The Definitive Guide to Influencer Marketing

Chapter 3: Campaign Launch

Now that you’re ready to reach out to some influencers, you need to know all about how to make contact, what information to include, and what to do and not to do.

Influencer Marketing Guide > Campaign Launch > 3.5. Setting up campaign tracking

GUIDE NAVIGATOR

0. Introduction
1. Campaign Definition
2. Campaign Setup
3. Campaign Launch
4. Campaign Monitoring
- 4.1. Detecting & collecting published media
- 4.2. Tips & tricks for following up
5. Campaign Analysis
- 5.1. Analyzing a campaign's results
- 5.2. Expectations vs. reality: the report
Glossary

3.5. Setting up campaign tracking

Monitoring your campaign is equally important as all the work you put into planning it. This is where you’ll start to see your results and whether or not you’ve achieved your objectives. Therefore, it’s critical to set up a good system of campaign tracking.

There are several platforms you can use to track your campaign, but a good place to start is Google Analytics. It’s free to start out, and there are various courses online in case you need to learn how to use it.

Influencer metrics

Influencers have some internal statistics that are valuable to your campaign. To clarify, these metrics are only available to influencers who have their profile set up as a business profile and who have over 10K followers.

If your influencer meets these criteria, they can access Instagram Insights. Insights can provide data on the influencer’s audience (gender, age range, location), engagement, reach and impressions. Ask influencers to provide you with the data related to the posts and stories they publish for your campaign.

Links

The best way to measure the traffic generated by an influencer’s publication is through the links used in the campaign. Links are often taken for granted; many people don’t understand just how much links can tell us.

How to create a tracking link

You first need to know where you want to direct the traffic. Do you want to direct people to your home page? A landing page? Your eCommerce shop?

Next, you want to create what’s called UTM parameters (urchin tracking module). Without getting too technical, Utms can be tagged onto the end of a link to you valuable information about your marketing campaign. There are five tags you can use:

- Source - shows which site visitors are directed from

- Medium - tells you what type of link was used, for example, email or cost per click

- Campaign - identifies the specific campaign

- Term - designates any paid keywords used

- Content - specifies what element was clicked, such as a banner or text link

A simple way to create UTM links is with Campaign URL Builder, a free tool from Google Analytics that walks you through the process step by step.

Shortening your links

Now, with all those extra parameters, your links can get really long. No one wants to post an unattractive, never-ending link on their profile or send it in an email. Thankfully, there are some services that let you shorten your link and make it more palatable.

Bitly allows you to generate, share and track links. It also lets your brand your links for increased recognition. Bitly offers an on-site dashboard from which you can monitor your links and their success. Bitly integrates with various social networks and digital marketing tools, and lets you create links individually and in bulk.

Short.io also lets you shorten branded links and then share them across the Internet. Short.io, like Bitly, offers built in Analytics. It also integrates with other marketing tools, like Google Analytics. Short.io also lets you create mobile links that direct users based on their mobile operating system. These are only two of the many link shorteners that are out there.

Do some research and see which one feels best to you. But whichever you choose, make sure you are consistent with both the building and tracking of your links.