MKTG 467

MARKETING STRATEGY

DR. VO THANH LONG

SELF STUDY REPORT

INFLUENCER MARKETING STRATEGY

TRAN THI THUY VI 1432300236

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
COURSE INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 3
WEEK 1: INFLUENCER MARKETING STRATEGY ...................................................... 4
I. Explain the ugly social media marketing problems that an influencer strategy
solves ..................................................................................................................................... 4
II. Describe the main challenges when rolling out an influencer engagement
strategy. ................................................................................................................................ 7
WEEK 2: CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY .......................................................... 10
I. Illustrate why creating content worth sharing or ideas worth spreading are also
key 10
II. Identify the top emotional responses to video content that Unruly uses to
predict shareability ........................................................................................................... 12
III. Justify employing top influencers and micro influencers to create sponsored
content.15
WEEK 3: HOW TO FIND INFLUENCERS? .................................................................... 17
I. BuzzSumo: Use BuzzSumo to find the most shared content ............................... 17
II. Diagram Traackr’s methodology for identifying social media influencers in a
topic area. ........................................................................................................................... 18
III. DealMaker ............................................................................................................ 21
WEEK 4: HOW TO ENGAGE INFLUENCERS? ............................................................. 23
I. Analyze 9 types of influencer to find the best engagement tactics for these
influencer categories. ........................................................................................................ 23
II. Test engagement best practices and use influencer outreach tactics that work
often. 24
III. Develop an “always-on” influencer program that strengthens your influencer
relations. ............................................................................................................................. 24
WEEK 5: HOW TO MEASURE INFLUENCER MARKETING .................................... 26
I. Compare gross rating points (GRPs), advertising value equivalency (AVE), and
brand lift............................................................................................................................. 26
II. Assess applause, conversation, and amplification rates as the “best social media
metrics.” ............................................................................................................................. 27
References ................................................................................................................................ 32

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COURSE INTRODUCTION
Course name: Influencer Marketing Strategy

Instructor: Greg Jarboe

School name: Rutgers Business School Education

Course time: 6 weeks, 4.5 hours/per week. Total time: 25 hours

Course level: Intermediate

Course information: Influencer marketing is the practice of engaging internal and industry
experts with active networks to help achieve measurable business goals (Greg, 2017). This
course is about strategy. Although there is no all-purpose, one-size-fits-all influencer marketing
strategy template, you will learn how to tailor one for a wide variety of B2B, B2C, and
nonprofit organizations using the two-step flow model of communication. This course is also
about tactics. The instructor mentioned that “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to
victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” (Greg, 2017).

Course Syllabus

Week 1: Influencer Marketing Strategy

Week 2: Content Marketing Strategy

Week 3: How to Find Influencers

Week 4: How to Engage Influencers

Week 5: How to Measure Influencer Marketing

Week 6: Influencer Campaigns

The content of this report is from week 1 to week 5.

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 WEEK 1: INFLUENCER MARKETING STRATEGY
This course will give the problems of social media marketing, the trend of influencer
marketing, the definition of influencer marketing, the value of influencer and why we need
them. Beside that, this course also points out the challenges of doing influencer marketing.

I. Explain the ugly social media marketing problems that an influencer

strategy solves
Problem?

“The ugly truth” in the social media is mentioned in the course via the example of
Avinash Kaushik. It is about how the company use the social media effectively? Does it have
any benefits?

Avinash Kaushik is an author and the digital evangelist at Google. Then, he looked at
some of the data around some of the posts that are being shared on Facebook today. And some
of those posts were from Expedia, some from Cisco, some from Chick-fil-A. He even said go
check out Google's own Facebook pages. He saw that there is a pathetic interaction with people
in the social platform. There were very few shares. There were very few likes. There were
incredibly few comments (Kaushik, 2017). And the question is that “If nobody's interacting
with it, if it isn't engaging anyone, why are you doing it? What's the big deal? Why are we
spending all this money and nobody seems to be engaging with our content? That's the problem.
That is the ugly truth”, Greg Jarboe said.

What makes the problem?

The key of this problem is the content. Most of the content that marketers are creating
on most social media platforms is boring. It will not be better when the company try to get
people who have learned to write the content over their entire marketing career and they just
make the simple brochureware. And put it on a social media and expect people interact with
them. However, there is a different group who can help to overcome this problem, create
engaging content, amazing content and attract a lot of people commenting on. This group is
called as influencers.

Creating remarkable content is critical

Most of people creating content try to make more content, faster, more posts per week
instead of three posts a week. It is not effective by the way. The quality of content is much
more important than the quantity of content. The marketers need to deeply how to create the
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most attractive and effective content on the social media, and learn how to write it. They need
to find out who have experienced creating remarkable content and figure out the way to work
with them. All these things must have the strategy to be successful.

Interest in influencer marketing is spiking

Whether you are a content marketer, or a social media marketer, both have discovered
that creating the kind of content that is going to engage your audience is hard to do. But there
is a group of people out there, who are doing it day in and day out, week in and week out. They
can understand and engage effectively with audience in the way the company wish to be. They
are influencers.

Source: Tomoson (2015)

Source: Influencer Marketing Hub, “The State of Influencer Marketing 2019”

Definition of influencer marketing: “Influencer marketing is the next big thing”

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 Influencer marketing is the practice of engaging industry experts with active networks
to help you achieve measurable business goals, definition from Lee Odden who is the CEO of
Toprank Marketing. Influencers can be called as evangelists or opinion leaders Greg Jarboe

What is happening in that social setting is influence. A person, who has a little bit more
knowledge than the rest, is leveraging that knowledge to influence the rest of their friends, or
colleagues. Sometimes it's their family members.

“Influencer marketing is the next big thing”. Nowadays, the world has shifted to social
media, consumers look at fellow consumers to inform their purchasing decisions. Instead of
looking at ads, as they did in the past, they now look at each other and at their favorite
personalities who are consolidating massive followings on YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat,
Pinterest, and other platforms. Therefore, many believe influencer marketing to be the next big
thing (10 Reasons Why Influencer Marketing is the Next Big Thing, 2015)

What is the value of influencer marketing? How do you improve the odds of success?

On average, businesses generate $6.50 in revenue for each $1 invested in influencer

marketing. 70% make $2 or more, and the top 13% make $20 or more. Most businesses get
solid results from influencer marketing, with just the bottom 18% failing to generate any
revenue (Influencer Marketing Study, 2015)

Source: Tomoson (2015)

Influencer Marketing is not a magic bullet, it's not going to solve all your problems, it works
every time, but it increases your chances.

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 II. Describe the main challenges when rolling out an influencer engagement
strategy.
Challenges when engaging influencers

1. How to identify the right influencers?

What happens when the chosen influencers have no influence?

 So, in your industry, in your market segment, in your geography, you need to figure
out who are the right influencers. That's a process. It's a standard problem and it's one
that is encountered repeatedly.
2. When we have identified these people, what is the right engagement tactics?

These influencers don't seem to come in a one-size-fits-all kind of flavor, they can not influence
all kinds of audience to promote them to buy your products or services.

3. What is the benefit after engaging with influencers? Did it generate any sales? How to
measure the performance of your programs.

Fewer journalists are the right influencers; Identifying the right influencers is hard

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“Why is finding the right influencer so hard? They don't wear badges that says, hi, I'm an
influencer”, the instructor said.

Many journalists lost their jobs. The failure is not come from audience’s interest in
those topics go away, it's just the career in journalism is a lot less robust than it used to be.
They had no influence, nobody cares and follow what they write Therefore, the company must
go out to find people who have enough knowledge, passion, and influential power in specific
area.

The other reason why finding the right influencers is hard is because they're all not
alike. They didn't all go to journalism school. They weren't trained in the same discipline. They
have different patterns, they have different assumptions, they have different business models,
they have different agendas.

Instead of talking to the people who are trying to reach influencers (journalist), you
should talk to the influencers themselves about being reached. However, those people will not
publish once a day or once a week or once a month as the timeline of magazines, newspaper in
the old days. And may some of them have day jobs, some of them are trying to make a living
at this influence thing, they have different backgrounds, they have different interests. The
company must discover and clarify seriously who are suitable with their goals. Therefore,
finding influencers in that field is difficult.

Some engagement tactics may not work; Some engagement tactics only work once

Example of instructor: The brand is Lamisil and influencers they were looking for or
they wanted us to find for them are people who had authority and an audience. around three
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different topics. One of those topics was ringworm, one of those topics was athlete's foot, and
the third topic was jock itch. Yeah, right. I want a list of the jock itch influencers. Well, believe
it or not, we found some people who had written a post once in a blue moon on one of those
topics. We reached out to them and said, "Hey, Lamisil is really interested in working with
you. Would you be interested in mentioning our brand? Or would you be interested in at least
posting more frequently on this subject because you know what? We think this is an important
issue." As the result, he had to say sorry.

In this category, influencer marketing isn't going to work. Why? Nobody, nobody wants
to be known as the jock itch guy, right? That's going to kill your social life. So, guess what?
Take this lesson to heart. Just because you can find people who may appear to be influential on
a topic doesn't mean they're interested in working with you to promote your brand, or promote
your subject, or your category, or whatever.

Measurement is key to bigger budgets

Half of brands report small influencer marketing budgets in comparison to the rest of
the marketing mix, allocating less than $100,000 annually. This indicates that influencer
marketing has difficulty proving that it generates the economic value that would make it a
strategic priority.

If you were showing top management that you are generating leads, and sales, and
revenue, and profits, they would be increasing your budget. But if you are just reporting views,
and likes, and retweets, and stuff, nothing shows the value of what you are doing. You're an
expense.

Measure key performance indicators (KPIs)

Start by monitoring and reporting the results of your activities in a way that makes sense
to your stakeholders (the people who determine your budgets should see your reports).

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 WEEK 2: CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY
Influencer strategy isn’t as effective or successful without content marketing. Great
content is at the center of the value exchange between a business, influencer, and buyer.
Incorporating influencers in your content facilitates reaching new audiences with brand
messages that are credible and trusted.

I. Illustrate why creating content worth sharing or ideas worth spreading are
also key
1. The hypodermic needle model

The list of 3 main challenges indicates that brands are still using “the hypodermic needle
model” of communication. It was developed in 1939 by Harold Lasswell to explain how
German propaganda worked. It’s regarded as “one of the earliest and most influential
communication models”. This model is “who says what in which channel to whom, with what
effect?” (Harold, 1948) .

The theory is a linear model of communication and talks about media’s power on audience.
The message, in this theory, is said to be like a magic bullet which enters the minds of audience
and injects a message. The theory explains how media controls what the audience views and
listens to and the effects, which can be immediate or later in future.

Model ignored the role of influencers

The hypodermic needle model postulated that the mass media had direct, immediate,
and powerful effects on a mass audience. But, it ignored the role of “opinion leaders.” Today,
we call these people “influencers” and they play a central role in social media. “They play a
very central role even in informal conversations” (Greg, 2017).

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1940 study of social influence

A 2-step flow of communication was found by a study of the presidential election in

1940s. The first step, from media sources to “opinion leaders,” is a transfer of information, but
the second step, from opinion leaders to their followers, also involves the spread of
interpersonal influence.

“Initial research did a study in the 1940s. They came from Columbia University and one of the
key people there was Paul Lazarsfeld. One of the things that they did was they looked at the
1940 presidential election and of course like any presidential election” (Greg, 2017). “In step
one they would get information from the media. In step two they would share information and
influence with their networks influence” (Greg, 2017).

The 2-step flow model

“Who says/seeks what in which channel to/from whom with what effect” and “Who
says/shares what in which channel to/with whom with what effect” (Greg, 2017). It's not just
who says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect, that still happens. Sometimes that
influencer finds you. They try to find the new things, sometime they will search and discover
their target topic that relates to your brands. Then they say to their audience what they have
known. “The person at the middle here is not you, it's not the marketer, you're off to the side.
The person in the middle, the key person, is the influencer” (Greg, 2017).

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Influencers must look over their shoulders

The relationships between influencers and their followers hang in a delicate balance. If
influencers adopt new ideas too quickly, their followers may begin to doubt their judgement.
So, influencers must continually look over their shoulders. "It's a terrible thing to look over
your shoulder when you're trying to lead and find out no one is there”, a classic quote from
Franklin D. Roosevelt.

2. Creating content worth sharing is the key

The power role of content is idea sharable. It should be meaningful, attractive and brings
the value to the audience in specific area, creators must make sure the content what deliver to
the audience deserve to spread out, get reaction and attention from the audience.

II. Identify the top emotional responses to video content that Unruly uses to
predict shareability
Video content is more influential than text

You're going to identify the social, emotional, and business factors that make your
content more shareable. Video is more shareable than images. And images are more shareable
than text.

Ex: When you have a problem with your telephone, you don’t know how to fix it. Video on
YouTube can help you. Even you do not need to go the store.

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 A 2017 study assessed the impact of social media content formats on purchase behavior
among US internet users. 86% said they were swayed by video to purchase a product. Text
proved to have about half the power of video, with only 44% of respondents inspired to
purchase a product after reading. So, video is about twice as impactful as text. “People find
that they can process video and the information in video are a lot faster than they can by reading
the text” (Greg, Influencer Marketing Strategy, 2017). One of the things that the shareability
of your content is doubled, if you can turn that content into a compelling video. Both of B2C
and B2C are H2H, so the emotional factors in the video content are equally important. If you
can find a way to take your story and include an emotional element to it. You are much more
likely to create content that will be shared.

Emotional ads drive business results

To help advertisers create an emotional connection with consumers, Unruly (video ad

tech company) has developed Unruly EQ, a new content testing tool, launched in partnership
with marketing research firm Nielsen, emotional analytics company Affectiva, and pioneers in
music data analysis Moodagent, that gives advertisers the data they need to maximize the
emotional, social, and business impact of their video content (Greg, 2016) .

Academic and industry studies have repeatedly proven the effect.ts of emotional
advertising on brand and business metrics. According to a recent Nielsen Consumer
Neuroscience study, ads with above average EEG scores (emotional ads) deliver a 23% uplift
in sales volume, while the Field, IPA and Gunn Report, “Selling Creativity Short”, stated that
emotional campaigns were 10 times more efficient than non-emotional campaigns (Greg,
2016).

Tool tests emotional impact of video content

Unruly, Nielsen, Affectiva, and Moodagent launched Unruly EQ in 2016.

Unruly EQ is a content testing tool that uses a combination of biometric, neurological,

emotional, and audio testing methods to give advertisers the data they need to maximize the
emotional, social, and business impact of their video content (Greg, 2016). These include:

• Brand authenticity and perception testing – Unruly EQ allows marketers to test their
ads to see if the content is perceived as authentic and consistent with their brand’s
values and purpose;

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 • EEG testing – Collaborating with Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience, Unruly EQ can
measure non-conscious responses, something traditional research misses, for a more
complete view of consumers. 32 sensors are used to capture activity across all brain
regions, along with eye tracking. Unruly Insight analysts and Nielsen neuroscientists
use the data to produce recommendations for content optimization;
• Emotional analytics and facial coding – Advertisers are given a second-by-second
emotional trace of their content using Affectiva’s market-leading facial coding and
emotion analytics technology;
• Audio testing – Unruly EQ incorporates testing from Moodagent, using machine
learning to examine how a specific soundtrack amplifies or detracts from the emotional
intensity and overall effectiveness of an ad;
• Social impact and shareability analysis – Unruly’s unique algorithm is trained using
almost 1 million consumer responses to videos and sharing data relating to 3 trillion
video views, and enables advertisers to predict and improve the social impact of their
video content.

Deep emotional intelligence

Unruly EQ enables us to identify the type and intensity of emotions elicited by a social
video ad to predict its impact, diagnose content for its emotional impact to improve creative
quality and analyze authenticity, brand statements, brand impact, purchase intent, and predicted
shareability (Greg, 2016). One important thing is the power of adding content to your influencer
marketing strategy. That makes you difference and be a brand champion. It is not only trying
to put all the passive information on your advertising or your content, and say to customers to
buy products, it does not work. It should be contained the emotional, social, and business
impact on your content, not just text. It shows which emotions did people feel? Did the ads
make people smile? Did the ads change people’s hearts and minds? Did the ads made the cash
register ring?

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Source: Good Odds from Toyota

An example of Ad video Toyota produced by Unruly in 2018. It combined metric that

scores ads on their likely emotional, social, and business impact. Toyota took advantage of the
back-to-back sporting events by promoting its Olympics campaign with a spot featuring 8x
Paralympic Gold Medalist Lauren Woolstencroft during the Big Game. The video elicited
strong feelings of inspiration, amazement, warmth, and happiness and scored high on brand
metrics, including 82% on both credibility and authenticity, plus a brand recall of 70%.

III. Justify employing top influencers and micro influencers to create sponsored
content.
Creating compelling content with influencers

The group of working on content marketing should be get together with the group of
working on influencer marketing. It can be hard to success if influencer marketing without
good content and content marketing without influencers. Influencer strategy isn’t as effective
or successful without content marketing. Great content is at the center of the value exchange
between a business, influencer, and buyer. Incorporating influencers in your content facilitates
reaching new audiences with brand messages that are credible and trusted (Lisa, 2017)

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Source: HubSpot Blog, 2017

Influencers are more influential than brands

57% of consumers have made a purchase based solely on an influencer’s

recommendation. The data from Tubalar Insights shows that in 2016, influencers got 6.0
trillion views and 209.1 billion engagements. Media and entertainment companies got 1.7
trillion views and 46.1 billion engagements. Brands got 250.6 billion views and 4.9 billion
engagements (Allison, 2017).

Best practices for influencer collaboration

The first thing is the content should be original. None of these influencers wants to
harm their reputation with their audience that they built for years by doing something that's a
knock-off of what somebody else has already done. Therefore, you need to think of ways to
cleverly involve them in your program and that program had better be something new to
avoiding the imitating other’s content. Therefore, the company need to think of a clever (and
transparent) way to involve an influencer with your brand (Greg, 2012)

The second thing is the content should be authentic. If the collaboration isn’t authentic,
nobody wins. Therefore, the content should be considered to addressing questions and concerns
upfront. (Greg, 2012).

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 WEEK 3: HOW TO FIND INFLUENCERS?
Identifying the right influencers is hard. The course provides 3 different tools to
discover the most relevant influencers for marketing campaign.

I. BuzzSumo: Use BuzzSumo to find the most shared content

It also shows you what isn’t being shared, what topic that people are not interested in.

Example: The most shared content for “nail art” was shared 340.1k times on Facebook,
LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest. And the most shared content for “nail fungus” was shared just
3K times. The results show that it looks like most people want to keep their toenail problems

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to themselves, of course there in on one want to say out loud that they have had or have snail
disease.

It can help the company to see what content an influencer share, how the effective of
influencer’s content.

BuzzSumo analyzed 100 million headlines

The headline of the posts also plays an important role in attracting the reading and
viewing rate of audience. Therefore, the headline should impress the brand name, key benefit,
and surprise. It is not a formula, creativity that you must think every post, it is something that
you try to not work as a robot, replace that what you have done. Testing, finding your sweet
spot that is unique to you and it is authentic to your brand.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of headlines, so BuzzSumo examined:

• Headline phrases that drive most engagement on Facebook.

• Worst performing headline phrases on Facebook.
• Most effective phrases that start or end headlines.
• Optimum number of words and characters to use in a headline

BuzzSumo analyzed 10 million articles shared on LinkedIn and looked closely at:

• The top phrases that start B2B headlines.

• The most engaging phrases in B2B headlines.

• The top words and topics that resonate with B2B audiences.

• The optimum length of B2B headlines.

II. Diagram Traackr’s methodology for identifying social media influencers in a

topic area.
It has three dimensions of influencers:

• Reach measures the total size of an influencer's online audience across all major social
networks. It helps the company to find who are the influencers in a topic area. They
have an open mind in each social media platform. How many people interact with a
topic are in Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube. How many people that
the company can reach?

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 • Relevance measures an influencer’s contextual affinity to your areas of interest. It can
be described for a differentiator, it means nobody “influencer” is not as expert in
everything. Example, you are an employee working at CGV, when your friends who
know you best, ask about an interesting movie to watch, as that time, you can be an
expert (influencer) in this topic because you are working on this topic, you understand
and know clearly about this. However, you also have many experiences by trying food
in different restaurants and know a lot of good restaurants, your friends may not take
your advice. Therefore, the company must know clearly who is influencer in which
topic area.
• Resonance measures the engagement of an influencer’s audience with their content.
Example, how many likes, comments, shares of your posts in Facebook?

Source: Creating Meaningful Connections

Key words define the relevant conversations.

For example, if you want to explore the top influencer in the topic “Space Exploration”.
Traackr can look at a ‘conversation’ such as Space Exploration and uncover the key Influencers

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within that community. The platform is then used by companies to engage with and manage
the dialog these firms have with the influencers they identify. Traackr has pulled together such
a list - below are some keywords, which define the relevance in a project called Space
Exploration:

The top 5 influencers “key influencers” around these keywords are:

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Source: Traackr

Keywords will show you what people's intent is. Tracckr tell you what people are
searching for. In other words, they are market research as well as keyword research that you
might use for an ad campaign. They tell you what people are searching for. That is a profound
insight.

III. DealMaker

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Source: Tubular.com

Over half (57%) have made a purchase based solely on an online influencer
recommendation (Natalie, 2017).

Source: The Durm

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 WEEK 4: HOW TO ENGAGE INFLUENCERS?
I. Analyze 9 types of influencer to find the best engagement tactics for these
influencer categories.
1. Celebrities (Find sponsorship opportunities for Celebrities)

The celebrity thinks, “My online audience is the size of Texas.”

Ways to engage: Find them sponsorship opportunities. Like a celebrity endorsement, you
probably must buy their attention. But, if you’re the hottest company around, what do you need
them for?

2. Authority (Create value for an Authority’s community)

The authority thinks, “My opinion is worth more than gold in my space.”

Ways to engage: Create value for their community. They’re a trusted authority. They can’t be
bought but they can be convinced. They are interested in anything that brings value to their
audience.

3. Connectors (Help Connectors grow their networks)

The Connector thinks, “I like to connect dots and create links.”

Ways to engage: Help them grow their network. Connectors live off their network. Bring value
to it and you will be gold. Make intros and help them to connect more dots.

4. Personal Brands (Help Personal Brands build their reputation)

The Personal Brand thinks, “My name is my equity.”

Ways to engage: Help them build their reputation and SEO. Help them enhance their personal
brand and you’ll be fast friends. Hurt it and there’s no coming back. Find ways to increase their
visibility.

5. Analyst (Provide an Analyst with new data and insights)

Analysts think, “I form and communicate credible insights.”

Ways to engage: Present new data and help them build the base of knowledge they need to
perform their job. Give them access to insider insights and new data but don’t impose your
analysis on them.

6. Activist (Provide an Activist with access)

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An Activist think, “My beliefs make me move mountains.”

Ways to engage: Give them access and listen. Don’t shy away from people who disagree with
your point of view. But, to make an impact, you must join the conversation with an open mind.

7. Experts (Bring Experts in for their advice)

An Expert think, “I wrote the textbook on my subject.”

Ways to engage: Bring them in for their expert advice. Stay focused on their specific areas of
interest. Find ways to help them produce content, deepen their analysis, and showcase their
own expertise.

8. Insider (Engage an Insider in a healthy debate)

The Insider thinks, “I’m a respected authority with an agenda.”

Ways to engage: They’re passionate and will find alliances to help build the market story their
company needs to tell. Engage them in a healthy debate, but never play against home court.

9. Journalist (Boost Journalist’s readership with a juicy story)

The Journalist thinks, “I am the new news industry.”

Ways to engage: Boost their readership with a juicy story and exclusives. Engage with them
the same way you engage a good old journalist: with an interesting, exclusive, and timely story.

II. Test engagement best practices and use influencer outreach tactics that work
often.
“Schmooze optimization” is the process of making casual conversation with 3 types of
influential individuals:

• Journalists and bloggers, who embed video in their stories.

• YouTubers, who engage with videos and subscribe to channels.
• Influencers, who share video with their social networks.

“Do you have any video?”

III. Develop an “always-on” influencer program that strengthens your influencer

relations.
1. Traditional influencer marketing campaigns

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 In a traditional influencer marketing campaign, outreach activities are typically designed
as disparate spurts and bursts of energy. A campaign is created, influencers are engaged, and
then everything goes quiet until the next time the brand embarks on a new campaign.

2. “Always-on” influencer marketing as a continuous approach

After gaining experience and understanding of how to run campaigns successfully, it’s
time to tackle the continuous approach. A successful influencer marketing strategy involves
longer, ongoing campaigns and campaigns that give you that short-time boost. Influencer
marketing is not a one-off, isolated campaign. It’s a process you need to integrate into your
brand’s overall social marketing.

Reasons why you need an always-on influencer program:

• A professional, flexible content lab

Influencer marketing and content creation go hand in hand. So, the influencer marketing
attracts many marketers whose top challenge is creating engaging content. A strategically
constructed influencer marketing program can reach millions of targeted consumers through
thousands of pieces of user-generated content, all put into market at the same time and then
tested for effectiveness. For the cost of one traditional media buy or contracted piece of
professionally produced content, brands can activate hundreds of influencers and fill their
content lab with thousands of pieces of creative in a matter of days or weeks, instead of months.

• More than a team effort

The key to success is when influencers are actively involved in the entire organization,
and not just posting stuff about the current ongoing campaign. When they engage actively
with different departments for different purposes and you achieve a close community like
that, you’ll have found the true meaning of influencer marketing. That also means your
influencer marketing ROI will increase significantly even further. For example: When you
are launching a new product and you do not know how to craft your product messaging. You
could ask your influencer community how they would talk about your new product. That
way, you will learn how your consumers will talk about your product, and that might be the
perfect evaluation or change in your communication plan you need.

• The time in-between campaigns turn out to be the most valuable

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 When your influencers are not posting on the campaign briefing you gave them, it might
be a perfect time to ask them what they think about the latest campaign or upcoming campaigns.
It’s like talking to a consumer who is also a sector expert. Asking influencers about the errors
of the latest message campaign to get the experiences and advice for the next campaigns. You
can earn more then the value of influencers than their post on social media.

• Building relationships

Influencer marketing is a people business. A human-to-human business. So, it is all about

the relationship you have with your influencers. That does not mean you should be friends with
all influencers in your sector. It does mean you should be friends with the influencers who are
most important to tell your story and who are actively involved in your company in the roles
they perform best: creativity, content creation, sector expertise, so on. When you have a
genuine relationship with your most important influencers, these influencers will help you and
your company at the most crucial points your company will experience. Therefore, keeping
continuously the strong relationship with influencer will help the brands get more benefits in
many sectors.

WEEK 5: HOW TO MEASURE INFLUENCER MARKETING

This course is about how to measure the success of your programs with the appropriate
key performance indicators (KPIs). If it’s brand awareness, then we will learn how to measure
brand lift. If it’s engagement, then we will learn how to measure applause, conversation, and
amplification rates. If it is lead generation, then we will learn how to track influencer campaigns
in Google Analytics.

I. Compare gross rating points (GRPs), advertising value equivalency (AVE),

and brand lift
If brand awareness is a goal, then measure it. Gross rating points (GRPs), advertising
value equivalency (AVE) are bogus metrics. Brand lift is one of the right KPIs to use.

Brand lift is the right KPIs to evaluate brand awareness. Because Google’s Brand Lift
solution gives you insights into how your ads are impacting the metrics that matter within a
matter of days, including lifts in brand awareness, ad recall, consideration, favorability,
purchase intent, and brand interest, as measured by organic search activity.

Google Surveys can also measure brand lift:

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 • Google Surveys enables you to get fast, reliable insights from consumers across the
internet and on mobile devices.
• You can use Google Surveys to measure brand awareness and purchase intent before
and after an influencer marketing campaign for $0.10 to $3.00 per completed survey.

II. Assess applause, conversation, and amplification rates as the “best social
media metrics.”
How should we measure engagement? TrueSocialMetrics can do it.

In October 2011, Avinash Kaushik said the best social media metrics included:

• Applause rate
o Applause rate indicates how many likes each of your posts has received on
average. For example: Applause rate = 75 means each of your posts has an
average of 75 Likes. Do users think the content we have posted is interesting,
even if they won’t bless it with their stamp of approval and forward it on?
• Conversation rate
o Conversation rate indicates how many comments/replies each of your posts has
received on average. For example: Conversation rate = 1 means each of your
posts has an average of 1 comment. Is what we are saying interesting enough
to spark the most social of all things: a conversation?
o A high conversation rate requires a deeper understanding of who your audience
is, what your brand attributes are, what you are good at, what value you can add
to your followers and the ecosystem you participate in.
• Amplification rate
o Amplification rate indicates how many times on average each of your posts was
shared or retweeted. For example: Amplification rate = 25 means each of your
posts was shared 25 times on average. Is what we are saying so incredible and
of value that people will stamp their name on it and forward it to everyone they
know?

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 Tracking your conversation, amplification, and applause rates will help you to measure
the real active engagement of users with social media posts. True Social Metrics tracks your
blog as well as your Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr,
Vimeo, SlideShare, and Google+ accounts in one tool.

It helps marketers to compare the performance and economic value for all their social
media accounts in one dashboard and find the most effective social networks for their business.

TrueSocialMetrics has competitive analytics. Because no login credentials are required

to connect your competitors’ social media pages. You can compare your results against your
competitor and analyze their posting strategy, social media campaigns, followers, and learn
their best practices.

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Source: TrueSocialMetrics.com

Source: Everefect “Leaderboard view of Facebook account vs competitors”

TrueSocialMetrics has influencer analytics. You can identify the most powerful social
influencers for your business and the most engaged users who can become your brand
advocates. It also helps to analyze which topics and types of content are the most effective for
engaging your influencers and measure the engagement.

Source: TrueSocialMetrics.com

Evaluate a range of key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring influencer marketing.

Best social media metric: Economic value

If your goal is to generate sales from influencer marketing, you need to find out how
many sales have been generated, which will give you an idea of your ROI. We need to show
how much economic value each visit from a social network brings to the site by completing
your site goals. For example: Economic value = $5 means that each visit from this social media
site brings your business $5 in value. Do we make any money from engaging users on social
networks?

Connect Google Analytics to TrueSocialMetrics

Want to measure the economic value of your social media efforts on your site?

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 • Connect your Google Analytics account to TrueSocialMetrics.
o Google Analytics can help you track online sales. You can set up an “Event”
and see which customers visited your website via the influencers’ posts. This
will help you find the ROI of your influencer marketing campaign in terms of
sales.
• To calculate economic value in TrueSocialMetrics reports, you need to set up a goal in
your Google Analytics account and assign a monetary amount to the conversion.

Source: Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik, “Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation,
Amplification, Applause, Economic Value”

Select goals from a template

• Google Analytics has goal templates that are designed to help you set actionable goals
that meet standard business objectives.

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 • You should create at least one goal for each category (Revenue, Acquisition, Inquiry,
Engagement), or you can also create custom goals.

Source: Educo
wed design

Set the goal value

• Assigning a monetary value to a goal gives you a way to compare micro conversions
and measure changes and improvements over time.
• For example, if 10% of email signups eventually result in a purchase, and your average
transaction is $50, you might assign $5 (example: 10% of $50) to your “Signed up for
email” goal.

Find your most effective social networks

Use Campaign URL Builder for tracking

• You can also use the Campaign URL Builder tool to add parameters to your URLs so you
can track each influencer post in Google Analytics.

• Convert each URL to a short link to make it more sharable.

• Then, see how many micro or macro conversions each influencer posts generated.

Find your most effective influencer post.

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References
10 Reasons Why Influencer Marketing is the Next Big Thing. (2015). Adweek. Retrieved
from https://www.adweek.com/digital/10-reasons-why-influencer-marketing-is-the-
next-big-thing/
Allison, S. (2017). In 2017, Every Brand Needs To Have an Influencer Strategy. Tubular
Insights. Retrieved from https://tubularinsights.com/influencer-strategy/
Greg, J. (2012). Schmooze optimization: How it increases views, improves engagement, and
boosts earnings. Tubular Insights. Retrieved from
https://tubularinsights.com/schmooze-optimization-youtube/
Greg, J. (2016). Unruly Launches Emotional Intelligence Products for Digital Advertising.
TheSEMPost. Retrieved from http://www.thesempost.com/unruly-launches-
emotional-intelligence-products-digital-advertising/
Greg, J. (2017). Influencer Marketing Strategy. Coursera. Retrieved from
https://www.coursera.org/learn/influencer-marketing-strategy/lecture/wyd84/fewer-
journalists-are-the-right-influencers-identifying-the-right-influencers-is
Harold, D. (1948). The structure and function of communication in society.
Influencer Marketing Study. (2015). Tomoson Blog. Retrieved from
https://www.tomoson.com/blog/influencer-marketing-study/
Kaushik, A. (2017). Stop All Social Media Activity (Organic) | Solve For A Profitable
Reality. Occam’s Razor. Retrieved from https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/stop-
organic-social-media-marketing-solve-for-profit/
Lisa, T. (2017). The Content Marketer’s Guide to Influencer Marketing [New Ebook].
HubSpot. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/influencer-marketing-
ebook
Natalie, M. (2017). Influencer content accounts for almost 20% of consumer media
consumption. TheDrum. Retrieved from
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/01/25/influencer-content-accounts-almost-20-
consumer-media-consumption

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