How to Choose the Best Influencer Tracking Platform

There’s a whole world of influencer tracking platforms out there and if you’re a business working with influencers with a small budget, tracking the real results of these campaigns is essential.

We all know that working with influencers can get expensive. Getting sales from your influencer campaigns is critical. In reality, vanity metrics only give you a part of the picture.

Without influencer sales tracking, businesses run the risk of making losses on influencer campaigns because they don’t have the data to make good decisions on their digital marketing campaigns.

Choosing influencer marketing software to track influencer-driven sales can be tricky, but this article aims to help you make the best decision for your business.

How do Influencers Get Sales?

Influencers drive sales for brands in various ways, but it is usually the promotion of a product  from an ecommerce brand, or a service you provide to them. Influencers promote these on their social platforms.

The content can take several forms – for example how-to content, reviews, before and after shots (this list isn’t exhaustive).

The influencer does it in a way that works and resonates with their audience so that they are primed to buy from you, whether they are micro – influencers or celebrity influencers.

The influencers that people follow usually have a high level of trust and engagement with their followers, and they feel that they are being authentic so are more likely to trust a recommendation. The stats back this up: 61% of consumers trust influencer recommendations

Why is Influencer Conversion Tracking Vital?

With any influencer collaboration, you usually get given vanity metrics like engagement rate, likes, and reach from your influencer, which means increased brand awareness for your business. However, these vanity metrics are hard to quantify in terms of the impact on your business. Does reach mean increased sales? Do posts with more likes mean more sales of a specific product?

Of course, there IS value in including relevant influencers in your marketing strategy, but vanity metrics don’t tell you the whole story. An influencer’s metrics don’t tell you anything about the number of sales your influencer had a direct hand in and how impactful the campaign was in terms of revenue for your brand.

Having a system to track influencer marketing sales (aka conversions) means you get two buckets of data – the vanity metrics data provided by the influencer and the sales data. Doing this means you can be more strategic with your influencer marketing and start analyzing the trends with each campaign and what works in driving conversions.

There’s more:

Track Return on Investment (ROI):

Tracking influencer sales gives you a clear picture of your ROI, which is essential when it comes to your influencer marketing strategy. This way you can allocate budgets more effectively, and see precisely which influencers work well with your brand to drive sales.

Optimizing Campaigns:

When you know what’s working well in your influencer marketing strategy, you have the ability to optimize your campaigns so that they are successful. Just starting? You begin with experiments and then make changes that can help to lead the way to success.

Creating a More Personalized Experience

By working with influencers it enables you to use the data you collect to create more personalized experiences for your customers. For example, if the data says that a specific product is frequently purchased via influencers, you could use that data to make personalized product recommendations.

Understanding Audiences and Improving Customer Acquisition

Understanding your customers and the customer journey is an essential part of your business. By working with influencers, you can gain a more in-depth understanding of the customer journey. Plus, you can learn their preferences (by looking at the products they buy, how much they spend, and other data metrics).

This can help you with customer acquisition too. When you know which influencer channels work most effectively, you can focus your efforts more easily.

Scalability

When you have had an influencer marketing program for a while, it enables you to scale effectively. You can really focus on driving budget to larger campaigns that have succeeded on a smaller scale, and allocate the right resources in your marketing team to grow your business.

Competitive Edge

Capture a larger market share than your competitors by using influencer marketing data to identify trends and any changes in customer behavior. Use this data for creating campaigns to give you a competitive edge.

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How Can You Track Influencer Conversions?

In short, the quickest way to track your influencer marketing efforts is by using influencer marketing software or referral tracker – it saves you time and effort, and everything is in one place. Several influencer marketing platforms offer conversion tracking, and many have free trials (including Tapfiliate).

You can track sales in two different ways – with a promo code, or with a tracking link. The discount code doesn’t require a click, and a tracking link does. Depending on the social media channel you agree to promote on (for example, an instagram story can have a link in, but an instagram post can’t) then you can decide which is best. With Tapfiliate, all of your influencers will automatically get access to their tracking link, but for coupons you will need to allocate them.

The tracking software will automatically recognize which influencer is responsible for which sale. You pay the influencer based on their performance.

What to Look for With an Influencer Conversion Tracking Software

When looking for conversion tracking software to track your influencer marketing campaigns, there are several vital things you need to consider during the entire process:

Usability and Features

An essential part of having conversion tracking software is to ensure that it is easy to use and has the right features for your business. The dashboard should be intuitive, and you should know where to find things quickly. You need to be able to see insights at a glance, with the option to dive deeper into the data.

Note: With influencer tracking software, you can choose to pay influencers a commission on each sale they refer. Doing this can help with negotiating on price. If you prefer to pay the influencer without adding a commission payment, you can.

Learn more about Tapfiliate’s features.

Integrations

With conversion tracking software, you will need to integrate your cart or payment provider to track the sales. Check to see what integrations the software has – usually, you will be able to do this in a couple of clicks. If you have a custom website or cart, what do you need to implement the code to enable you to track sales? You might need to use your in-house developer or find a developer to help you with it.

Tapfiliate has 36 different integrations including ecommerce platforms like Shopify, payment platforms like Stripe and PayPal, SaaS solutions like Recurly, plus a REST API integration, and a JavaScript integration for custom sites.

Reporting and tracking

Tracking your influencer marketing campaign’s success can be done with transparent reporting and tracking. Ensure that it has detailed and comprehensive campaign reports to see which social media influencers are driving sales.

Tapfiliate offers real-time automated tracking which means that you can adjust campaigns quickly. Plus, we offer a 14-day free trial.

Documentation and customer support

Ensure that the company you choose has adequate documentation for setting up tracking and that they have an excellent customer support team that can answer your questions.

Pricing

Check what their pricing is – is it within your budget? Are there different pricing levels available? Can you buy an annual subscription? Which works best for your brand? Additionally, many tracking solutions offer free trials so you can ensure that it is the best fit for your business.

Did you know that Tapfiliate offers a free 14-day trial so that you can ensure it’s the best fit for your business. Get started now.

Sign up for Tapfiliate’s 👉 free 14-day trial to start tracking your influencer marketing results 

Which Brands Use Influencer Marketing to Drive Sales?

Several brands use influencer marketing to drive revenue to their business. Here are a couple of examples that have used Tapfiliate to track their influencer sales.

The NU Company

Vegan snack bar business The nu company creates delicious organic snack bars with plastic-free packaging. They use ethically sourced natural ingredients and plant a tree for every bar they make. The nu company works with influencers to spread the word about their brand.

he NU Company uses Tapfiliate to track its brand ambassador program sales. They have increased conversion rates and revenue for their company. Their sales get tracked using a unique URL automatically created by Tapfiliate and provided to the influencer.

Cubus

Cubus is a Norwegian clothing brand that is a part of the Varner family. They cover the basic clothing needs of families using natural materials, and they have been around for more than 40 years. Sustainability is critical for them.

Cubus uses Tapfiliate to track their sales from influencers that promote their products on social media. They issue coupon codes to some influencers and utilize the unique URLs for influencers to share with their audience.

Cubus uses Tapfiliate to track their sales from influencers that promote their products on social media platforms. They issue coupon codes to some influencers and utilize the unique URLs for influencers to share with their audience.

You’ve Found Your Influencer Tracking Software. What Next?

To ensure that the software is right for your business, ensure that you entirely use the free trial if your chosen software offers one. That way, you’ll be sure when you start. The following steps are:

Get integrated

You will need to ensure that the tracking software gets integrated to track sales effectively when you first start. Check to see which shopping cart or payment provider you can integrate with, and follow the instructions.

Invite influencers

The next step is to invite influencers to promote you. Finding the right potential influencers for your brand is key to your success – it helps if they have similar audience demographics. Of course there are criteria you can have to find the perfect influencer or content creator for your brand. 

You will need to think about your influencer strategy and the types of influencers you want to work with.

Note that while many brands place an emphasis on follower count, engagement metrics are a much better indicator of success.

Influencer databases can help you to narrow down the right influencer for your brand, and can help you weed out those influencers with fake followers.

You could place an affiliate link promoting your influencer program on your website and send out an email to your client list. You can use a social listening tool to try and 

Additionally, you can do research and create a list of influencers to target.  Add these influencer profiles It’s essential to create influencer relationships.

Run your first campaign

Once you have influencers (whether or not you use an influencer discovery tool), then you need to run your first campaign. Depending on your brand, that could be a shoutout, competition, or coupon. When running campaigns, it’s essential to organize the start and end dates so you can track the campaign’s success. Compare the results to your key performance metrics on a regular basis. You can gain valuable insights from your campaigns, whether or not they were successful.

How Do You Know if an Influencer Campaign was Successful?

Determining the success of an influencer marketing campaign is essential so that you can refine your strategy and allocate your budget effectively. A wide range of metrics can assist in analyzing the performance and impact of each campaign:

1. Financial Metrics:

Revenue: The direct revenue from the campaign is a vital metric, correlating influencer efforts to actual sales figures. You can use an influencer tracking platform to do this for you.

Conversion Rate: Evaluating the percentage of conversions provides insights into the efficacy of influencer content in driving actions.

Return on Investment (ROI): Calculating ROI by assessing the net profit relative to the total cost of the campaign unveils its financial viability.

2. Vanity Metrics:

Reach: Measure how many individuals were exposed to the campaign, providing a snapshot of its visibility and span.

Likes and Comments: The volume and nature of likes and comments offer a window into the engagement and resonance of the campaign with your target audience.

3. Depth Metrics:

Engagement Rate: Delve beyond likes and comments to evaluate shares, save, and the time spent on posts to gauge genuine interest and interaction.

Audience Growth: The follower growth or subscribers during and after a piece of content is published for a campaign indicates its capacity to expand your brand’s community.

These metrics will enable you to make strategic decisions about your business and which future campaigns work best with your brand.

Tapfiliate has a range of features and we offer a free 14-day trial of our influencer marketing platform.

Start Tracking Your Influencer Sales Today

Now that you know why tracking your influencer sales is essential, you can decide on an influencer marketing tool that meets your needs in terms of key features, integrations, customer support, and pricing. Then you can get started and integrate, invite your influencers from different social networks, and organize your first campaign. Once you’ve created a network of influencers and influencer partnerships, you can focus on growth and scaling. Relationships with influencers is key. Performance tracking is an essential step in this process.

Tapfiliate has a range of features and we offer a 👉 free 14-day trial of our influencer marketing platform.