Many pros say that blogger outreach campaigns can’t accurately be measured; however, we need something to take back to our boss, right? We need to be able to compare blogger relationships against each other to determine who to keep working with; not to mention knowing whether or not your campaign as a whole was even worth the money, time, and effort.
Though we may not be able to measure blogger outreach ROI to an exact level, we have got to give it a “community college try” so that we have some sort of springboard.
As of now, there are no industry standards for measuring blogger outreach campaigns, so it’s up to each agency or brand to establish an “in house standard.” From estimated impressions to lead generation, each company has different goals and thus different standards to measure.
Since blogger outreach is a marketing tactic that is ongoing, the ROI can’t be measured to an exact number but we can still get close. One thing that many CEO’s don’t understand when it comes to this form of marketing is that the earned posts live in cyber space, and they bring in traffic long after the campaign is “over.”
In order to determine some sort of ROI for your outreach campaigns or a measurement standard, a goal needs to be determined before you start reach out to bloggers in your niche. Next, you need to optimize your campaign and linkable assets for that goal. Here are some ideas:
Optimize Your Campaign According to Your Goal
Lead Generation: Build a landing page that you construct in advance so that you can give your blogger something to link to instead of just your brand’s homepage. Whether the landing page prompts visitors sign up for a free software demo, an eBook or a webinar, the lead capture info is yours forever and allows you to measure how many people filled it out for a more accurate standard than simple web traffic.
Move Customers through the Funnel: Provide the blogger with downloadable resources such as white papers, case studies, and eBooks. Your potential prospects will fill out a quick form with their name and email address to receive the free giveaways. Case studies and eBooks that talk about how your brand can help reach a goal are great resources to move customers to that next level.
Gain New Customers: Using your handy Google Analytics, keep track of all new visitors to your site from the post. Set a “conversion goal” to track how many take a certain action while on your site, not just how many people visit.
Gain Influence for Your Brand: Reach out to bloggers who want to link to your brand or a resource from your brand as an authority on a topic in your niche. Social media shares and blog comments (positive ones anyway) are great metrics to look at.
Brand Awareness: Since brand awareness is such a broad goal, simply track social media shares and site traffic via Google Analytics or use a link shortener like bitly.
Product Purchases: Have the blogger offer a coupon in their post or a code for a discount. This way you can track where those purchases came from.
Evaluate on an Individual Level
Using your spreadsheet or measurement tool, it’s important to evaluate the metrics that coincide with your goal for each blogger. It’s also wise to analyze the post tactics, titles, and etc. of the successful and unsuccessful relationships so you can encourage tactics that moved your goal forward for future campaigns.
Analyze the Campaign as a Whole
To see the success of your campaign as a whole, it’s important to look at totals from all the bloggers posts. This is crucial reporting to show to a boss or a client. Not to mention it lets you know if your tactic was successful.
Keep track of your time and money spent on your campaign and compare it against the total amount of leads, new customers, clicks, and social media shares that you got from your bloggers’ posts.
Continually Track
If blogger outreach is something you plan on doing a lot of, then you probably want to invest in a blogger outreach tool that also tracks and monitors your campaigns continually like GroupHigh to save time.
If blogger outreach is something that you don’t plan on doing on a regular basis, then plan to spend time staying organized and allot time every week to update your spreadsheets so that you can keep track of the post URLs and the metrics that contribute to your goal. Keep track even after the campaign is over—mentions from bloggers are evergreen content!
What metrics do you look at to determine whether or not your blogger outreach campaigns are successful?
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