Only 18% of Marketers Integrate ROI into Influencer Marketing
This year has seen brands take influencer marketing more seriously and dedicate more of its budget to it than ever before. As a result, the industry has begun to look at the measurability of influencer marketing, including its most effective metrics and ROI.Influencer Intelligence’s new report in association with Econsultancy explores how the industry has changed over the last year and considers the challenges being faced and the need to combat them in order to ensure a successful future. The results were interesting. Measuring ROI of individual influencer collaborations has been an ongoing challenge for marketers as the impact of influencer marketing isn’t always instant, and conversions and revenue can sometimes be tricky to quantify. So, it may come as a surprise that just 18% of those who took part in a survey said that they are able to integrate influencer marketing into overall digital marketing ROI calculations, considering the array of data marketers say they are collecting. This is despite a resounding 84% of marketers citing that demonstrating the ROI of influencer marketing will be critical to success in the future. In addition, 31% said influencer marketing is peripheral to their digital marketing ROI calculations, with a further 21% stating it is too much of a challenge to include influencer marketing within their overall ROI measurements. A problem can be the lengthy sales cycle. For example, 28% of respondents said influencers encourage them to immediately click through and buy something, compared to 50% stating that influencers just encourage them to add a product to their wishlist for potential purchase in the future. When interviewed for the report, experts noted the lack of industry benchmarks available currently for influencer marketing ROI. Although, when planning future strategies, 25% claim to review regularly, and adjust their investment in individual influencers accordingly, so there is little doubt that influencer marketing budgets need to increase and become more flexible.