How to Measure the ROI of Your Influencer Marketing Program?

One of the Influencer Marketing questions I get the most is what is the ROI of Influencer Marketing? Measuring Influencer Marketing ROI is one of their most difficult challenges because most marketers think about marketing in a silo and not as a business leader. Here’s the difference.

Marketers tend to think about fluff metrics: likes, shares, social post engagement, etc. This is what gets us put in the “disposable” category when business is bad. When reporting, business professionals, on the other hand, consider one key question: Does it make my business better?

By answering, “does it make the business better?” you will move away from the fluff metrics and actually be able to reflect on true business value.

Now, let’s break this question down. This can mean a myriad of things. For example, the obvious question of “did it help me win a sales?” However, Influencer Relations, like any program, can support businesses in a bunch of other ways including: improving products, helping the business better understand their customer or helping sales and marketing understand their prospects, streamlining processes, or even providing access to information that wouldn’t otherwise be available like leads, churn data, competitive intel, etc.

Let’s explore even further:

Product

When we stop thinking of Influencers as “someone with a large social media following” and start thinking of Influencers as “industry experts,” our approach changes. We stop thinking of “share” metrics and start to think “how can I learn from them?”

Along those lines, in addition to your products, Influencers also have access to your competitors’ products. The “secret” and “confidential” information you share with them? They are getting the same intel from others in the market, as well. They also usually get unique access to upcoming products, demos, and other information. Asking the right questions can help you uncover where you truly stand in the market in terms of both existing and upcoming product features and in terms of usability.

If you’re product is missing something, they will likely know. If you’re product is hard to use, they will likely know.

Here’s how to measure ROI:

• Number and value of product feature ideas or recommendations
• Increased user adoption based on those updates we implemented
• Increased customer conversion because we added/adjusted the functionality above
• Decreased customer churn because we added/adjusted the functionality above

Access to Information

In the age of information, we all know that access to information is critical. Heck, that’s why we spend so much time trying to build our email lists and generate leads. Influencers who are true industry experts know your customers and your prospects. They know you and your competitors.

Report the ROI as:

• What did I learn?
• How many more sales did I or will I be able to make because I now have this information?
• What changes will I be able to make because I now know this?

Market Research

What’s the best way to attract your target market? Having a deep understanding of who they are, what they love, what they hate, what is their biggest challenge, and how they like to resolve those kinds of issues. Influencers are talking to people in the market all day long. They can help you answer these kinds of questions.

They also have a deep understanding of where the market is headed and how big the market is. For example, Josh Bersin’s HR Technology Market 2019 report shares the HR Tech market is a $5 trillion market in the US alone. It also shares what topics he thinks will need to be addressed this year – everything from employee experience to pay trends. Having access to these kinds of market sizing and expectations is critical to any future-thinking company.

How do you report the ROI?

• What trends have we uncovered that can help me approach my business in a new way, reach a new audience, or open doors to a new market opportunity?
• What bad decisions did I not make because I had access to new information?
• What good business decisions did we make based on this information?
• What content did we create and what was the impact of that content on earning new business or keeping current business because of this information?

Marketing and Sales

This may seem a little hypocritical considering the beginning of the post. But, there are marketing metrics that do matter. At its very core, marketing is designed to provide information and access to sales reps. With that said, marketing metrics should be directly tied to sales. Hence, they are grouped together. Marketing metrics that do matter include things like:

• How many pieces of content did we create with Influencers? How many leads did those generate? (And yes, use tracking links to measure this!)
• Is the sales content more usable? The content more trustworthy to buyers? (It’s sad. But, in a previous post, I discuss how Hubspot shared 90% of sales content created by marketing goes unused.)
• Did the leads you collected from these new assets convert to customers? This may take a while to measure, but it’s definitely something worth measuring throughout the buyer’s journey.

With all that said, Influencer Relations programs are extremely valuable to any business. In fact, they can support almost all aspects of the business – whether it’s product development, marketing, sales, business strategy, etc. The answer to proving the value is right in front of you. When you stop thinking like a marketer, and start thinking like a business leader, the answer to determining ROI is simple.