Influencer Marketing ROI: How to Measure + What to Expect
SEP 26 / 3 MIN READ
We're well into the 2020s. By now, you already know companies are making money with influencer marketing.
Brands make an average of $5.78 back for every $1 they spend on it. And the top 13% of companies drive $20+ in new revenue for every $1 spent.
That's great, but how much is it bringing in for you?
A shocking number of companies don't know the answer to this question (and aren't even trying to answer it).
Nearly one-third aren't measuring their influencer marketing ROI at all, according to the 2024 State of Influencer Marketing report from Influencer Marketing Hub.
In today's article, we're going to show you how to measure the return on investment from your influencer marketing campaigns, what kind of results you can expect, and how to get the most out of your influencer partnerships.
Is influencer marketing worth it in 2025?
The short answer: Yes. If you're doing it right.
Influencers are people who have built a loyal following on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok through content creation or as celebrities.
Because they're so recognizable and their followers know so much about their lives and tastes, people value their opinions. And that includes the products they use and recommend to others.
Assuming your influencer is...
aligned with your target audience and brand values
actually interested in your product or service (and would use it themselves)
active on the marketing channels your customers use
...you're in a good spot.
The vast majority of companies have tremendous success leveraging influencers' audiences to increase brand awareness, credibility, and sales.
But, as is true with your other digital marketing activities, you have to measure its success.
Influencer marketing ROI benchmarks
We've already touched on the fact that companies generally make $5.78 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, with top-performing campaigns bringing in $20+.
In other words, the average company will net a 578% (or 5.78x) ROI, while the best will see a whopping 2000% (or 20x) return.
And 89% of marketers agree returns on influencer marketing are comparable to or better than other marketing channels.
For your influencer marketing strategy specifically, there are a few things that'll affect your ROI:
Your industry
CPG, beauty, fashion, fitness, food/beverage, and other consumer goods industries benefit the most from influencer marketing because they rely on visual appeal and social proof to sell products.
Mobile gaming is another industry where celebrities and influencers can make a big difference.
Your infleuncer's relevance to your audience
The more aligned an influencer's interests and values are with your brand, the better their audience will respond to your collaboration.
The size of your influencer's audience
According to data from the American Marketing Association, return on influencer spend (ROIS) is over 3x higher for nano-influencers than macro-influencers. Although macro-influencers generate 6x more revenue, their costs average 18x higher.
Celebrities can be the most expensive, but they're best when you want to go viral or promote a generalist product (e.g., a new food item on your menu).
We prefer to think in terms of how recognizable the influencer is. Scroll-stopping faces tend to make a big impact whether they’re technically a nano-influencer or a macro-influencer.
How you distribute your content
Most influencer content is limited to the marketing channel they use to reach their audience. With Cameo, though, your creator sends you the content and you handle distribution, so you can repurpose it in a variety of ways — including social posts, online ads, even emails or texts.
Measuring ROI from influencer marketing isn't always so clear-cut...
When you're calculating the return on investment from a PPC campaign, it's relatively easy to tie your marketing efforts and their cost back to sales. This is especially true if you're in the DTC space — just count the number of clicks (and their cost) vs. the number of sales (and their value).
But influencer marketing?
It's not as straightforward.
"Awareness" metrics are easy to measure.
In the case of brand awareness campaigns, "sales" isn't even the primary focus. That's why many companies measure the success of their campaigns using engagement metrics.
For example, Chipotle used Cameo to partner with a TikTok star (@Tariq). It produced 100M+ organic views on social, netted them 1.7B+ PR impressions, and became their top performing content on Insta, Facebook, and TikTok.
Since their campaign goals were awareness-focused, this is what we'd call a successful influencer marketing campaign.
But brand awareness ≠ money in the bank.
Of course, Chipotle's campaign brought them a massive number of sales. The questions of "Exactly how many?" and "What were they worth?" are harder to answer.
There's not always a clear way to connect an influencer's post to your bottom line. If virality isn't your main goal, you have a problem.
Let's say you pay an influencer $5,000 for a post. You receive 15,000 likes and 2,000 comments on it. Your follower count increases by 10,000. And you see an uptick in website traffic and social media engagement.
You're also getting more conversions, but it's unclear at this point exactly how many of them are directly attributed to that post.
There are some ways to get a better handle on your ROI, which we'll talk about next.
How to calculate your influencer marketing ROI
Depending on the type of campaign you're running, there are plenty of ways to track the ROI from your influencer campaigns:
1. Affiliate links
An affiliate link is a trackable link that's unique to your influencer. When they promote your product, they'll leave that link for their audience to click.
Whenever someone clicks it and makes a purchase, you'll know exactly which one of your influencer's posts brought them there. So, you'll know the exact $ amount they brought you.
2. Promo code
If you're partnering with someone long-term or going the celebrity endorsement route, giving them a promo code to share with their audience is one way to track how much money the campaign generated.
Generally, promo code campaigns work like this:
The creator shares a video or image featuring your product.
They mention the promo code and leave a link to buy the product.
When someone uses the promo code, they get a discount.
You track how much new revenue is attributed to that code.
3. UTMs
A UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) is a tracking code you can add to the end of a URL. When someone clicks that link, the UTM tells your analytics platform lots of information about that click.
The point is, with UTMs you can track exactly where your traffic came from and how it behaved once it got to your site.
So, if one influencer shared a Cameo video on Facebook and another shared it on Instagram — both linking out to the same website — but you want to know which channel produced more revenue, UTMs are very helpful.
4. Dedicated landing page
With a dedicated landing page, you create a standalone page that only your influencer is allowed to link to. That way, all the traffic and conversions on that page can be directly attributed to the one pushing your product.
What's nice about the landing page approach is you can use the landing page to tailor your messaging to that influencer's audience.
If you're working with multiple creators, you can add these pages up to calculate the total ROI of your influencer campaign. You can also compare them to each other so you know which ones are driving higher ROI.
5. Platform analytics
If you're in control of the content distribution (like you are with Cameo), it's even easier. Just look at your platform's analytics to see how your post performed.
How to measure the success of your campaigns
There are four main influencer marketing KPIs you need to look at:
Impressions
Engagement
Conversions
EMV
Impressions
Impressions are the number of times someone saw your influencer's content. This is important because it gives you an idea of how many people will see (and, by extension, become aware of) your campaign.
Engagement
Your engagement rate is the ratio of people who engage with your influencer's posts compared to how many people saw it. Engagement can be anything from likes, comments and shares to clicks on a link and views on a video.
You should look at all these engagements separately. And you need to look at how many viewers do at least something with the post.
If an influencer wants to charge a high rate because they have a lot of followers and views, but you notice they have low engagement, your ROI will be much lower.
Conversions
This is the most important part of ROI in influencer marketing. Conversions are the number of people who took the action you wanted them to ultimately take, like making a purchase or signing up for your email list.
You can track total sales through one of the methods we discussed earlier. To understand your conversion rate, look at the number of people who made a purchase divided by the total number of people who saw your influencer's content.
EMV
Earned media value (EMV) is a form of ROI that measures the impact an influencer had on your brand's visibility. It adds up all the likes, shares, and comments to estimate how much it would have cost to get that same amount of engagement through traditional media buys.
This is how you quantify the impact of an influencer campaign when you aren't driving sales directly, such as when you're trying to spread brand awareness.
EMV = Total # Impressions X Cost per 1,000 Impressions (CPM)
You can find the CPM by looking at ad rates on the platform your content is published on.
Tips for getting the most ROI out of your influencer marketing:
Choose the right talent to work with.
Most importantly, you have to work with the right influencers.
Pick someone who:
Is aligned with your brand
Would actually use your product on their own
Has an engaged audience (look at engagement rates)
Then, make sure their messaging and product features align with how you're trying to position and market your product.
Stay ahead of trends.
We live in a world of micro-trends. A few weeks ago it was the "brat" aesthetic. Then, people started describing things as "demure". And in a couple of months, nobody will remember any of that.
So, you need to move quickly through putting your campaign together. We're talking days or weeks, not months before your campaign goes live.
Be everywhere.
Republish and repost your content on all the channels you can.
Repurpose TikToks across Reels and Shorts accounts.
Run ads using your highest-performing posts.
Talk and blog about it on your website and social media accounts.
The more places you share, the more people will see it.
Now...with most influencer partnerships, licensing is complicated and they're the ones who post it (a.k.a. you have no control).
With Cameo, it's the opposite. Browse celebrities now, filter based on talent categories and audience demographics, and connect with your top choices in just a few minutes. Within days, you'll have a finished product.