On average, brands earn $5.78 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. But that ROI isn’t guaranteed - especially if you're not working with the right creators. So, how do you identify influencers who will actually drive results on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube?
Finding high-performing influencers requires more than scanning follower counts. You need to analyze their engagement rate, audience authenticity, content quality, and alignment with your brand. Tools like Influencer Hero can help assess factors such as fake followers, conversion potential, and content performance.
In this article, we’ll break down how to find ROI-driven influencers, the metrics that matter, and the tools that make the process more efficient.
There are essentially two ways of working with influencers. Inbound is when influencers reach out to you and outbound is when you reach out to the influencers.
With Influencer Hero you can streamline both ways. By adding custom landing pages to your website influencers can directly sign up for your affiliate program.
For outreach we use automated email sequences with hyper personalized messages to maximize your reply rate.
Below is an overview of the pro’s and con’s for inbound vs outbound.
In marketing you can’t get around defining your ideal customer profile (ICP). This is especially important however with influencer marketing as a clear ICP helps to define your ideal influencer profile (IIP).
The reason this is so important is because you can create multiple IIP personas based on your ICP.
Real example:
We work with a client in the kitchen niche. The main influencers were quite obviously food & cooking influencers. However, by taking the time to think about the ICP we identified several other high performing influencer categories:
The last one was especially interesting where we were able to identify a lot of high performing influencers.
Micro influencers perform better due to higher engagement and authenticity is often referred to but then we see larger influencers sell significant amounts and this rule is invalidated.
In our research where our data scientists analyzed over 10K commercial influencer posts audience size showed a clear correlation with conversion. Which also makes sense: larger audience, bigger reach hence more potential for sales.
The main issue here is the discussion around ROI as there are two variables involved here. Sales but also cost. Larger influencers being more expensive is the main reason micros can lead to higher ROI.
The word “can” is included for a reason. From our experience helping brands to partner with over 30K influencers over the past 7 years we have seen mixed results.
In other words, it depends on the brand and product category. Some brands see better results with macros while others see higher ROI with micros. Test different segments and double down on what works.
What is important is to implement the right strategy when working with different types of influencers. With nano and micro influencers you typically can easily work with affiliate & gifting campaigns (asking for a post in exchange for free product & commission).
With macro’s this can get more difficult and we sometimes fall back to product seeding (no obligation to post). This is especially helpful if your product enjoys organic product placements.
E.g. Let's say you are an active wear brand. By sending products to fitness influencers your products get exposure whenever the influencer wears your clothing in the gym - making product seeding an ideal strategy.
With Mega (500K+) influencers and celebrities (1M+) you typically have to work with fixed payments to get influencers to work with you.
We always recommend using software for influencers search and frankly for every step of the process.
In a competitive landscape like e-commerce you can’t waste your valuable time on manual tasks while your competition is using tools to automate the process.
Below are some options to choose from for finding influencers.
Usually the more expensive options have higher capabilities but this is not always the case. Having used most of these platforms it is surprising that the more costly platforms like CreatorIQ or Grin do not offer more capabilities.
Contract length is another thing to keep in mind as there are many reviews about brands complaining about not being able to cancel their contract.
Influencer Hero is also currently still the only option which offers creator storefronts as an added functionality to the CRM which we are convinced of will be the most important way of working with influencers in the next 5-10 years but this would be a whole article in it self.
Below is a quick overview of some of the options.
For a full breakdown access our article on top 10 influencer marketing software here.
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As much as we explain the importance of top of funnel traffic we know that most of us are primarily looking for conversions which is why our data scientists analyzed over 10K commercial influencer posts to determine the correlation with ROI.
Below are the top 5 metrics which correlate with ROI based on the study:
When deciding which influencers to work with, make sure to keep an eye on these metrics. We provide all these data points for free with our influencer chrome extension.
To read the details of the study, how we conducted it and what the exact findings were, access the full influencer report here.
Finding influencers who deliver high ROI isn’t about chasing follower counts—it’s about alignment, authenticity, and data. By clearly defining your ICP and IIP, leveraging both inbound and outbound strategies, and using the right discovery tools, you can build a pipeline of creators who actually move the needle for your brand.
Still unsure how to find high-ROI influencers? Book a demo with Influencer Hero and get instant access to audience insights, content performance data, and storefront-enabled influencer partnerships.
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