Tracking Social Media Influencer Campaign Success

Partnering with influential creators helps brands generate brand awareness, reach new audiences, boost engagement, and drive sales—just to name a few!

But to justify the investment required to partner with creators, us influencer marketers need to understand what ‘success’ looks like. This starts with tracking and analyzing the right performance metrics.

“When you're trying to report the success of the entire program to C-level execs, the board, or investors, what does that look like? What does success look like for these programs, and how do you have that conversation internally? What metrics are you leaning on to tell that story?”

Korina Sanchez, Performance Marketing Manager at Chomps.

As Korina describes, leaning on the right metrics will help you to tell the story of your program’s success. This makes it far easier to request more budget, increase headcount on your team, or even to launch brand-new programs off the back of proven results. So, what performance metrics should influencer marketers be paying close attention to?

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What KPIs should I be tracking for my influencer marketing campaigns?

The KPIs (key performance indicators) you use to measure the success of your influencer campaigns will depend on your campaign objectives. Are you focused on adding UGC to your asset library, building brand awareness, growing engagement, or increasing product sales?

“When it comes to KPIs, there's a lot of things to look at. What matters depends on what your objectives are. This will change the metrics that you want to be looking at.”

Bren Daniel, Head of Influencer & Partnerships at Caraway.

The KPIs you prioritize should always be in sync with your primary objective. However, it’s good practice to view the whole picture by tracking all available metric. When you’re making critical decisions about the running of your program, you should prioritize the most relevant metrics  to your primary objective.

“It's always good to partner with your tech team to help you set up tracking for your campaign metrics, because you also want to make sure that whatever you're tracking is consistent with all the other marketing platforms.”

Milan Freeman, Influencer Marketing Expert and Strategist.

Let’s break down common metrics that are used to measure the impact of influencer programs. As we mentioned before, which metrics we want to focus on change depending on the type of program we are running and the ultimate business objective we want to achieve.

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Generating content

Every brand needs to develop a deep asset library of content that can be used across their marketing channels. Leveraging influencers to help create a variety of high-quality, engaging content is a great tactic, especially if your in-house capabilities are limited.

“Creator-shot ads are really native to the platform compared to a studio asset and as a result, they tend to resonate better compared to a more polished brand ad. Also, when you work with creators, you can produce a lot more content compared to what you might get from a brand studio shot day.”

Maurice Rahmey, CEO of Disruptive Digital Agency.

While this might not involve quantitative metrics, you need to consider what channels or platforms this content will live in and what you want it to achieve.

This takes us all the way back to our chapters on booking content deliverables for social platforms. As a good rule of thumb, you want to ask for:

• Content geared to your key objectives (awareness, engagement, sales)
• Variety of formats (static, video, GIF)
• Multiple video lengths (short form, long form)
• Vertical and horizontal crops
• Different hooks (variations of the first 1-3 seconds of videos)

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Generating brand awareness

Brand awareness refers to how familiar your target audience is with your brand, its products, and services. Brand awareness is important for all brands, and is especially critical for emerging brands that haven’t established themselves within the market and to their prospective customers. At a minimum, brands want their potential customers to recognize their brand when prompted with visual or auditory cues, and recall their brand from memory. More mature brands will aim for category dominance in addition to these other brand awareness considerations.

Reach (#)‍

The total number of unique users who have seen your content. Reach is helpful to understand how many people an influencer’s content is being served to. If reach and impressions are high, this is a good indicator that content is resonating with a wider audience.

Views (#)

Views measure the number of times a Reel has started to play or replay, or the number of times that a on-reel appears on someone’s screen.

Impressions (#)

The total number of times your content has been viewed. On influencer content, high impressions are essential. It’s important to understand what averages look like for a creator’s content, however, as impression counts can be artificially inflated using bots. When possible, you’ll typically want to look at impressions and reach together.

CPM (Cost per mille/thousand impressions)

This is the cost to reach a thousand impressions and is most commonly used during the vetting stage of influencer marketing to assess whether a creator is effectively reaching their audience. It’s also a metric that gets viewed when looking at how expensive it is to reach a specific audience in paid media.

“With CPM you can understand how much it costs you to get in front of your influencer’s fans’ eyeballs and compare and contrast that to your other traditional media channels.”

Korina Sanchez, Performance Marketing Manager at Chomps.

Brand Lift (qualitative)

Brand Lift is typically measured by a study performed by the social media platform and will calculate the incremental effect your ads had on brand awareness, perception, or recall.

While this is an in-direct metric to follow, brand lift studies can provide insights into how exposure to influencer content affects consumer attitudes and opinions about your brand.

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Driving social media engagement

Video metrics are essential to track in influencer campaigns since virtually every creator you’re partnering with produces some form of video. Pay close attention to how each platform defines common metrics, as they are not always 1:1.

Meta (Instagram)

2-second continuous video play: The number of times your video was played for 2 continuous seconds or more.

3-second video play: The number of times your video plays for at least 3 seconds, or for nearly its total length if it's shorter than 3 seconds.

ThruPlays: The number of times your video was played to completion, or for at least 15 seconds.

YouTube

Views: The number of views on content for videos, Shorts, and live streams.

View Rate: Percentage of impressions that resulted in a view.

Watch Time: The total minutes viewers have spent watching the video. YouTube’s algorithm assumes that a higher watch time indicates a more engaging video, and may promote your influencer’s video in search and recommendations sections of the app.

Engagements

In-stream: Viewers watch 10+ seconds of the video or click on the ad.

In-feed: Viewers watch 10+ seconds when muted or click the thumbnail to view the full-sized video.

Bumper and non-skippable ads: Viewers click the ad.

YouTube Shorts: Viewers watch 10+ seconds of the video and don’t pause it.

TikTok

2-second video views: Number of times your video was played for at least 2 seconds.

6-second focused views: Number of times your video was played for at least 6 seconds, played in full if it is less than 6 seconds, or received at least 1 engagement within the first 6 seconds.

15-second focused views: Number of times your video was played for at least 15 seconds, played in full if it is less than 15 seconds, or received at least 1 engagement within the first 15 seconds.

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Generally, these video metrics are found across all platforms:

Engagement rate (%): This measures the level of interaction your content receives from users, including likes, comments, shares, saves, and other actions (depending on the platform). Engagement Rate is calculated by dividing the total number of engagements by the total number of followers, and then multiplying by 100 to get a percentage.

Engagement rate helps brands evaluate the overall quality of the influencer’s content, making it the most important overall vetting metric. Engagement rates tracked in a paid environment may also indicate if the content resonates with a specific audience. It’s important to note, however, that engagement rate is not often correlated with off-platform metrics such as traffic or sales.

Video Plays: The number of times your video starts to play. This is counted for each impression of a video and usually excludes replays.

Audience retention and quartile video plays (25%-100%): The number of times your video was played at [X]% of its length, including plays that skipped to this point.

Average video playtime or duration: The average amount of time a video was played, including any time spent replaying the video for a single impression.

Comments: As we’ve said elsewhere in this guide, don’t discount the value of reading through comments! While comments are not quantifiable, they contain super valuable information about how your followers, potential customers, or current customers are digesting your content and feel about the partnerships you’re forming with creators. Sentiment analysis can also help you catch any potential CX (customer service) issues before they become something larger. ****

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Increasing website traffic

Businesses selling products and services online often look to influencers to help them drive new visitors, or traffic, to their websites. This is important to brands because new website traffic is the first step towards increasing brand awareness and driving higher intent actions potential customers may take on their website.

CTR (Click-through-rate)

CTR is typically provided by the ad platform reporting and can be manually calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions, then multiplying the result by 100 to get a percentage.

For example, if an ad has 3 clicks and 100 impressions, the CTR is 3%. Higher click-through rates suggest the content is effective at driving clicks off the ad platform.

Link Clicks

Clicks on links within an ad that leads to a website or landing page destination. This is the primary ad metric to look at when you’re using paid media to drive website traffic.

Website Views

Look at this metric in Google Analytics or whichever tool you’re using to report on your web analytics. Typically views count as repeated views of a website or page. You’ll want to look at the gap between link clicks on your ad and website views as these are people who may have dropped off between the ad and the landing page.

Time on site

(Also called Sessions in GA4). This reflects how any minutes and seconds individuals are spending on a page or your website. If the number is low, the content is not engaging enough to keep them there—or there’s a disconnect between what the user saw in the ad and what they experienced on the destination page.

Pages per session

This metric helps you understand if the user is clicking beyond the first page you send them to. This may indicate increased user intent, they’re browsing instead of demonstrating high intent to buy the item you sent them to view, or they’re looking for more information to help them make a decision.

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Generating purchase intent or sales

Brands selling products and services online work with creators to help them drive sales and revenue through their websites or online retail partners. There are multiple ways brands partner with influencers to achieve these goals, which typically include affiliate partnerships or flat fee deals where sales are the ultimate goal.

“In some cases, a robust influencer marketing program can generate higher lifetime values of customers than through paid media campaigns. For influencer marketing directors or managers, that's a way for you to easily fight for more budget. If the lifetime value of the customer that you're bringing in is more valuable in the long run, then that's where you should be investing your money.”

Lydia Lee, CEO at For the Clout.

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CTR (Click-through-rate)

This metric is typically provided by the ad platform reporting and can be manually calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions, then multiplying the result by 100 to get a percentage.

For example, if an ad has 3 clicks and 100 impressions, the CTR is 3%. Higher click-through rates suggest the content is effective at driving clicks off the ad platform. In most cases, CTR does not directly correlate to sales. However, it’s a good practice to consider CTR a factor in the strength of your ad CTA (call-to-action) or effectiveness to generate a click.

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Website Views

Look at this metric in Google Analytics or whichever tool you’re using to report on your web analytics. Typically, views count as repeated views of a website or page. You’ll want to look at the gap between link clicks on your ad and website views, as these are people who may have dropped off between the ad and the landing page.

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Conversions

Conversions are defined by the advertiser and are often purchase-related (purchase, add to cart, initiate checkout), however, they can also be set as email newsletter sign-ups, lead form submissions, or other custom actions.

Note that the number of times a user interacts with a product (frequency) can influence whether or not they take an action. Some creator programs may not generate conversions if the frequency per user is low.

Promo codes are often used as another form of tracking conversions that may not have been captured through last-click reporting (attribution can be messy!)

“We look at digital sampling, in-store sales velocity, promo codes, and unique URLs, to name a few. This is in addition to impressions and engagement metrics we’re viewing on social. It’s powerful when you can marry multiple metrics together to tell a story where they may have lived in isolation before.”

Molly Savage, Omnichannel Growth Marketing Leader at Bobabam.

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Conversion Rate

This tracks the percentage of users who take a specific action, such as those listed above. You’ll want to compare your conversion rate from ads to your benchmark website conversion rate to see how similar they are to one another. Typically, ad conversion rates are lower than your website conversion rates.

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CPA (Cost per acquisition or action)

CPA tracks the cost per action that you’ve indicated as your primary action, such as a purchase. Similar acronyms are used such as CAC (customer acquisition cost) or CPP (cost-per-purchase). It is calculated by dividing marketing costs (spend) by the number of new customers. Be sure to keep the time window the same when calculating this.

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AOV (Average order value)

This indicates how large the cart size was in your currency. It is an average number taken over all carts filled during the period of time you’re viewing in reporting. It’s important to understand if your AOV from ads is higher, lower, or the same as your baseline AOV from all customers. This will help you understand more about the quality or purchasing power of the users coming from your influencer posts.

If you’re not running ads, you can usually view AOV by segmenting traffic based on source or promo codes within your web analytics or POS platform.

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ROI or ROAS (Return on investment or ad spend)

ROAS: measures if a digital ad (or campaign) is generating profits. This takes into account the total revenue generated by the ad (or campaign) compared to the total ad spend attributed to that ad (or campaign). Most brands aim for above a 2x ROAS.

ROI: this also measures the overall profitability of a program and takes into account revenue generated, but often includes a wider cost definition. Costs that may be factored into ROI calculations could include:

• Ad campaign spend
• Influencer fees
• Content production
• Other costs (not overhead) related to the campaign

Calculating your return on investment (ROI) will help you determine the true profitability and efficiency of your influencer partnerships.

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LTR or LTV (Lifetime revenue or value of customers)

Lifetime revenue (LTR) is an estimate of a customer's gross revenue over their lifetime as a customer.

Lifetime value (LTV) is an estimate of a customer’s net revenue over their lifetime as a customer. LTV is more commonly used by marketers to predict the future value of customers acquired through influencer programs.

The main difference between the two is that lifetime revenue doesn't include gross margin or direct cost factors. One of the ways to calculate LTV is to take the average revenue per user multiplied by gross margin and then divide that total by churn rate (percentage of users who are no longer customers).

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So long as you have your tracking set up accurately and you’re seeing data flow through that you can rely on, you’ll have plenty of great information to hand when determining how effective your creator campaigns are (AKA, what’s working and what’s not).

While data is plentiful, remember to focus only on the metrics that are most relevant to your key objective for each of your creator programs:

“Remain focused on the number one metric, or the metric on fire, that lines up with your priority objective for the campaign. Every experiment and piece of creative should be aimed at incrementally moving your metric on fire.”

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

Once in a while, take a step back and compare your key metrics to similar data points generated by other marketing efforts. Keep your teams, including leadership informed and engaged in influencer campaign performance - it’s awesome to celebrate the wins together and identify more opportunities to optimize campaigns!

So, you have your key metrics—but what exactly should you do with this information? How can you present this in a compelling way to your team and to leadership to tell the complete story of how your campaign or program is performing?

Let’s roll on into reporting best practices for influencer campaigns!

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How do I measure brand awareness through influencer campaigns?

Metrics such as reach, impressions, and CPM (cost per thousand impressions) are good measures for brand awareness. Reach represents the total number of unique users who have seen your content, while impressions indicate the total number of times your content has been viewed. CPM helps you understand the cost of reaching your influencer's audience.

What is the importance of engagement rate in influencer marketing?

Engagement rate measures the level of interaction that influencer content receives, including likes, comments, shares, saves, and other actions that demonstrate someone finds that content valuable. It’s the most important metric in helping influencer marketers to evaluate the overall quality of the influencer's content and whether what they are creating resonates with their audience. While engagement doesn’t directly correlate with off-platform activities like website traffic or sales, it provides a solid indicator that a creator’s followers trust their recommendations and are more likely to act on them.

How can I track website traffic from influencer campaigns?

Metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), link clicks, website views, time on site, and pages per session will give you insight into increased web traffic resulting from influencer campaigns. CTR indicates the effectiveness of influencer content in driving clicks to your website or dedicated landing page. Link clicks represent the number of clicks on links within an ad that lead to your website or landing page. Website views, time on site, and pages per session help you to understand how users interact with your website after clicking through from the influencer's content. Diving your creators a unique referral link to use in their content will make these metrics easy to track, so you an identify your top performers.

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