Data-driven influencer marketing doesn’t simply refer to the ways in which we measure performance and campaign success. It also refers to the ways we select creators, audiences and brand partnerships based on how transparent they are with their data set.

Having a solid understanding of the data behind the creative is essential to running successful campaigns, however the human element of insight, assessment and transparency is equally as important; without assessing human connections, sharing transparent data and disclosing findings, the influencer marketing industry wouldn’t be able to produce amazing campaigns that resonate with audiences worldwide.

In this article, we’re looking at the importance of data in influencer marketing and how both brands and creators should be wholly transparent with the data they both work with and display.

Why Does Being Data Driven Matter?

Data is a crucial ingredient to setting up and managing a successful influencer marketing campaign; we need data to assess how suitable a content creator might be for a brand, and to predict the results when sharing content on a range of social media channels.

Data is also essential in predicting ROI, and understanding how influencer marketing might benefit a brand’s wider business strategy. To expand, data allows us to measure the efficiency of a creator against an audience, to tweak a campaign to achieve ideal outcomes and to ensure every campaign’s key goal is met, that being ROI.

What Kind Of Data Might Be Assessed?

When we talk about data in influencer marketing, we might be referring to a wide range of different metrics. These often include:

- Average reach;

- Average impressions;

- Post engagement;

- Audience demographics/ success rate with a demographic;

- Average traffic to website per post; and

- Average conversions per post.

What Do We Mean By Being Transparent?

Data is an extremely powerful and therefore useful tool, but it is meaningless if creators and brands aren’t willing to share it. This is what we mean by being transparent in influencer marketing; if you’ve worked in the industry for a while, you’ll remember a time when creators could easily manipulate their data, such as buying likes and followers, and because of this, it was hard for brands to know how reliable the data was.

Although this undermined the industry's reputation at the time, it also highlighted huge learnings, and now brands and creators alike value transparency now more than ever. Data transparency means better campaigns, more highly targeted audiences and happier consumers who get to see content they actually want to see, but this can only be done if data is transparent and accurately reported.

Being transparent with data will help cement influencer marketing as a respectable industry, and once this happens, advertisers and marketers will allocate more of their marketing budget into this space - it’s a real win win.

How Can Brands Run More Data Driven, Transparent Campaigns?

Selecting the right strategy for any influencer marketing campaign requires a combination of data, human insight and transparency. One of the key ways that brands can achieve this is by partnering with an influencer platform that can provide valid data on creators.

Our proprietary platform not only takes the struggle out of accessing influencer data, as by signing up to the platform the creator has already consented and shared their data, it ensures brands work with creators who don't have a track record of providing fraudulent or manipulated data, thanks to our strict vetting onboarding process. Both of these benefits combined, can ensure the success of your campaign and provide more accurate result predictions.

To learn more about how your brand could use our proprietary platform to generate data-driven influencer marketing campaigns, head over to our website now!