Are influencers a waste of money?

Selling through social media or social commerce is set to boom in the UK, with predictions that the sector will double in value by 2028.

However, a new survey of senior marketers is suggesting that influencers – whether virtual or real – may not be worth the spend for small businesses.

The survey reveals that not only are businesses struggling to determine whether they are getting a return on investment from influencer deals; but actually find it hard to build meaningful partnerships with influencers from the get go.

Blind investment

In a survey of marketers by the influencer marketing agency, SAMY, exactly half of those interviewed said they were unable to prove a return on investment from influencer marketing.

The survey was carried out among senior marketers at 70 global consumer brands.

However, and perhaps reflecting the work that SAMY does, the survey suggests that the failure lies not with the effectiveness of using influencers for marketing a business; but with the marketers, who need to get clued up on how to maximise their relationships.

The survey says that just under half (44%) of respondents say they’re running campaigns “without clear KPIs in place”.

The data also reveals that just under a third of the marketers say “they’re unsure how to gauge the power of influencers to grow a brand’s community” .This is “making it harder to measure success or scale what works”, says the SAMY team.

Lack of connection

However, according to the survey, the key hurdle affecting marketers is not measuring effectiveness, but simply managing to find the right influencer to work with in the beginning. In fact, 60% of respondents said that this had proved difficult for them.

Even among those businesses who did employ an influencer, 40% said that long-term loyalty had proved an issue. “Many still rely on one-off posts instead of deeper, ongoing collaborations with influencers that drive sustained engagement,” wrote the report’s authors.

SAMY has created a framework to help companies select the right influencer; integrate this relationship into their marketing strategy and then measure performance.

Influence and power

The UK social commerce market is projected to more than double, reaching £16bn by 2028. As the TikTok data reveals, social media marketing is where community, engagement and shopping all collide – and inspiration plays a key part in all three of these.

According to a Digital 2025 report from We Are Social, annual social media advertising spend is now £9.02bn, which is an increase of 13.8% year-on-year. It adds that influencer investment has hit £930m, which is a similar year-on-year increase (13.6%).

These survey results confirm that influencer power isn’t waning but that companies just don’t know how to find it, nurture it and then track it.

As brands like Tony’s Chocolonely have proven, there is huge potential for customer growth if they get it right. On the flipside, there is also the potential to damage a brand if the influencer relationship goes sour as a restaurant in San Francisco found out the hard way.

Change of strategy

Businesses must drill down to decide what they want their brand ethos to be and who they are targeting to find the right influencer partner.

They then need to set KPIs for the relationship that they can track. They may even have to completely rehaul their strategy, said Juliet Howes, Influencer Marketing Director at SAMY.

As she explained: “Brands that are treating influencers as long-term partners and strategic collaborators, supported by the right tech, a clear framework, and KPIs that go deeper than vanity metrics are the ones most likely to solve the ROI conundrum.”