It’s no longer up for debate: Influencer marketing should be considered as seriously as all other traditional advertising choices when drafting media plans for the year

A study last year reported that that the average influencer marketing campaign received $6.85 in earned media value for every dollar spent on paid media–an impressive number indeed.

But there’s more to quantifying return on investment of your influencer engagement than earned media value: What about tracking consumer behaviors that lead to conversions and actually generate revenue?

Contrary to popular belief, it is actually possible to measure consumer actions following engagement with influencers–the type of data the bigwigs at your company will salivate over. We put together alist of strategies for blogs, Instagram and YouTube, and we are sharing some of the top tactics below.

Unlike out of home, TV or display, influencer marketing resonates with consumers in a more authentic way while also giving much higher visibility into the success of the campaign.

Blogs

Conversion pixels: A conversion pixel placed on your website will tell you how many readers of the sponsored content ended up visiting on their own (not via a direct click through orretargeting ad) within a 30-day window. We’ve seen that up to 40 percent of site visits via influencers are not currently tracked because they are not direct click-throughs.

Cross-promote: Require all influencers to pin their content on Pinterest. Pinterest is the most evergreen social platform, and you’ll receive continual engagement well past the initial engagement period of your campaign. You should also ensure that all the influencers are sharing their article to Facebook and promoting it through their blog’s Facebook page via paid advertising. Make sure their targeting correctly identifies those who like your brand or competing products.

Page views vs. read ratio: Measure the page-view-to-read ratio. For every 10 page views, two people actually read the entire article. If the reads on a specific post/page are higher than average, promote that influencer’s content as recommended reading on premium publisher sites. For best results, engage with influencers that have the highest read ratio, not the highest amount of page views.

Instagram

SMS marketing: An SMS strategy provides a great opportunity to continually engage with those interested in your product outside of social media but still on their preferred device–mobile. Promoting a coupon code is a great way to collect a phone number, as consumers are generally willing to provide that information for the benefit of savings. Consider re-engaging with your audience on a quarterly basis via SMS marketing.

Measure in-store redemptions: By using SMS marketing through text messaging, including coupons or QR codes, you can track the amount of consumers who requested your promotion, but also the ones who actually redeemed them and completed the conversion.

Comment to buy feature: One of the easiest ways to track direct conversions, comment to buy allows followers to comment on a particular post expressing their interest to buy the product featured in it. They are then emailed a personalized link to complete their purchase.

YouTube

Links within the video: Ensure that you are providing links to click inside of the video to further incentivize site visits. Encouraging a site visit within the context of the topic is more organic.

Be featured: Pay the influencer extra to be the featured video on their channel for a specific amount of time to receive up to 100 times more video views. We’ve found that six months to a year is average and provides tremendous results.

Track and retarget: Track clicks from YouTube and have specific retargeting ads ready for that audience using the influencer-created content. This provides more content that is relevant to the consumer and another opportunity for them to engage with your brand.

Influencer marketing is a powerful tool for brands, but influencer marketing backed by data is the holy grail. Utilize the information available to you to maximize your campaigns and generate results that move the needle.

Article Written by Sarah Ware of Social Times