Make every investment on influencer marketing count

Influencer marketing is the fastest growing marketing channel in digital space. Reports suggest it delivers 11x ROI (rate on marketing investment) compared to traditional forms of advertising. An effective influencer marketing is measured by its effectiveness in building brand awareness, improve brand advocacy, manage reputation, increase the share of voice, improve sales conversion, or reach a new targeted audience. To calculate the returns on your investment you first need to outline the cost of investment on your influencer that will be measured after the end of your campaign. To start with, you have to choose your influencer wisely. Here are a few tips:

Measure reach of your influencer. Is your content covering a substantial number of people from influencer’s platform? In simple terms, are the followers replying or sharing your content? You need to be certain that there is a considerable real number of followers who interact with your content. It is meaningless working with an influencer with a million followers yet receives a tiny ratio of Retweets, likes or comments.

Track the number of impressions. This is the number of times your post is visible to the audience online. What you have to do is, compare the impressions on posts shared by an influencer to the number of impressions your brand receives on posts you publish through your own social media channels.

Look at the number of engagements (likes, comments, reactions). This helps you find out if audience or potential customers are talking about your service or product and, of course, what they are talking about. Another important aspect to take note, is the influencer engaging with the audience or simply just broadcasts your message then steps out of it? Somebody who often engages with their followers will be far more influential to your brand.

Get high-quality content out there. Strike your audience by producing eye catching content or get influencers to deliver for you.

If you create rich content, you have an opportunity for stretching it across different platforms i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube.

How can you track conversions from an influencer or manage to get somebody to respond to a Call to Action? It’s important to realize, the purchasing cycle can be quite long, therefore, exercising patience is important. The fact is, you need to ensure you keep on measuring results after you are done with the influencer.

Here is a simple formula: (Sales price per item x Number of extra items sold) - Cost of your campaign / Cost of Your Campaign)

So, how do we get to this formula or measure conversion?

Track correlation of your content published online. For instance, count the number of all subscriptions on your website within a month after a new post your influencer published.

Track your content with links from influencers’ each post. You can easily tell where exactly traffic is originating from. It helps you make informed decisions on your next post or campaign.

Encourage influencers to use a campaign hashtag that is tied to your revenue with their followers. You can count the total number of people using the hashtag during the campaign period.

Give discount tickets. Yes, offer promotional cards with discounts to different influencers to share with followers. So, every time you make a sale you get to know which influencer did the trick. Providing them a promo code is enough incentive to motivate them into buying your product/service.

Tracking ROI from influencers can be a bit daunting but always be prepared to set your tactics right and directing your resources to appropriate channels.

Keeping up on new developments on social media is essential as it moves very fast as you read the next word, therefore, you wouldn’t want to miss out on its profitable returns.

I leave you with a case study from one of the most talented sports individuals, Christiano Ronaldo.

A $1 billion marketing contract between him and Nike in 2016. He posted 1,703 times overall on social media in 2016 out of which created 2.25 billion engagements (likes, comments, shares, retweets, and views on videos) per Hookit. Nike in return generated $499.6 million from Ronaldo’s posts in 2016 alone. Pick that one out!