Optimise Your Influencer Marketing Strategy: The Power of Tracking Software in Organic CampaignsBy Sophie

Over the past 4 years, the influencer marketing space has grown dramatically. Its value for 2024 is predicted to be $22 billion, a significant increase from $9.7 billion in 2020.(Source: Statista via bit.ly/4bXO75x). To keep up with the growing industry, tracking influencer marketing campaigns has become crucial. It allows us to measure ROI, optimise performance, and make data-driven decisions. By monitoring key metrics such as engagement and conversions, we are able to assess the effectiveness of influencer partnerships and adjust strategies in real-time. This not only justifies marketing spend to clients, but also helps build stronger relationships with influencers and ensures compliance with campaign guidelines. In this blog, we are going to discuss the importance of campaign tracking and share our top software recommendation.

The Importance of Tracking in Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing campaign tracking involves monitoring and analysing performance metrics to assess the effectiveness of campaigns and optimise their impact. Some key metrics that are often tracked include:

• Engagement (Likes, comments, shares, saves)
• Reach
• Impressions
• Views / Plays
• EMV
• Conversions

However, tracking the above metrics manually by simply viewing the content from a social media account is not always possible. For organic campaigns, it's important to inform your clients that the creators you work with are not required to share any insights into their content. Additionally, recent Instagram updates allow users to hide the number of views and likes on their posts, further reducing our visibility.

Making Data Driven Decisions

Effective tracking enables data-driven decision-making. While it's common for clients or those outside the marketing field to judge an account solely by its follower count, deeper insights reveal that this metric isn't always the most telling.An account with a larger follower base may generate less engagement, link clicks, or conversions compared to an account with fewer followers if the latter has a more engaged audience or more compelling content. This insight helps prioritise collaborations with the right creators who align better with your brand or client's goals.

Tracking plays a crucial role in optimising ongoing influencer marketing campaigns, by providing real-time data on performance metrics. This data allows us to identify which aspects of the campaign are working well and which are not. By continuously monitoring these, adjustments can be made during the campaign, whether that means reallocating budget to more effective influencers, tweaking content strategies, or refining targeting criteria. This approach ensures that the campaign remains effective and aligned with its objectives, maximising overall impact and efficiency.

Criteria to Consider

So what criteria should we look for when choosing an appropriate tracking software for our agency or client?

• User Interface: Ease of use and user experience are crucial. Investing in software that is difficult to use or understand is not worthwhile.
• Features: Evaluate what insights the software provides. Ensure it aligns with the KPIs you want to track.
• Integration: Ensure the platform can integrate with other marketing tools and platforms, if necessary for your client's needs.
• Pricing: Pricing is often a key deciding factor, especially if the cost comes out of the client's budget rather than your agency's.
• Customer Support: Check if the software offers a live chat function or easily accessible support for immediate assistance.

What Features Do We Look For?

The features you need in tracking software will depend on your clients' goals and needs. Here's what we typically look for in our tracking software:

1. Influencer Search: The ability to look up creators and use filters to find the right fit for the campaign.
2. Influencer Insights: Providing audience and engagement insights for the creators we are considering working with.
3. Campaign Creator: The capability to create campaigns and organise content and creators into each relevant campaign.
4. Auto-Recording Content: This ensures we don't miss any content shared. It's also important to be able to add content manually that may have been missed (e.g., if the creator forgot to tag the brand in a story).
5. Key Stats: Tracking likes, comments, shares, saves, impression reach, and $EMV for each piece of content shared.

Keep an eye out for a more in-depth blog post on these features in the future!

Challenges

There are of course still challenges when it comes to tracking influencer content. One such being data accuracy. Even with in-depth analytics provided by software, without paying the creator for access to their in-app content insights, our data access is limited. Additionally, as new platforms emerge and gain popularity, tracking software often lags in incorporating these platforms, meaning we can't obtain as rich data as we can from more established platforms.

Our Recommendation

Previously, we used Tribe Dynamics for a client with a large budget and found it met many of our campaign tracking needs. However, when we recommended Tribe Dynamics to a newer client this year, we discovered that their prices had increased significantly following a merger. This made the software too expensive for our client's budget, and we no longer felt comfortable recommending it at such a high cost.

This led to us doing our own research on some other platforms, including:

• Brandwatch
• Influencity
• Captiv8
• MightyScout
• Upfluence

Our research concluded that Mighty Scout was the right software for ours and our clients needs. With us being the primary users, it was also important that we enjoyed and could manage with ease the interface and user experience. It also gave us all of the features we were looking for and at a much more affordable price. Additionally they had a pay as you go option which meant when our campaign was over, our client could happily end their contract and easily restart for their next campaign.

While challenges such as data accuracy and integration with new platforms may continue, selecting the right tracking software can help navigate these issues. Our experience with platforms like Tribe and MightyScout demonstrates the importance of finding a solution that fits your specific needs, whether it’s ease of use, comprehensive features, or budget-friendly options.

Investing in the right tracking tools empowers your agency to deliver more impactful influencer marketing campaigns, ultimately driving better results for your clients. We encourage exploring different software options and considering the criteria we've outlined to find the best fit for your needs.

For more insights on optimising your influencer marketing strategy, feel free to reach out to us or explore our other blog posts.