Influencer Marketing KPIs: What to Measure and How to Make Sense of the Results

Two things make the difference between a campaign you can repeat and improve, and one that ends with a vague feeling of “it went well.” First, setting clear and measurable targets at the start, so you know exactly what you are working towards. Second, going back to those targets afterwards and looking beyond the numbers to understand what actually drove the results. Together, these two steps turn each campaign into useful input for the next one.

This blog gives you a complete overview of the KPIs to track per funnel stage, plus a practical approach to analyzing what drove your results.

The full KPI overview

Influencer marketing KPIs fall into three categories that map to the marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, and conversion. Most campaigns measure across more than one stage, since the same content often serves multiple goals.

Goal	Example KPIs
Awareness	Impressions (organic and paid), reach, average watchtime, video completion rate, frequency, share of voice
Consideration	Clicks and CTR, engagements and engagement rate, saves, shares, profile visits, follower growth, comments sentiment
Conversion	Key events (purchases, signups, installs), conversion rate, ROAS (return on ad spend), cost per acquisition (CPA), revenue attributed to influencer codes, add-to-cart rate

A note on engagement: not all engagements carry the same weight. Saves and shares are stronger signals of intent than likes or comments, since they reflect a more deliberate action from the viewer.

Make your KPIs SMART

Before you lock in your KPIs, run them through the SMART test: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. “Get more sales” is not a KPI. “Generate 500 directly attributable purchases through influencer-specific discount codes within 30 days of posting” is. The first one cannot be measured, the second one can be tracked from day one and gives you a clear yes or no at the end of the campaign.

How to analyze your campaign afterwards

Once the campaign is finished, the temptation is to compile every metric into a long report and call it done. The more useful approach is to pick one or two key KPIs that align with your main objective, then look for patterns that explain the results.

Five dimensions are worth checking against your chosen KPIs.

Compare creators against each other

Even within the same campaign, with the same brief, results between creators can vary significantly. Look for what made the difference: influencer persona, content style (POV, voice-over, captions), or posting moment. A very good idea is to ask the creators themselves for their feedback on this. They often have a sharper read on why certain content landed with their community than what you can see in the numbers alone.

Compare platforms

If your content ran on multiple channels, the same creative direction often performs very differently on each. We have seen campaigns where TikTok content significantly outperformed Instagram, even when the creators on Instagram had stronger historical numbers, and vice versa. Knowing this for next time changes how you allocate budget across channels.

Look at content elements

A video is built from three parts that each influence different KPIs. The hook drives watch time, since it determines whether viewers stay past the first three seconds. The branded middle drives engagement, since this is where the message either lands or feels forced. The call to action drives CTR and conversion. By linking each part to its KPI, you can pinpoint exactly where a video succeeded or fell short, instead of judging the whole piece as good or bad.

Compare formats

Reel versus carousel, short video versus long video, organic versus paid. Format effectiveness is one of the easiest things to test across a single campaign, and one of the most useful insights to carry into the next one.

Compare paid amplification settings

If you used social media ads to amplify the content, you can compare different targeting setups, different campaign objectives, different landing pages, or other ad traits that might have affected the KPIs. A piece of content can perform very differently depending on which audience it was shown to, what objective the algorithm optimized for, or where the click sent people next. Isolating these variables helps you understand whether a result came from the content itself or from how it was distributed.

Reporting is input for the next campaign

The point of analyzing a campaign is not to score it. The point is to learn what to do differently next time. We recommend keeping a living document with learnings from every campaign: a list of best-performing creators, a list of do’s and don’ts, and a short list of practical tips for whoever runs the next campaign. Each new campaign builds on the previous one, instead of starting from scratch.

Frequently asked questions

Should I focus on awareness, consideration or conversion KPIs in one campaign?

It depends on your campaign objective, but in practice you almost always measure across multiple funnel stages at once. A conversion-focused campaign still needs awareness KPIs to understand how many people saw the content, and consideration KPIs to understand how many were interested enough to click through. Looking at all three stages gives you the full picture of what worked and what did not.

Why are saves and shares more important than likes?

A like is a passive reaction. A save means the viewer wants to come back to the content later. A share means they thought it was worth sending to someone else. Both are deliberate actions that signal stronger interest or intent than a like or a comment. When you see a piece of content with a high save or share rate, that is usually a strong indicator it will convert well in paid amplification too.

How do I benchmark whether my campaign performed well in general?

Three sources of benchmarks are useful. First, the targets you set yourself before the campaign started, based on your goals. Second, the performance of your previous campaigns, compared in ratios like CTR, CPM, or engagement rate rather than absolute numbers. Third, industry benchmarks. For the Belgian market, our own SM Index reports monthly KPIs from thousands of Belgian creators, including average organic views, average engagement rate, and other useful benchmarks you can compare your own performance against. The most reliable benchmark is usually your own historical data, since it accounts for your specific brand, audience, and product category, but external benchmarks help when you want to know how you stack up against the wider market.

Want to plan your budget around these KPIs? Read our guide on the four influencer marketing budget categories next.