Now that influencer marketing has been around for a while, challenges related to measuring the return on investment of this highly popular tool are not as difficult as they used to be.  Especially in India, where influencers play a major role in boosting sales of a product, this strategy is yielding huge returns, as any digital marketing agency in India will tell you.

Earlier Challenges with Measuring ROI

The digital medium of marketing has had an edge over its real-world counterpart in that everything is highly measurable.  Well, almost everything.  Around 40% of marketers, when asked about measuring the ROI of influencer marketing, admitted that they were unable to tell with absolute certainty, whether their influencer marketing strategy was actually driving sales or not.  However, certain key metrics that have evolved over time have shown that calculating ROI of influencer marketing is not as murky an area as earlier supposed.  Given that the trend of influencer marketing has caught on like wildfire, and continues to be reported as the quickest way of acquiring customers, it is of interest to know how to calculate the ROI of this tool.

Metrics that Matter: Measuring ROI Effectively

Return on investment for an influencer marketing strategy becomes a measurable entity when one considers a few key metrics that are easily quantifiable.  For example, reach – the number of people reached by an influencer marketing campaign.  How is this useful to a digital marketing agency in India?  Well, if you’re looking to run a campaign that touches as large an audience as possible, it follows that you must team up with influencers who have the largest follower base.  The trick is to research and select the right identifier who can truly influence the buying decision of her audience.  Another useful metric to track is the number of shares of the content that features a product or brand.  Perhaps the most useful metric though, which gives a direct measure of ROI, is conversions – the actual number of calls-to-action that your audience has generated.

Using Measurable Influencer Marketing

A major reason for the success of influencer marketing as a strategy is the trust that an influencer is able to instill in the minds of their audience.  There is something infinitely more appealing about a recommendation that comes from a real person, as opposed to one that is presented in the form of an advertisement or a promotional, however artfully made it may be.  Studies show that around 50% of people follow through with product recommendations made by influencers that they’re paying attention to – that is too good a statistic for any digital marketing agency in India to want to miss out on. Armed with a set of metrics that measures ROI effectively and without ambiguity, marketers can now focus their energy on engaging with the right influencers who will in turn, convince their followers that this is the brand they can confidently put their money on, and get them to click on the button that matters – Buy.