Having spent over a decade now working in media measurement, I’m more and more requested by purchasers for my view on utilizing the newest vainness metric du jour, Earned Media Worth (EMV), to measure influencer campaigns. For these unfamiliar with the metric, it’s supplied by various instruments as an try to supply a greenback worth to ‘earned’ social media content material (eg this Instagram publish mentioning us is ‘value’ $500).
The idea could sound acquainted – EMV is basically a born-again model of Promoting Worth Equivalents (AVE) from the outdated PR world, which tried to supply a price equal to purchasing that medium or attain by way of promoting. It’s just lately raised its ugly head once more as influencer entrepreneurs look to justify their efforts and show their impression.
Fortunately, AVEs have (lastly) been dismissed as meaningless and deceptive metrics by all revered measurement our bodies, however I’d like to clarify why I consider their new incarnation as EMVs additionally has no place in a forward-thinking influencer programme.
- Basically, the explanation you’re doing influencer advertising is as a result of you already know genuine model suggestions from trusted people carry considerably extra weight than an advert – so why undersell your self by evaluating with this outdated metric?
- EMV is a black-box metric with every vendor having its personal methodology for calculating. This not solely makes it arduous to match, but in addition to know – how am I supposed to enhance on this KPI and my model efficiency if I don’t know what it’s?
- The greenback worth is extremely deceptive because it has no connection to final ROI or gross sales. Ask your self, how has this publish valued at $500 introduced $500 of worth to my model?
- Clearly influencers do sponsored content material and so it’s attainable to place a greenback price towards an Instagram publish for instance. However simply as no-one has ever paid rate-card costs for getting media within the offline world, the identical additionally applies on-line. An influencer’s charges can differ massively primarily based on how a lot she desires to work with that model, what the marketing campaign is, and finally what’s in it for her.
- Simply as each marketing campaign has completely different targets, so ought to the KPIs and measurement. Generally it’s possible you’ll be in search of consciousness if it’s a brand new product launch, generally it’s possible you’ll be in search of engagement amongst key area of interest teams and so forth. How does a blackbox greenback quantity match into your targets and make it easier to measure this efficiency?
- EMV can also be a purely quantitative metric. It doesn’t take into consideration the sentiment of a publish, different competitor mentions in a chunk, or whether or not your key messages are there. Suppose an influencer posts a unfavourable evaluation of your product – would you continue to depend this as being value $500? Lastly, EMV additionally doesn’t take into consideration your goal audiences and whether or not or not these have been impacted.
EMV has turn into fashionable as a result of it supplies a easy reply to a posh query. The fact is that there isn’t one easy magic silver bullet KPI that may be utilized to all manufacturers, industries, and even particular person campaigns. This is the reason we constructed a measurement framework, primarily based on the Worldwide Affiliation for the Measurement and Analysis of Communication’s framework and tailored it to influencer advertising to assist manufacturers set targets prematurely after which measure their efficiency periodically, whether or not after a marketing campaign or extra commonly as month-to-month benchmarks.
EMV is often used as a rear-view mirror tactic after campaigns, a method of exhibiting “look, didn’t we do properly?”, or to indicate how a model is benchmarking towards a competitor. As ever, crucial factor we will take away from a measurement train is how can we be taught from this, and the way can we adapt our methods and techniques subsequent time spherical to make sure we carry out even higher?
And now in the event you’ll excuse me, as the worth of this weblog publish is outwardly $375, I’m going to go and deal with myself to a pleasant spa break. Oh, wait.
Bio: Sam has over a decade’s expertise working in digital media and media measurement, and is at the moment the specialist within the European magnificence sector at Traackr. He’s externally accredited by the Affiliation for the Measurement and Analysis Of Communication (AMEC).
Need a greater influencer advertising metric? Strive VIT. Study extra on this article evaluating VIT to EMV
