Your influencer marketing campaigns are only as good as your results. But if you don’t know which results to track or how to measure success, then you’re going to end up frustrated and confused. When it comes to influencer marketing, there are several key performance indicators (KPIs) you can use to evaluate the effectiveness of...
Your influencer marketing campaigns are only as good as your results. But if you don’t know which results to track or how to measure success, then you’re going to end up frustrated and confused. When it comes to influencer marketing, there are several key performance indicators (KPIs) you can use to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign.
One of the best benefits of working with influencers is their ability to drive brand awareness and introduce their audience to your brands and products. Tracking brand awareness can be tricky, but one good way to measure whether more people are finding out about your brand is through website traffic.
Why is site traffic important?
Having the best product or service in the world means nothing if no one knows about it. If people are viewing an influencer’s post but never visiting your website, then you’re not going to see any real increase in awareness, engagement, or sales. Driving potential customers to your site where they can convert should be on your list of goals to achieve during your campaigns.
When customers are considering purchasing a product, they move through the sales funnel starting with awareness, moving onto consideration and finally to conversion. The consideration phase is when potential customers are interested in making a purchase but they’re not 100% sure yet.
When you send people to your site from an influencer’s post, you can help provide the information and encouragement these potential buyers need to move from consideration to conversion. When people visit your site, they can engage with whatever calls-to-action you have in place and you can also retarget them with ads later on to drive more sales.
Measuring how your influencer marketing program is impacting your site traffic shows how your brand reach is growing from partnering with influencers and which tactics are the most effective.
How to track site traffic
There are a few different metrics within the overall KPI of site traffic. Looking at all of these metrics will help give you a holistic view of how influencer campaigns are impacting your site traffic.
These are the most common website KPIs to track:
- New users: track the number of new users who visit your page for the very first time, which helps you measure an increase in brand awareness.
- Visits from referrals: see where visitors are coming from by using unique campaign URLs to track visits from all of your influencers and from specific campaigns.
- Time on site: pay attention to the average time users are spending on your site so you can figure out bounce rates and optimize to make sure people are staying on your page(s).
- Total sessions: the total number of sessions on your site within a specific date range can show how effective your campaigns are.
- Total pageviews: the number of pages that are viewed within a specific date range shows you where users are spending the most time on your site.
Once you know what to track, you need to figure out how to measure which influencer campaigns are most effective at driving traffic to your site.
Affiliate links are a popular way for marketers to track each influencer. These URLs have a unique identifier included so you can tell which influencers and campaigns are driving the most traffic to your website. UTM links operate in a similar way, allowing you to track the source, type of content, and more.
Promo codes that are unique to your influencers not only help drive sales, they also help you track website traffic. Special landing pages that are unique to an influencer or tied to a specific campaign are another tactic you can use to trace the source of your website traffic.
Partnering with influencers gives you access to loyal and engaged audiences of potential customers. By working with them, you can reach large segments of your desired audience and generate brand awareness. Since influencers are highly trusted by their followers, endorsements from them help add credibility to your brand and encourage conversions.
To measure how well your influencers and campaigns are building brand awareness, it’s important to track how they’re driving traffic to your site. Using affiliate links and promo codes and keeping an eye on your new users and referral visit analytics will help you determine how to best use influencers to drive traffic to your site.
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