As a digital marketer, you’ve embraced the power and magnitude of influencer marketing for your brand. The reach and engagement associated with the brand have subsequently seen a sharp upturn. Is the knowledge that influencer marketing is working for your brand enough? Not at all!
Things are seldom binary in marketing, and precision is imperative. That’s where Total Media Value comes in. Of all the metrics associated with influencer marketing, Total Media Value might be the most crucial. It is a precise and tangible value that truly determines the success of your influencer marketing campaign.
Marketing today is less about the “how” and more about the “how much.” Knowing the Total Media Value of a campaign can help marketers optimize their efforts to get the best possible ROI.
Now that you’ve achieved success through influencer marketing, let’s understand what Total Media Value means and how it is calculated to get an accurate estimate of how much of a success it is.
What Is Total Media Value?
Total Media Value is the measure of success associated with an influencer campaign. It does so by comparing its influencer marketing ROI with the ROI of a traditional, non-influencer campaign.
The logic is simple: If a brand takes the effort to execute influencer marketing, there must be a significant upside. Otherwise, the brand might continue with their regular campaigns since those already offer a better ROI.
Total Media Value also gives the brand an idea of how much an equivalent marketing campaign would cost for the same amount spent on the influencer campaign. This is particularly crucial for smaller brands where every dollar spent is crucial.
Why Is Total Media Value Important?
- As a brand, you would avoid spending dollars on influencers with fake followers or bots.
- Total Media Value is the easiest way to separate fake influencers from authentic ones with an engaged fan base. The numbers make it impossible to hide.
- Total Media Value indicates how much brands should be paying influencers for a campaign.
- Engagement and Reach are vital parts of Total Media Value and help calculate the number of leads generated.
4 Approaches To Measure Total Media Value
1. Social Reach Based
Social Reach depends upon the number of viewers present online. It is not a measure of the total volume of social shares but is based on the social influencer of the person sharing.
If a person with 1,000 Twitter followers shares it, then the total value is $1,000, assuming we’ve assigned a value of $1. If five people retweet it, then the sum of their followers multiplied by the given value is the Total Media Value.
2. Impression Based
To calculate an Impression, count the number of instances a post from your brand appears before a user. Like in the content world, an impression is made every time a user sees the brand’s name through an image or video.
The calculation here is similar to social reach-based TMV, except every instance of the mentioned brand is calculated separately. If a brand is mentioned multiple times in a single post, multiple impressions are associated with that post itself. It also includes mentions in blog posts, ads, or any other mentions, which are then multiplied by the total views.
3. Conversion Based
While this might be the easiest method to calculate Total Media Value, it is also the hardest to optimize as it includes assumptions regarding the cost of converting a user. Conversions can also mean anything, from a newsletter sign-up to an actual purchase.
The total media spend on the campaign is divided by the number of converted users. Without link tracking, URL parameters, and tracking pixels, it is close to impossible to calculate the number of converted users in real-time.
4. Engagement Based
Tracking engagement across every post in an influencer campaign is critical for a brand to determine the ROI of the campaign. Engagement can mean something as small as mouse movement, scroll time, or mobile visits and includes like, share, and comment.
Engagement is, again, subjective. The Total Media Value here is dependent on what comprises an arrangement. The simplest way is to assign a value to all engagements and then multiply that constantly into the number of engagements. For brands to keep track of outliers and extreme cases, it is recommended to calculate the number of engagements per user.
Standard Established Total Media Values
These are base established values across which the Total Media Value is calculated:
Different platforms have different metrics to help calculate the Total Media Value. For example: ‘Shares’ aren’t considered for Instagram and YouTube but are a key part of Facebook Total Media Value. The more shares, the higher your Facebook ROI. Similarly, ‘Views’ don’t matter on Facebook and Twitter, but it is the most important metric while calculating YouTube Total Media Value.
These values are established based on how much it would cost to generate these metrics through traditional paid advertising.
How Is Total Media Value Calculated?
Calculating the Total Media Value involves digging deep and capturing large quantities of data in real-time. While this might seem daunting, it doesn’t have to be! Most platforms allow digital marketers to plug built-in trackers at the start of the campaign to ensure collation of data.
Collect Data
As mentioned above, this is where it all begins. Collecting all the data about relevant metrics is a necessary step to estimate the returns on social content. All the collected data needs to be put in a spreadsheet so that your formula can be plugged in across vast quantities of data. Many online tools can take care of the crawling, collection, and calculation of the Total Media Value.
Convert Data To Money
To put a dollar value on your metrics, you need to calculate how much it would have cost to achieve that engagement through traditional campaigns. For instance, the amount you pay to promote a Facebook post. This is why the established values come in handy across large amounts of data. Multiply the established values with the total size of the campaign to have a holistic value.
Some points to keep in mind:
- The cost of producing the content in-house vs. using an agency.
- The cost per engagement, if the right audience is viewing the campaign in its entirety.
Calculate The Total Total Media Value
Now that you’ve assigned the values, you are ready to calculate the Total Media Value of the campaign. Take the established dollar value and multiply each metric by the number of engagements for that metric (views * number of views, shares * number of shares etc.).
Add the total values for all metrics and then add the production cost to create and execute the campaign. This is your Total Media Value.
Measure The ROI Of The Campaign
Isn’t TMV what we ultimately need? No, the purpose of this entire exercise is to calculate the ROI associated with the campaign:
(TMV – Investment)/ Investment = ROI
Replacing the actual investment here with the investment that would’ve been needed in a traditional campaign gives us an idea of the ROI from social media content.
For every PR, advertising, and marketing campaign pulled off for a brand on social media; there is a value that accurately determines the effectiveness of that campaign. That magical number is your Total Media Value, or TMV, of a campaign. With constant control over the TMV, you can assess and optimize the ROI of every campaign, ensuring your brand gets the best bang for your buck.
The team at AtisfyReach can help you as our team of professionals are well-equipped for the entire influencer marketing process, from start to finish. Trust us; with our team, your business is in safe hands because your success is our goal!
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