What are the most essential influencer marketing KPIs you should use to determine if your influencer marketing campaigns are successful?
Note: This article was originally published on September 6, 2018, but has been updated in 2022 to reflect more up-to-date information.
For a more in-depth overview of different metrics and what each of them can tell you, see our in-depth guide on analyzing and optimizing creator performance over time.
Introduction
Influencer marketing is a growing part of the online marketing mix, and more than 16 billion dollars will be spent on it during 2022.
At Matchmade, we’re on a mission to make influencer marketing scalable, repeatable and effective. We routinely analyze more than 9.2 million YouTube channels, and run thousands of YouTube creator collaborations per year.
To help influencer marketers, we wanted to share same basic influencer marketing KPIs any marketer can use for running successful influencer marketing campaigns.
Planning Phase: Content and Audience Match
Finding the right influencers is the trickiest part of influencer marketing. Browsing through an endless number of YouTube channels when searching for the right influencers for your game can be very time-consuming.
A recommended approach is to focus on content match first:
- Make a list of titles and topics that are similar to your game. You shouldn’t make this list too restrictive though. It can often lead you to miss potentially well performing channels where the topic is less directly related, but still reaches the same audience.
- For example: Do you have a sports game? Look at FIFA channels and channels that cover real-life sports. Is your game open world? Start with Minecraft channels, or GTA V, etc. If you have a mobile shooter game, channels that cover action games could potentially be a good fit.
- Use this list as a starting point for finding potential channels to collaborate with on YouTube and other platforms.
- Remember to consider different sized channels during your search! While small and midsize creators do not have the reach of larger stars, their engagement rate can be up to double that of bigger creators.
- Keep in mind that sometimes content that is not similar but reaches the same audience can also work great. This is why is it recommended that you dedicate at least a portion of your budget to discovering new content categories that could perform well for you.
If you want to make things even easier, consider using Matchmade for your creator campaign needs. We automate the creator search process by analyzing millions of YouTube channels, and automatically select the best channels for your based on your target audience. Click here for more information.
I’ve generated a list – what do I do now?
- Narrow your list down based on audience match.
- Ask the influencer, their manager, or agency for the audience data. This helps you determine how effectively they reach your target demographic and geo.
For example, Fifa and Fortnite are very different types of games, but they reach a similar audience (18-24 year-old males). Figure out if your game fits with what these viewers want to see. If your game makes sense to the channel’s audience and content, you’re in a good place reach out to the influencer.
Matchmade can help here as well if you don’t want to do the heavy lifting. As creators integrate their data with Matchmade’s platform, we can automatically determine if they have the right demographics for your target audience. This way, we can also help you discover new potential content categories that might seem unrelated, but have excellent reach in your target audience.
Active Campaign Phase: Average Views and Click-Through Rate (CTR)
You’ve found your influencers, and you’re running a campaign. Your sponsored video is LIVE on their channel. Exciting! But how do you evaluate how your video is doing and the results of your influencer marketing campaign?
As a rule-of-thumb, you can look at the average views and click-through rate (CTR) of the influencer’s videos to get a rough estimate. Alternatively, you can also look at all engagement (comments, likes, etc.) in addition to link clicks.
- A good way to do this is by taking a look at the average number of views these YouTubers have. Look at the videos they’ve created in the last 2 – 4 weeks, and their CTR. You can get this data from the influencer or from Matchmade.
- Compare the average viewership and CTR of the creator’s videos to the video with your sponsorship. This lets you understand whether your content is performing well and the influencer’s audience is liking your game.
- This is why audience match is critical. If your game matches the interests of a channel’s viewers, the viewers are more open to watching videos about it. This applies even if the channel itself is not about games similar to yours, or even about games at all.
Why does CTR matter?
Which channel would you choose? The one with 4 million average viewers that has 0.2% CTR, or the channel with only 500K viewers that has 2% CTR? It’s natural to pick the smaller channel with higher click-through rate, because it means the viewers find the offering much more attractive. Furthermore, once you have several of these smaller channels, your results will likely be much better with a similar budget you’d spend on a single channel with millions of views.
At the end of the day, the insights gained during your influencer campaigns help determine if the YouTubers you picked today are the right fit for your campaigns tomorrow.
Analysis Phase: Number of Installs and Revenue Gained
Tracking your downloads and revenue per marketing channel is crucial for understanding which channels deliver the best results. That’s why teaming up with 3rd party data partners at the initial stage is so important.
Matchmade supports all major 3rd party data partners. This way, you can see what kind of creators generate the best results for you. It also allows us to hire more similar creators in future campaigns while deprioritising ones that perform poorly. This way results and scale can be increased dramatically over time.
Takeaways for Influencer Marketing KPIs:
- When you’re planning your influencer marketing campaign, pay attention to the channels’ content and audience.
- Make sure your game matches the channel viewers’ interests.
- Ensure that you can reach your target audience through your chosen influencers.
- During the campaign, keep an eye out for viewership and CTR. This way you get an idea how your sponsored videos are doing.
- After the campaign, analyze the number of installs and revenue generated. This helps you decide what kind of creators should be hired for the next campaign.
These basic influencer marketing KPIs will help you get started. However, they are by no means the only metrics you should look at. If you are interested in running high-performing user acquisition campaigns for your game, get in touch with our team – we’d love to help!