Making sense of campaign data with influencer marketing reporting

Campaign reporting is a cornerstone of any marketing strategy and the key to taking your brand to the next level. When you can back up your vision with solid data, it’s easier for executives to get behind your most exciting ideas. 

But how can you best measure your success? How can you prove that success on paper? How can you show return on investment (ROI) on a campaign with multiple halo effects?

If you work with influencers, these questions don’t always have simple answers. When measuring your influencer marketing’s ROI, your reports need details that support every claim. 

Below, we’ll explore how to understand your campaign performance, how to partner with the right influencers for your brand, and why investing in the best influencer reporting tools can make a difference.

Influencer marketing reporting: The key to understanding campaign performance

Reporting helps brands understand what matters to their customers. Whether improving their quality of life, getting ahead at work, or saving the planet, aligning your brand’s values with your customers’ is key. 

Influencer marketing can have long-term ripple effects — sometimes stretching for months or years after the end of a campaign. Reporting can help justify your investment in an influencer by giving you instant, real-time feedback. You can see which messages and influencers made an impact and what that impact means. 

Campaign reporting is valuable for all marketing efforts, regardless of which funnel stage you’re targeting. You can understand how your influencers supported your long-term marketing efforts by gathering compelling details and key performance indicators (KPIs). Leadership can see how influencers worked their magic, so you can advocate for future (optimized) campaigns. 

How to put together an influencer marketing report 

An influencer marketing report doesn’t have to be a time-consuming project. Once you master the format, you can adjust it to fit the needs of each campaign. Make sure you have these basics included:

Write a report overview 

A report overview details the most important components of the campaign, including budget, influencer partners, campaign goals, customer persona, and funnel stage. You might even include extenuating circumstances, such as a recent shift in buying habits or a news story that’s impacting customer sentiment. 

The best overviews are thorough and concise, so consider bullet points, lists, and white space to break up information without omitting important details. This helps casual readers get the gist and serious readers verify that the data supports your conclusions. 

Overviews set the stage for the rest of the report, giving readers benchmarks to evaluate the results. So, if your main goal is to drive sales, they can use your sales volume percentage to determine success. 

Compile campaign performance data 

Your campaign performance data reveals how your marketing resonated with the influencer’s followers, making it the base of your report and the wellspring of your actionable insights. 

While standard quantitative data usually comes directly from social media platforms, it’s worth thinking outside of the box. You might include user-generated content (UGC), like comments on the influencers’ posts or brand testimonials. This may not be an official KPI, but it’s valuable insight into how followers feel about your messaging at any given moment. 

For instance, if the influencer’s followers seem agitated by influencer content — even if their engagement rates look good — you might consider adjusting your content strategy based on the comments. 

5 key KPIs for influencer marketing 

KPIs are fluid for most marketing agencies. However, in influencer marketing, there are a few critical metrics that you should always include: 

1. Brand awareness and audience growth 

This KPI refers to how well your customers know your brand and whether they engage with your brand. 

Marketers typically measure these results via:

• Influencer reach/impressions: This refers to how many unique indviduals saw a post vs. how many times the post was viewed. (For example, if a follower watched the same video twice, the reach would be one and the impressions would be two.)

• Engagement counts: This includes the number of likes, favorites, reposts, comments, shares, and brand mentions. 

• Community growth: The number of new subscribers or social media followers. 

Quantifying your brand awareness before you launch is essential, This way, you have a baseline to compare against and show how far the needle moved with each influencer and campaign. 

2. Website traffic 

Website traffic refers to clicks generated by influencer posts, bounce rates, page views, session duration, and unique users. Most marketers measure direct click-through rates, but not always. If your influencers don’t use affiliate links, you can still track traffic upticks via tools like Google Analytics. 

Website traffic helps determine if the influencer’s followers are curious enough to take the next step. It can also highlight issues with your website, like slow loading times or tricky navigation. 

So, if website traffic doubled after a campaign launch but the purchasing portal crashed, your report should show the issue wasn’t with the influencers. 

3. Standard social media metrics 

Standard social media metrics measure your reach, impressions, and engagements. Even if people didn’t click or comment on the post, you can still gauge how many people saw the ad. Most social media platforms offer built-in tools to quickly assess your influencer marketing success. 

You can also use content platforms like Hummingbirds to pull in key metrics across the digital space. If your influencer campaigns spark conversation in other digital spaces, like Reddit, you can better understand how different types of customers interact with your content. 

Remember, reach and impressions typically scale with your larger performance metrics. The more people engage on a social media platform, the more likely they’ll engage off-platform. This is important when you’re aiming to grow your market share, because you want your digital efforts to make the biggest splash possible. 

4. Affiliate conversions 

Affiliate conversions refer to how many people followed the influencer’s call-to-action, whether it was to sign-up, subscribe, or purchase. Affiliate conversions are the primary goal of affiliate marketing, and you can track these numbers via sales, followers, and subscribers. 

In addition to tracking conversions in standard ways, you can also send out surveys after conversions. These work especially well for ecommerce retailers because you can use simple drop-down menus where customers name the influencer who sparked their interest. 

Incidentally, these surveys serve as another valuable touchpoint with the customer, assuring their feedback is important to the brand. 

5. Sales velocity 

Sales velocity refers to how much revenue you bring in relative to the availability of your brand in a specific market. As your sales velocity grows, your profits grow too. 

When influencers can convert curious followers into life-long customers, you can track both initial and long-term sales volume as success metrics. Whether you measure via loyalty programs or purchase histories, you can see how an influencer campaign impacts revenue. 

Sales velocity is often the most critical KPI, especially for leadership. If your content creators increase market share in your target location or demographic, it’s a sign their high-quality content speaks directly to their followers. 

You also shouldn’t overlook the influencer as a customer. Many micro- and nano-influencers only advocate for brands they believe in. With that perspective, influencer marketing can double as a customer acquisition strategy when partnering with several influencers who can become loyal customers. 

Analyze the data to uncover insights 

Your performance data tells a story about how your customers interact with your brand’s messaging and whether they’re willing to engage with the products or service. 

So, if your impression rates were high but click-through rates were low, it may mean that the influencer’s followers aren’t paying enough attention to the influencer’s posts. It could also mean that your brand isn’t striking a chord with followers. (This is one reason it’s so important to vet influencers before partnering with them!)

As you look at your data, start with a top-down approach before segmenting it by influencer. This gives you a sense of whether the campaign worked and who drove the action. 

While data performance can reveal a lot, it only goes so far. You still need to pinpoint which tactics work and what results you’re aiming for. If you’re opening a new wellness store and targeting hyperlocal audiences, you should focus on impressions and reach. If you’re growing your email list, subscriber counts are the more relevant KPI. 

Identify the halo effect of your efforts 

The halo effect is the tendency to associate positive feelings with a brand after one positive experience. 

From viral videos to instant brand recognition, the ripples of an influencer campaign can stretch far and wide. When you work with real people who effectively spread the word about what you do, there are dozens of reporting elements to consider. 

But how exactly do you measure the ambiguous halo effect? The best way is to keep track of brand awareness, mentions, and customer sentiment after your campaigns wrap-up. It’ll also be valuable to make note of any initial ripple effects you see. 

For example, after a local influencer campaign, you might see lots of brand buzz on Instagram. This may make it easier to secure a local radio interview where you can discuss why your brand is catching fire. 

Capitalizing on halo effects is critical for brands, because they’re often time-sensitive opportunities that can vanish as soon as they arise. 

Create an easy-to-share document 

Compiling your data into one document makes viewing, sharing, and evaluating easy. Whether you use Google Slides, PowerPoint, or Visme, you can show people how influencers connected with followers and how that impacted the brand. 

Consider how data visualizations can effectively present key numbers or factors when you put your report together. You might use a heatmap to prove that influencer videos are more impactful than influencer photos. The right reporting tools will give you several options to display the data, so you can find the right one for you.

Influencer marketing tools simplify campaign reporting 

Influencer marketing solutions support marketers by automating data collection and analysis. When you use these tools, you can simplify and streamline everything from the overview to the final wrap-up. 

The Hummingbirds platform pulls reach, impressions, and engagement numbers into one handy dashboard, making it easy to see the analytics that drive your campaigns and conversions. 

With all the data dumps out there, our software keeps things simple. When you can boil down the most important aspects of your campaign (while still being able to support your conclusions), you can dramatically increase reader comprehension and retention. 

Our platform focuses on three key metrics: 

• Local awareness: This includes reach and impressions. 

• Retail velocity: Brands measure sales and conversions and report back.

• User-generated content: We track all UGC within the platform to reveal how customers relate to your brand. 

Whether you use micro-influencers or macro-influencers, influencer tools can drastically reduce the time you spend compiling insights and stats across campaigns. With automation, you can also improve the accuracy of your numbers to reach more detailed conclusions about your audience. 

Learn more about how software improves influencer marketing 

Influencer marketing solutions are the best ways to track your influencer campaigns and clearly show how your messaging resonates with your audience. These tools round up the most important metrics, going far beyond what social media platforms can give you. 

Plus, the best influencer marketing software can also help you before and during your campaigns. With Hummingbirds, you can match with the best influencers, manage campaigns from one dashboard, review UGC, and much more. 

Whether you’re concerned about an influencer’s follower counts, content authenticity, or local reach, the right tool can help you address these issues upfront, giving your campaigns the best chance for success.

Ready to learn how our software works? Book a call with the Hummingbirds team today!