Influencer Advisory™What is a good influencer marketing ROI?
A good influencer marketing ROI is 5 to 1 or better, and 10 to 1 is great. Here is how to measure it so your boss trusts the result you report.
Founder · November 10, 2026 · 2 min read
A good influencer marketing ROI is 5 to 1 or better, and 10 to 1 is really great, by the benchmark Ainfluencer Marketplace quotes. (Ainfluencer Marketplace)
Nielsen figure: Whalar says Nielsen found its campaigns had an ROI of $2.41, above all other media channels measured.
Those numbers only help you if your boss believes how you got yours.
How do you know if your influencer marketing is paying off?
Measure against a real holdout group, not a matched audience.
- Matched-audience method: Across 15 Facebook experiments, matching viewers after the fact usually gave a different answer than a real holdout. (Marketing Science (INFORMS), via IDEAS/RePEc, 2019)
Obvi says the days of proving influencer ROI with story views and discount codes are ending. (Obvi)
The Selling With Love Podcast says tracking sales back to each creator is making ROI easier to show. (The Selling With Love Podcast)
Once you trust your own method, outside numbers become something you can check against.
What ROI do other brands get from influencer marketing?
Quote the range from named sources, then show your own test.
- Stella & Chewy's: 665% campaign ROI, 25K new followers, on Aspire's own story page (aspire.io, undated)
- City Beauty: GRIN says followers grew 35,000+ in three years; many creators near 200% ROI. (grin.co, undated)
Both wins come from the software company's own pages. Habits & Hustle with Jennifer Cohen says paid ads are easier to track for sales and ROI than influencer marketing, so expect your boss to compare. (Habits & Hustle w/ Jennifer Cohen)
The unpredictability of ROAS, like most people can't break even on their investment with influencers, makes it hard to justify, spend, and continue to scale.
A low number often means the return is real but counted in the wrong place.
Why is my influencer marketing ROI so low?
Count every kind of return, and cut the creators who do not perform.
- 80% of the creators you onboard don't perform, and you only find out after paying them.
eCommerce Fastlane says influencer return shows up in sales, content, halo effects, brand awareness and better Amazon rankings. (eCommerce Fastlane)
Tracking all of this, every month, is where most small teams run out of hours.
Can someone run and measure influencer marketing for me?
This is the work we do for brands every day, so your team can report results instead of chasing them.
Far more creator content to test as paid ads. Budget goes to the proven winners, and the rest are cut fast. Influencer grows into a channel big enough to sit next to Meta. A new audience almost right away, from the creator's handle. New-customer costs 20% to 30% lower when the creator gets a cut of the spend. Every creator deal can become an ad, because the rights are already signed.
If you have some of the steps in place, we audit what's missing in each and how to take it further.