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Brands and influencers have been working together for years through Influencer Marketing. As the global influencer marketing industry is projected to reach $32.55 billion by the end of 2025, up from $21.1 billion in 2023,brands are investing more than ever in creators to drive real results.
Why? Because it works! Influencer marketing campaigns earn $5.78 for every dollar spent, proving that when done right, the ROI (Return On Investment) is hard to ignore.
Understanding your influencer marketing ROI will tell you whether or not your campaign paid off. It doesn’t matter if you are using affiliate links, discount codes, or tracking tools, measuring ROI is what is going to help you achieve great partnerships and generate real engagement and sales.
Influencer marketing ROI (Return on Investment) is a metric that evaluates the profitability and effectiveness of influencer marketing campaigns by comparing the revenue generated to the costs incurred.
In other words, ROI tells you what you as a brand will get in return for working from an influencer.
ROI is commonly used to measure an influencer campaign performance. However there are other metrics that can tell you how your campaign went but from a different perspective. Here's a quick breakdown:
The correct formula for estimating your Influencer Marketing ROI is:
Let’s make it clearer with an example! Pretend your brand partnered up with a skincare and beauty influencer on TikTok. You paid them $2,000 for a series of videos promoting your new morning routine combo. Time went by and the campaign generated $6,000 in sales directly tied to the influencer’s content.
In this scenario, your brand earned a 200% return on investment, meaning for every $1 you spent, you made $3 in return ($1 back, plus $2 in profit).
Measuring the effectiveness of your Influencer Campaign is not that simple as looking at likes or shares. And while ROI seems to cover only the money aspect of your campaign, in order to fully understand how well invested your efforts were, you need to take every agent in place into account.
The success of your campaign is going to be determined by your original goal. The right metrics combined with the appropriate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so that you can truly calculate your return on investment.
Here’s a step by step guide on how to do it!
Before launching any campaign you need to set clear goals, to establish what success looks like. In other words, think of what you are trying to achieve and put all your efforts into that cause. The clearer the goals, the easier to get that result.
There are 4 common campaign goals that can be divided in the different marketing funnel stages:
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are specific metrics used to evaluate the success and impact of influencer-driven campaigns.
That’s why for better understanding on how your campaign is working you must set KPIs to measure your overall progress. Here are some of the most popular ones:
The same as it goes for goals, there are some KPI’s that fit better in specific funnel stages.
Quick note: Soft KPIs help measure awareness and engagement, while hard KPIs are tied directly to revenue and business impact.
Once you find the right influencers to work with and determine the platform you are going to use as the arena of your marketing campaign you need to determine specific tracking tools you are going to use in order to check and analyze your results.
Down below is a list of the tools you must include in your strategy:
To fully understand your campaign numbers, you must account for all the costs involved. This includes:
Once your campaign is over, or if it’s too long you can do a mid evaluation, get together all the performance indicators you were tracking and calculate your Marketing Influencer Return On Investment.
You can calculate the general ROI of your campaign or you can break it down per influencer or social media platform for a more detailed lecture. Based on the results you get, you can adjust your strategy for future campaigns.
Measuring influencer ROI can seem a little bit difficult, but it doesn’t have to be complicated, especially if you have the right tools.
When running a small campaign or managing multiple influencers at the time, this few tools can really help you track performance and calculate your returns effectively:
You can create and use trackable URLs to monitor clicks, conversions and traffic driven by each one of the influencers you partnered up with.
You can use Google’s Campaign URL Builder for an easy setup.
You can also create unique discount codes assigned to each creator to track how many users were incentivized to visit your site or make a purchase.
Codes are great for directly tying sales to a specific influencer and track individual performance.
You can use Google Analytics to measure site traffic, user behavior, and conversion data from influencer campaigns. Pair it with UTM parameters to attribute performance accurately.
You can use it for free and track every influencer-driven activity on your site.
Influencer Hero is a marketing platform that offers built-in ROI tracking, performance analytics, campaign management, and reporting.
Great for brands that want an all-in-one solution. Here are the main benefits:
Influencer Hero offers flexible plans based on your needs, starting from $249/month for smaller teams. Custom pricing is available for enterprises and agencies.
If you are starting small, don’t have extra budget or simply don’t want to add any specific online tool, you can always trust your spreadsheets. For smaller campaigns, manually logging metrics like sales, engagement, and referral traffic works—just be sure to stay consistent.
Pro Tip: No matter which way you decide to go, using more than just one of these tools and cross-checking the data is the best option at getting the full picture of your influencer campaign’s performance.
It’s normal to wonder what is a good ROI in influencer marketing. Knowing the industry benchmark can help you set your goals and have real expectations.
The average ROI from influencer marketing campaigns typically ranges from 5 to 10 times the initial investment. This means that for every dollar spent on influencer marketing, brands can expect to generate between $5 and $10 in revenue.
However, top performing brands often see much higher results, especially when campaigns are well targeted and paired with authentic influencers that truly align with the brand.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the possible ROI outcomes:
When evaluating influencer marketing campaigns, ROI is a key indicator of performance. Generally, ROI outcomes can be grouped into three tiers. A return between $1 and $4 is considered below average, signaling that the campaign likely needs optimization and is not meeting expectations. In contrast, a $5 to $7 return indicates a strong and healthy campaign, suggesting that the strategy is effective and delivering solid results. The most desirable outcome is an ROI of $8 or more, which is classified as excellent—a clear sign of high-performing content and a strong alignment between the influencer and their audience. These benchmarks offer a quick reference to assess campaign success and identify opportunities for improvement.
Always remember that a good ROI depends not just on sales, but also on long-term value like brand awareness, customer acquisition, and content reuse. Also, the industry your brand is working in directly impacts the possible ROI of your influencer marketing efforts.
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Here are different scenarios where brands manage to drive influencer marketing campaigns to a successful ROI.
Hi Smiles is an Australian oral care brand founded in 2014. The company has gained global recognition for its innovative, peroxide-free teeth whitening products designed for at-home use.
They launched a campaign where they partnered up with the Jenner sister and Connor McGregor, well known influencers, to promote their whitening products among young women and men.
The campaign had amazing results:
ReTreet is a luxury wellness resort in Texas focused on delivering immersive mind-body experiences through yoga, nature, and holistic treatments.
They launched a campaign partnering with wellness-focused content creators. The resort invited influencers, like Petit Mama Life, to stay for a couple days to share their real experience and share it with their audiences to get real engagement.
The campaign delivered strong results:
Influencer Marketing can have an amazing impact on your brand. In order to make sure it stays a great strategy to communicate your products and services, you must understand and measure your Influencer Marketing ROI.
ROI is not an isolated metric. True performance measurement is achievable when combined ROI with clear goals and KPIs to get the full picture.
There are several tools that brands use to track influencer performance, including Google Analytics, UTM builders, affiliate platforms like Refersion or Impact, influencer CRMs like Influencer Hero, and social listening tools such as Hootsuite or Brandwatch.
Influencer marketing often offers a higher ROI than traditional paid ads, especially when working with niche or micro-influencers, due to increased trust and engagement. However, paid ads may provide faster reach and more controlled targeting.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) measures revenue directly generated from ad spend, while ROI (Return on Investment) takes into account all campaign costs—including influencer fees, product samples, and team time—making ROI a more comprehensive profitability metric.
Micro-influencers often deliver better ROI for niche markets due to higher engagement rates and lower costs, while macro-influencers may offer more reach but at a higher price point and often with lower engagement percentages.
Brands can estimate potential ROI by reviewing past campaign benchmarks, assessing influencer engagement metrics, calculating projected conversions based on audience size, and factoring in all campaign costs. Pre-campaign forecasting tools and influencer calculators can also assist in setting realistic ROI expectations.
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