It’s difficult to prove that public relations and marketing—including Influencer Marketing—drive actual sales and increase revenue metrics. Campaigns often track many other metrics, such as impressions and click-through rates. However, being able to show that your influencers deliver sales results is crucial to the understanding and applicability of Influencer Marketing campaigns.

A poll by Tomoson rated Influencer Marketing as the fastest-growing online channel for consumer acquisition. As it continues to grow, proving revenue metrics will be essential for marketing budgets. By treating Influencer Marketing as a revenue center instead of a cost center, you can increase budget allotment and ultimately benefit the bottom line of the brand and company.

What Revenue Metrics Should I Measure?

 If measuring the metrics of Influencer Marketing campaigns is completely new to you, then this article can help you get started with the basics. Here, we’ll look specifically at sales and conversion key performance indicators (KPIs) to prove revenue.

There are certain items you’ll want to track in order to prove revenue metrics as a result of Influencer Marketing campaigns. The items can be broken down into short and long-term return on investment (ROI) measures.

Short-Term ROI

1. Sales

Sales are the purchases made directly from seeing an influencer’s post. The sales numbers will show you and your team the immediate impact on revenue that your campaign is producing.

You can calculate the profit from sales in two easy steps: 

  1. Divide the cost of the influencer as a whole by the number of influencer orders. This will give you the cost per order.
  2. Compare the number in step 1 with the total revenue. If the total revenue exceeds your cost per order, then you have generated profit.

By following these simple calculations, you’ll have proven numbers to show to your team and brand. 

2. App Downloads

By having your influencers put a link to the app store in their content, you can easily see how many people download your brand’s app as a result of seeing an influencer’s post. This is an especially useful tool to suggest to influencers when your brand is launching a new app or update because you get exposure which will help gauge initial interest.

Long-Term ROI

1. Subscriptions

Subscriptions often come in the form of monthly or weekly service packages. A subscription is, for a consumer, an investment. Tracking subscriptions doesn’t end after sign-ups. The ROI will continue long into the future. 

2. Memberships

Memberships include exclusive benefits and networking opportunities. While some memberships have fees, even free memberships can add to long-term ROI because they add to your brand’s consumer base. Members will keep coming back, adding to your bottom line over time.

3. Free Trial Sign-Ups

While quick returns are important and exciting, measuring how the campaign generates income over a longer period of time will create a blueprint for future campaigns. When an influencer gets someone to click on their link and sign up or subscribe on your website, it guarantees future ROI as they keep coming back, eventually making purchases. A free trial might not immediately create revenue, but it’s a stepping stone to consistent sales.

4. Conversion Rates

Conversion rates are the total number of website visits or unique user visits divided by how many of those users signed up, subscribed, and/or made a purchase. Conversions tell you not only how much traffic your influencer can generate, but whether that traffic is becoming part of your brand’s audience and consumer base. 

Why Should I Track ROI?

According to the Tomoson poll, businesses generate $6.50 for every dollar invested in Influencer Marketing. However, companies often spend the bulk of their time measuring qualitative metrics like impressions and vanity metrics. These things are crucial to understanding your audience and what works best to reach them through influencers.

Tracking the quantitative data, however, shows the clear correlation between Influencer Marketing and revenue. That’s the kind of data your supervisors will want to see. Like Jerry Maguire says, “Show me the money!”

3 Easy Ways to Drive and Prove Revenue Metrics

When crafting a campaign, try having your influencers use these three Influencer Marketing campaign must-haves in their promotional content. The items listed below will provide you with trackable data that will prove revenue. 

1. Promo Codes

Promo codes provide influencers with special discounts that they can offer to their followers. The codes not only get followers excited, but they also help make sales easier to track. Many YouTube influencers will plug their coupon codes at the end of their videos, telling viewers to go to your brand’s website and use their code for special deals, free shipping, or discounts.

You can also create unique URLs for each influencer to track the direct traffic each individual is bringing to your site. There are two ways of doing this. 

  1. Use redirects. In other words, you can use a service to create a short link that tracks user data before sending them on to your site. Bit.ly links are a good example of this.
  2. Provide UTM tags. UTM tags are specific to each influencer, so you know where the traffic originates. UTMs are additional text appended to a URL that track data using Google Analytics. You can use URL generators to create nice looking links without all of the scary-looking code. 

2. Landing Pages with Trackable Calls to Action

The content that influencers share should include calls to action, as well as associated with those calls to action. In doing so, the influencers will increase the website’s traffic and provide even further proof of revenue.

In influencer promotions, there should be purchase buttons, hot new products, or space to subscribe to an email list. You can track visitors to your site, but you have to track what they do once they get there. This will further prove that the influencer is having a direct impact on revenue for your brand. 

3. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs partner your brand with another brand or individual. As part of the programs, they put links to your website on their own and redirect traffic to you. When visitors to their site click the link and make a purchase from your brand, the affiliate gets paid. It’s a win-win situation that increases both sales and exposure. Plus, visitors who come to your website through affiliate links are likely to come directly to you next time, giving you 100 percent of the profits. 

Wrap It All Up

There are many items to think about when tracking the success of a campaign. Proof of revenue is just one of the peas in the pod, but it’s a very big pea. While qualitative measurements are useful to understanding your audience base and creating relevant content, quantitative ROI is crucial to link your campaign to revenue.

Measuring revenue requires you to create UTM tags, landing pages, and promo codes to attach to individual influencers. Tracking each influencer’s traffic to your website shows which ones are most cost-effective for your company. By taking the time to create trackable codes and measure sales from individual influencers, you can easily see the impact Influencer Marketing is having on your brand’s bottom line. Trust us, that’s data you’ll be happy to see. 

Sources

Which Is More Important: Reach vs. Impressions in Social Media Analytics?
10 Instagram Features to Start Using Now
Posted in Marketing Campaign Management, Metrics and tagged , ,