How To Measure 5 Influencer Marketing KPIs
In the world of influencer marketing, success can sometimes feel like a mystery. How do you know if your campaign truly made an impact? That’s where Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come in. KPIs help your brand understand and gauge the success of your influencer marketing campaign by offering tangible data to back up your marketing decisions.
In this guide, we’ll dive into five essential KPIs for influencer marketing and provide you with actionable advice on how to measure them. Whether you’re focused on building brand awareness, driving traffic, growing your audience, or increasing engagement, understanding KPIs will help you make sense of your campaign performance.
1.Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is all about how familiar your target audience is with your brand. When you increase brand awareness you’re making your brand more recognizable, which can lead to more customers in the long run. For influencer marketing, brand awareness is an important KPI because micro-influencers can introduce your brand to new audiences in an authentic way.
For example, during a 79-day Fareway campaign with Hummingbirds, their brand reached over 507,000 potential customers through local user-generated content (UGC) creation. This resulted in our creators and their followers visiting Fareway and becoming top of mind as a grocery spot in town to visit. The power of brand awareness at a local level is an impressive and important metric when tracking the success of a campaign.
How to track and measure brand awareness
Before launching your campaign, it’s important to get a baseline of where your brand stands in terms of awareness. You can measure brand awareness by setting benchmarks before launching a campaign or understanding your competitive positioning so you can gauge how it changes as a result of marketing efforts.
Below you will find a list of some metrics you can use to measure your brand awareness
Survey Results: You can conduct surveys before and after the campaign to gauge changes in brand recognition and brand sentiment.
Brand Mentions: Track how often your brand is mentioned on social media and other influencer marketing platforms.
Customer Sentiment: Use tools to monitor the sentiment of conversations about your brand.
Google Trends: This can help you see if there’s a spike in searches related to your brand during and after your campaign.
Some social listening tools like Sprout Social and Google Trends are also great for real-time tracking of brand mentions and sentiment.
2. Traffic
Traffic is an important metric that refers to the number of visitors that land on your website or social media platforms. It’s a vital KPI because increased traffic often indicates that your campaign successfully captured the audience’s interest. Traffic could also be an indicator of possible leads and when you need collaborations for your brand.
For example, a beauty brand partnering with a local beauty influencer might see a significant uptick in website traffic as followers click through to learn more about the products being featured. They could also see an increase with in-store promotions through campaign traffic or a higher click-through rate which would give your brand more return on investment (ROI).
To measure the impact of your campaign on traffic, use these metrics:
Total Website Traffic: Measure the overall number of visitors to your site during the campaign period and after.
New visitors: Track the number of first-time visitors to see if your campaign is reaching new audiences.
Time on Site: Assess how long visitors spend on your website, which indicates interest and engagement.
Number of Impressions: Check how many times your influencer content was viewed, even if it didn’t result in a click.
Another tool you can use to measure traffic is Google Analytics. It is a powerful tool for tracking website traffic and understanding visitor behavior.
3. Engagement
Engagement refers to the interactions your content receives, such as likes, comments, and shares. If you have a high engagement rate, your influencer content is hitting the mark. It is resonating with your targeted audience on a personal level or gaining traction. On the other hand, if your engagement has a low engagement, it shows you that something is off. You need to switch gears or find a better way to target your audience, which is why it is a great KPI to show influencer marketing success.
For example, OLIPOP did a campaign with Hummingbirds where 81 local content creators were activated over 15 days and their brand gauged 273,000+ in potential reach. They saw an average engagement rate of 4.37%, with the industry standard being 1-3% for a campaign. Therefore, using an engagement rate is a great tool when tracking the success of your influencer marketing campaigns.
To measure engagement for your brand campaigns, focus on these metrics:
Social Media Likes: Track the number of likes on your social media campaign-related posts.
Comments: Monitor the number of comments to gauge how much conversation your influencer content is generating.
Shares: Keep an eye on how your influencer content is being shared, as this shows that people find it valuable.
Engagement Rate: Calculate the engagement rate by dividing the total number of engagements by the total number of followers, then multiplying by 100.
Sprout Social and Hootsuite are other tools you can use to track engagement metrics across various influencer marketing platforms.
4. Conversions
Conversions refer to actions that you want your audience to take, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading a resource. This KPI is crucial because it directly ties your influencer marketing efforts to tangible business results.
For example, Spenga activated 27 hummingbirds over 54 days and saw a potential reach of 74,000+ along with a direct 5 memberships sold during the campaign. This conversion along with the 20,000 views from local people on the creators’ reels showed the impact of the campaign for the brand.
In addition to Spenga, it is important to get a baseline of conversions and how to track them following the methods below:
Affiliate Links: Provide influencers with unique links that track sales or sign-ups directly attributed to their content.
Promo/Discount Codes: Use special codes that help you identify which conversions came from a particular influencer.
UTM Parameters: Add UTM codes to URLs to track where your traffic and conversions are coming from.
Google Analytics and affiliate tracking tools can also be very useful in tracking conversions.
5. Audience Growth
Audience growth rate refers to follower growth or and increase in subscriptions on your social media channels or other influencer marketing platforms. This KPI is important because it shows how well your influencer campaign is expanding your reach and building your audience.
A great example of increased audience growth from a campaign with Hummingbirds is when Optimum Wellness Solutions had an increase of more than 11% for their social media followers. Their campaign made such an impact that their social media reach also improved by nearly 70% in the campaign window, showing how important audience growth is to the success of campaign goals.
A great way to measure audience growth rate is to focus on the following metrics:
Follower Count: Track the number of new followers you gain during the campaign for a good indicator on your campaign success.
Growth Rate: Calculate your growth rate by dividing the number of new followers by the total number of followers, then multiplying by 100.
Audience Demographics: Analyze the demographics of your new followers to see if you’re reaching your target audience.
Another great tool to track audience growth is Sprout Social or other social media analytics tools because they provide insights into your audience and their demographics.
Use what you’ve learned to improve your next influencer campaign
KPIs aren’t just for measuring success. They’re also the best resource for improving your future campaigns. By analyzing the data from your KPIs, you can identify what worked well and what didn’t, allowing you to refine your strategy and get even better results next time.
For example, if you engagement rate was high but conversions were low, you might focus on creating more compelling calls to action in future campaigns. Or, if your brand awareness didn’t increase as much as you had hoped, you might try partnering with influencers who have stronger connections with your target audience.
To continue to learn more about influencer marketing and how it fits into your overall digital marketing strategy, check out more of Hummingbirds’ educational resources: