How to measure the impact of influencer marketing - Good Rebels
Information is passed from opinion leaders to opinion followers, as first proposed in the ‘two-step flow’ model of communication by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet in their book:The People’s Choice(1948).
A brand that takes advantage of audience empathy, admiration, aspiration and personal ties is able to reach relevant influencers more effectively.
Direct communication between a brand and its audience has broken down. Theinfluencerserves as an intermediary between company and consumer.
Unfortunately many opinion followers have developed an understandable suspicion of brand-influencer collaborations, due in part to over-exposure. The ‘top’ influencers are assumed to be speaking on behalf of a brand as part of a commercial agreement, no longer as the result of altruism or spontaneity.
To avoid scepticism and a loss of credibility brands must seek out, adopt, and develop an organic relationship with relevant influencers. We have highlighted the following successful methods:
To make sure a brand has identified and collaborated with the most suitableinfluencers, we must quantitatively and qualitatively analyse shared actions between brand and influencer.
At Good Rebels, we believe that technology is our best ally in understanding these shared actions. First, we define and implement influencer KPI reports using the following benchmarks:
Web traffic: number of visits to the microsite, e-commerce, landing page or mobile application through influencer recommendation. We can track traffic to a particular web page through Google Analytics.
Redirecting traffic to the POS: to count the number of people that arrive at the point of sale based on the recommendations of influencers, we rely on a combination of methods. There is existing technology that helps us to count store traffic.
Data acquisition: the redirection of traffic to registration forms in order to grow the brand’s database. It is recommended that brands make use of Google Analytics to register all visits immediately, as they occur.
All this data should be compiled to create an influencer dashboard; so brands can analyse the evolution of their actions as well as comparing the success of one set of actions to another.
Influencer relationships can help improve a brand’s visibility and engagement. However, everything depends on influencer profile. Bigger is not always better, sometimes less impactful influencers serve as support to more popular influencers and can help to further increase the conversion rate.
Analytics and social media monitoring help us understand the impact of influencer collaboration, as well as tracking goals and objectives. It is important not to get stuck in a never-ending cycle of customer identification and relationship through PR and conventional communication models. Rather, we recommend going full circle and closing the loop through phases of monitoring and analysing impact.
