I’m at a point where I need to stop guessing about campaign performance and start proving it to leadership. We’ve run a bunch of influencer and UGC campaigns across different markets—Russia and now pushing into the US—and the results are all over the place. Some campaigns crush it, others underperform, and I honestly can’t explain why to the finance team without sounding like I’m making excuses.
The problem is that traditional marketing attribution doesn’t capture what’s actually happening with influencer work. We’re seeing brand lift, audience growth, engagement spikes, and sometimes direct conversions, but how do you present that to a CMO or CFO in a way that justifies the next budget cycle?
I’ve been looking at case studies and benchmarks, but most of what I find online feels generic and doesn’t account for cross-market differences. A campaign that works in Russia has completely different metrics than one in the US, and our category is pretty niche—I can’t just compare ourselves to beauty brands or e-commerce companies.
How are you guys approaching this? Are you building custom dashboards? Are you segmenting by campaign type? And more importantly, how do you handle the long-term brand value piece when the C-suite wants to see ROI in the current quarter?
Okay, this is exactly what I deal with every day in my role. Here’s the hard truth: you need to stop thinking about ROI as a single number. Your C-suite wants one metric, but influencer marketing doesn’t work that way. Instead, build a framework with multiple dimensions.
I usually segment ROI into three buckets: immediate conversion ROI (trackable direct revenue), brand equity ROI (lift in awareness, consideration, purchase intent), and strategic ROI (market position, customer lifetime value, category dominance).
For the US specifically, I recommend running incrementality studies or holdout tests. Pick a geographic or audience segment where you don’t run influencer campaigns and compare performance against your treated groups. That gives you real lift attribution, not just correlation. It’s more rigorous and finance teams respect it.
For cross-market comparison, use benchmarking tools but don’t trust the defaults. Build your own benchmarks using historical data from your past campaigns. You’ll find that your US campaigns have different CPE, engagement rates, and conversion times than Russia. Own that difference and explain it to leadership upfront.
One more thing: document case studies, but do them right. Pick your best-performing and worst-performing campaigns, and deep-dive into why. What was the creator fit? What was the audience overlap? What was the content format? The CFO doesn’t want to hear ‘influencers drive awareness’—they want to hear ‘when we partnered with creators who had 60-80% audience overlap with our target demo, we saw 3.2x ROAS on this campaign.’
Anna, this is super helpful. The incrementality study idea is interesting—have you found that C-suites buy it, or do they still see it as theoretical?
I think my problem is that we’re mixing direct response campaigns (where ROI is clear) with brand-building campaigns (where it’s not). And I haven’t done a good job explaining to leadership which is which. Plus, when you’re expanding internationally, you’re making long-term bets that don’t always show up in quarterly numbers.
I want to build this framework you’re describing, but I’m not sure where to start. Do you recommend hiring an analyst, or is this something I can structure myself with the tools we already have?
Building on Anna’s point about framework—I’d actually flip the question. Instead of asking ‘what’s the ROI?’, ask ‘what are we trying to learn from this campaign?’ Because if you’re in expansion mode (which you are), your early campaigns aren’t revenue engines yet. They’re learning investments.
I recommend creating what I call a ‘decision framework’ for the board. Show them: here’s what we’re trying to achieve, here’s what success looks like, here’s how we’ll measure it. Then, after the campaign, show data against those metrics. If you nailed the framework upfront, the post-campaign debrief becomes an easy conversation.
For cross-market ROI, standardize your metrics. Define what ‘engaged user’ means in both Russia and US. Define what a ‘qualified lead’ looks like. Then compare apples to apples. You’ll probably find that CFE (cost per follower engaged) and CAC (customer acquisition cost) vary significantly, and that’s okay. Your job is to explain why and show that you’re optimizing each market independently.
One tactical thing: create a ‘campaign performance scorecard’ template. Include metrics like reach, engagement rate, audience quality score, conversion rate (if applicable), and brand lift estimate. Do this for every campaign. After 6-8 campaigns, you’ll have rich data and patterns that leadership can understand.
Also—and this matters for the C-suite conversation—don’t lead with influencer ROI. Lead with customer acquisition cost and payback period. That’s what CFOs understand. ‘This influencer campaign acquired customers at a 40% lower CAC than our paid ads’ resonates way better than ‘we got 50K impressions.’
Also, my advice: build relationships with 2-3 data-savvy creators or agencies in each market who can give you honest performance feedback. Influencers often know more about what’s working than your analytics tools do, because they’re in the trenches. Use them as a reality check on your data.
I love where this conversation is going, but I want to add something: the relationships and network effects of influencer campaigns are real, even if they’re hard to quantify.
When you work with the right creators, you’re not just getting their audience—you’re getting credibility in that community, potential for repeat collaborations, and often referrals to other creators or brands. That network value is huge, especially when you’re expanding into a new market.
So yeah, track the hard metrics that Mark and Alex are talking about. But also tell your C-suite a story about partnership value. ‘We partnered with 5 key creators in the US tech space, and we’ve now got warm introductions to 3 major brands for potential co-marketing.’ That’s real value that doesn’t show up in ROI calculations but matters for long-term positioning.
Also, if you’re doing UGC campaigns specifically, segment your ROI by content type. A 15-second TikTok video will have different performance and repurposing value than a long-form testimonial. Make sure your C-suite knows that you’re creating different types of value, not just comparing everything as ‘content.’