Influencer marketing for maximum brand awareness – insight into the most important KPIs

Brand awareness shows you how well-known and present your brand is among your target group. Does she recognize your brand in different environments? How is your image? Unlike pure performance campaigns, brand awareness campaigns are about getting people to remember your brand, recognize it and, in the best case, positively associate it with certain values ​​or emotions.

Influencers do something here that traditional advertising often fails to do: they convey your brand messages in an authentic and, above all, personal context. Your community trusts their opinion: Especially in younger target groups, over 50 percent of people trust recommendations from influencers, but classic advertising is increasingly rarely having this effect. Through this trust, influencers help you make your brand visible across multiple touchpoints.

A common mistake in influencer marketing: campaigns start with awareness goals, but are measured with performance KPIs. Of course, conversions and sales are important metrics - but they tell you little about whether your brand has become better known.

As a rule, brand awareness has a slower and broader effect than performance marketing. Someone who hears about your brand for the first time today might not buy for another three months. That's why you need metrics that make this early phase of the customer journey visible: How many people saw the content? How did they react and are they talking about your brand?

Nevertheless, you don't have to look at brand awareness and performance separately: At Ad Specialist we talk about brand awareness because both work together. If you are visible today, you can achieve measurable performance signals tomorrow.

Not every key figure is equally important for every campaign. There are differences whether you plan an Instagram campaign or a placement on YouTube or Twitch. Basically, every influencer agency will tell you that the focus of brand awareness should be on the most efficient possible target group penetration.

For example, in our awareness campaigns with brands like emma or HelloFresh, we always make sure that the CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) is low and the community ratio (what percentage of followers belong to your core target group) is high.

We have summarized the most important KPIs for brand awareness in influencer marketing for you.

Reach & Impressions

Reach and impressions are among the fundamental KPIs for brand awareness. They show how many people have come into contact with your brand. The following are important:

• Reach: People who have seen the content
• Impressions: Total sightings including multiple contacts
• CPM (Cost per Mille): Price per 1,000 visual contacts
• Community Ratio: Share of followers who belong to the relevant core target group

When evaluating, pay attention to the quality of the reach: a high reach to the wrong target group is of little use to you. Therefore, always look at data on the target group such as age and location, as well as the community ratio.

Brand fit & target group quality

What over 10,000 campaigns have shown us: Not all reach is worth the same. It is much more important that the influencer fits your brand. As Influencer Marketing Agency, we check various points about brand fit before every campaign:

• Gender distribution of the community
• Age structure of followers
• Interests of the target group
• Community location
• Content style and brand values of the influencer

A poor brand fit leads to wastage, meaning that even a high reach has little effect. If the CPM is high at the same time, your campaign will be twice as expensive: you need a lot of budget with little target group relevance.

Share of voice

Share of Voice shows you how present your brand is in online conversations compared to the competition. You find out what percentage of relevant conversations in your industry revolve around you. You can measure various data using social listening tools:

• Hashtag mentions
• Brand mentions
• Mention of important terms

If the share of voice increases after a campaign, this campaign has contributed to your brand awareness. This key figure is particularly meaningful for your long-term brand presence, for example if you enter into long-term influencer collaborations.

Brand Search Uplift

One of the strongest metrics for brand awareness is brand search uplift. You measure whether more people are actively searching for your brand after a campaign, for example with these tools and numbers:

• Google Trends comparison
• Google Search Console data
• Development of branded keywords
• Direct brand searches

Compare data before and after your campaign: Increasing searches show that your brand has stayed on people's minds. At the same time, the connection to performance is created here. If someone is actively looking for your brand, they are already interested in buying.

Engagement rate

For the engagement rate, you compare interactions to reach or followers. The number tells you how actively users reacted to the content. Important interactions include:

• Comments
• Saves
• Shares
• Discussions under posts
• Recurring questions about the product

In addition to the sheer number of interactions, it is also worth taking a look at the community sentiment. How do people talk about your brand? The more positive the comments or the more active the brand discussions, the better. They are stronger awareness signals than pure likes.

Follower growth

If an influencer marketing campaign generates more followers, it shows that users want more contact with your brand. In our influencer marketing agency we look at these points, for example:

• Follower growth during the campaign period
• Comparison with quiet phases
• Growth by individual creator posts
• Peaks according to specific formats
• Sustainability of growth

If your number of followers grows during posts and campaigns, the content has an impact.

Link clicks & traffic via UTMs

Clicks on links in Instagram stories or YouTube placements show you the transition from awareness to measurable purchasing interest: How much traffic actually ends up on your website? Although they are not a pure awareness KPI, they provide important signals towards brand formation. For example, you can measure:

• Clicks on links in bio
• Story swipe ups
• UTM based traffic
• Click rate per creator
• Click rate per format

Website Sessions & Session Quality

What happens after the click? Now it's time to evaluate the visits to the website and their quality. Our influencer marketing campaigns with brands like MagicHolz or Enpal have shown that high-quality traffic is important in awareness campaigns. You can look at the following numbers:

• Sessions during the campaign period
• Length of stay
• Bounce rate
• Pages per session
• Returning visitors

The longer someone stays on your website and the more pages they look at, the more interested they are. Here too, be sure to compare the campaign period with quiet times and define the traffic source using UTM parameters.

View Through Rate and Video Completion Rate

Video KPIs are very important for measuring brand awareness, especially on platforms like TikTok, Instagram with Reels or YouTube. Be sure to check out these two metrics:

• View Through Rate (VTR): the proportion of people who have watched a video up to a defined point (e.g. 30 seconds). A high VTR shows that the content held attention and that the brand message was received.
• Video Completion Rate (VCR): the percentage of users who have fully watched a video. If someone watches a video until the end, they have absorbed the entire brand message. This is the most valuable awareness moment in video format.

Individual KPIs only ever tell part of the story. A high reach without engagement indicates a passive target group. Many mentions with negative sentiment are not a success. That's why we at Ad Specialist always recommend defining a KPI set of 3 to 4 coordinated key figures. You derive this from your campaign goal.

For example, if you are planning an awareness campaign on Instagram, you can look at these KPIs:

• Reach as a base KPI (how many people have you reached?)
• Engagement rate as a quality signal (did the content resonate?)
• Brand Mentions & Community Sentiment (did the campaign contribute to positive brand communication?)
• Follower growth as a long-term indicator (do people want to see more of your brand?)

Important: Set the KPI goals before starting the campaign. This is the only way you can evaluate whether you have achieved your goals and what you can improve in the next campaign.

Brand awareness is measurable. Provided you use the right metrics. Instead of just looking at clicks and conversions, a KPI set of quantitative and qualitative key figures is worthwhile. KPIs such as reach, engagement, target group quality and brand search uplift combined give you a realistic picture. This picture becomes even more complete if you think of awareness and performance together as a branding approach in influencer marketing: visibility leads to interest, interest leads to search and search in turn leads to purchasing decisions.

Would you like to set up your next brand awareness campaign strategically and work with the right metrics right from the start? Then feel free to contact us – we at Ad Specialist will accompany you as an influencer agency from conception to evaluation.