What are the best tools for measuring and improving influencer marketing ROI?

The creator economy is a class of businesses built by creative professionals. Also referred to as the “passion economy” or “influencer economy,” it is defined by creative professionals who develop their own brands, attract an audience, and monetize that audience to generate income.

In 2023, everyone has the opportunity to be a creator and join the creator economy, which is estimated to be worth $100 billion +. ALl you need is a smart phone with a camera, and the confidence to click "record" and "publish". You never know what someone might resonate with...

By using influencer marketing tools, you can automate tasks, simplify processes, and utilize business intelligence to achieve greater success with your influencer campaigns. Traackr, in particular, simplifies both campaign management and discoverability, enabling you to concentrate on other aspects of your job, such as building strong relationships with high-quality influencers who are passionate about your product and can effectively represent your brand.

We believe an influencer marketing tool should enable you to make impactful decisions about who to work with, how to work with them, and how to put your budget to best use, while reducing manual work so your time can be spent on the relationships that matter to your brand. That's our mission at Traackr.

Back in the day, screenshotting content and manually tracking all of the UGC that was being posted off of the back of an influencer product mailer was one of the most tedious, time-consuming tasks. It was impossible to catch everything. Now there are tools for it that not only provide you with the content, but it also shows you who was the most effective in terms of driving reach, engagement... Traackr has changed the way a lot of influencer marketers spend their time thanks to optimizing this with seamless reporting and analytics features.

Influencer marketing has become a crucial component of many brands' business and marketing strategies. Although influencer marketing tools can help brands streamline and optimize their programs, especially when working with hundreds of creators, the human element remains essential. Trust between marketers and creators is a significant factor in influencer marketing and cannot be replaced by even the most sophisticated tools.

While I agree the significance of influencer marketing tools in tracking campaign ROI, I firmly believe that human evaluation is equally vital. Human evaluation has the potential to reveal things such as audience sentiment and statistics that cannot be accurately identified by tools alone. Overall, gauging content engagement and campaign sentiment is an effective method for measuring ROI. It is crucial to dig deeper and analyze comments and post shares instead of solely relying on superficial metrics such as likes and followers.

In my experience, the most effective and intuitive tool for influencer marketing has been the Traackr platform. I love it for working on anything influencer marketing related; list building, campaign planning, vetting influencers or discovering more creators who are untapped by your brand. It's an easy platform to incorporate into your day-to-day and can be used by multiple members of your team which means work is done efficiently while giving overview to those who need it. In terms of reporting, analytics, and tracking your campaign's success, Traackr has allowed me to share my wins with my teams, clients and make it easy to understand what's working and where our biggest opportunities are.

In my experience, Traackr offers unparalleled functionality to help you achieve your goals. Beyond just discovering content creators, the platform allows you to execute complete campaigns. You can keep track of important metrics such as potential reach, impressions, engagements, conversions, ROI, and many others. Great tool for discovery and catching up on influencer-generated content.

It's important to evaluate how a tool acquires its data, and how up-to-date the data is. GDPR and stricter OAuth protocols have made it difficult to acquire influencer data at scale. Make sure you ask the tool if the metrics that it is showing you are coming directly from the platforms, or are they inferred.

There is two types of data in the industry (and it's imperative you're using the correct one!) - Scraped Data (That often runs off estimates, as there is only so much 'scraping' a tool can do off public information) - Official API Data (Data that is pulled directly from the social networks) Always use tools that only use official API data.

Brandwatch, of course. ?? There are a number of great influencer marketing platforms that help marketers identify the right influencers, track deliverables, and report on campaign performance. The key is to decide if you're looking for a SaaS solution, influencer marketplace, or managed service approach.

Brands just starting out may benefit from simpler influencer marketing tools that provide basic functionalities such as influencer discovery, outreach, and campaign management. However, more established brands with larger budgets and more complex campaigns may require more advanced tools that offer features such as analytics, audience insights, and influencer relationship management. Having a supportive team to help with influencer marketing is also important. Many influencer marketing tools offer support and managed service teams that can provide guidance and expertise on using the tool effectively.

You may even decide that a tool-only approach isn't the best solution for your unique needs. Whilst self-serve tools can be helpful for those who are very experienced when working with influencers, you may look to engage the services of a freelancer or agency who has a wide experience with influencers, in order to use their expertise and guidance to navigate the complexities of negotiation, creative, strategy, and evaluation when looking to work with influencers.

Some things to consider when choosing the right influencer marketing tool: Your budget User interface and ease of use Your campaign goals The size of your influencer network The complexity of your campaigns Customer support

Critical factors to consider when evaluating influencer marketing solutions: 1. Which social platforms do they support? Are they an official API partner? 2. Do they offer the key features you need? 3. How many influencers are they able to track? 4. Do they have positive online reviews? 5. What is their approach to customer data privacy? 6. How reliable is their customer support? 7. Does the cost align with your budget?

Even with robust influencer marketing tools, it's important for marketers not to rely solely on them for their influencer marketing programs, especially when it comes to relationships with creators. While tools can make life easier for marketers, not all creators want to work through them. Many creators prefer to have a more personal relationship with the brands they work with, so it's essential to balance leveraging a tool while adjusting to the needs of creators. Additionally, you may need to use workarounds at times to fit unique campaign workflows. A tool should never stop you from trying out a campaign on a new platform or for a new use case. Get creative!

Whichever tools you use, it is crucial to know how you're defining success as a brand from the outset. Brands should be designing their own custom measurement frameworks, often in partnership with an analytics-focused influencer agency, to ensure that you're tracking towards the right KPIs and setting fees based on the success your brand values.

To use influencer marketing tools effectively, start by defining your goals and audience. Use the tool to find influencers, manage relationships, track performance, and analyze results. Stay flexible and adapt your approach as needed to achieve your goals. You got this :)

An influencer marketing platform can augment your workflows, but it won't replace them entirely. Collaborating with influencers is very much a human-to-human business, but software can be a great way to collect data and make informed decisions about your campaign strategy.