What separates a good creative from a bad one? In our fast-paced digital landscape, staying current and aligned with the latest content trends has always been a challenge. A content formula that delivers performance today might fail to get clicks in a month or two. Hooks turn outdated, content formats become tired, and keywords get overused in a matter of weeks. Additionally, what works for one audience can easily fall flat with another. Every demographic has a certain way of engaging with content, and engagement trends across platforms and niches are constantly evolving.
Given how unpredictable the environment is, creative teams can’t rely on a single tried-and-true content formula they can repeat across all output. However, amidst this state of constant flux, some influencer marketing agencies have been promising (and consistently delivering) impressive results. So what is the secret sauce behind this sustained performance? How can top agencies like the Goat Agency repeatedly deliver high-performing, scalable creatives despite the digital landscape’s volatility? This piece will explore the data-driven performance marketing strategy leading agencies use to ensure returns while reducing campaign costs. With special focus on IT marketing, we will study some cases where the Goat Agency helped tech companies generate stellar returns with data-led discovery and testing.
The Goat Agency
The Goat Agency, an award-winning influencer marketing agency under advertising giant WPP, heavily relies on its data-driven framework as its unique selling point. Speaking on this data-driven operational model, co-founder Arron Shepherd told The Drum, “We don’t just guess, we know who can sell a $10 make-up brush versus a $50 make-up brush. You can only get that data by using the influencers in a trial-and-error way and seeing who converts. The advantage we have over everyone else, not just in our industry but in the ad industry, is that, when it comes to the most powerful advertising technique – which is using influencers in the right way – we understand who will actually work, and we can make an unbiased selection, because we don’t manage any talent. That means we can guarantee results for a fixed price.”
With a wide range of outstanding campaigns under its belt, from award-winning culture and FMCG advertisements to Cost per Install (CPI)-dropping app marketing campaigns, this confidence and delivery have pulled in numerous star clients, including Dell, Unilever, IBM, Blizzard Entertainment, etc.
Since its inception in 2015, the Goat Agency has distinguished itself as an influencer agency that goes beyond influencer representation but doubles as an essential growth partner, stressing influencer marketing’s power as an effective performance channel. In addition to connecting brands with influencers, the Goat team leverages data to strategize and ensure performance, delivering measurable ROI and long-term brand activation for every client they work with.
IBEX
Behind the Goat Agency's assured performance is Ibex, its proprietary influencer intelligence software. This AI-powered data analytics tool utilizes a decade's worth of influencer campaign data points to provide foolproof strategies and forecasts. Designed to eliminate the many inefficiencies of influencer marketing, from impact measurement and attribution to value assessment, this internal tool provides a solution for a more meaningful performance strategy.
Since the influencer marketing landscape has become increasingly saturated and today’s creator pool offers an extensive selection, working with an influencer can be an expensive gamble for brands. Manually selecting influencers based on vanity metrics and obvious filters no longer ensures equitable returns. Additionally, influencer marketing has far surpassed its traditional role as a Top-of-the-Funnel promotional channel. Over the years, brands have progressively invested significant money in their influencer marketing efforts, treating it as a full-funnel marketing channel with high anticipated ROI. With this shift, brands need accurate attribution and performance influencers who can justify their decisions. The Goat Agency's Ibex fills this need with data-backed predictions, refined influencer selection, and verifiable strategies for every campaign.
The Goat Agency’s Performance Marketing Strategy
In addition to enabling the Goat team to accurately identify the best creators for every campaign goal, this intelligence software is instrumental in campaign planning and refinement. Randomly spraying creative assets and praying for returns can be a costly risk. Without verifiable performance insights to inform your paid media strategy, you can only start measuring returns after the fact. With real-time performance feedback, agents can test strategies and quickly measure what works and what doesn’t. Thanks to this, Goat’s creative and strategy teams consistently conduct A/B testing at scale, comparing different creative approaches to identify high-yielding strategies. These creatives with proven performance are then scaled or repurposed to further drive campaign goals. With promises you can back, earning your clients' confidence becomes far less challenging.
With an advanced tracking and attribution system powered by its internal software, the agency guarantees accurate media value estimates, ensuring brands get what they pay for. This data-led performance marketing approach is the critical engine that enables the Goat Agency to consistently deliver the results it promises.
Performance-Led Paid Social Strategy
Since today’s social media platforms enable brands to maximize returns with their influencer marketing assets through ad formats such as allowlisting and darkposting, accurate performance calculations have become more vital than ever. For brands and agencies to choose which campaign asset to amplify and repurpose, they need accurate performance insights to inform those decisions and justify their ad spend.
In addition to its internal database and analytics tool, the Goat Agency also partners with Integral Ad Science and ThisThat to optimize its paid media strategy. With comprehensive data, advanced tracking, and brand lift calculations, the team can accurately test creatives to identify the best-performing one for paid amplification. These performance-led decisions ensure maximum Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), giving clients the confidence they need to ramp up their investments.
The Cost of User Acquisition in IT Marketing
Given today's tech habits, software and app marketing may seem like a simple task, since most people spend a large portion of their time on their devices. But once you consider the reality that you’re competing with over 2 million apps to gain visibility while dealing with skyrocketing user acquisition costs, the landscape feels a lot more competitive than one would assume. Since social media has proved its worth as a powerful marketing channel, tech and software brands are also vying for a spot on our social media feeds. From mobile game creators to B2B software companies, startup app developers to legacy brands, social media serves as the ideal hunting ground for tech companies to secure new users.
However, many of these IT businesses are still struggling to get their message heard in an increasingly crowded digital space. Since every niche is overrun with competitors, app marketers have to take a million-to-one shot to stand out. This results in wasted investments on campaigns that fail to deliver justifiable returns, consequently raising Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Cost Per Install (CPI).
A more data-driven performance marketing approach, such as the Goat Agency’s framework, provides an effective solution to this pervasive issue. This strategy solves dominant IT marketing issues in two ways:
- It enables strategic target expansion. While accurate targeting is crucial to generate real returns, concentrating your marketing efforts within your specific niche isn’t always the most rewarding approach. If you exhaust your entire marketing budget on creators in your niche, you risk a costly blow to your ROI by pouring into an echo chamber. In such cases, influencer intelligence software helps by identifying a gateway to generate unique reach without risking misalignment.
- It facilitates creative testing at scale to cut down costs: Since businesses are investing a significant proportion of their marketing budget into social media promotions, they need foolproof creatives with high return potential. However, the unpredictable nature of social media algorithms and user engagement behavior makes performance predictions incredibly tricky. Data-led approaches address this issue with creative testing solutions. Rather than scaling any piece of content based on how good it ‘feels’, this strategy leverages analytics tools to get cold, hard data on which content performs and which doesn’t. This substitutes the unreliable, assumption-based ‘guesswork’ with verifiable, fact-based decision-making. With proven performance data, making budget-conscious paid social media decisions becomes significantly easier.
Case Study: How the Goat Agency Used Data to Decrease Car Gurus’ CPM
Digital automobile marketplace Car Gurus partnered with the Goat Agency to drive brand awareness and generate leads using social media. This multi-funnel campaign leveraged Ibex’s creator discovery feature to identify 17 creators across multiple niches and platforms, each showing high potential and brand alignment. These influencers delivered multiple assets based on three distinct creative briefs. The Goat team then assessed these outputs and amplified the best-performing ones with influencer-led paid ads.
On top of exceeding their estimated impressions by 142%, as a direct result of the data-led paid media optimization, Car Gurus also saw a substantial reduction in their Cost-per-Mille (CPM) compared to previous campaigns.
Case Study: How the Goat Agency’s Ibex Helped World of Warcraft Transcend its Niche
When World of Warcraft contacted the Goat Agency to help drive awareness and conversion for its ‘World Within’ expansion pack, the agency avoided the obvious route of solely targeting the gaming community.
Since most gaming content creators’ audiences are already actively engaged and in the know, the team believed that limiting their campaign efforts to this niche would be redundant. Instead, they used Ibex to discover crossover communities where they can drive unique conversions among both active and lapsed gamers. The intelligence software led them to 10 creators from a wide variety of niches, including arts & crafts, cosplay, music, etc., who delivered a range of highly engaging assets for a three-phased full-funnel marketing activation. This data-led strategy generated 631,000 engagements with 90% positive sentiments.
Reduce Your Cost Per Install (CPI) With A/B Testing
Social media has turned into a powerful full-funnel performance marketing channel for businesses. However, as its impact increases, so has the cost.
With the rising competition, even the biggest-budget production can easily fall flat. A piece of content can ‘feel’ top-notch in every way – the biggest names, outstanding visual production, exceptional narrative direction, but none of these factors necessarily guarantee results. Today’s highly competitive algorithmic landscape operates such that every tiny element can make or break a campaign asset. So, investing a lot of money in a piece of content without any assurance it will work is a dangerous move. Given this risk, data-driven creative testing has become a handy tactic to ensure performance and boost ROI.
Leading agencies like the Goat Agency consistently deliver results by using performance data to inform every decision. This data is collected through creative testing, where one piece of content is measured against another to identify which element drives performance. Similarly, if you’re an app developer looking to reduce your Cost Per Install (CPI), you can use creative testing to identify which creative is worth your money.
Here’s how it works: You produce two creatives with identical elements – the same creator, the same visual and narrative direction, the same audio, and introduce one variable – a different caption with distinct keywords or a different hook, and measure the performance data of these assets to determine which element drives results. Does Creative A with a ‘problem first’ hook generate a better completion rate than Creative B, which introduced the product first?
Whether you need to make follow-up content or boost your best-performing asset with paid ads, these findings will show you which creative element or strategy will give you the best Return on Investment. This way, you can significantly boost your CPI by eliminating weak creatives and investing in those with guaranteed returns.
Identify Winning Creatives with Influencity
Creative tests provide the proven evidence marketing teams need to drive impact and make the most of their influencer marketing investment. Even without the proprietary technology to access these data points, you can use influencer intelligence software like Influencity to conduct these tests.
/campaign-reports-slider-tabs-content-tracking-image-composition.webp?width=800&height=500&name=campaign-reports-slider-tabs-content-tracking-image-composition.webp){kind=tracking}
Influencity’s comprehensive, customizable campaign reporting tool makes campaign testing easy by giving you all the data points you need to compare multiple variables. These reports will help you determine the best-performing creative element and strategy to elevate your campaign performance.
Conclusion
The growing competition in social media marketing has raised the average marketing budget. Advanced data analytics and performance reporting solve this issue by providing reliable performance data and insights to filter out budget-draining marketing investments. By enabling businesses to make informed, verifiable decisions, this data-driven strategy ensures maximum returns.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can you cut the costs of your social media campaigns?
To reduce excessive marketing expenses, brands and agencies can use precision targeting and A/B testing to ensure maximum returns for every dollar spent.
What is A/B testing in influencer marketing?
A/B testing, or split testing, is an effective marketing tactic where two variations of a campaign asset are compared to determine which performs better.
How can you use split testing to reduce CPI?
Your split-testing findings show which creative asset generates returns and which doesn’t, helping you make informed decisions on where your investment should go. This budget optimization strategy can significantly decrease your CPI.
Where can you find the necessary tools for conducting A/B testing?
Even without the proprietary systems top agencies use, brands and agencies can access the data points needed for creative testing through influencer marketing platforms like Influencity.
How can you expand your reach outside your niche?
You can attract unique reach by leveraging influencer intelligence and audience analytics to identify crossovers audiences to target.
Tags:
Content Strategy
%20and%20How%20Can%20They%20Benefit%20Your%20Brand%20article.jpg?length=628&name=What%20Are%20Key%20Opinion%20Leaders%20(KOL)%20and%20How%20Can%20They%20Benefit%20Your%20Brand%20article.jpg)
