03.21.2023
Measuring success for an influencer marketing campaign is essential to growing your influencer marketing effectively, and ultimately, growing your brand. In the Influencer Marketing Report 2021, they found that 67% of respondents measure the Return on Investment (ROI) from their influencer campaigns. This is an improvement of 2% on the previous year’s result. However, this means that - somewhat surprisingly - 33% of firms do not measure their ROI. You would think that every firm would want to know how effective their marketing spending is.
Conversion/Sales as a metric or key performance indicator (KPI) was the undisputed lead in this year’s survey when considering ROI. Influencer marketing is sufficiently widespread now that most businesses understand that the best way to measure your influencer marketing ROI is by using a metric that measures your campaigns' goals. Brands wish to focus on using their influencer marketing to generate tangible results:[1]
· 38.5% believe that you should gauge a campaign by the conversions/sales.
· 32.5% are most interested in engagement or clicks generated due to a campaign.
· 29% are interested in views/reach/impression.
While some metrics are easy to track, others like conversions/sales can be slower to manifest or harder to directly connect to influencer marketing. Earned Media Value has become more recognised in recent years as a good measure of influencer campaigns' ROI. Earned Media Value provides a proxy for the returns on the posts that an influencer has historically given the firms they have worked with. It indicates what an equivalent advertising campaign would cost for the same effect. EMV calculates the worth you receive from content shared by an influencer. The only negative of using this measure is that the calculation of EMV can be complicated. As such, it can sometimes be difficult for marketers to explain the concepts to their managers. Another name used for earned media value when related to influencer marketing is influencer media value.
Calculating Earned Media Value
Marketing departments, companies and employees need the EMV to measure the results of their work. Not only to show their work has a positive impact for the client or on the business and will help them achieve their business goals, but to improve their activities. After all, if you don’t measure something, you can’t improve it. And you or your client will never know whether the campaign goals were reached or not.
EMV is an attempt to provide a formulaic method of calculating your digital marketing strategy impact, by comparing it to similar media outreach. The most common metrics included in EMV calculation formulae are:
EMV = impressions x CPT x (brand/company chosen factor)
· Impressions – Some form of a reach metric. Whether that’s potential audience, number of followers, impressions, interactions, etc.
· Multiplied by an equivalent cost per thousand - so if you were measuring the reach of an Instagram campaign for example, you would use the cost per thousand you’d expect from Instagram paid advertising.
· Multiplied by another factor depending on the use-case or person doing the conversion, to help align the results with the brand or company needs.
This is one issue with measuring EMV. The metrics you need are vague and ambiguous. There are various tools and platforms that can help you with not only monitoring the impressions needed for the calculation but also give you input on the factors you should include to make sure the calculation of EMV is the most precise for your situation.
Some suggestions to include could be:
· Sentiment
· Engagement metrics
· Performance
· Social Media reach
Advertising Value Equivalence
Much like EMV, advertising value equivalency (AVE) is another potential metric to calculate the ROI from your social media campaigns. The simpler method of knowing what a particular advertising space costs, multiplied by the mentioning in articles in the same media outlet without paying for the exposure (typically multiplied by some factor allowing for the additional value of not being paid for advertising) has a long history. It is easy to see how this evolved as a measure for PR agencies and marketing departments to calculate the value of being mentioned in media.
However, not only has AVE been widely debunked as a valid measure by scientific study[2] but with the differences of costs on different social media platforms the simplicity does not exist anymore in making these calculations.
Influencer marketing platforms and the tools provided should now be viewed as the standard for measuring your social media campaigns value. We invite you to contact Achoo to learn how we can help you with all aspects of your influencer marketing.
