3 Ways Data Can Improve Your Influencer Marketing Programs

Having the right data can answer all of these unknowns, and give you the information you need to make smart, agile decisions. 

Below we discuss the types of data you need to improve your influencer selection, influencer fee budgets, and campaign reporting. We’ll also walk through some exercises and examples to bring it all to life.  

How To Use Data to Find Influencer Partners

“Your ideas can fall flat if you have the wrong messenger.”

It all starts with finding the best people to partner with. The best influencers for your brand might not be the people you already know or the folks who post the most beautiful photos. Looks can be deceiving! It’s important to utilize objective methods for finding and selecting influencers. 

Here are a few ways in which data can help you evaluate if an influencer is the right fit for your brand: 

• Content relevancy: what types of content are they producing and in what format (photos, short videos, etc.)?
• Influencer attributes: what are their interests, where do they live, what languages do they speak?
• Audience alignment: does their audience mirror what you know to be your target demographic? Does their audience live within your target geographies?
• Ability to engage: what’s their engagement rate on what platforms? If video is your focus, do they have high video view rates? Are the comments on their posts indicative of an involved audience or are they just a series of fire emojis?
• Past performance: how have they performed in the past? Do they have a consistent history of high performance? Or did they just recently go viral (for the wrong or right reason)? Do they have any previous sponsored posts that did well?
• Pass brand safety checks: do their values genuinely align with your brand values? Or are they talking about negative topics that your brand doesn’t want to be associated with?

Pro Tip: If you have access to Traackr, use these tips to find high-performing influencers.

Now let’s put what we just learned to the test. Imagine you are a beauty brand creating an Instagram influencer gifting campaign for your lipstick product in the US. Which influencer would you pick to partner with?

Based on the bit of data provided, you might be inclined to chose Influencer A. However, when you dig into the data, you would actually be better off to partner with Influencer B. Below is some data that you might miss if you don’t have an influencer marketing tool with the right vetting capabilities.

Here are the key takeaways that this data is telling us:

1. Influencer B has a higher engagement rate. Even though her post may not be as visually appealing, there’s something about it that draws her particular audience in.
2. Influencer B’s audience is more credible than Influencer A’s. This means she has real people following her, not bots.
3. Influencer B’s target demographics are a better fit. Her audience is primarily in the US and mostly comprised of fashion stylists and makeup artists (versus nurses and PR specialists). 

Using a data-based approach can allow you to scale your programs and replicate success again and again. 

Now that you’ve found your ideal influencer partner, let’s figure out how much to budget.

How much should you pay each influencer? 

It’s risky to go into a conversation with a budget that is not backed by data. Bias or vanity metrics (like follower count) can lead you to over or undervalue an influencer. Instead use data to analyze an influencer’s past performance and answer these questions:

• How has their organic versus paid content performed? 
• How has their photo content performed vs their video content?
• How well has their content performed with your brand or similar brands? 

This allows you to establish goals and baselines based on spend efficiency metrics like cost per impression (CPI), cost per engagement (CPE), and cost per view (CPV). Knowing how much an influencer is going to cost per impression, engagement or video view gives you the ability to allocate the appropriate budget and negotiate proper compensation. 

Pro Tip: Spend efficiency metrics are only one piece of the puzzle. Use these other 4 metrics to help calculate influencer rates. 

Influencer marketing platforms, like Traackr, provide budget calculators based on a combination of followers, engagement, past performance and more to recommend compensation for sponsored and organic content. Having this type of tool can help save you time (and many headaches).

For example, based on first glance, how much do you think you should pay each influencer for a post?

You might be catching on now that it takes data to get to the bottom of this. Using Traackr’s platform, you can calculate the estimated fees you would need for a photo and video.

Now, you might want to go with Influencer B because her rates are lower, but that’s not necessarily the right decision. It’s important to take the lessons learned above and see which influencer will have the higher likelihood of reaching your target audience. 

How To Leverage Campaign and Program Reporting Data

Every time you run a campaign you have the opportunity to (hopefully!) celebrate and improve. 

Three key categories of measurement that you should track are:  

Performance Metrics

• Number of activated influencers 
• Number of posts 
• Reach 
• Impressions 
• Number of views 
• Number of engagements 
• Engagement rate 

Spend Efficiency Metrics 

• Cost per Post 
• Cost per Thousand Impressions
• Cost per View 
• Cost per Engagement 
• Cost per Click

Cost Equivalency Metrics

• Brand Vitality Score (VIT) 
• Earned Media Value (EMV)

Unsure of the differences between VIT and EMV? Learn more about these metrics and which one marketers can use to improve their influencer marketing programs.

Utilizing all of these metrics gives you the opportunity to tell a bigger story about how influencer marketing is impacting awareness, engagements, and sales. 

Gathering this data also allows you to compare your different influencer investment strategies, and determine how you should allocate budget in the future. The exciting work comes into play when you are able to look back at the data and answer these questions: 

• Which influencer performs best in a campaign? 
• Which influencer campaigns drive the best return on investment (ROI)? 
• Which social platforms should I invest in? 
• How efficient is influencer marketing for my brand? 

Pro Tip: Use Traackr’s Influencer Marketing ROI calculator to calculate your influencer marketing ROI. 

How Brands Put These Practices Into Action

You probably already know this in your gut, but cookie cutter influencer strategies aren't what's going to get you to the top. You need strategies that are specific to your goals, specific to your brand, and based on a deep understanding of what's working now. 

Data can give you all of this! Here is an example of how a Traackr customer used data to find their path. They looked at:

• Global spend by influencer tier
• Cost per video view (CPV) by influencer tier
• CPV per social platform year-over-year

By looking at these three segments of data together they found that:

• They spent the most budget on top tier influencers
• Top tier influencers were the most efficient at driving video views (low CPV) 
• TikTok was the most efficient platform for driving video views (low CPV)

So how did this inform their strategy? They found that if they had leaned even harder into top tier influencers (re-allocated budget from micros and nanos who weren't as efficient), they would have earned more video views and awareness. 

Please note that this may not be the same for all brands! Some certainly find that smaller tier influencers drive more efficient results. Analyzing multiple layers of data across tier, platform, and content types gives you the ability to easily see gaps and identify key opportunities for your brand.

Main Takeaways 

If you’re going to walk away with one main takeaway, it should be to lead with data at every step of your influencer marketing process. 

• Influencer selection: Go beyond aesthetics to identify partners with the right audience and strong content performance. 
• Influencer Fees: Use platform specific benchmarks and past performance to base your offers. 
• Campaign Reporting: Expand your campaign reporting to include spend efficiency metrics to optimize over time. 

You can also watch the full workshop on this topic here!

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