According to many marketers’ research, influencer marketing is currently the fastest growing method of acquiring customers online, leaving behind SEM, SEO, mailings or display advertising. With the increase of this popularity, there is a growing need to measure the effects of cooperation with influencers. Marketers need so-called common denominator – they want to know in an accessible way which influencer has achieved better results. We need measures that show what the return on investment was, did we reach the right opinion leaders, what was the commitment? Advanced panels for media monitoring with full influencers’ analysis are helpful in this area.
Blogs, vlogs, photos and recommendations are the source of many valuable information, help build brand awareness and create new spaces for advertisers. In the Newspoint report “Analytics and Monitoring of Influencers”, the advantages and challenges of cooperation with opinion leaders were gathered. We advise on how to measure success in influencer marketing and how to set goals for advertising campaigns. We describe the measurement indicators that are helpful in the selection of influencers and those with which you can measure the effectiveness of the campaign.
Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on reaching audiences through opinion leaders in specific communities (operating on different social platforms) called influencers who have a significant impact on potential buyers and their purchasing decisions. The influencer’s community is usually focused on one particular subject, which he is passionate about, guru and hobbyist. Influencer marketing appeared in Poland more or less in 2015. Earlier, we did not use this concept even though, of course, many brands already cooperated with bloggers and youtubers.
Influencers
The Influencer most often uses several social media platforms. The most important in Poland are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, own blogs, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn. Influencers are divided into those with large ranges and those who are more popular in certain niches of so-called micro-influencers. The most reach of influencers are celebrities, big screen stars, athletes, models, and politicians. Well-known, recognizable people who gather around at least a million fans. They can be described as mega-influencers.
The next ones are traditional influencers. Famous names, nicknames or pseudonyms. Developers of great content. Experts of a given subject or industry. Their group of fans can count from 10,000 to 1 million users.
And finally, the most numerous group: micro-influencers with small ranges in the range of 500 – 10,000 fans (below the threshold of 500 fans should not rather classify users as influencers). Small range but significant impact power. Activities via micro-influencers often turn out to be more effective than promotion by means of celebrities. In the world, there is a clear trend of the decreasing involvement of recipients along with an increase in the number of people watching a profile. In the Newspoint Report we have analyzed thousands of social media profiles in Poland and we have compiled this data with the results that come from the world. Newspoint data confirms this trend.
The popularity of influencer marketing
Companies that have already benefited from this form of marketing declare a further increase in outlays on this channel. We trust opinion leaders more than celebrities or the media. After all, they are enthusiasts and experts in a given field. Influencers produce three times as many engaging messages as non-opinion leaders. In addition, each of their entries has a four times greater impact on the purchase decision than the average entry in the network of friends. This is the power of influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing has gained enormous popularity and is very effective. What is important, this efficiency can be measured. You should measure it. Such a need is indicated by the surveyed marketers. Just now, when this form of marketing is gaining popularity. The Rakuten Marketing affiliate network, in July 2017, conducted a survey on 200 Great Britain marketers directly cooperating with influencers.
86% of them admitted that they are not sure how intruders set their rates. What’s more, in 38% of cases, marketers do not know whether the publications they pay for sale translate into sales. Interestingly, despite this, it does not contribute to the decline in interest in influencers. 75% of respondents expect an increase in spending on influencer marketing next year, and 33% reported that this increase will be over 50%. How much could these values be if marketers were able to properly assess and measure the effectiveness of such activities?
Cooperation with influencers
Cooperation with influencers constantly raises smaller or bigger concerns of people responsible for brand communication. The most common concerns in cooperation with influencers appearing in marketers’ declarations are:
It does not all succeed. Sometimes, campaigns do not bring the expected results. The most common causes of failure influencer marketing:
For more than half of marketers, the challenge is to continuously measure the effects of the campaign, and for every third monitoring of the influencer marketing campaign. Without good monitoring it is difficult to talk about the success of the action and measurement of engagement. It’s also difficult to find free tools to support the marketer’s work in this area, and Google Analytics itself is not enough these days. Manual tracking using search engines will be a tedious task, very time-consuming and ineffective. And yet often we need to monitor the effects of the campaign in real time.
With the help of marketers, brand monitoring systems come with a panel equipped with tools for full analytics of all influencers: bloggers, youtubers, instagramerów, snapchaters, authors on facebook and twitter and the entire multitude of other creators. Measuring their activities is not only an observation of the number of entries, comments, likes or sharing. Modern panels of brand communication monitoring can also assess the sound of the statement, estimated range and advertising equivalent. The great advantage of the brand monitoring panel is the availability of billions of documents from around the world on the basis of which it is possible to analyze in almost real time.
Measurement of influencer marketing
In influencer marketing, it is very important to measure the results achieved. You need measures that show us what the return on investment was. Measures that will allow you to compare subsequent actions with influencers and decide if they were valuable or not. Is the social media channel good for our brand? Have we reached the right opinion leaders?
However, such an assessment is not simple. It is often difficult to indicate which component of marketing influencer translated into sales growth. But it does not mean impossible;). If we use professional measuring tools, it will turn out whether the outlays have brought the expected returns.
The marketing influencer measurement consists of two parts:
How to reach the influencer?
The first step in marketing using influencers is to find people with whom the brand would be willing to cooperate. Influxing influencing is a study combining elements of quantitative and qualitative analysis and social media audit. After determining the criteria to be met by the opinion leader for the brand, it is possible to reach the right people in order to establish relationships. Average number of followers, views, reactions, comments and material sharing, as well as estimated range of publication, audience involvement, number of visitors on the blog / website, gender or influencer’s age – these values allow you to select profiles with which cooperation can allow to achieve by the KPI brand.
We can reach influencers through: rankings, reports, research, influencer marketing platforms, Google alerts, internet monitoring tools and social media with influencers’ analytics functions. In the Newspoint panel, it is possible to choose publications depending on their range, advertising equivalent, overtone or gender of the author. In addition, statistics on, e.g. authors of the largest number of posts, the most liked, disseminated or commented.
Indicators measuring the effectiveness of the campaign
The indicators that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a campaign depend on the goals we set for ourselves at the stage of project planning and the manner of its implementation. General goals such as “increasing brand awareness” are difficult or very expensive to measure. Therefore, in the case of campaigns with influencers it is recommended to set measurable goals, the measurement of which will be more easily parameterized, for example, increasing akctivity on the website, increasing sales, number of followers, clicks, likes, reactions, comments, reaching a specific number of users, subscriptions to the newsletter, downloads report, number of leads, number of participants in the competition, commitment. Commitment is closely related to the so-called coefficient of involvement. It is a common denominator for a simple comparison of influencers. Depending on the number of fans and their interactions, we can determine the posts of the opinion leader that arouse greater interest and emotions on the part of the recipients.
In the case of some actions, it is worth checking whether the campaign lead to the number of entries in which the brand was mentioned (media buzz of publication). It is worth doing this especially when a certain hashtag was promoted during the campaign.
Armed with such indicators, as part of the Newspoint platform, we can create our own tool for influencers analytics online with a division into all opinion leaders and posts published by them. After setting profiles, we get a matrix that will show us both the effectiveness of a given opinion leader and a specific post, as well as the involvement rate.