The rise of platforms like Facebook and Instagram have made it that much easier for micro-influencers to permeate the customer journey, but measuring their exact impact can be difficult. Here we look at why this is so challenging, and two metrics you can track for meaningful data.
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Guest post by Katie Sawyer of Eventbrite
Micro-influencers engage in buying conversations 22.2 times more often than the average consumer — conversations they could be having about attending and recommending your event. But how do you measure the impact they’re having?
Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are making it easier for influencers to have an effect on all parts of the customer journey — and for you to measure it. Not sure how to use micro-influencers? Read on to find out how to measure the impact of micro-influencers for your event.
Obstacles to measuring influencer marketing
When comparing influencer marketing to more traditional marketing channels, there’s much more at play than a simple ‘view’ or click-through. This can make it more difficult to assess performance.
Fake followings (from bots or paid followers) can make finding the right influencers tricky. And it’s difficult to get our hands on much social media data beyond what we see on our screens.
With changing algorithms, the metrics we use to measure the ROI of influencer marketing are still evolving. But that doesn’t mean you can’t set trackable goals for performance now.
Two metrics you should be tracking
Make sure your micro-influencers are making an impact for your event by tracking their performance. Here are some common metrics for measuring the impact of micro-influencers for your event.
Engagements
Engagements on social media include likes, comments, views, shares, and retweets. Those engagements show whether people are talking about your event — and what people are actually saying about your event.
Similarly, your engagement rate tells you the percentage of people who saw the content and engaged with it.
For example, you might think that paying a foodie influencer with millions of followers will drive people to your food festival. But you see their followers aren’t engaged — they aren’t liking, retweeting, or sharing posts about your event. This might mean that the influencer — although perfect on paper — isn’t driving ticket sales.
Website views and referrals
Ask your micro-influencers to include tracking links to your ticketing page that can help you see whether their followers bought tickets.
Another option is to provide micro-influencers with a promo code that they can share with their followers. That way you can track how many redemptions each micro-influencer generated.
Ask your influencers to include these links or promo codes in all their posts on Facebook or Instagram. Or if they have more than 10,000 followers on Instagram, you can also have them include a swipe-up link in their stories. This is a great way to target consumers once they have seen some live/in-the-moment video content of an event.
Measure and refine your strategy
Analyzing your data is crucial to measuring the success of your micro-influencer marketing. As with most strategies, you will need to optimize as you go along to make sure this is the right investment for you.
Ready to measure the impact of your micro-influencers? Check out The Secret to Sell-Out Events: Selling to the Social Ringleader to help identify your micro-influencers and nail down their ROI for your event.