Report: Advanced influencer marketing delivers greater revenue
July 13, 2023
CreatorIQ, the end-to-end creator marketing platform, has released findings from its Unleashing the Power of Creators report, demonstrating a direct correlation between influencer marketing investment and increased ROI.
According to the report, conducted by independent research firm Aberdeen Strategy & Research, brands with the most advanced influencer marketing programmes see far better results from their efforts than competitors with less sophisticated influencer marketing programmes.
Influencer Marketing Leaders — defined as brands in the top 20 per cent in metrics like impressions, engagement, conversion, and annual revenue attributed to influencer marketing efforts — outperformed the lower 80 per cent in year-over-year improvement across KPIs in all stages of the funnel. These Influencer Marketing Leaders saw:
- 9.1x greater improvement in impressions
- 8.2x greater improvement in engagement
- 11.7x greater improvement in conversion rates
The study also noted far greater YoY increases in customer retention, brand sentiment, customer satisfaction, and average customer profit margin among the top 20 per cent of brands versus competitors.
Perhaps most importantly, heightened influencer marketing efforts contributed to a 6.2x greater YoY improvement in annual revenue, leading to a Return-On-Creator-Spend (ROCS) of $4.70 on every dollar invested in influencer marketing programmes.
As a result, brands in the top 20 per cent of influencer marketing spend say that they plan to invest 30 per cent more in their influencer marketing programmes on average in the future. While brands have increased spending on both digital advertising and creator marketing in the last year, the report shows that brands anticipate increasing their investment in creator marketing programmes at a rate 13 per cent higher than digital advertising.
“The time to adopt and scale creator marketing efforts is now,” said Tim Sovay, Chief Business Development & Partnerships Officer at CreatorIQ. “And the more advanced brands get with their influencer marketing efforts, the wider the gap they create between themselves and competitors across every KPI, including revenue. With investment in creator marketing solutions only increasing in the years ahead, brands lacking a solid strategy and solution will only get left further behind.”
Unleashing the Power of Creators is based on a survey of over 200 marketing executives in the US and UK across multiple industries, including Beauty, Consumer Electronics/CPG, Gaming, Media/Entertainment, Retail/Fashion, and Food/Beverage.
The report comes on the heels of CreatorIQ’s brand and agency survey, where 67 per cent of marketers reported increasing creator investment YoY, with 76 per cent of these organisations diverting funds from other marketing functions. This is mainly due to advancements in measurement solutions, which helped 94 per cent of organisations understand and attribute sales to creator efforts.