Breaking Down Influencer Marketing Objectives

Every marketing campaign needs an objective. Whether you’re still exploring the advantages of influencer marketing or are leveraging creators regularly, you need a clear goal to achieve results.

While campaigns may vary, most have one of three objectives, which include:

Increasing brand awareness
Driving sales or conversions
Boosting social media engagement or follower count

Here’s a breakdown of these influencer marketing objectives, campaign suggestions and metrics to better understand how to track influencer marketing success.

Brand awareness

When a brand launches an influencer marketing campaign, it’s often looking to boost brand awareness. In other words, the marketing team wants to get the company’s name out there, gain visibility, and help customers associate a brand with a specific product.

Campaigns best suited to drive awareness

Product reviews

Product reviews offer great exposure for brands. You simply send influencers your product, ask them to use a campaign-specific hashtag in their message, and tag your brand on social media.

Consider a video review. Video reviews are part demonstration, part review, which is a great combination when introducing your brand to a new audience.

Product endorsement

If you’re looking for a simpler campaign, you can send products to influencers and ask them to endorse them on their social channels. An influencer might share a picture of your product with a positive message, for example.

Metrics to measure brand awareness

Audience growth
Reach and impressions
Hashtags and brand mentions

Sales and conversions

Some influencer campaigns are aimed at boosting a brand’s bottom line. Influencers often have sway over their audience; it’s one of the many influencer marketing benefits you’ll notice as a brand. Influencers have earned their followers’ trust and, as a result, can encourage them to make certain purchases.

Research shows that 35% of social media users try new products due to an influencer endorsement.

If the purpose of influencers is to drive sales, consider the KPIs for influencer marketing that you’d like to track. Your influencer marketing strategy should likely include unique promo codes or tracking links for attribution purposes.

Campaigns best suited to drive sales

Ask an influencer to promote a sale

Pick a product that you’d like an influencer to promote and come up with an incentive for people to buy it. Most influencer marketing campaigns offer a discount or another financial benefit, like free shipping.

To add more urgency to your campaign, add a timeline. For example, customers can get 20% off the retail price if they buy before midnight.

Ask influencers to share a picture or video, a positive message, the link to buy the product, and the promo code.

Ask an influencer to offer a free trial

If your product isn’t tangible, a free trial might be your answer. If, for example, you sell subscription-based accounting software, ask an influencer to endorse the product, provide a link to it, and encourage followers to request a free 10-day trial.

Affiliate marketing

If, while setting goals for influencer marketing campaigns, you notice that you’re consistently trying to drive sales, an affiliate marketing program might be best. With this program, you work with a handful of influencers who will consistently promote your products. In return, each influencer, or affiliate, earns a commission from each sale.

Different types of influencer marketing benefit different brands, but if you’re interested in affiliate marketing, check out IZEA’s Ultimate Guide to Influencer Marketing.

Metrics to measure sales and conversions

Sales associated with unique promo codes
Conversions

Social media engagement and follower count

If you’re looking to engage new followers and give your brand’s follower count a boost, list that as your priority under influencer marketing objectives. With this as a goal, you want to see followers like, share, and comment on influencer-generated content. Hopefully, those engagements encourage the audience to follow your brand on social too.

Campaigns best suited to drive engagement and follower count

Social contests

Plan a product giveaway and ask an influencer to get involved with it. The influencer can promote it, explain how to enter, and even announce the winner.

Social media takeovers or Q&As

Once you’ve worked with influencers and identified a few that you’d like to continue to work with, you could ask them to participate in a social media takeover or a live Q&A session. Both give followers a chance to speak directly to an influencer and drive engagement simultaneously.

Metrics to measure engagement and follower count

Likes, comments, shares
Reach and impressions
Follower count (measured before and after the events)

For many brands, the importance of influencer marketing is only growing. As a result, identifying influencer marketing objectives will become even more crucial to success. When you’re ready to launch a social media influencer marketing campaign, find the right influencer and create a campaign that supports your main objectives.