Using the right influencers can get your brand in front of the right audience at the right time, increase engagement, drive web traffic and boost sales. Many brands quickly invest in their first big name influencers without taking into account whether or not their investment is actually earning them a return. If the ROI of influencer marketing campaigns is tracked, brands can evaluate campaign performance, find their best performing creators and make better marketing spending decisions in the future.

Set Clear Goals for Each Campaign

In order to measure influencer marketing return on investment, goals for each campaign must be clearly stated. Possible goals include increasing campaign awareness and lead generation. Less goals for a influencer marketing campaign may include website visits, engagement and sales. Each goal may have different determining factors for success. For example, an awareness campaign may be measured by impressions.

Track the Right Influencer Marketing Statistics

For a campaign to be successful, key performance indicators must be tracked. If a creator drives website visits, sales or audience growth but isn’t significantly increasing impressions or engagement, that’s ok. Follower count does not equate success.

Campaign success is best determined by reviewing a combination of several metrics including clicks, website visits and sales, engagement, impressions, audience growth and conversions.

Consider Using Influencer Marketing Software

Measuring influencer marketing ROI can be tricky with a number of different reporting systems and disperse data. This can be made easier with software designed to give brands a centralized system to track creators, campaigns and the performance metrics for each.

Marketing teams can use software to organize creator activities and campaigns, and compare results. Manually compiling all that information takes time, and has an increased potential for human error.

Choose the Best AI Influencer Marketing Platforms

AI technology provides marketing teams recommendations and analysis. Brands can use AI to analyze creators based on an audience’s relevance and level of engagement, as well as assess previous content performance.

AI can also reduce the need for repetitive analysis. The marketing team can use time previously spent on analysis for strategy and creative development.

Calculate Influencer Marketing ROI

Campaign efficiency can be assessed by calculating ROI. The formula is as follows:

Influencer Marketing ROI = (Campaign Return − Campaign Investment) ÷ Campaign Investment × 100

Campaign return can vary and is assessed based on the objective. For example, a return for an e-commerce campaign could be total sales dollars, and for a campaign focused on lead-generation the return could be total leads or conversions.

Brands should also evaluate all the costs associated with the campaign including creator fees, product costs, and platform fees.

Improve ROI Through Optimization

Marketers shouldn’t only assess ROI after a campaign is completed, but use the findings to optimize future campaigns.

There are several aspects of marketing campaigns that can be assessed for performance. These include creators, content formats, audience segments, and campaign strategies. For example, high-performing creators can be rewarded with additional campaigns, and strategies that don’t perform can be modified or eliminated.

Influencer Marketing Without Agencies

In the past, an agency was often needed to facilitate an influencer campaign. Agencies had the experience and relationships to locate suitable influencers, negotiate fees, and arrange the partnerships. 

Conclusion

Brands are best positioned to optimize their influencer marketing strategies when they have the flexibility to quickly modify their approaches based on campaign performance. Measuring ROI of influencer marketing campaigns is more accessible and accurate when a brand tracks and manages campaigns, themselves, using the appropriate tools and software. AI and software is making influencer marketing campaigns easier and faster to arrange. Brands can structure and manage their creator partnerships using the best influencer marketing platforms and influencer marketing software and services. Vitaay.ai helps businesses enhance their marketing strategy using its integrated and all-in-one marketing platform.