Influencer Marketing Campaign Reporting: Best Practices

For marketers looking to optimize their influencer strategies and programs, implementing consistent and robust reporting and analysis isn’t optional.

Let’s be real: If you don’t have a straightforward way of showing what content or influencers are performing (or even what your objectives are in the first place) it’s impossible to know how to get more of the same—or make educated decisions about where to invest your resources and time.

Plus, concise reporting is the best possible way to make a pitch to the people upstairs as to why your influencer marketing budget deserves a boost! Here are some best practices to ensure you're getting the most out of your influencer marketing efforts.

‍

Align metrics with your campaign objectives

The first step in effective reporting for any type of marketing is to define your campaign objectives. Then, you can align your metrics accordingly. Whether your goal is brand awareness, engagement, conversion, or revenue, your priority metrics should reflect a core objective that becomes your so-called ‘North Star Metric”:

“Make sure that apart from the standard set of metrics that you know what one number matters to you. I call this the one big number and that is your north star metric. It needs to be represented on your reporting dashboard and you need to understand whether your activations are helping you get what you want for that number.”

Mike Newton, Influencer Marketing Strategist

For examples of which metrics you might focus on specific to each type of campaign objective, check out our chapter on “CPA, CPM, ROAS - What Metrics Should Your Program Track?”

‍

Track both upper and lower funnel metrics

Remember how we talked about the marketing funnel waaaay back in chapter 2? Given that influencer programs can fuel any aspect of the funnel, it’s really important to take a more comprehensive view of program and campaign performance.

While it's tempting to focus solely on bottom-line (revenue and sales) results, upper funnel metrics such as reach, impressions, and engagement provide insights into brand awareness and audience interest. Mid and lower-funnel metrics such as click-through rates, conversions, and sales offer a more direct view of campaign ROI.

By monitoring a variety of metrics, you can gain a holistic understanding of your campaign's performance across the entire customer journey. It’s worth noting, however, that examining several metrics and utilizing one primary metric for optimization are different. You’ll still want to keep your primary objective and related metric consistent for optimization efforts.

‍

Implement proper attribution

Attribution—what channel, platform, or creator gets credit—can be extremely challenging in influencer marketing. As Liv explains, using unique referral links, promo codes, or UTM parameters for each influencer allows you to properly attribute traffic and conversions.

“I’m all about the UTMs. They tell me exactly who's doing what, who's driving revenue, and where it's coming from. That makes it so much easier to show incremental revenue lifts.”

Liv Soibelman, Head of Ecommerce for Blueprint.

Be intentional with the marketing attribution model you choose to follow, and consider how influencer content interacts with other marketing channels in the customer journey. It’s a best practice to keep attribution models consistent across all channels in reporting, so be sure to work with your marketing counterparts to ensure how you’re looking at data and assigning credit is consistent.

“Attribution can be tricky, especially with influencer campaigns so we try to add in different tracking components like UTM parameters on the landing page links, custom promo codes, unique product bundles or offerings, or post-purchase surveys. Influencer content can impact funnel metrics across the board, even if the entire campaign is designed to drive sales, this doesn’t mean that the creative will always do this. It might help boost brand awareness or drive intent and another channel might pick up the transaction.”

Lissa Regets, Fractional CMO & Digital Marketing Consultant at Ideabox.

‍

Benchmark against other marketing channels

Influencer marketing is only one piece of your brand’s marketing efforts. To truly understand the value of your influencer campaigns, you need to compare performance against your other marketing channels.

Marketing programs that take longer to show results—like influencer campaigns focusing on brand awareness—are always more difficult to justify spend for, especially during leaner times. Comparing performance via metrics Cost Per Mille (CPM), Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) helps to justify influencer marketing spend and identify areas where influencer content might be more effective than traditional advertising.

“CPMs is something that is universal across the board. Understand how much it's costing you to get in front of the eyeballs that you're getting in front of, and compare and contrast it to your other traditional media channels. It's the easiest way to have an apples to apples result.”

Korina Sanchez, Performance Marketing Manager at Chomps

‍

Measure long-term Impact

While immediate results are important, don't overlook the long-term impact of influencer partnerships. Some platforms or placements allow for views to increase over time. YouTube is a really important one here, thanks to SEO).

Looking at the performance of a YouTube-based influencer program over a short period of time may not give you a full, accurate picture of what is possible with that kind of campaign. Keep those promo codes active for longer and monitor performance over several months, instead of just a few weeks.

When you’re able to tie back new customer acquisition to influencer campaigns, you can begin to look at customer cohorts and important metrics like customer Lifetime Value (LTV) and LTV to CAC ratio. This can reveal that customers brought in through influencer marketing may be more valuable over time, justifying higher upfront costs for a bigger long term payoff.

‍

Analyze content performance

There are a huge number of factors beyond platform engagement that affect performance, including:

• Post format (e.g., video vs. static image)
• Platform
• Placement
• Posting time
• Caption length
• Video length
• Hashtag usage

This analysis can inform future content strategies and help you to brief influencers more effectively, as you will have a much better idea of what content will perform well. And as a Molly explains, it will also help you to identify those influencers who are hitting the mark:

“Let’s say you're working with a creator on a gifted basis and they are either consistently creating really, really high-quality content or are posting content that gets a lot of engagement, they are positive indicators and you can start to formalize the partnership a little bit more.”

Molly Savage, Omnichannel Growth Marketing Leader at Bobabam.

When you find content that aligns well with an influencer’s audience, is brand aligned, and is performs well, you want to zero in on that messaging and try different ways to communicate that story using various formats.

‍

Use advanced analytics tools

Start with free analytics tools such as Google Analytics (GA4) and consider investing in more advanced, paid analytics tools that can provide deeper insights into your campaigns. You’ll also want to capture reports from any social platforms you’re using in campaigns (organic or paid).

Most brands pull data into Excel to analyze or pump the raw data into a more advanced tool to help them make sense of the information. Common features brands look for in the advanced tools include traffic and audience demographics segmentation, fraud detection, competitive benchmarking, cohort analysis, sales and revenue, analytics dashboards, and individual campaign or platform tracking.

Always remember that numbers tell part of the story, but they don't capture everything. Supplement your quantitative data with qualitative insights. This might include feedback from influencer partners, customer testimonials, input from your customer service team, or observations about trends in your industry. These insights can help explain the "why" behind your data and inform future strategy.

‍

Establish a regular reporting cadence

Your reporting cadence should align with your campaign timelines and business needs. While real-time monitoring is valuable for catching any issues quickly, in-depth analysis often requires time for data to accumulate.

“You should be looking at the results every day and really doing one deep dive a month where you're dissecting the data every which way and then actually coming up with quantitative goals and action steps.”

Josh Butowsky,  Founder at Influencer Response.

Consider daily check-ins, weekly quick-view reports for ongoing campaigns, and more comprehensive monthly or quarterly reports for strategic analysis. Once you’ve determined a report view that works for you, keep it consistent so it is easier to compare one data set to another over time. Amber relies on a specific reporting structure to demonstrate immediate results, and then the long tail of an influencer campaign:

”Initial reports should start within the first 72 hours at the latest. You'd want to kind of see how performance is going, depending on the platform. And I like to always get a second round of reporting. So I like to report initial, do an initial report and then report at the very end of the next month. So, at the 30 day mark or at the 60 day mark for affiliate and creator programs.”

Amber Kai, Head of Creator and Brand Partnerships at Sequincial.

‍

Present actionable insights

When reporting to your leadership team, focus on presenting actionable insights inspired by data. Highlight key findings, explain their implications for the business, and provide clear recommendations for next steps. This will help you make a case for more budget and resources to scale your influencer program bring in even stronger results.

‍

Keep refining your approach!

The best part about reporting? Being able to continuously refine your program! You can identify your top-performing influencers and content types, and double down on what works. Similarly, you can recognize underperforming elements and adjust accordingly. This iterative process is key to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of influencer campaigns over time.

By implementing these reporting best practices, influencer marketers can develop a robust framework for measuring, analyzing, and optimizing influencer marketing campaigns snd programs. Remember: Effective reporting is NOT just about collecting data – it's about generating meaningful insights that inform ongoing improvements and demonstrate the true value of influencer partnerships to your brand.

Knowing what works is of immeasurable value to your program. But it’s equally important that you to take the time to experiment and find out what other types of content, influencers, or programs could bring in great results. This is why you need to cultivate a strong testing culture within your team—and that’s the topic of the next chapter!

How do I align metrics with my influencer campaign objectives?

Make sure that you define the primary goal of your campaign, such as brand awareness, engagement, conversion, or revenue. Then, select the key metrics that directly reflect progress towards that objective. For example, if your goal is to drive sales, focus on metrics like click-through rates, conversions, and revenue attribution. By ensuring your key performance indicators are tied to your campaign objective, you can effectively measure success and optimize accordingly.

How can I track both upper and lower funnel metrics in influencer marketing?

Tracking upper and lower funnel metrics provides a holistic view of influencer campaign performance. Upper funnel metrics like reach, impressions, and engagement are indicators of brand awareness and audience interest, while mid and lower-funnel metrics such as click-through rates, conversions, and sales offer insights into more direct campaign ROI. Attribution methods like unique referral links and promo codes for each influencer allow you to accurately track their impact at different stages of the funnel.

How do I present actionable insights from influencer campaign data?

When presenting influencer campaign data to leadership, focus on distilling the numbers into actionable insights that inform business decisions. Highlight key findings, explain the implications, and provide clear recommendations for next steps based on the data. Focus on how these insights can be leveraged to optimize current campaigns, inform future influencer strategies, and ultimately drive better results for the brand. By connecting the dots between data and action, you can effectively demonstrate the value of your influencer marketing efforts.

‍