Influencer marketing campaigns are one of the top ways to market your brand. Research shows that consumers – especially millennials – trust influencer marketing more than traditional ads and trust their favorite influencers almost as much as recommendations from friends and family. But partnering with an influencer can be tricky, especially when you’re attempting to track the data from an influencer marketing campaign.

Part of the impact from influencer marketing comes from the fact that the influencers themselves have almost complete control over the details of how they market your brand. They use their social media accounts, words, and tone to promote your brand. This makes the recommendation feel more authentic, but can mean that you have to be more creative when trying to track exactly what your ROI is for these particular campaigns.

Here are some tips to keep in mind to make sure you’re able to track the data from your influencer campaign and make sure it’s working for you.

Establish a clear goal

The best way to make sure your influencer marketing campaign is accomplishing your goals is to set the goals at the beginning. Make sure they’re clear and attainable goals that are easy to track. There are several kinds of goals or potential outcomes that influencers can help you achieve.

• Direct product sales
• Brand awareness
• Increased followers
• Lead generation

Once you decide on a general goal or focus, make sure you have specific, measurable metrics that you can track to determine your success. Try to be as specific as possible – for example, if you want to increase direct sales, you might set a goal of increasing sales by $2,000 during the campaign run. Using the S.M.A.R.T. method – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, time-based – is a great way to make sure that whatever potential outcome you want for your influencer marketing campaign is as successful as possible.

Knowing what your goal is before you begin will help you choose the right influencer and guide your overall strategy so that it is measurable and effective.

Working with your influencer

Regardless of what your goals are, tracking an influencer campaign can be a little tricky. It’s important to have a way to differentiate growth from an influencer campaign from growth generated by other marketing methods. There are some steps that you can take to help make this easier for you. Because influencers have a good deal of control over how they share and promote your product, make sure you clearly communicate your specific goals to them so that they know how to best promote your brand. Here are some things that you can do and provide to not only help your influencer promote your product but also to make tracking your ROI easier.

Coupon codes: Make an influencer-specific coupon code for your product. This method is especially effective if your overall goal is to increase sales. Giving your influencer’s followers the incentive of a specific discount code not only encourages their fans to buy your products, but will also give you a tool to track exactly how many sales were generated by a particular influencer. Specific landing page: If your goal is to increase views to your website or blog, create a specific landing page for influencer-generated traffic. Give the link to that page to your influencer to include in their post and promotions. When you’re tracking your data, use the views of that specific landing page to gauge exactly how much your influencer increased your page views compared to your other page views.

Quality Content: Whatever you’re asking your influencer to promote – whether it’s a product or followers or a blog article – make sure the influencer is comfortable with your brand and have everything they need to accurately promote it. This is particularly true if your goal is to increase followers or leads. If your influencer knows what your goals are, they can better steer their audiences to the actions you want them to take. For example, if your goal is to increase Twitter followers, the influencer can include a call to action encouraging their fans to follow you on Twitter. Make sure that you provide the influencer with a link to all your social media sites and have access to any content you want shared.

It’s a good idea to provide any photos or images that you want promoted as well, though often influencers will produce content featuring your product as well. Making sure that your influencer has access to everything they need and are clear on your goals for a particular campaign will help them produce higher quality content that will then drive their audiences to your sites and hopefully achieve your goals.

Influencer marketing is a powerful tool to help boost your brand. And while measuring the data and determining your ROI can present challenges based on the nature of influencer marketing, the tips we’ve shared today will help set you up for success and make tracking your data easier.