.

 

7. Review SEO Rankings:

Track your websites search engine optimization rankings after every campaign. If the goal in your influencer partnership is to drive website traffic, there are plenty of SEO monitoring tools that can be highly valuable in measuring success for this specific objective.

 

Be sure to reach out to ShopHer Media for any influencer marketing inquiries.