6 Proven Strategies to Solve Attribution Issues in Influencer Marketing

Attribution in influencer marketing campaigns can be tricky. Despite significant investment, it’s tough to determine exactly which marketing channels are getting you those sales and conversions. 

Additionally, attributing influencer sales often gets hindered by data silos, complexities of multiple touch points, and cross-platform inconsistencies in your marketing strategy.

In this article, we will help you solve these challenges by describing six actionable strategies for accurately tracking influencer-driven results and calculating the return on investment.

1. Identify common attribution challenges

To accurately measure the impact of your influencer marketing strategy, you need to address issues like multi-touchpoint complexity, inconsistent metrics, and cross-platform tracking gaps. Here's how to solve these common attribution problems. 

Handle multi-touchpoint complexity

Consumers frequently interact with multiple influencers or platforms before purchasing to make an informed decision. This makes it difficult to pinpoint which influencer played the most significant role.

How to do this:

• Implement UTM parameters: Use UTM links to track traffic sources and measure conversions more accurately. Tools like Social Snowball help format UTM parameters for your affiliate links for seamless integration, allowing you to track program data inside Google Analytics.

Read our help article on how to provide affiliates with both discount codes and UTM links for more details.

• Integrate cross-platform tracking: Use analytics tools that consolidate data from various platforms into a unified report, helping you identify how different touch points contribute to the purchase journey. For instance, with Social Snowball’s TikTok Shop integration, you can seamlessly manage all your TikTok Shop and DTC store affiliate marketing data from one unified media library.

Standardize metrics across platforms

The lack of common metrics across influencer campaigns leads to inconsistent measurement and makes it harder to compare results.

How to do this:

• Set clear KPIs: Focus on core metrics that align with your goals, such as engagement rate, reach, and conversion rate.
• Consolidate data sources: Use influencer marketing platforms, such as Social Snowball, to track all activities on one dashboard for easy comparison and analysis.

Bridge cross-platform tracking gaps

Tracking influencer performance across platforms, from social media to in-store visits, often presents significant challenges.

How to do this:

• Implement conversion tracking: Set up tracking pixels or use third-party tools to monitor customer actions after engaging with influencer content, whether online or offline.
• Use unique affiliate links/codes: Provide influencers with unique affiliate links to directly measure their impact on sales and track the effectiveness of their campaigns. 

For example, Mink Hair Grows, an all-natural beauty product company, shares unique custom codes with its affiliates that they can share with their audience. This personalizes the experience for the influencer while helping the brand track the ROI of each influencer easily.

2. Set clear campaign goals

Apart from the above challenges, one key difficulty in influencer marketing is tracking the direct impact of individual influencers on specific actions like conversions or purchases. Attribution issues arise when you cannot clearly link a sale or action back to the right influencer or campaign, especially when working across multiple platforms and touch points.

To overcome this, define specific goals for your influencer campaigns. Tie each goal to measurable metrics for clear outcomes. For example:

• Awareness: Track impressions and reach.
• Engagement: Measure likes, shares, and comments.
• Conversions: Focus on traffic, leads, and sales.

These metrics will help you evaluate the success of each campaign and understand which influencers are driving results.

You can also use Social Snowball to automatically track all these metrics which will help you spot which affiliates or campaigns are giving you the best return. Additionally, you can export all this data into a CSV file, which makes reporting and analysis even easier.

3. Implement robust attribution models

Once you’ve set clear campaign goals, the next step is to determine how to measure success effectively. Choosing the right attribution model is essential for accurately understanding how different influencers and touch points contribute to your objectives. 

Without a robust attribution framework, you risk overlooking valuable insights or misjudging campaign performance. Here’s a breakdown of popular attribution models and their use cases:

Last-click attribution

This model gives 100% credit to the last touchpoint before conversion. It’s simple and ideal for campaigns focusing on direct sales, but it overlooks the value of earlier interactions in the customer journey.

Multi-touch attribution

This model credits all touch points that contributed to a conversion. It’s suitable for campaigns with long sales cycles, where customers interact with multiple influencers or channels before making a purchase.

For example, if a customer discovers your product through a YouTube video, reads a review on Instagram, and finally purchases via a direct affiliate link, each touchpoint receives partial credit.

Time decay attribution

This model prioritizes recent interactions over earlier ones. It’s particularly useful for limited-time promotions or campaigns, where the final interaction is crucial for driving conversions.

For example, during a flash sale, the influencer who posts closest to the sale’s end might have the most influence on purchases.

Position-based attribution

This hybrid model gives the most credit to the first and last touch points while distributing the remaining credit among middle interactions. It works well for campaigns aiming to track both awareness and conversion drivers.

For example, if a customer learns about your brand from an influencer’s TikTok video and makes a purchase after clicking their Instagram affiliate link, both touch points get significant credit.

How to choose the right attribution model

The right model depends on your campaign objectives and the complexity of your customer journey:

• Use a multi-touch model if your sales cycle involves multiple influencers or channels and spans weeks or months.
• Opt for time decay attribution for short-term promotions or campaigns focused on urgency.
• For awareness campaigns, consider a position-based model to balance credit between the first interaction and final conversion.

4. Leverage technology for accurate attribution

When combined with advanced attribution models and first-party data, the right automation tools can allow you to allocate resources efficiently and maximize campaign ROI. Here's how:

• Real-time campaign adjustments: Advanced attribution platforms help identify underperforming influencers or campaigns, enabling quick pivots to boost performance. For example, if you notice an influencer's clicks aren't converting into sales, you can modify their content strategy or adjust the messaging.
• Better forecasting: By analyzing past performance data, you can refine future strategies, from influencer selection to budget allocation. This reduces guesswork and aligns campaigns with business goals.

For example, Social Snowball provides you with advanced tracking and reporting, enabling you to monitor influencer performance across campaigns, track conversions, and get real-time data on ROI. By automating key aspects of attribution, these tools reduce manual errors and provide deeper insights into which strategies work best.

5. Combine first-party and third-party data

Apart from using automation, combining first-party and third-party data provides a more comprehensive view of your influencer marketing efforts. While first-party data offers granular insights into conversions and behavior on your platforms, third-party data fills in gaps with a broader audience and platform-specific trends.

Here’s how you can integrate first-party and third-party data:

• Centralized tracking: Use tools like Social Snowball to aggregate metrics from affiliate links, promo codes, and influencer performance in a single dashboard. For example, Social Snowball’s Safelinks provide unique, single-use coupon codes, guaranteeing accurate tracking while preventing leakage to coupon sites.
• Cross-reference insights: Align first-party metrics such as conversions with third-party data, like influencer engagement rates. For example, if an influencer drives significant traffic (third-party data) but low conversions (first-party data), it might indicate issues with the landing page or incentive.
• Refine attribution models: Integrate third-party engagement metrics into first-party attribution models to capture the full customer journey. For example, a multi-touch attribution model can combine direct sales data with platform-specific interactions to evaluate influencer impact in long sales cycles.

6. Post-purchase surveys

Connecting seamlessly with the combination of first-party and third-party data, post-purchase surveys offer a direct method to gather valuable customer insights. These surveys enable you to understand attribution from the customer's perspective, complementing tracked metrics with qualitative feedback on their purchase journey.

Some best practices for using post-purchase surveys are:

• Strategic placement: Include surveys during checkout or in follow-up emails to maximize response rates. To streamline this, platforms like KnoCommerce allow seamless integration of surveys on Shopify's Thank You pages. For example, after a customer completes their purchase, a survey asks, "How did you hear about us?" with options tied to specific influencers or campaigns.
• Integration with affiliate tools: Tools like Social Snowball work natively with KnoCommerce, enabling you to embed the Social Snowball Thank You Page widget into post-purchase surveys. This primes customers to engage further by sharing unique tracking links or promo codes generated using Social Snowball's SafeLinks feature.

For example, Fanjoy, a creator merchandise brand, leveraged Social Snowball’s integration with Klaviyo to include post-purchase emails that introduced customers to its affiliate program. In just four months, Fanjoy generated $100K in incremental revenue.

Bonus tip ⛄: Pair surveys with tools like SafeLinks to secure reliable data. SafeLinks generates unique, single-use discount codes, eliminating the risk of leakage to coupon sites. This makes sure accurate attribution when customers provide feedback about their purchase journey.

Conclusion

Accurate attribution in influencer marketing is crucial for truly understanding the effectiveness of your campaigns and making data-backed decisions. Without it, you risk missing key insights, which can lead to ineffective strategies and lost opportunities.

With the right tools and strategies in place, however, you can not only track performance accurately but also drive significant improvements in your ROI. This is where Social Snowball comes in. More than just tracking, Social Snowball offers a comprehensive platform that seamlessly integrates with your existing systems, giving you a full view of your influencer marketing efforts.

By using Social Snowball, you can:

• Effortlessly track influencer-driven conversions, making sure that you can measure the true impact of each campaign.
• Simplify affiliate management with tools like SafeLinks, which protect your discount codes and prevent leaks to third-party sites.
• Gain deeper insights through integrations with tools like KnoCommerce, which allow you to track post-purchase behavior and optimize your strategies.
• Automate and streamline workflows, allowing you to focus more on growing your program and less on manual tracking.

Book a demo with Social Snowball to know more!

Frequently asked questions

What metrics are key for tracking conversions?

Tracking conversions involves metrics such as:

• Revenue: Total sales generated from influencer campaigns.
• Conversion rate: The percentage of clicks or impressions that resulted in a sale.
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The cost incurred to acquire one customer through influencer marketing.
• Attribution by platform: Performance segmented by social media platforms.

How does last-click attribution work?

Last-click attribution gives 100% credit to the final touchpoint before a conversion. For instance, if a customer clicks an Instagram link from an influencer's post and makes a purchase, the influencer is credited with the sale. While simple and effective for tracking direct conversions, this model may overlook earlier interactions that contributed to the decision.

What is the impact of cross-platform tracking gaps?

Cross-platform tracking gaps occur when customers engage across multiple platforms, and their interactions aren't seamlessly connected. This can lead to:

• Incomplete data: Missed touch points that reduce campaign visibility.
• Misattributed results: Credit skewed toward platforms with better tracking capabilities.
• ROI misjudgment: Underestimating the contribution of certain influencers or campaigns.

To mitigate this, use tools like Social Snowball that offer advanced cross-platform analytics. Features like UTM link tracking and platform integration make sure that you capture data from all customer touch points.

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