Influencer Marketing ROI

With the rise of social media, many changes have come to the business world, particularly the marketing of those businesses.

The use of social networks to market brands and businesses has created a special form of marketing known as influencer marketing.

When you saw the words influencer marketing, you are sure that you thought of things like shares and likes. But there is so much more to influencer marketing than one might think.

There are many metrics that have to be considered when creating influencer marketing campaigns.

In the end, though, most influencer marketers concentrate on driving a strong ROI. What is that? Why is it important? Let’s discuss that and some other key pieces of information that can help you with your future campaigns.

Influencer Marketing – What Is It?

Influencer Marketing is the marketing strategy that uses social media users or influencers to promote their brand or products.

This can be done through a blog post or an influencer’s post by a social content creator that has a good brand alignment.

Engaging with the influencer’s audience or their own social media followers builds credibility and eventually drives sales.

That being said, there are other advantages when it comes to influencer marketing. Here are a few of those:

• Increase website traffic
• Build brand awareness
• Enhance your reach
• Increase social media followers
• Drive sales
• Build leads

The Importance of Influencer Marketing

When you are analyzing your key performance indicators, you may get pretty frustrated and begin asking yourself if this influencer marketing thing is even worth it. Believe us, influencer marketing is most definitely worth it.

This form of marketing is by far one of the best strategies that you can use to get your brand’s story in front of a wider social media audience.

To understand things like your influencer marketing ROI, you need to understand the significance of influencer marketing in regards to your business’s marketing campaign’s success.

According to several studies on the topic, there are several reasons why having an influencer marketing strategy can be beneficial to your business.

These studies have found that most people looking to spend money are looking for natural and authentic content as inspiration. This may be why influencer campaigns can effectively build brand awareness.

This is why micro-influencers have seen such a big push recently, as the smaller the Instagram followers count, the more one-on-one contact they have, which can seem like a more authentic connection to potential customers for your brand.

The studies also show that of all the influencer marketing KPIs, engagement is the one that, when elevated, equates to success in an influencer marketing campaign.

The hardest metric to prove, though – at least for the influencers themselves – is the marketing ROI.

So now you understand why this type of marketing is significant and needs to be a big part of any brand’s marketing campaigns. But even with that in mind, we still need to do a deep dive into the influencer marketing ROI to understand better how to use it to craft a successful campaign.

What Metrics Can You Track?

It is all about brand awareness when it comes to any influencer campaign. Using social channels and the influencers that use them will help with your brand’s awareness.

There are three main influencer marketing KPIs that a good marketing agency will use to analyze the success of a marketing campaign:

• Reach – This typically is analyzed through numbers of followers (i.e. YouTube subscribers)
• Engagement -This is the typical likes, comments, and shares.
• Brand Mentions – It is important to be shared online in places other than social media platforms. Having your brand be mentioned in press and media can drive up your website traffic, which is also important to the success of your campaign.

What Does ROI Mean?

All of those metrics can be used when measuring ROI. ROI (return on investment) is by far one of the most important.

This metric boils down to mathematical proof that the marketing budget you have allocated to your social media influencer’s sponsored content drove revenue or traffic to your business.

Influencer marketing ROI isn’t always money, as we said above. Sometimes it is as simple as building your social media followers or even just enhancing your brand’s awareness amongst your target audience.

The ultimate reason, though, to calculate ROI for your influencer marketing campaigns is to ensure that your marketing dollars have yielded the results you were looking for.

How Do I Calculate ROI?

Influencer Marketing ROI starts by setting campaign goals. To do this, you will want to begin by asking yourself what it is you are looking to achieve.

What is important to your brand? Some of the most important goals when it comes to these data-driven campaigns are:

• Brand Awareness
• Building Engagement
• Content Creation
• Return on Ad Spend
• Build Revenue

Your influencer marketing campaign needs to align with the rest of your brand’s marketing. This is especially important when you have opted to use multiple influencers or multiple campaigns.

Once your campaign goals have been defined, you can then turn to choose the metrics you will use to track the success of your influencer marketing program.

Some of these metrics might be:

• Social media post impressions
• Landing page visits
• Engagement numbers
• New customers
• Direct sales

Next up, you want to total up your campaign costs, which will help you find your ROI and define your influencer marketing budget.

Some of the costs that tend to crop up according to many marketing agencies are:

• Time – Time spent can include looking for the right influencer as well as handling the influencer campaign. This could include the creation of content yourself, such as videos. To save time and lower your costs, you can utilize an app like Billo to find a video creator to help you. You can also use time-tracking software to help you with this.
  
• Samples – In order to entice influencers, you may need to offer freebies or special promo codes for them to use with their followers.
  
• Influencer fees – This really depends on which of the influencers you go with for your influencer marketing efforts. The smaller the influencer, the less you may have to shell out.
  
• Software – Other than the metric-tracking software, you can find a social listening tool. On top of that, there are several analytics software you can invest in, too. if you are trying to save a little money you could look at Google analytics to get similar information when it comes to your actual landing page.

Now that you know exactly what your campaign cost is, you can calculate those returns. This depends on campaign goals.

Here are the metrics you will use when tracking ROI:

• Brand awareness – Impressions, views, and shares
• Engagement – Comments, landing page visits, video views, other interactions
• Return on Ad Spend – Average order value, return on ad spend, and cost/click
• Sales – Revenue, average order value, and cost per acquisition

With those two numbers figured out, you can calculate influencer marketing ROI as well as dive into deeper insights. The basic formula to calculate true ROI looks like this:

(Return/Cost) x 100 = ROI

What is a Good ROI Percentage for Marketing?

A good ROI is 5:1. That means that once you have compiled this qualitative data, you should have a $5 return for every $1 spent on your influencer marketing campaign. In the end, though, any positive ROI is a good percentage.

What is the Difficulty When it Comes to Tracking Influencer Marketing ROI?

Calculating influencer marketing ROI can be challenging for the actual influencer or the brand, even if they follow the steps above. An influencer marketing campaign has a lot of non-tangible assets to be monitored.

In other words, the difficulty in the brand trying to measure influencer marketing ROI is that it’s not all about the money.

You don’t have the same access to the customer with an influencer marketing platform as you would on your own website (with your own website, you can also use tools like Google Analytics).

Since you don’t have that access, you will need to be super clear with the influencer you choose and monitor any of that sponsored content on the social media platforms it goes out on.

This is why marketing agencies track social media posts and the influencer platform to ensure that they are getting the metrics they are looking for.

Tips for a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign

Now that you have an idea why the ROI of influencer marketing is by far one of the most important metrics, we want to give you a few tips on how to ensure your influencer campaign is successful.

• Figure out your target audience. This will not only help you create your content and choose your influencer, but also determine which social media platform will convert better.
  
• Take a deep look at the influencers you are considering using for your campaign. You will want to look at their follower counts and social platforms to make sure they align with your brand message. Take a look at times they did paid advertising or other paid media.
  
• Consider allowing guest posting on your own social media accounts. This will allow those influencers to introduce new people to the other influencer platforms. You can also give the influencer a unique promo code to share on their feed to drive traffic to your website.

How To Start Talking With Social Media Influencers

So how do you find influencers? And when you do, how do you talk to them? There are influencer marketing platforms where you can contact various influencers or slide into their DMs and begin the discussion. Here are a few tips that could help you with this process:

You want to start with an interview. You will want to contact them and pitch them what you see going on with the campaign.

Make sure to have your contracts and agreements handy to answer any questions and share them with the influencer.

Make sure when doing this pitch that you are not making it all about what you get out of the collaboration. You can offer special codes or early access to a product. You can also mention your social media numbers and the fact that they will also have the ability to reach your customer base as well.

Don’t make the pitch too corporate. You are dealing with influencers who have developed an authentic personality, so you want to be personable and authentic.

A good thing to add to your pitch is to ask the influencer for advice. They have special experience and may be able to help you out even if they choose not to work with you in the end.

If you don’t want to go that route, you can also start mentioning them in your social media content. This can be done through text or audio in the actual post, sharing some of their content on your stories, or simply tagging them in a post.

This is a great way to get their attention and eventually start a dialogue between you and them.

Final Thoughts

Using influencers in a marketing campaign over social media platforms can really help enhance your brand’s awareness. However, like with any marketing campaign, it is a cost for your company, so you want to make sure you have a successful turnout.

The last thing you want is to spend your company’s money and not have any return on your investment. This could mean revenue, but it could also be extending your brand’s reach or driving traffic to your website.

There may be many different metrics that you can use to evaluate the success, but there is one that stands above the rest: ROI. This is why monitoring your campaign’s ROI is so important, and we hope the information above helps you with that.