How To Choose the Right Influencer Marketing Activation to Get the Right ROI

So, let’s say you have your heart set on a Facebook Influencer Marketing activation and you want to increase visits to a website. In your mind, that would be the ROI golden ticket. Do you know for certain that Facebook is the right place for your brand? At the end of the campaign, do you think you’ll be happy with the results? Will all of that hard work pay off?

Crafting an influencer marketing activation may get your creative juices flowing, but without focusing on results for your next sure-to-be-award-winning campaign, you’re not likely to improve your company’s bottom line. So, how can you maximize creativity while adhering to strategy and following a process?

3 Ways to Choose the Right Influencer Marketing Activation to Get the Right ROI

1. Set measurable campaign goals.

At the outset of each campaign, answer the questions:

• What will success look like on this campaign?
• How will we measure it?

Let’s say you are working on a campaign to promote pet-friendly travel. The “Fido Flies to Finland” campaign is focused on traveling on planes with furry friends. In line with our model, you’d add a measurable success statement as follows: “Drive 700K impressions across five social media channels and 1MM video views on YouTube to the Fido Flies to Finland campaign.” Combine that statement with the previous goal and it looks like this: “Increase awareness of pet-friendly travel content on blogs and YouTube from 1.2MM to 3MM impressions and views by December 31, 2018. Specifically, drive 700K impressions across five social media channels and 1MM video views on YouTube to the Fido Flies to Finland campaign.”

2. Analyze and select an influencer marketing activation.

Now that you have a measurable goal, what activation(s) will help you reach the goal? Here’s a list of potential influencer marketing activations to consider:

• Affiliate marketing
• Ambassador programs
• Blog posts
• Conference and/or retreat sponsorship
• Creative assets for marketing purposes (rights to professional photography or videos, content, etc.)
• Demos (cooking demos, DIY workshops, photography classes, etc.)
• Display advertising
• eNewsletter campaigns (dedicated blasts or features in weekly or monthly publications)
• Live events (in home, at corporate headquarters, on location, etc.)
• Facebook Live broadcasts
• Live stories (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat)
• Podcasts
• Ratings and reviews on a brand’s website
• Recipes
• Satellite media tours or other spokesperson opportunities
• Social media campaigns (one or a combination of targeted or amplification campaigns on Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, and/or YouTube, etc.)
• Twitter Parties
• Videos

Of course, you can always combine activations depending on your campaign goal(s).

3. Track results.

To identify whether your campaign activations are delivering results, it’s key to track the metrics throughout the entire campaign. The convenience of using the platforms’ tools to track progress and growth is what makes it even more appealing to business owners. With so many options for social media marketing, it could start to make your head spin a bit. To simply things for you, here are some popular influencer marketing results to consider when formulating your game plan:

• Ad clicks and/or impressions
• Affiliate sales
• Awareness (e.g., impressions, views)
• Creative assets (e.g. professional photographs, blog posts, videos, etc.)
• Coupon downloads
• Earned media
• eNewsletter subscriptions
• eNewsletter click-through and/or open rates
• Engagement (e.g., comments, likes, shares, and regrams/repins/retweets)
• Giveaway entries
• Increased social media following
• Loyalty program or other service signups
• Sales
• SEO (e.g., ranking high on search engines, getting backlinks, etc.)
• Third-party site reviews (e.g., Amazon, Walmart, etc.)
• User-generated content

Depending on your budget and manpower, you can either manually track statistics or use a metrics tracking program. If you choose to manually track the statistics, creating a spreadsheet will make your managerial life easier. (Google Sheets are a nice option, especially for collaboration.) The benefits? A spreadsheet will help you and your team organize links, sponsored post activity, and sponsored promotional activity.

A lot of automatic stats tracking programs have come onto the market since influencer marketing entered the space. Companies like DashThis!, NUVI, Radian6, Simply Measured, Twingly, and more offer a variety of programs, services, and dashboards to help you track influencer and campaign activity.

What Results You’ll Get From Each Influencer Marketing Activation

So, what types of results will you get from each activation and what metrics should you track with each activation? We put together a little chart to help sort through and organize something that could cause a major headache.

Next Steps

Once you set goals and analyze influencer marketing activation options, it’s imperative to select the influencer marketing activation (or a combination of activations) that are going to get you the biggest bang for your buck. By looking at the helpful chart featured in this post, you’ll easily see what activation gets you what in order to get the best ROI results.

Watch 2 Steps to Huge ROI on Your Influencer Marketing Campaigns on YouTube.

What influencer marketing activation will help you drive the most ROI based on your brand’s objectives?