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 self-importance metric du jour, Earned Media Worth (EMV), to measure influencer campaigns. For these unfamiliar with the metric, it’s offered by quite a lot of instruments as an try to supply a greenback worth to ‘earned’ social media content material (eg this Instagram submit mentioning us is ‘price’ $500).
The idea might sound acquainted – EMV is actually a born-again model of Promoting Worth Equivalents (AVE) from the previous PR world, which tried to supply a price equal to purchasing that medium or attain via promoting. It’s not too long ago 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 imagine their new incarnation as EMVs additionally has no place in a forward-thinking influencer programme.
- Essentially, the explanation you’re doing influencer advertising is as a result of you realize genuine model suggestions from trusted people carry considerably extra weight than an advert – so why undersell your self by evaluating with this previous metric?
- EMV is a black-box metric with every vendor having its personal methodology for calculating. This not solely makes it onerous to check, but in addition to grasp – 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 post valued at $500 brought $500 of value to my brand?
- Clearly influencers do sponsored content material and so it’s attainable to place a greenback value towards an Instagram submit for instance. However simply as no-one has ever paid rate-card costs for purchasing media within the offline world, the identical additionally applies on-line. An influencer’s charges can fluctuate 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 totally different targets, so ought to the KPIs and measurement. Generally you could be in search of consciousness if it’s a brand new product launch, typically you could 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 show you how to measure this efficiency?
- EMV can be a purely quantitative metric. It doesn’t have in mind the sentiment of a submit, different competitor mentions in a chunk, or whether or not your key messages are there. Suppose an influencer posts a unfavorable evaluation of your product – would you continue to rely this as being price $500? Lastly, EMV additionally doesn’t have in mind your goal audiences and whether or not or not these have been impacted.
EMV has change into fashionable as a result of it offers a easy reply to a fancy 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. That is why 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 recurrently as month-to-month benchmarks.
EMV is normally used as a rear-view mirror tactic after campaigns, a means of displaying “look, didn’t we do properly?”, or to point out how a model is benchmarking towards a competitor. As ever, a very powerful factor we will take away from a measurement train is how can we study from this, and the way can we adapt our methods and ways subsequent time spherical to make sure we carry out even higher?
And now in case you’ll excuse me, as the worth of this weblog submit is seemingly $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. Learn more in this article comparing VIT to EMV
