August 29, 2025
10 Min
Case Study: How Beau Bottles Drove $82K in Sales and Viral UGC Using Influencer Hero
Influencer marketing has become a key strategy for brands to reach targeted audiences effectively. Understanding the cost-effectiveness of campaigns is crucial, and that’s where our CPM (cost per mille) calculator comes in.
This article will guide you through the significance of CPM in influencer marketing and how to utilize our spreadsheet to understand and maximize your return on investment (ROI).
CPM stands for cost per mille, which represents the cost of one thousand impressions on an ad. In the context of influencers, this would be how much you’re paying for 1000 people to see a post, reel, video or story.
It is a key metric because:
The effectiveness and reach of influencer marketing campaigns can be directly impacted by audience demographics. Location, gender and age can be fundamental metrics that help brands understand who their potential customers are and how to tailor their messaging accordingly.
For instance, if an influencer's audience predominantly consists of young women in urban areas, brands targeting a similar demographic can expect higher engagement rates and conversions, thus justifying a higher CPM.
Conversely, if a brand aims to reach a broader, more diverse audience, it may need to engage multiple influencers with varying audience profiles, affecting overall CPM calculations.
Moreover, analyzing these demographics enables brands to allocate their budgets more strategically, ensuring that they invest in influencers whose followers align closely with their target market.
By focusing on these metrics, brands can not only enhance campaign relevance but also optimize spending, thereby maximizing ROI and achieving more significant impact within their marketing efforts.
Find our free Instagram analytics tool here.
To calculate influencer CPM, you need to divide the total cost of the collaboration by the number of impressions (or views) the content receives, then multiply the result by 1,000.
There are two main factors in the calculation of CPM:
To calculate CPM, you’ll need to multiply the cost of the campaign or post, actual or potential, by the impressions. To make this easier for you, we’ve created a free template.
This tool allows you to easily estimate an influencer’s usable audience based on key demographic percentages and automatically calculates the CPM based on the proposed fee.
Here’s how it works:
Make a copy of the CPM template into your Google Drive or download it to your computer to start editing.
Fill in the influencer’s total follower count and up to three key metrics relevant to your campaign. These can include:
Use the best data available from their analytics or an influencer tool. You don’t need to use all three — just select the ones that match your audience targeting needs.
Enter the total cost you plan to pay the influencer — this could be per post, per campaign, or based on estimated value.
The sheet will calculate:
If the calculated CPM feels too high, simply adjust the fee in Column H to find a more justifiable cost.
Using fewer metrics? You can remove unused columns without affecting the formulas in Columns G and I.
Need help understanding engagement rates to refine your analysis further? Check out our guide.
Let’s say we wanted to work with an influencer that has 118k followers, we’ll add this into column C to calculate the final results .
First you’ll have to choose three metrics that you want to use to determine potential impressions expressed as a percentage:
Based on this, you can now input a possible fee in column H so that the CPM is calculated. For this case, the usable audience is 34,360, and with a potential fee of $1000 the CPM would be $29.1.
Now that you have the CPM data available, here are a few ways to use it:
As brands dive into influencer marketing, understanding and optimizing CPM is more important than ever. Our spreadsheet is designed to help businesses make informed decisions by accurately calculating CPM based on audience demographics. Start optimizing your campaigns today!
Want to go beyond CPM? With Influencer Hero, you can discover creators, track CPM and ROI in real time, and manage your entire influencer program from one dashboard. Book a free demo and see how brands scale campaigns with data-driven insights.
CPM, or cost per mille, is the cost per thousand impressions in advertising. In influencer marketing, it quantifies how much brands pay for their content to be seen by a specified number of viewers. Understanding CPM is essential for brands as it allows them to measure campaign efficiency, compare costs across influencers, and assess the visibility generated by their marketing efforts.
Audience demographics, such as gender, location, and age, greatly impact CPM calculations. Brands should analyze these demographics to identify their target audience effectively. When influencers have an audience that matches the brand's target demographics, it can result in higher engagement rates and greater conversions, making a higher CPM justifiable. This targeted analysis helps brands optimize their marketing budgets and enhance campaign relevance.
The CPM calculation sheet is a user-friendly tool where you can input the total cost of your influencer campaign along with selected audience metrics (like age, gender, and location). The sheet will calculate your CPM and provide estimates on usable audience and potential impressions. Use this data to evaluate the effectiveness of influencers and determine which partnerships align best with your brand goals.
Absolutely! The CPM calculator is adaptable for different influencer marketing strategies, whether for a single social media post, stories, or comprehensive campaigns. By entering the relevant costs and audience metrics, brands can assess CPM for various content types, helping identify the most cost-effective influencer partnerships tailored to their specific marketing objectives.
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