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Influencer marketing is here to stay. Brands have been partnering with creators for decades in order to promote their products and services by generating buzz, interactions and brand love. However, how do you actually measure its impact?
On average, brands see $6.50 in revenue for every $1 spent on influencer campaigns in 2025. Compared to traditional banner ads, influencer marketing delivers 11× higher Return On Investment (ROI) on average.
But how does this ROI look in real life? In this article we’ll break down what ROI actually means, share real life examples and best practices for brands wanting to make the most out of their investments. Let’s dive in!
Influencer Marketing ROI is a key metric that stands for the Return on Investment, meaning the money you make in relation to the money you’ve spent on a particular campaign or marketing action.
ROI is a key metric to analyze during influencer marketing campaigns as it helps brands understand if their creator partnerships are actually driving good results. Whether your goal is to increase sales, sign ups or brand awareness, ROI is going to show you what’s working and what’s not.
By tracking ROI you can:
Without ROI, influencer marketing is just guessing what works or not. With it, you have the necessary information to better run your campaigns and get the results you expect.
ROI is measured by the difference between the revenue and the cost of a campaign, relative to the cost. Here’s how it’s calculated:
This gives you the return on investment as a percentage — showing how much profit you made for every dollar spent.
This value is often expressed as a percentage. For example, if you spent $1,000 and earned $6,500, your ROI is 550%.
In order to know how your campaign is doing in terms of investment, something truly important is to track user behavior after they engage with the content. The best way to do this is by implementing trackable links and tools:
UTM codes are tags you add to specific URLs to track traffic sources . You can use them to identify:
Adding these tags to different URLs you can see exactly how many people click, sign up or make a purchase thanks to a particular creator and platform.
Another way to track performance is providing creators with personalized links that automatically measure conversions and sales. These links are often tied to commission bonuses for influencers, meaning they can be great for ongoing partnerships.
Giving influencers special discount codes for them to share with their audiences is a great way to see how many times that code was used to make a purchase.
You can create landing pages tailored to each influencer or campaign. This is a great way to improve not only the user experience but also helps tracking performance in a clear way.
Whenever you are tracking the performance of a marketing campaign you can focus entirely on the numbers, more specific in direct sales or conversions but you can also measure performance looking at:
The crucial question would always be: Did the campaign generate more value than it cost?
Once you set your campaign, goals and the measures to track the performance you are ready to go. It’s always normal to wonder if all this effort is worth it, so here are some real life examples of successful marketing campaigns for you to get inspired!
Glossier, the skincare and makeup brand, did not waste time partnering with big celebrities or money on traditional ads. The brand went in another direction: real people with real opinions.
At one point, over 70% of Glossier’s online sales were driven by referrals and influencer driven recommendations.
Glossier has successfully proved that influencers can make a huge impact on your sales and growth of your business. Without needing to rely on paid ads, the brand worked together with different creators to build interest and hype around their products even to the point to use it as feedback for new product releases.
HelloFresh, the best meal kits for a healthy lifestyle, crafted a strategy in which they partner with YouTube and Instagram influencers to turn online content into actual conversions.
These partnerships and campaigns combined delivered up to 5.2x ROI!
HelloFresh has proven that you can merge different platforms and creators in order to get thousands of new subscriptions and clients. The brand worked so close with creators that they became a part of their sales funnel, not just a branding tool. And the ROI they got sure proves how well this worked.
Blueland is a brand that sells eco-friendly cleaning products. They decided to launch an influencer campaign on Amazon, partnering with over 200 creators.
As a result, in less than three months they turned a $10K influencer budget into nearly $130K in revenue, achieving an impressive 13× ROI.
This campaign highlights how micro-influencers can not only boost visibility but also drive conversions.
The fitness gear brand started their marketing campaigns giving clothes to some niche YouTube, TikTok and Instagram creators.
As a result, sales jumped from £500 a day to over £35,000 a day in just a few days after key influencer partnerships.
By combining different platforms, creators and strategies like challenges to generate authentic content, they generated a positive brand sentiment, a bunch of new customers and positioned themselves as the number one fitness brand on TikTok.
Espin is a brand that sells electronic bikes. They partnered with a marketing platform to run an influencer campaign, focusing on creators that align with specific personas, such as outdoor lovers and sustainable community fans.
As a result, they managed a 4.5x ROI, without increasing their paid media budget.
By partnering with the right influencers, Espin not only got the results they were expecting but also proved that with thoughtful audience matching and organic content from trusted voices in inches, your campaign ROI will be excellent, even for smaller brands.
All these examples and scenarios have one thing in common: long term collaborative relationships. An important thing to understand if you are about to embark in influencer marketing is that working with influencers takes time. You don’t always get to see immediate results. However, if you are focused and partnering with the right creators for your brand, you would drive not only brand awareness but also big conversion rates.
Influencer marketing as any other strategy takes time and effort to get the results expected. In order to make sure whether you achieve good or bad results, here are some key practices that can help brand turn influencer partnerships into measurable impact:
No matter what campaign or amount of influencers you want to do, always set clear goals so you’ll be able to identify what success looks like.
Without proper tracking there’s no way to prove your ROI in any campaign.
Create custom discount codes, unique landing pages or UTM links to help you attribute traffic and sales to particular creators.
Authenticity is key in influencer marketing. Make sure to partner up with creators that truly match your brand image and values.
Micro influencers might be a good starting point. Make sure to study their voice, tone and style to make sure they are the right fit.
Think beyond individual posts. Longer collaborations gives creators the opportunity to include your brand in a more natural, organic way into their narrative.
Seeing your products in influencer’s daily lives creates more trust and sense of authenticity.
Don’t stop in one platform or content format, be open to combining different things.
Repurpose creators' content across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, email campaigns and any other channel you may see fit.
Treat influencer marketing as a performance channel.
Tracking your ROI is almost as important as defining your marketing goals. If you craft a well-structured strategy that includes UTM links, affiliate codes and analytics, you can track how your campaign is performing and not just in terms of conversions, but also brand awareness, engagement rate and content reach.
Influencer marketing is changing all the time. What works today might not be the best tomorrow. Stay data-driven, test regularly, and prioritize long-term creator relationships to make influencer marketing truly worth the investment. Want to see how you can track ROI, engagement, and conversions in one place? Book a demo and discover how our platform helps you make smarter, data-backed decisions.
There are several tools that help you measure ROI from influencer campaigns, including Google Analytics, Impact.com, Shopify analytics, and influencer platforms like Influencer Hero, Grin, and Upfluence. These platforms offer built-in tracking for conversions, affiliate codes, and audience insights.
Influencer marketing often delivers higher ROI than paid ads, especially in terms of engagement and trust. While PPC focuses on clicks, influencer content typically drives better long-term brand sentiment, with up to 11× the ROI of banner ads, according to industry reports.
Common mistakes include working with mismatched creators, not defining campaign goals, using generic tracking links, and underutilizing performance data. Avoiding these errors can help improve campaign outcomes and generate better ROI.
Yes. ROI can vary significantly by platform. For instance, TikTok may drive stronger engagement and brand awareness, while YouTube often yields higher conversion rates through long-form content. Instagram Reels are popular for lifestyle and beauty, but ROI depends heavily on audience behavior and content format.
ROI timelines depend on your campaign goals. If you're focused on direct sales, results might be visible in weeks. However, for brand awareness or community building, ROI often grows over several months of consistent influencer collaboration.
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