It is projected that social commerce sales will be worth $958 billion by the end of 2023 and it is expected to make up 17% of all e-commerce spending by 2025. With the Influencer Marketing market expanding by $2.6B in the last year, it’s becoming increasingly difficult – even for veteran marketing companies – to keep up with industry trends and to discover top-performing influencers amid all the new faces. Although this might be true, incorporating a well-tailored set of KPIs within the influencer marketing strategy can lead to highly performant, results-driven campaigns.
General Consensus: What Do Industry Experts Agree On?
A study conducted in March 2021 found that 58% of respondents in the United States were following a virtual influencer at the time, with Gen Z adults being the most avid followers. The popularity of virtual influencers on YouTube (28.7%) and Instagram (28.4%) is a testament to their marketing potential. This trend indicates that the overall impact of influencer marketing will continue to grow and prosper. Advertising with influencers is comparable to getting a recommendation from a friend, making it a highly valuable tool for businesses to effectively and creatively market their products or services. By incorporating influencer marketing into their overall marketing strategy, businesses can better match KPIs to create tailored, highly performant campaigns.
“Influencer marketing generally has a higher ROI than other types of marketing”, said Robert Palmatier, professor of marketing at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business and co-author of an influencer marketing study conducted by the university. In the study, he predicts that in the future, marketing will be crowdsourced. While there are many other components that will influence a campaign’s performance, the following factors are known to amplify influencer marketing campaign success:
- Non-generic Campaigns: Non-generic campaigns tend to perform better in influencer marketing, as they stand out from the crowd and capture the audience’s attention more effectively.
- Relatability: Being relatable is an important factor for success, as it helps establish trust and credibility between the influencer and their audience, making the audience more receptive to the brand’s message.
- Perseverance: Perseverance is crucial in influencer marketing, as building a relationship with influencers and their audience takes time and effort, and results may not be immediate.
- Clear Marketing Goals: Specifying clear marketing goals is essential for measuring the success of an influencer marketing campaign and determining whether it has achieved its desired outcomes.
- Fresh and Unique Content Creation: Fresh and unique content creation is important in influencer marketing, as it helps to differentiate the brand from competitors and keeps the audience engaged.
- Specific Niches: Targeting specific niches allows brands to reach a more targeted audience that is more likely to be interested in their product or service, increasing the effectiveness of the campaign.
Tips for better influencer marketing performance
To succeed in influencer marketing, be agile when it comes to planning in advance while also being flexible and open to taking on new trends. Continuously test, learn, scale up best ideas, co-create content, integrate it into products and creative on owned platforms, and experiment with new social media platforms for better marketing performance.
3 tips on how to deliver improved results:
- Focus on niche markets: Keep influencers from the brand’s specific market verticals in mind, but don’t forget about the brand’s other interests in neighboring niches. Examine what these interests might be, scrutinize and gauge influencers from those areas.
- Tailor brand messaging: Don’t be afraid to make ads stand out and be creative. Give ads an edge by personalizing them to the brand, and take note of current trends; for example, many people are drawn to ads with virtual influencers. To make ads even more captivating, consider using additional engaging mechanics such as AR masks.
- Build long-term relationships with high-performing influencers: Spend more time crafting quality relationships, rather than constantly pursuing new ones. Remember to allocate enough time to develop creative strategies that will capture the user’s attention. Additionally, building trust with an influencer’s audience takes time and can’t be accomplished with just one campaign.
Top Influencer Marketing KPIs To Keep An Eye On
When it comes to influencer marketing, the five most important KPIs to look at are conversion rates, reach and awareness, referral traffic, audience growth, and engagement. Although there’s several other KPIs, it’s important to remember that each set of KPIs serves different purposes for different components of the plan. The listed KPIs are a good starting point to help track progress, quantify performance in achieving objectives, and keep influencer marketing strategy on track.
What to look out for?
Many influencer marketing campaigns have delayed effects and organic performance can be impacted by paid promotion, even long after the campaign has ended. Generally speaking, the KPIs that are followed will be based on the holistic business and marketing goals, however, there are a few general indicators that can be implemented to measure campaign success:
- Audience Reach: This measures the number of unique individuals who have been exposed to the influencer’s content, and therefore the brand’s message. This metric is important for evaluating the campaign’s potential impact and brand awareness.
- Impressions: This measures the number of times the content was displayed on users’ screens, regardless of whether they engaged with it or not. This metric is useful in determining how many people were potentially exposed to the brand’s message.
- Engagement (Comments, Likes, Shares): This metric measures the level of interaction between the influencer’s audience and the content, indicating the level of interest and relevance of the brand’s message to the audience. High engagement is indicative of a successful campaign.
- High-quality content: This refers to the quality of the influencer’s content, including aesthetics, tone, and messaging. The quality of the content is critical in determining the audience’s engagement and perception of the brand’s message.
Additionally, new research investigates the impact of influencers, their posts, and their followers on marketing success. Researchers discovered that a 1% increase in influencer marketing spending would lead to improved engagement by nearly 0.5%.
Relationship Between Expert Insights and Scientific Research
A study conducted in March 2021 found that 58% of respondents in the United States were following a virtual influencer at the time. The popularity of these avatars was the greatest among Gen Z adults, 75% of whom admitted to following virtual influencers. Most virtual influencers are followed on YouTube (28.7%), with Instagram being the second most popular location (28.4%).
TikTok took 3rd place as the most popular platform, which is not surprising given that dynamic content always gets more engagement than other types of content. This means that even non-human influencers, like virtual influencers, are as successful as human influencers when it comes to marketing. This indicates that the overall impact of influencer marketing will continue to grow and prosper.
Influencer marketing involves collaborating with an online influencer who is an expert in the relevant subject matter to promote a product or service. Choosing the right influencer can provide access to a large audience that may have been overlooked. Tips for better influencer marketing performance include running non-generic campaigns, being relatable, specifying clear marketing goals, creating fresh and unique content, targeting specific niches, and persevering. Top influencer marketing KPIs to keep an eye on include audience reach, impressions, engagement, and high-quality content. By following these tips and tracking these KPIs, brands can optimize their influencer marketing campaigns for greater success.
The crux of this article is that influencer marketing can be an effective and innovative method for businesses to promote their products or services. However, to ensure the success of an influencer marketing campaign, businesses must strategically focus on non-generic campaigns, relatability, perseverance, clear marketing goals, and fresh and unique content creation. Moreover, businesses must aim to target specific niches and track key performance indicators (KPIs), such as conversion rates, reach and awareness, referral traffic, audience growth, engagement, and high-quality content.
It is noteworthy that the increasing popularity of virtual influencers and their comparable efficacy to human influencers in marketing should be taken into account by businesses. As such, businesses must remain vigilant of this trend and consider incorporating it into their influencer marketing strategies.
– By Daria Belova, Marketing and PR Director of HypeFactory
About HypeFactory
HypeFactory is a global influencer marketing agency that uses advanced analytics to create engaging influencer-driven marketing campaigns. The company is a revolutionary service provider – stepping in as a full-cycle marketing agency, overseeing every campaign from start to finish – from campaign creation and management, influencer selection, campaign optimisation and scaling, to post-campaign analysis and reporting. Working with leading brands from across the globe, HypeFactory is creating influencer campaigns that speak directly to their clients’ target audiences.
To learn more about HypeFactory, visit: https://hypefactory.com/
About Daria Belova
Daria is an experienced marketing professional with 16+ years of experience in building and maintaining brand and marketing strategies. At present, Daria is responsible for maintaining and further developing HypeFactory’s marketing strategy and implementing it across global markets. With a passion for Tech and AI, Daria sets her skills towards building innovative brand awareness campaigns and developing influencer marketing strategies.