Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of your influencer marketing program helps you understand whether you’re actually driving revenue for your business or spending money on something that isn’t working. To do this, you need to weigh sales, traffic, and engagement figures against the cost of influencer partnerships, free products, and affiliate commissions. Measuring performance can help you allocate budget, optimize your marketing efforts, and stay on track with your associated growth goals.
The good news is that influencer marketing professionals are seeing the returns: nearly two-thirds anticipate recouping their influencer investment within a month, and about half expect returns within two weeks of a campaign partnership. But seeing those returns requires knowing how to track them.
In this guide, we’ll break down key metrics that measure influencer marketing ROI and how to measure influencer success.
4 influencer marketing metrics to track
Though metrics such as follower count and likes are signs of building brand awareness, they don’t necessarily contribute to your bottom line. The following ecommerce metrics more accurately measure influencer marketing ROI and potential revenue impact:
Sales
Sales is one of the primary key performance indicators (KPIs) for influencer campaigns, and a crucial driver of business growth. This metric can be measured by tracking purchases through affiliate links, promo codes, and custom URLs. Tools such as Shopify Analytics or Google Analytics make this easier by connecting traffic from unique UTM links—URLs with tracking tags attached to specific sources and campaigns.
However, not all customers purchase right away or use one of the affiliate’s trackable links. Some convert later or return to your site through a different channel. This is still a signal that your influencer marketing plan is successful, but it may be more difficult to measure. To account for this, consider extending your attribution window (more on that below) and look for indirect signals like surges in organic traffic after a campaign, which can provide a more complete view of an influencer’s impact on sales.
Average order value (AOV)
Average order value (AOV) measures the average revenue generated per order. Using the aforementioned trackable links, compare your influencer-driven AOV to your company’s overall AOV. If the influencer-driven AOV is meaningfully higher, that’s a strong sign of successful alignment between your target customers and that influencer’s audience. On the other hand, a low influencer-driven AOV could signal that your influencer’s audience isn’t aligned with your target demographic.
Conversions
In influencer marketing, conversions include any desired, influencer-driven actions taken by potential and existing customers, such as making a purchase, creating an account, or signing up for an event or email list. These actions often signal purchase intent.
Similar to sales and AOV, you can track conversions through influencer-specific links and codes. If you notice that your influencer-generated content is experiencing high traffic but low conversions, there are key questions to ask. Is there a messaging mismatch between your brand voice and how the influencer is promoting your product? Is your website checkout process as seamless as possible? Are you losing traffic consistently on a specific page or product?
Website traffic
Website traffic is a metric that can help you measure brand awareness. Think of increased web traffic as a “halo effect” of influencer marketing—it might not drive immediate sales, but it has long-term potential to improve your bottom line. Here again, UTM links can help you get an accurate measure of influencer ROI by tracking how many visitors creator campaigns are driving to product landing pages or your broader website. Another way to determine impact is by comparing your website’s baseline traffic numbers to traffic numbers during the period of an influencer partnership.
5 tips for measuring influencer success
- Ask your customers for feedback
- Set and measure specific demographic goals
- Use attribution models
- Triangulate your data points
- Use an affiliate platform for direct attribution
These best practices from established marketing professionals and other business founders can help as your business assesses influencer marketing success.
Ask your customers for feedback
Post-purchase surveys are highly useful for measuring ROI from influencer marketing campaigns. Even asking customers: “How did you hear about us?” can reveal which influencers and social channels are driving conversions among your target audience. Survey data can also tell you about customers who may have seen your product through influencer posts but later converted through a different pathway.
On an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast, Gyve Safavi and Mark Rushmore, founders of oral care company SURI, explain that they use post-purchase data to fill the attribution gaps and monitor how their marketing channel mix changes over time across organic search, social media, influencer programs and more. This qualitative data complements the quantitative data—like traffic, sales, and conversion—generated through platforms like Shopify Analytics and Google Analytics, giving you a fuller picture of how customers are discovering your brand.
Set and measure specific demographic goals
Think about measuring niche campaign goals that go beyond brand awareness, audience growth, direct sales, and lead generation. For example, if you’re looking to improve goals like conversions from shoppers over 50 or expand to a new state or city, you may choose to work with micro-influencers with niche audiences in those demographics and weigh those metrics over general sales and conversions.
Lindsey Carter, founder of activewear brand SET Active, shares a relevant example with Shopify Masters: “Let’s say [our influencer partner’s] demographic was in Texas. We might not have an audience base in Texas. So that’s something that we measure in our collaboration. We sit down, and we go over the details of how it did, the units that sold. Did we grab new customers in Texas? If the answer was yes over a certain percentage, then we know we hit our goals on that collaboration.”
Use attribution models
The metrics you use to track the success of your influencer campaigns depend on your overall goals. But sometimes, customers may see an influencer post, click on the post, but only return to shop later after seeing a paid ad. To give credit to the various marketing interactions that helped with a sale, you can use marketing attribution models. These models track clicks and UTM links to better understand the customer’s journey.
There are generally seven types of marketing attribution models, including “last click” (which gives credit to the last-clicked paid ad or social post before the customer converts) and linear attribution (which distributes conversion credit equally across all touchpoints on a customer’s journey to purchase). Choose a consistent attribution model to understand the various factors that lead to a sale and whether your social media strategy and other marketing efforts are working well in tandem.
Triangulate your data points
A single performance metric won’t accurately reflect your influencer marketing ROI. Effective influencer marketers calculate several data points across marketing channels to better understand a campaign’s impact.
Toral Patel, the VP of marketing for clean beauty brand Kopari, tells Shopify Masters that her team tracks engagement metrics like earned media value, video views, and engagement, which they benchmark against revenue to determine efficacy. They also monitor direct and organic site traffic as an indicator of an influencer’s impact, and use post-purchase surveys to account for conversions that other metrics might miss.
Use an affiliate platform for direct attribution
Organizing your creator campaigns through affiliate platforms enables you to measure influencer ROI with ease and precision. These tools create promo codes and tracking links that are unique to each of your collaborators, making it clear which pieces of influencer content are driving conversions.
Shopify Collabs is one such comprehensive tool that provides analytics for influencer campaigns—it can track sales, orders, conversion rate, visits, commission, and more. Pair it with a broader platform like Shopify Analytics, which tracks impressions, engagements, conversions, and customer acquisition.
How to measure influencer success FAQ
How do you measure influencer success?
To measure the success of influencer marketing campaigns, track common metrics like sales and AOV that directly impact your bottom line, as well as conversion and website traffic, which are broader measurements that speak more to brand engagement and awareness.
How do you evaluate an influencer’s performance?
Evaluate an influencer’s performance by measuring their campaign metrics, like conversion rate and referral traffic, against your pre-defined campaign goals. Use tracking links and promo codes monitored through an affiliate platform so you can easily measure influencer marketing ROI.
What are the four Ms of influencer marketing?
The four Ms of influencer marketing are:
Make: Define your business and campaign goals and the type of content you wish to create.
Manage: Identify and engage the right influencers.
Monitor: Track performance metrics and campaign impact.
Measure: Evaluate ROI and apply your findings to future campaigns.
