Importance of Data-Driven Influencer Marketing

You don’t need to do a deep dive into the research to determine that influencer marketing has become a vital brand tool. Consider, for example, that according to IZEA’s 2023 Trust in Influencer Marketing report, ​​50% of all respondents have made a purchase after seeing a product used by an influencer. So how do brand marketers get in on the action in ways that are both effective and sustainable over the long term? The key to success seems to be data — both historical and real-time — used before, during, and after an influencer marketing campaign. From updating audience research and finding the right influencers to analyzing campaign effectiveness and improving customer retention, data-driven influencer marketing tools can guide your brand’s decision-making strategies for a better return on investment, customer retention and growth. Read on to find out just how valuable data can be to the future of your brand and how you should be using it.

Launching data-driven influencer marketing campaigns

Update your target audience

Regardless of what your company sells, your audience is going to change. People change jobs, income, goals, marital status, locations, and even values. For example, Insider Intelligence estimates that Gen Z will surpass Gen X in the number of digital buyers by 2025.

At least once a quarter — or ideally once a month — you should look at the data you’ve gathered through customer relationship management, recent campaigns and industry insights to determine the evolution of your target audience.

You’ll need to look at both industry trends and brand-specific data. Is there an influx of younger decision-makers in your industry? Are Gen Xers shifting to eco-conscious clothing and travel? Are more millennials searching for cruelty-free skincare products? 

If you don’t already have the right influencer marketing tools to capture and analyze this data, including social mentioning, consider investing in an influencer marketing platform like IZEA Flex. With a comprehensive suite of tools that lets marketers manage and optimize their campaigns with customized metrics and data-driven insights, your brand can scale its efforts and adjust tactics to improve ROI. The power in Flex comes through Associations, which connect campaigns with payments, creators, links, content and much more.

Define your marketing goals

Long before you begin your search for influencers, you’ll need to set your goals to define your marketing strategies. How else will you know if your campaigns are successful without using key performance indicators to provide data insights?

Make sure that your goals are S.M.A.R.T.: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. And while financial goals are important, they shouldn’t be your only aim. Consider reputational goals, as not every influencer marketing campaign will result in immediate sales. 

A few goals to consider:

• Increasing brand followers
• Improving customer satisfaction and retention
• Increasing brand engagement
• Improving brand awareness within an industry sub-sector

Yet again, this is where data shines, providing useful information on where your brand’s marketing efforts — and those of your partnering influencers — are paying off and where they’re falling flat.

Find the right influencers

When searching for influencers for your next campaign, a shared audience demographic should be top of mind. But that’s certainly not the only criteria you’ll need for success. 

You’ll need to look at real-time data that showcases influencers’ follower count, engagement rates, campaign rates, industry niche, values, content, platforms, and client reviews.

Although you can certainly find some of this data with a manual search of their past and recent posts or through an influencer database, there are drawbacks. In addition to being time-consuming, you won’t necessarily have access to real-time data or the pre-vetted processes provided by more advanced technologies.

Consider investing in next-generation influencer marketing software, which will not only arm you with the most recent data available on each influencer but also put it all at your fingertips in a customized influencer marketing dashboard. 

Create great content

Historical data plays an important role in determining the type of content and messaging on which your campaign should focus. 

The right analytics tools can turn data into a story, highlighting insights that let marketers inform content decisions. What topics are trending in your industry now compared to last quarter? Is video still king among Gen Z? Are there recurring themes from last year that are no longer top of mind among Facebook users but are still prominent in the top TikTok posts? Do posts with humor still resonate among DIYers on Instagram?

Let data guide your content decisions to help ensure that your marketing efforts will pay off in terms of engagement, alignment with your brand, and ROI.

Analyze a campaign’s effectiveness

Once you’ve homed in on your most up-to-date audience persona, fleshed out your brand goals, and partnered with the right influencer who has created and shared great content for your campaign, it’s time to put data up to the big challenge: determining the effectiveness of your influencer marketing campaign. 

Beyond simply reporting audience actions and reactions, such as likes, shares, downloads, and click-throughs on links in calls to action, data can teach about the who, where, when, how, and why of your current campaign. These insights can inform your future campaigns by answering questions like:

• Who engaged most with our campaign? Was it working women under 29 from the West Coast?
• Where did our website visits originate? Did 71% come from the Instagram campaign, while the other 29% came from TikTok and Facebook?
• When was engagement best? 
• How did people find our campaign? Were they already followers of the influencer or did they find it via the campaign’s hashtags?
• Why didn’t our landing page convert? 

With real-time and historical data driving nearly every decision your brand will make around influencer marketing, it’s time to invest in the software you need to make every campaign more successful than the last. With the right KPIs, analysis, and influencers at your team’s disposal, influencer marketing could quickly become your most powerful and cost-effective tool to elevate your brand.