When compared to other methods of advertising, such as outdoor advertising, TV and radio, context, or targeting, influencers are seen to have higher credibility with their target audience. Traditionally, a person is more inclined to believe a blogger’s evaluation than a nice booklet from a brand. Our goal is to find influencers that have a loyal and targeted audience for the business.
The most obvious method of analytics on Instagram is to study statistics. Even before agreeing on the terms of cooperation, arrange with the blogger that he/she would submit screenshots of account statistics following the publication of advertising material. However, there are nuances here as well. You must understand what to watch and when to see it.
Ask for statistics on posts 5-7 days after posting – during this time most of the audience will view the publication. It’s better to request Stories statistics on the next day at the most: if the blogger posts a lot of stories, your publication will get lost in the archive.
Now about what to watch:
Link conversions. If the link in Stories redirected your audience to your site or another account, you can calculate the click-through rate (CTR) using this formula: number of clicks ÷ number of views × 100%.
Reach is the number of unique users who viewed the publication. According to the reach, you can estimate the objectivity of the blogger’s rates. For example, a collaboration cost 400$. Coverage of the audience – 15,000 users. This means the cost of coverage per person – 0,02$. Compare this with the cost of your advertising on other channels – and you’ll understand how profitable or unprofitable it is for you to work with this blogger.
Impressions are the number of times a post is viewed. One user can view a post or a story several times. Knowing this figure, you can calculate the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) using the following formula: cost per ad ÷ number of impressions of the ad × 1000.
Likes, savings, and reposts. These are “vanity metrics,” but you can use them to understand audience attitudes toward integration.
Use links with UTM tags
If your ad uses a link to a website, ask your blogger to add a UTM tag to it, which is a small piece of code added to the URL. All data from UTM tags goes into analytics systems connected to the website, such as Google Analytics. You can understand where the audience came from and accurately track their further actions.
If some action is supposed to be the result of an ad – make a purchase, pre-order a product, make an order – using UTM tags you can calculate the cost of cooperation based on the CPA (Cost-Per-Action) model. You can calculate the price of attracting one lead using the formula: advertising costs ÷ number of leads. The easiest way to create the link with UTM tags is to use Tilda link constructor: https://tilda.cc/utm/
You need just to fulfil the required fields and copy the link below.
Give promo codes
If you can offer your audience special terms – discounts, special offer – use promo codes in advertising campaigns with bloggers. A named promo code allows you to track that the user came from a particular blogger, even if the person decides to use the offer later.
Track reactions.
Look at the comments on the promotional publication, their quality and tone. Assess what and how users write. Sometimes users have questions, and you can get in touch with an interested audience by responding in the comments. Monotonous and little-worded comments can point to bot scamming.
Knowing the number of reactions, you can calculate the average engagement rate per post – Engagement Rate Per Post. Calculation formula: (likes + comments) ÷ number of followers × 100%.
Compare user behaviour patterns
Alas, but sometimes you can catch bloggers who are not too conscientious. To show the effectiveness of advertising, they can use various tricks: scamming likes, views, comments. The advertiser looks at the results – everything is fine, but in fact – the budget is drained.
That’s why I recommend making sure to compare the result of cooperation with the account statistics. You can use analytics and social networking statistics services to view account statistics. For example, the LiveDune and SocialBlade services show account subscriber activity statistics and audience growth dynamics, the number of likes/comments and engagement levels.
If the result of the check is very different from the standard indicators, then either there was cheating, or… The ad was genius, and the other methods mentioned above can help you determine this.
Calculate ROI
ROI (Return on Investment) is a measure of your return on investment. It shows the efficiency of your investments.
If you used UTM-tags or promo-codes with bloggers and can calculate the profit from advertising, you can calculate the ROI according to the formula: ((net profit – advertising costs) ÷ advertising costs) × 100%.
If the result is more than 100%, you have recouped your investment, and the collaboration was effective.
Keep in mind that net profit in this case does not mean the total amount of sales by UTM-links or promo-codes, but the proceeds minus all the extra expenses (taxes, salaries, etc.).
Conclusion…
So, to evaluate the effectiveness of cooperation with bloggers on Instagram:
- Request and study in detail the statistics of the advertising publication.
- Use UTM tags to calculate click-throughs on links in ads.
- Apply promo codes to track a particular blogger’s audience.
- Evaluate user reactions to the ad publication
- Monitor the changing dynamics of interest in the brand or product.
- If possible, calculate the return on investment by considering the net profit.
You can read about what a good influencer ad should look like in this article.
Had I actually read this before I did my research and spent so much on different influencers for my sunglasses brand Vistinse, I would have had better ROI. Very helpful!