How To Boost Influencer Marketing ROI Through Amplification

While most marketers know the proven value of influencers, there’s one tactic many brands aren’t utilising to maximise their influencer marketing ROI – amplification through paid ads.

If you want to maximise the full ROI from your influencer campaigns, you really need to go beyond those organic followers and reach new audiences with paid media.

How to reach new audiences beyond an influencer’s feed by using ad dollars to amplify your influencer content

1. Influencer Marketing & Influencer Amplification, What’s the Difference?

Before jumping into influencer amplification, let’s take a step back for those who need a refresher.

Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy that uses key content creators across social media to drive authentic conversations and engagement around a brand’s products and message.

• A successful influencer partnership raises awareness and drives sales. If you’re new to influencer marketing campaigns — don't worry — we've got heaps of articles and a team to help you with your end-to-end data-driven campaigns!
• Nowadays, engaging an influencer is no longer the final step in the influencer marketing process.

Influencer amplification is a marketing strategy that puts advertising dollars behind brand mentions from a specific influencer.

Instead of repurposing the content and distributing it through the brand’s handle, influencer amplification connects the influencer’s handle to the brand’s ad account for advertising.

2. How Paid Campaigns Help Boost Influencer Marketing ROI

Influencer marketing has emerged over the years as a strong marketing tactic but it has its limitations.

For example, they can also be difficult to track and measure performance-wise, and there can be limitations in terms of CTA and where clicks drive traffic.

How paid social campaigns can help solve three of the biggest challenges of organic influencer content

Influencer Post Day

• Problem: Once an influencer post is published, it doesn't have much visibility after 24 hours.
• Solution: Integrate the influencers’ accounts with an agency account, placing ad dollars behind the best performing influencer content.

No Call to Action

• Problem: On Instagram, there is no current method of reliably driving influencer engagement to an off-site conversion.
• Solution: Place a CTA overlay on the influencers’ posts and promote it to the influencer’s followers and additional audiences (lookalike, engagement, lists, etc.)

Lack of Attribution

• Problem: It is difficult to measure influencer post-performance.
• Solution: UTM tags and Facebook Pixels track traffic sources to CTA links, giving direct insight into how each post is contributing to your sales

3. Branded Content vs. Influencer Amplification

By now you may realize there are recently released native features for boosting influencer content.

Last year, Instagram released Branded Content Ads, which enables brands to partner with influencers to boost individual posts, but there are limitations.

Here’s a breakdown of how partnering with a marketing agency gives brands more control over their influencer investments.

Branded Content:

• Boosted posts are limited by campaign objective: Brand Awareness, Reach, Traffic, Video Views, and Page Post Engagement
• Influencers only give access to the single post
• Influencers must tag the brand as a business partner in their organic post
• Branded Content is only available to select brands

Influencer Amplification:

• Amplifying influencer content can be connected to any Facebook campaign objective, including Conversions
• Influencers give access to their Facebook page and Instagram handle
• Any influencer post can be boosted
• Amplification is available to all brands working with influencers
• Content can be redistributed across multiple channels, not just Facebook or Instagram

4. 7 Steps for Boosting Your Influencer Marketing ROI

If there’s one thing to take away from this article, it’s our process for boosting your influencer marketing ROI.

Here’s are our top 7 tips on how you can maximize the reach of your influencer marketing spend beyond branded ads:

1. Identify your highest-engaging influencer posts
2. Connect influencers’ posts with the best performing audiences
3. Create audiences from influencer engagers and followers
4. Rewrite ad copy to convert users, but maintain the influencer’s voice
5. Add CTA button to drive users to your website or desired source
6. Add UTM tags and Facebook Pixels to track CTA link traffic
7. Use Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics to measure clicks and revenue

By following these seven steps, you will reach beyond your organic influencer’s post and improve the longevity of your influencer content.

5. How to Measure the ROI of Your Paid Influencer Marketing Campaign

From impressions to conversions, there are many measurable trigger points to track throughout the course of your influencer amplification campaign.

If you are putting ad spend behind an influencer post, here are some of the influencer marketing KPIs you may want to track. Keeping in mind, the metrics you decide to track depend on your goals.

• Increased Website Traffic
• Branded Search Lift
• Increased Purchase Activity

Tools like Google Analytics are great for tracking traffic, while native tools such as Instagram Insights are good for tracking engagement data. There are also a plethora of third-party analytics tools that are available for tracking your KPIs.

No matter your goals, the true success of your paid influencer campaign depends on three things:

1. Clearly defined objectives
2. The right message for the right audience
3. Effective measurement of your data

5. Other Ideas to Explore When Setting Up Your Amplified Influencer Marketing Campaigns

To better amplify and accurately measure success from a paid campaign, consider the following:

• Use an influencer marketing platform to choose the most suitable person who can deliver the best positive ROI for your influencer marketing campaign.
• When setting up your campaign, keep in mind to reach your chosen social media influencer's audience and most engaged followers.
• Request the ad creative from your social media influencers. For example, a photo of them opening a box containing your product to give you a brand lift.
• Measure influencer marketing ROI by using a unique promo code for each particular influencer. Promo codes allow you to measure ROI and track sales based on how many people have made a purchase because they found it through an influencer.

Boosting Influencer Marketing ROI: Final Takeaways

The method for amplifying your influencer content is three-fold:

• Invest in influencer marketing to gain initial organic reach
• Amplify the top-performing content with paid social ads to drive traffic and increase revenue
• Track your influencer campaign objectives, KPIs, and campaign costs