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Measuring Influencer Marketing
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Measuring Influencer Marketing
No matter the industry, tracking the buyer’s journey is a never-ending component of running a business. How customers learn about products and services is always evolving, and more than ever, influencers and content creators are a part of that – even for tech solution providers.
Ever wondered how the influencer industry works and how folks in your field can take advantage of it? Although I am theoretically one myself, I figured I should consult someone who studies the space from a business perspective. I welcomed Joe Vezzani, CEO and Co-Founder of social media analytics company Lunar Crush, onto a bonus episode of The Business of Tech.
Here’s what you should know about unlocking the potential of content creation for B2B sales, personal promotion, and more.
The State of Play for Online Buyers
This almost goes without saying, but Vezzani kicked off our conversation by confirming what we all suspect: social media, from citizen journalism to influencer culture, has drastically changed the buying landscape.
That’s why Lunar Crush works with businesses to pull data from X, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, and more to understand what these markets look like and how companies can make better decisions based on those findings.
And these aren’t just influencers doing one-off viral posts. These content arms now have entire teams behind them, and it’s not uncommon for new leads to come in through social media relationships.
Influencers and Technology Companies
Before dismissing the role of influencers in tech service marketing, consider that your target customers are learning things from these influencers. I asked Vezzani to explain how this economy works from a technology company perspective, and he explained that a lot of content creators begin as hobbyists sharing subject matter expertise. It’s often niche expertise, but even ‘micro influencers’ have the power to reach very specific audiences.
But leveraging these creators for specific business outcomes isn’t always straightforward:
“It’s the same thing as having a billboard – you don’t necessarily know. It’s more of an awareness play. We’re trying to shift that into more of a performance play right where it’s, I know exactly how many impressions I’m getting from this budget… as transparency in the data starts to happen, we’re then able to correctly get those people the right amount of money for the campaigns that they’re doing,” said Vezzani.
Measuring Success
But how can this actually be measured? The success metrics can be squishy. Even when a creator puts considerable effort into content, it’s hard to know how far and how well the message was received.
At Lunar Crush, Vezzani explained that they zero in on metrics like keywords to uncover individual creators talking about specific things. They’re aiming to create transparency around the production of creative content and how it’s amplified, because the effort put into making something doesn’t necessarily equate to actual reach:
“As we’re collecting that in real-time across all these different social networks, we’re really helping to kind of frame the market. When it comes to the potential reach of all of these different individuals, the reach that happens on a potential campaign might be different for every single person,” he said.
The clearer the metrics, the easier it is to establish how a creator is rewarded for successful posts.
Viral Versus Consistency
This led me to the ongoing debate over virality v. consistency. The traditional marketing philosophy that a consistent message eventually gets heard still holds water in the social media arena – despite the allure of chasing viral impact, many people believe that consistent posts are far more important.
I asked Vezzani for his take (as someone who looks at the data), and he says it’s a bit of both. He definitely agrees that consistency in messaging is key, especially to retain existing audiences, but it’s certainly helpful to go for easy virality when possible.
Because when you achieve a nice variety of viral posts and consistent ones, Vezzani says you get a ‘higher low.’ Meaning that if you regularly get 100 new customers a day from social media, then a viral moment bumps you up to a temporary rate of 500 new customers a day, even when the viral moment is over, you can still end up with an ongoing average of 120 new customers a day.
“Social media is all about consistency, staying relevant, staying within the algorithm, but definitely go for virality when you can,” he said.
I asked if approaching this from a B2B perspective changes anything. In short, Vezzani believes the essence of awareness and coolness from B2C content still applies to B2B, but B2B social media relationships turn into business conversations much faster.
Will AI Disrupt the Space?
I couldn’t let Vezzani leave without checking in on his AI takes. As you’d expect, AI is already at play in social media analysis.
“Every single post that we pull in, we’re utilizing five or we’re going on six different open source models to try and understand, is this a positive post? Is this a negative post? What’s being said here? Are there other keywords that relate to what’s being said here? And so AI has just found its way into tons of technology and it will continue to find its way in businesses utilizing this stuff on the back end,” he said.
On the front end, he’s seen plenty of businesses succeed with single-use AI to drive the buying journey, specifically customer support agents.
Advice for Tech Leaders, Platforms to Consider
Are you ready to ramp up your social media communications? I asked Vezzani what advice he’d give to people in your position. His answer is simple: start posting, and don’t think too hard about it.
“If you don’t think you’re a social media person, but you’re a CEO of a company, I would say don’t worry about that. Just try it and see what happens,” he said. “X is a great place for thought leadership as a CEO or as a manager of a business or a CMO to go and just put your ideas into the world and start talking about your business.”
On top of X, he also suggests diving into LinkedIn for B2B content. He assured me it’s a far more accepted thing to post thoughts frequently, even if they’re not super groundbreaking:
“As you go along throughout your day, think about, what are some of the insights that I heard throughout my day? Who are some of the people that I talked to that I thought something was interesting? And start posting those things. Start putting that out there. And I think you will be wildly surprised as to the inbound.”
You can probably skip Instagram and TikTok if you’re into eCommerce, and Reddit might not get you as many leads, but it’s a great place to flex your expertise and research.
Most importantly, he wants you to know that it’s never going to be perfect. Just keep plugging through, and you’ll get to your fans.
I’m not one to argue with that advice! For more on Vezzani and his work, head to www.LunarCrush.com or follow him on X @joevezz. He loves DMs, so feel free to hit him up there.
As always, my inbox is also open. Send stories, insights, and questions my way.
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