Identify Marketing Goals Before Metrics

In the online performance marketing context, metrics are parameters for measuring your progress level towards the next milestone. So, your metrics are subject to your team goals or the organization’s marketing objectives. 

Therefore, setting clear goals will guide the metric determination process. In other words, having clearly defined objectives makes it easier to come up with productivity and performance metrics.

It’s also crucial to identify your goals in relation to your brand’s vision and mission. The objectives are your pointers to identifying the right metrics for measuring your progress level at each point. So, if they don’t align with the vision, you may fail to reach milestones.

Finally, your goals and metrics should align with the AIDA marketing model. 

The AIDA model describes the stages of a buyer’s interaction with your business. AIDA is an acronym that stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. 

Your publicity objectives must address one or more of the AIDA model elements. And the KPIs on your influencer marketing dashboard should reflect your progress at each point.

Typical brand objectives will include:

• Building brand awareness
• Breaking into new markets and reaching a wider audience
• Increasing customer interaction with the business 
• Improving organic traffic
• Improving conversions, sales, and profit

KPIs to Include in Your Influencer Marketing Dashboard

Just like key sales pipeline metrics should revolve around incoming revenue, the metrics for your influencer marketing dashboard should focus on the goals discussed in the previous section. 

Below are the most important KPIs to note in your marketing dashboard.

1. Reach and Awareness

The reach and awareness KPI tallies with the first element of the AIDA model and is often the primary goal of any marketing campaign. So, it should be the first metric on your dashboard and the first indication of your influencer marketing campaign’s progress. 

All marketing efforts start with reaching people and making them aware of your brand offerings. And you should endeavor to complete this stage before moving to the next.

The wide-reaching potential of influencer marketing makes this metric even more critical. Like in affiliate marketing, influencers often use multiple platforms, like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and even on-demand webinar videos to reach audiences. Therefore, they have direct access to a large audience and avenues for increasing your brand’s visibility. 

However, it’s easy to estimate the effect and efficiency of any marketing campaign wrongly. For example, many managers simply assume their strategies are working, but they don’t have the numbers to quantify the growth. 

Reach and Awareness KPI helps you track the market volume you’re reaching with your campaign. It enables you to identify the number of new prospects that have become aware of your brand due to your marketing efforts. Finally, it portrays how well your influencer marketing strategy reinforces the prospect’s opinion of your brand.

An excellent way to use this metric is by tracking impression data on your influencers’ content. Start by examining the platforms your influencer marketers use to reach their audience. Next, measure how the strategy pushes your brand in a “direct to customer (DTC)” manner. 

You should also track the volume of followers on the influencer platform of choice to determine the extent of your outreach. Identifying the reach of your influencer marketing campaign will help you decide the best way forward in implementing your strategies.

2. Engagement

It’s counterproductive to invest in influencer marketing when the audience isn’t interested in the influencer’s content. Likewise, you don’t want to spend money on a strategy that won’t hold your target’s attention.

That’s why you should keep the engagement KPI on your project dashboard. The metric will always remind you to check who’s interacting with your ads.

Engagement metrics provide an in-depth view of how the audience receives your campaign. For example, while you may be reaching several people, only a small percentage may be showing interest in what you offer. 

The reach and awareness metric will show the volume of the market that saw your campaign. But the engagement metric will tell you how many received your advertisement.

In addition, the engagement index aligns with the second stage of the customer journey in the AIDA model. A customer shows interest by engaging with your content and campaigns. 

Social platforms are the go-to avenues for several influencer marketing campaigns. They’re also the primary traffic sources for affiliate marketing campaigns. Logically, one of the best places to find your target market is on these platforms. Given that most influencer marketing campaigns use social media platforms, you want to start your engagement measurement from there.

Engagement tracking on social media, such as Facebook ads reporting, is relatively straightforward and doesn’t require complex productivity tools. So, you can get insight into the engagement rate by determining the volume of likes, comments, and shares on the ad’s content.

The volume of people the influencer can reach doesn’t matter if none of them engage with the post. For example, a 0.1% engagement from a million followers translates to 1000 engagements, whereas 10% from 10,000 followers achieves the same.

3. Conversions

The primary aim of most (if not all) influencer marketing efforts is to improve conversions and drive brand growth. Conversion generally translates to increased traffic to your website and an uptick in sales and lead generation and profit. Therefore, the conversion metric comes in handy for measuring your progress towards achieving this goal.

However, determining the conversion level from influencer marketing can be tricky. That’s because a measure of ambiguity always surrounds the outcomes of this advertisement strategy. There’s also the potential for fraud and result manipulation from influencer channels.

Nonetheless, conversion tracking may be more important for your brand, depending on your marketing goals. In addition, it’s never enough to measure how many people your influencer campaign is reaching. Instead, you want to determine the volume of your audience taking the actions you intended with the campaign, e.g., sign-ups, lead inquiries, and interaction per profile visit. 

4. Audience Growth Rate

Another key metric that reflects the success rate of your influencer campaign is the growth rate of your audience and social following. A primary intention behind most influencer marketing strategies is to develop brand popularity tracked through social media analytics.

Influencer marketing strategies take advantage of the large following and the online presence influencers have to achieve set objectives. Essentially, you’re getting someone who has a large volume of followers to advertise your brand. 

Influencer marketing works pretty much like ambassador affiliate programs. People tend to trust influencers more, and they’ll transfer that faith to a brand that their favorite social media star recommends. 

However, you shouldn’t assume the strategy will always work. For example, your influencer may have a large following, but their followers may not want to interact with your brand. Such a situation won’t benefit your business, and you may have to restrategize. So, you should have the above marketing KPI on your dashboard to keep you abreast of your brand following.

5. Brand Mentions

Another important metric to keep within the dashboard view is the number of brands mentions the company receives through the campaign. This KPI is similar to the engagement KPI; however, there’s a slight difference between them. Tracking brand mentions will help you correlate influencer posts with an increase in people tagging the brand. Engagement primarily tracks likes, comments, and shares.

6. Cost per Post

The cost per post metric helps you track the cost accrued each time an influencer features your brand in their content. It’s similar to cost-per-click, which measures how much you pay for each click on your ads. 

Having the cost per post metric on your dashboard keeps you abreast of your budget and your expenditure on any influencer marketing campaign. It also helps you estimate the total amount you may eventually spend on marketing strategy. 

Plus, it helps you keep track of all your influencers if you have more than one on your list. 

7. Return on Investment (ROI)

You picked a reliable influencer, developed intriguing content involving them, and posted it. You invested time, effort, and money into influencer marketing. Your goal and the reason for such commitments are probably to increase sales and profits. The return-on-investment metric helps you measure your results in relation to the marketing objective.

ROI is the most important KPI to track and must always be on your dashboard. It helps you estimate the volume of revenue coming in through your influencer marketing campaign. 

You calculate your marketing ROI by deducting the amount invested from your total revenue. Therefore, you can determine how beneficial the marketing strategy is for your brand by comparing your income with your expenditure.

A positive ROI indicates the strategy works, while a negative ROI shows a need to review your campaign. The ROI metrics inspire insights to optimize for each stage of the buyer’s journey in the AIDA model. 

In addition, your ROI will be sufficient to show results when discussing progress with important stakeholders. That’s why it’s the most important metric you should have on your dashboard. It gives a quick overview of your campaign’s effectiveness.

8. Influencer Content Results

Your influencer’s content strategy will significantly influence how well the audience will receive your brand. For example, the followers may be more willing to view your website if the influencer mentions it in a text post on Twitter. But, on the other hand, they may not be willing to take a break from video content to examine your offerings.

Tracking which content module attracts more engagement will help you avoid wasting effort on the wrong avenue. You can create a content cluster (similar to content hubs in SEO marketing) to direct continuous specific information to the audience. For example, you can create a series of intriguing stories or video skits all on the same premise to promote your brand.

How Do You Find the Right Influencer for Your Brand?

A large following on social platforms is critical when picking an influencer. But it’s not the only factor you should consider. You want to go for influencers who are also brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors are individuals who are community-recognized users of your brand products/offerings. An influencer who frequently uses your product will be able to advertise your offerings to your target audience better.

Furthermore, a brand ambassador influencer will have several followers who share similar interests. Therefore, the chances of better engagements are higher with such brand reps. 

Find your perfect brand ambassador and use these metrics to take your influencer marketing to new heights.

Monitor Your Progress With Influencer Marketing Metrics

Influencer marketing can do wonders for your brand awareness, engagement, and conversion down the line. 

However, you won’t be able to tell the strategy’s effectiveness without tracking each of its elements. That’s why you need KPIs on your dashboard to monitor your influencer marketing results.

Above, we’ve highlighted eight of the best metrics to include in your project dashboard. These metrics are ideal when considering time management techniques and your project management needs. 

Use them to take your influencer marketing efforts to the next level.

About the author

Sam O’Brien is the Chief Marketing Officer for Affise - a Global SaaS Partner Marketing Solution and affiliate marketing network. He is a growth marketing expert with a product management and design background. Sam has a passion for innovation, growth, and marketing technology. Sam has also written content for Moz and PandaDoc.