ROI of Influencer Marketing: A 2025 Guide to Calculating Your Return

Creators are the ultimate “people-to-people commerce” channel.

And the money’s following them. The global influencer marketing market is projected to top $30 billion in 2025. But as spending climbs, so does the pressure to prove it’s worth it. Every CFO wants one thing: the return on investment (ROI) of influencer marketing, in black and white.

The rub is that 50% of marketers still can’t prove ROI from influencer marketing.

So ahead, you’ll find a breakdown of what ROI really looks like in creator partnerships, how to measure it with clear math, and which tactics actually drive sales.

What is influencer marketing ROI?

At its core, influencer marketing ROI measures the return you get on every dollar (or product sample) you invest in creators. Think of it as the difference between what you put in—payments, freebies, affiliate commissions—and what you get out in measurable value: sales, signups, traffic, or even long-term brand lift.

Influencer marketing is a targeted form of advertising built on relationships with creators and their audiences. That can mean sending an influencer a product in hopes they’ll feature it, negotiating a pay-per-post agreement, or setting up hybrid deals where influencers earn affiliate commissions. 

Why are influencer marketing campaigns worth the investment?

Unlike old-school celebrity endorsements, where a star delivers scripted lines, influencers typically create their own content based on brand guidance.

The difference between a mediocre effort and a successful influencer marketing campaign often hinges on creator freedom: When influencers can speak in their own voice, ROI jumps. Sprout Social’s 2025 The State of Influencer Marketing Report: In Influencers We Trust found that 49% of consumers make purchases at least once a month because of influencer posts.

The returns are hard to ignore. According to a Tomoson study, businesses earn an average of $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, with the top 13% of brands hitting $20 or more. Even more telling, 70% of businesses double their money.

Beyond reach, influencer partnerships deliver on cost-efficiency. 

“Influencers offer a cost-efficient way to produce high-quality content,” says Cristy Garcia, vice president of marketing at Impact, a technology platform that allows retailers to manage and optimize all of their partnerships through every stage of the lifecycle. “It filled a gap when production studios were closed due to COVID-19 restrictions. It allowed brands to continue posting during a time when users were spending more time on social media.”

How to calculate influencer marketing ROI: A step-by-step formula

Here’s a clear framework you can run every time:

Step 1: Define your campaign goals and KPIs

ROI only makes sense if you know what you’re aiming for. Are you chasing brand awareness, leads, or sales? 

As Nick Veneris, marketing manager for Refersion, says: “The biggest mistake brands make is not knowing what they’re looking to achieve—then receiving an unexpected result.”

Each goal has its own metric. For example:

• Awareness is measured in impressions, reach, and brand mentions. 
• Lead generation is measured in new signups, subscribers, or form fills. 
• Sales are measured in conversions, tracked revenue, and affiliate code usage.

An effective influencer marketing strategy connects the dots between campaign goals, KPIs, and spend.

Step 2: Track your total investment

This is the “I” in ROI. Add up everything you spend: influencer compensation, free products, agency retainers, content production, analytics tools, and campaign costs.

“One of the biggest mistakes that ecommerce merchants make is not putting ad spend behind content that’s doing really well organically,” says Jason Goldberg, president and cofounder of Carro, a collaborative commerce network that helps brands build partnerships with influencers.

Step 3: Measure your returns (monetary and non-monetary)

Sales and conversions matter, but they’re not the whole picture. Think bigger than last-click results. 

• Monetary returns include tracked sales, affiliate revenue, and the value of new leads. 
• Non-monetary returns include engagement quality, brand lift, and user-generated content you can repurpose in ads or email. 

Influencer Marketing Hub (IMH) suggests comparing cost per engagement and cost per conversion to identify which creators and what tiers actually deliver. In many cases, a micro-influencer with stronger trust can outperform a macro with broader but thinner reach.

💡Pro tip: If you’re on Shopify, you don’t have to cobble together tracking with spreadsheets. Shopify integrates directly with dedicated affiliate and influencer marketing platforms. Refersion, Impact, and Carro—all part of the Shopify Certified App Program—help merchants to calculate ROI by:

• Assigning unique links, codes, and commission structures to influencers
• Attributing sales and revenue in real time
• Pulling influencer performance into the same analytics dashboard as your core business metrics

Step 4: Calculate the final influencer ROI

For monetary returns, the ROI formula is straightforward:

ROI = (Return − Investment) / Investment × 100

The result of the calculation shows the revenue you generated, expressed as a percentage of your initial investment.

So if you spend $10,000 and generate $65,000 in tracked revenue:

ROI = ($65,000 – $10,000) / $10,000 x 100 = 550

So, that’s a 550% ROI. Tomoson reports that the average brand sees $6.50 back for every $1 spent (which comes out to 550%), while the top 13% report $20 or more. 

That gives you a benchmark.

Key metrics to measure influencer marketing ROI

When you're calculating influencer marketing ROI, you want a mix of hard and soft metrics.

Regardless of whether you focus more on qualitative or quantitative data, Nick from Refersion’s advice is to follow the data: 

“Measurable attribution is possible for all channels and all influencers,” he says. “The performance marketing model with influencers works great for long-term, sustainable relationships and also gives you extremely concrete data about clicks, conversions, revenue, and AOV—and that’s possible from Twitch and YouTube, to TikTok.”

Here’s how to pick your scoreboard:

Conversion metrics (The hard ROI)

These are the numbers that speak to your CFO. They show whether influencer campaigns drive direct business results.

Revenue and sales

The baseline KPI for most influencer programs is sales. Unique promo codes, custom URLs, and affiliate links make it easy to track purchases in Shopify Analytics or Google Analytics. 

But don’t forget indirect conversions: Customers often see influencer content, then return later through another channel. That halo still counts.

💡Pro tip: In HubSpot’s 2025 The State of Marketing report, 28% of marketers say they see the highest ROI from influencers on Facebook, 22% say Instagram, and 12% say YouTube. That’s a reminder to track sales by platform, not just in aggregate.

Lead-generation and email subscribers

Influencer campaigns can also drive top-of-funnel growth. Use gated offers, referral funnels, or customer relationship management (CRM) tagging to track how many new subscribers or signups came from creator content. These leads feed directly into long-term revenue pipelines.

App downloads

For mobile-first brands, installs and registrations tied to influencer promotions are a clear ROI signal. Referral codes and SDK tracking ensure accurate attribution. 

And the opportunity is growing: According to DataReportal’s Digital 2025 Global Overview Report, people now spend 3 hours and 46 minutes per day on mobile devices on average, underscoring how much app-driven activity dominates daily online time.

Awareness metrics (The soft ROI)

Awareness metrics capture the softer signals—reach, resonance, and momentum—that build the pipeline for future sales.

Reach, impressions, and earned media value (EMV)

Reach shows how many people saw your campaign, impressions show how often, and EMV translates that visibility into a dollar figure. 

In Autumn/Winter 2025, fashion month activations across Paris, Milan, New York, and other hubs generated $768 million in EMV.

Social media engagement rate (likes, comments, shares)

Engagement metrics show how deeply your target audience interacts with influencer content—not just that they saw it, but that they paused, reacted, commented, or shared.

Hootsuite’s 2025 engagement benchmarks put Instagram at an average engagement rate of 3.5% across industries. 

LinkedIn is close behind at 3.4%, while TikTok lags at around 1.5%. 

Industry specifics matter too: Consumer goods and retail brands see about 3.0% engagement on Instagram, with Reels in that sector averaging 2.4%.

“Differentiating the affiliate links between the long-form blog post and the Instagram story is essential in understanding how audiences engage with the product. There is measurable impact even in tracking how many people have ‘swiped-up’ to read the initial blog post, as that allows us to understand the consumer engagement at a deeper level,” says Christy from Impact.

Audience growth

Track follower growth, new subscribers, or community members gained during and after influencer marketing campaign activations. Growth here indicates lasting interest beyond a single campaign.

Website traffic

Use UTM links, landing pages, and referral reports to measure how much influencer content drives traffic. Compare campaign periods to baseline site activity to calculate lift.

Valuing influencer-generated content (IGC)

The ROI doesn’t end when the campaign does. Influencer-generated content (IGC) has a second life: Brands reuse creator photos, videos, and testimonials across ads, landing pages, and emails. That reuse stretches the value of every dollar spent.

According to IMH’s Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2025, 41% of brands say repurposing creator content in paid ads delivers higher ROI than studio-produced creative.

IGC often outperforms polished campaigns because it feels native to social feeds.

When you build ROI models, include the long tail: the media value of content you can recycle, the savings on production costs, and the higher engagement rates that authentic creator content drives in paid channels.

What is a good ROI for influencer marketing? (2025 benchmarks)

Before defining ROI success, it helps to know where the bar is set. Eighty percent of marketers now rate influencer marketing as effective for their businesses.

The same IMH report shows that campaign objectives are shifting toward revenue impact: 35.6% of brands list sales as their primary goal. On Instagram, where most influencer activity still happens, engagement rates remain modest: 1.73% for nanos, 0.61% for macros, and 0.68% for megas. 

And with 75.9% of creators falling into the nano tier, most brand-creator partnerships are happening at that level.

ROI also has to show up in real business terms. According to Sprout Social’s 2025 Influencer Marketing Investments and Impact Report, marketers overwhelmingly see influencer content outperforming branded content: 92% say sponsored influencer posts deliver better reach, 90% say they deliver stronger engagement, and 83% say they convert better than organic brand posts.

So what does that look like in dollars? Stack Influence’s 2025 ROI benchmarks put the average return at $5.20 per $1 spent across influencer campaigns. City Girl Strategy reports a very similar number, with an average ROI of $5.78 per $1—and even higher when partnering with micro-influencers.

Taken together, these benchmarks suggest that in 2025, strong ROI from influencer marketing means targeting at least $5–$6 returned per $1 invested. Campaigns that outperform this average, especially those optimized for platform strengths or structured around micro- and nano-influencers, can push into double-digit ROI.

Key factors that influence your campaign's ROI

Your ROI depends on variables beyond just spend: who you work with, where the content runs, what format it takes, and even how much your product costs. Here’s how those factors stack up:

Influencer tier (nano, micro, macro)

Influencer tiers are typically broken down by follower count, which directly affects cost, reach, and ROI potential:

• Nano-influencers: ~1,000–10,000 followers
• Micro-influencers: ~10,000–100,000 followers
• Macro-influencers: ~100,000–1 million or more followers

According to a study from Unibocconi, nano-influencers, despite having smaller audiences, often deliver higher engagement per follower and better ROI compared to macros.

Here’s what the study found:

• Revenue per follower, revenue per reach, and return on influencer spend (ROIS) all favored nanos over macros.
• Nanos generated 43 cents per follower, while macros only managed 0.93 cents).

The researchers attribute this tosocial capital theory, which holds that larger followings dilute personal connection—and conversion power.

Nick from Refersion agrees. “Influencers in the wrong niche or with too broad of an audience may not drive the results you’re seeking,” he says. “Finding brand alignment with the influencer is probably the most important thing to get right. Set clear goals, find influencers who can help achieve those goals, then trust the influencer’s expertise.”

That’s exactly what has driven the success of jewelry brand Mejuri’s influencer marketing: “We look for women who are passionate about the brand, who share the same values. It's not necessarily about the number of followers,” CEO and cofounder Noura Sakkijha told Shopify. 

“They share very genuine relationships or influence on their following as well and that's really key for us to make sure that we know the authenticity of the brand flows through ourselves and our partners.”

📚Read: How To Find Influencers For Your Business In 2025

Platform (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube)

Each platform shapes how audiences engage with creators—and how much revenue you can realistically expect back.

TikTok continues to deliver the strongest returns. In partnership with Dentsu, TikTok reported a short-term ROI of 11.8%, with 75% of advertisers saying TikTok influencers gave them their highest ROI compared to other social media platforms.

Instagram remains the most popular influencer channel, but engagement rates are lower: 1.9% on average in 2025, compared to TikTok’s 5.3%. 

YouTube (including YouTube Shorts) sits in the middle: longer videos let influencers tell deeper product stories, while Shorts average 3.1% engagement—higher than Instagram but lower than TikTok.

Content format

According to the Influencer Marketing Hub 2025 Benchmark Report, livestreaming is the leading content strategy, cited by 52.4% of marketers. That means more than half believe real-time content is a high-impact format. 

That same report notes short-form video (Reels, TikTok, Shorts etc.) as a top format—about 38.1% of experts recognize it as a go-to format in their strategies.

💡Pro tip:A recent Kantar study reported that influencer content holds viewer attention significantly longer than traditional brand ads. Viewers were 2.2x less likely to skip influencer content than standard branded content. That means formats that naturally retain attention (video, stories, live) can maximize influencer marketing ROI.

Product price point

ROI also depends on what you’re selling. Impulse-friendly products like snacks, beauty, or accessories can convert quickly through short-form influencer content. Higher-ticket items like furniture, mattresses, and luxury goods often require longer content arcs, in-depth reviews, or ambassador-style partnerships before audiences are ready to buy.

Benchmarks vary by vertical. For example, Aggero reports that beauty brands—a category where influencer marketing is deeply embedded—see an average return of $4–$6 per $1 spent, while anything above $10 per $1 counts as a “high ROI” outcome.