{"id":179,"date":"2025-09-17T06:01:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T06:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/?p=179"},"modified":"2025-09-18T16:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T16:31:13","slug":"are-influencers-a-waste-of-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/17\/are-influencers-a-waste-of-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Are influencers a waste of money?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Selling through social media or social commerce<\/a> is set to boom in the UK, with predictions that the sector will double in value by 2028.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

Blind investment<\/h2>\n

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

The survey was carried out among senior marketers at 70 global consumer brands.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>; but with the marketers, who need to get clued up on how to maximise their relationships.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

Lack of connection<\/h2>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

Influence and power<\/h2>\n

The UK social commerce market is projected to more than double, reaching £16bn <\/a>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.<\/p>\n

According to a Digital 2025 report<\/a> 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%).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As brands like Tony’s Chocolonely<\/a> 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<\/a> found out the hard way.<\/p>\n

Change of strategy<\/h2>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

The post Are influencers a waste of money?<\/a> appeared first on Startups.co.uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-startups"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":180,"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ccsbinc.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}