Strategizing ROI to Maximize Your Brand Relationships

ROI can feel like a scary marketing term and an even scarier thing to deliver on. “Return on investment” sounds like a 15-pound brick strapped around your ankle. The good news is, its bark is worse than its bite, and the better news is: with a few simple steps, you can set up, generate and deliver ROI that will not only elevate your partnerships but keep your partners coming back for more!

Understanding ROI

ROI, put simply, is a mutual incentive for both parties to participate in an arrangement or project. Think of it as a professional “friends with benefits” situation- your goal is to deliver on your promises and keep each other happy and stress-free. Various units can help you measure ROI, whether you’re on the brand side or the one performing the project. This depends on the goals each party has in place- and the more goals you’re meeting for the other, the friendlier the arrangement. Social media partnerships get a bad rap, with a leading stigma surrounding “getting stuff for free” in exchange for seemingly very little promotion on the web feeling largely unfair and a little too “easy” to the non-influencer public. But behind the scenes, some of the best influencers, brands, and project teams have strong deliverables, measurements, and agreements in place to help them dictate the success of a project, as well as the opportunity to scale projects like it in the future.

I like to think about it from the perspective of applying for a job (and yes, your job interview is just as much a partnership as the ones you see on Instagram!). When an internal team thinks about making a new hire, they are investing by paying your salary, providing for your benefits, and having you represent their company. Their expected return is likely to be able to give you projects and feel confident that you will succeed. The same goes for your digital partnerships. As a brand, whether you’re giving up time, resources, product, or funding- you’re investing in a project. And as a freelancer, blogger or influencer, your work is an investment in and of itself, of your time, skills and digital reputation.

For bloggers, freelancers, and influencers, the same rules apply, and ROI plays just as big of a role in digital partnerships. Influencers can get a bad rap for peddling “free stuff” online, and those who promote without a plan for ROI are indeed easy to spot. When you’re pitching a project, the quickest way to hear radio silence in response is to simply ask what your partner is willing to offer. Instead, come to the table willing to generate content, ideas, and results that help the company understand your value- just like an employee. Value can take many forms, the most common being sales, clicks, signups, and/or beautiful content. The brand will often set clear key performance indicators to ensure that they’re cashing out on the value that they want from a given project.

As a brand, you’re thinking about ROI from the perspective of not only your job but the benefit of the company as a whole. This goes for both partnerships with individuals like freelancers and bloggers, but also with B2B partnerships with fellow brands. ROI can be difficult to measure and depends largely on your marketing goals. For example, if your goal is sales, you may set up a unique link for your partner to promote so that you can track exactly how many sales this person generates with their content. In the context of B2B partnerships, you’re aiming to partner with fellow brands on events, activations, and content that generate value for both parties in exchange for their time, investment, and donated product. At its peak, the conference and events industry generated $330 billion in 2018 (pre-pandemic). These events are notoriously expensive and rely largely on the investment of sponsors. In return, these conferences can promise to generate leads, exposure, and ultimately more money for their sponsors, or partners, through targeted advertisements and placements. These events can assure with almost 100% confidence that their partners will make money. 

On a smaller event or individual partnership level, the KPI’s need to be more targeted. These can also include increased sales and leads to new influencer partnerships, as well as assets like high-res images from the event. It’s up to your partnerships and social media team to work together to decide what assets and performance indicators they’re willing to commit to as a part of this partnership and to deliver on those promises post-event.

How to Set Up and Generate ROI

I mentioned before that there are lots of deliverables that can be considered a return on investment. These largely depend on the marketing goals of your partner. Good ROI strategies take into consideration the work, time, and investment made by both parties. Below are just a few examples of deliverables and KPI’s that can help you figure out what you’re offering to your partners.

High-Res Images and Assets

Sending images post-event or following a social media post allows the brand the opportunity to repost your content and talk about your event on their page. Often, this involves the mutual benefit of tagging one another on social media so that your audience can discover and explore one another’s pages. Think of this aspect of a project as a freelance marketing shoot, where you have generated the photography and photo editing and delivered to your partner the final product for their use. This is a great route for pursuing partnerships that “fit your vibe” or where you emulate their ideal audience. You’ll find these mainly on platforms like Instagram and photo-focused blogs.

Sales and Clicks

Sales are one of the hardest channels to deliver on due to a largely saturated influencer base across apps like Instagram, especially in major cities like New York. Some bloggers can successfully generate sales because their following includes an audience that is often left without a source of honest feedback and reviews for products and experiences. This includes curve and plus-size fashion, family and parenting products, and green/clean/sustainable product education, among others.

To generate and track sales, you need to develop a system for not only producing content but tracking leads. Many sales-based ambassador programs include a unique shoppable link that allows the brand to track leads gained from your page. Developing sales-based projects relies on delivering content that solves a problem for your key audience. This works well in fashion, for instance, where there is no industry standard for fit, fabric, sustainability, etc.

Clicks are also relevant to a brand’s SEO goals, and if you’re creating written content it’s important to ask your partner which keywords and phrases they’re targeting so you can incorporate them into your piece, as well as internally link back to their site and pages. Learn more about SEO on our blog, and download our Beginner’s Guide to SEO to get started developing your SEO strategy!

Leads and Emails

Collecting leads helps a brand maintain a solid list of people who want to learn more about their story, what their products can do, and hopefully turn those leads into customers. Leads can take the form of newsletter signups, followers on Instagram, likes on Facebook and many other points of contact. Generally, email is valuable since a brand can create campaigns tailored to a customer’s unique shopping experience. 

Lead generation works well for giveaways and product launches. These projects encourage individuals to sign up for the chance to win products and services (a return on their own investment!) and creates a database of individuals for the brand to tap into in the future. Generating leads from a brand perspective can involve Google Forms, newsletter signups in exchange for a discount on your first purchase, and similar collection strategies.

Audience and Exposure

Perhaps the least enticing for a brand (except for the top percentage of influencers and celebrities), partnership based on exposure typically works well for pages that have a storied history of making sales, impressions, or news. If any one of the Kardashian’s popped into your head when you read that, you’re on the right track. This form of partnership simply means that you are offering the brand the opportunity to speak directly to your audience in the hopes of any kind of return. From a B2B perspective, this can work in the context of putting products in front of the “right people” at an event or through a PR campaign. 

When pitching an exposure partnership, you still need to deliver on what could come from the project and give examples. This means you should be ready to report on your stats like audience engagement, likes per post, previous clickthrough rates, etc. This is the most tenuous type of partnership and has the least strings attached. It relies predominantly on the celebrity of the individual(s) and a large amount of trust! It’s also a space that gets a lot of influencers and PR agencies in trouble when they can’t deliver clear KPI’s.

Reporting Back

Once you’ve completed a project, it’s important to follow up. Good partnerships are rooted in long-term and friendly relationships based on positive performance. You should have set expectations at the outset of your projects so both parties are clear on the return. To ensure you’re checking all your boxes throughout the project, it’s helpful to set up your KPI’s ahead of time. Set up a shot list to make sure you’re capturing the right kind of content. If you’re drafting written content, be sure to mention any relevant info the brand has provided ahead of time. 

Once you have completed your end of the bargain, you should report back to your partner, much like a researcher presents their findings. Again, think of yourself as an employee and your partner as your boss or business partner- you want to keep them in the loop! When you follow up, always highlight the outcome. At your job, delivering on KPI’s can help you develop a reputation as a detail-focused employee, and help your superiors see you as someone who wants to deliver, elevate, and succeed both for yourself and the company. Similarly, even if you don’t meet the initial expectations, explaining yourself and opening up a discussion is a great way to generate a long-term relationship based on trust, and to collaborate on how you can adjust expectations and continue to work together. 

Return on investment can be a lengthy self-discovery process, divining the value that you offer your potential partners by being your most authentic and effective self. Whether you’re developing a marketing plan for your job or strategizing digital partnerships for your social media pages, knowing the value you’re offering and collaborating with your partner on their own goals will set you apart as a desirable brand partner.

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