Think ROI: How to Get the Most From Your Influencer Marketing Budget

Influencer marketing is emerging as one of the most effective ways of getting online content noticed. Content shared by influencers has long been seen as more trustworthy than information shared directly by brands, and companies are harnessing the power of this new resource in their droves.

Influencer marketing is accessible to brands of almost any size, with smaller influencer campaigns achievable at relatively low budgets. And of course, bigger brands that have more to spend are able to tap into the extensive follower bases of some of the world’s biggest social media influencers.

Whether you have a little or a lot to spend on influencer marketing, ROI should be top of your agenda. Plan your campaign with ROI firmly in your mind. Only by doing so will you see exactly what influencer marketing can do, and why it’s proving so popular amongst a wide range of different brands.

Let’s take a look at the steps you can take to make the most from your influencer marketing budget, no matter how big or small that budget may be. Here’s how to get the best possible ROI when you enter the world of influencer marketing.

Set clear objectives

If you want to max out your ROI, you really need to know what success looks like from day one. Plan your strategy with a clear set of objectives in mind, and make sure every move you make is tailored towards achieving those goals. Typical objectives might include improvements in brand awareness and reaching new audiences, as well as more easily quantifiable sales and engagement targets.

Once your objectives are defined, you’ll be able to look into different influencers who might be able to assist you in reaching those set targets. If you know what you’re hoping to achieve, you’ll also find that measuring the results of your campaigns is far easier.

Define your metrics

The metrics you use to measure the success of your campaign go hand in hand with the objectives you set at the beginning, and they’re incredibly important in terms of ROI too. There are many metrics that you can measure when determining the impact of an influencer marketing campaign, but it’s important not to try and overstretch your team by keeping tabs on huge numbers of inconsequential facts and figures.

Focus in on the numbers that really matter, and let the changes in those stats guide your campaign activity. One of the most common stats that marketers track is engagement, and this is hugely important in a campaign such as this. Other metrics you might want to measure include clicks, conversions, impressions, reach and overall product sales.

Analyse your results

There are many different tools available that can assist in measuring your defined metrics, and analysing the results. Google analytics is a well used platform that can provide marketers with all the information they need to get their heads around the progress of a campaign, and what needs to be done to boost its impact.

There are also specifically designed platforms made just for influencer campaigns, like MatchMaker™. This end-to-end global influencer campaign management platform can track and report on influencers, content and analytics across multiple territories and platforms. It makes it easy to see, at a glance, how all of your campaigns are doing, via one influencer campaign management tool.

Use your findings to plan new campaigns

There’s no use recording heaps of data on your campaign performance if you’re not going to use that data to improve future marketing strategies. The most successful influencer campaigns are those that are planned with information at their heart, and much of that data comes from the learnings of past campaigns.

So, as your campaign comes to a close, use what you’ve discovered to think ahead, and plan the next campaign with those findings in mind. If you’ve found that particular influencers have been massively impactful on the overall performance of the campaign, make sure you put those same influencers at the top of your agenda going forward.

Similarly, look into whether micro or macro influencers worked best for your company, and which styles of influencer-generated content really resonated with your audience. There’s a goldmine of data at your fingertips, make sure you use it.

—

Planning your initial influencer marketing campaign might seem a little like guesswork, but as you start to think about your campaign objectives, metrics, analytics and plans for the future, you’ll soon see that there’s a real science to these partnerships. If you’d like to find out more about how influencers might be able to make some noise about your brand, get in touch.