How can you use performance evaluations to advance your career in Influencer Marketing?

Leverage performance evaluations in Influencer Marketing to drive career advancement. Use feedback to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Showcase achievements and the impact of your campaigns. Proactively seek developmental opportunities, demonstrating a commitment to growth. Align your goals with the company's objectives and illustrate how your contributions contribute to overall success. Regularly communicate progress, fostering a results-oriented reputation that positions you for career progression.

Setting clear goals with your manager is essential to advancing your career in influencer marketing. Have an open and honest discussion regarding the level that you’re currently at, and what would need to be achieved in order for you to progress to the next level. Once specific, measurable criteria are set, create a plan on how you will meet those criteria and over what timeframe. As time goes on, ensure you document the evidence and have regular check-ins with your manager on how it’s all going. Don’t be afraid to reach out if you’re facing a blocker or you’ve gotten stuck somewhere. You’re not expected to know everything!

In influencer marketing, it's not all about your individual work, teamwork is also a key factor. It's important to gather feedback from your team and understand how well you work together. In this field, it's not just about the 'vanity metrics' – things like how many views, impressions, and reach your campaign gets. These metrics are great for brand awareness objectives, but there's more to it. Ask yourself: Did the campaign result in sales? This is crucial for aligning your campaign goals with broader business objectives. Another important measure of success? Whether your client comes back because they were happy with the work you and your team delivered. That's a sign of a job well done.

Data is everything. Both your time and the budget you’re provided is part of a measurable ROI. Ask your manager if there is a team database of key metrics and, if there isn’t, it’s worth creating your own in a spreadsheet. This will allow you to benchmark how you’re performing on key metrics, such as CPM, CPC, and ROI. Knowing how to run a basic pivot table on that data is invaluable. And the longer you’re in a role, the more valuable that knowledge becomes. That’s because you can show quarter by quarter, or year by year, how you’ve spent budgets and which influencers/platforms/content mediums have been most effective. This allows you to create data-driven arguments on where future budgets should be placed and it could set you apart.

The best achievements are often a mix of the tangible and the intangible. Tangible achievements could be dramatic cost cuttings or significant ROI off the back of innovative approaches you’ve driven. Intangible achievements could be other company firsts, such as working with a top-tier talent or entity that had previously ignored all collaboration requests. Keep note of these achievements and highlight them as part of your performance review. Do not underplay team input if that has been a factor. Always be honest and upfront on who has been involved and the roles they’ve played. Respect is easily lost for anyone “hogging the limelight” and you’ll lose out over the long-term.

It's important to acknowledge and evaluate mistakes, asking why it went wrong in the first place. Stand out when telling your manager how you've learned from your mistakes. Explain situations since where you've applied your learnings from previous mistakes and the results of your new methodology - this could be beneficial to the whole team.

I’m always far more impressed by those who can honestly and openly identify their weaknesses in their role, because it shows you also know where and how to grow. These weaknesses could be related to your own performance, but they could also be related to the industry you’re in. For example, if you repeatedly work with the same creators, you may notice their pricing begins to creep up. If you openly acknowledge what you’re seeing, and plans to overcome it, your managers will take notice. Identify challenges → provide solutions. If your company isn’t doing this already, you can also consider gathering feedback from your peers both within your team and outside of it. You'll be surprised at what people have noticed about the way you work.