Brands relying on spreadsheets, screenshots and fragmented reports to manage influencer marketing could be losing out on more than £734,000 over the course of three years, according to a new study by Forrester.
The study commissioned by influencer marketing platform Kolsquare found that a composite, Europe-based consumer brand would achieve a 127% return on investment over three years after replacing manual influencer marketing processes with a centralised, data-driven platform.
The benefits over three years would amount to £734,000, allowing the organisation to recover its investment in less than six months. The findings expose the operational costs associated with manual campaign management, creator vetting, and reporting.
The study, The Total Economic Impact™ of Kolsquare, was based on interviews with four senior decision-makers working across the retail, beauty and fashion sectors.
“Influencer marketing has outgrown manual processes,” says Quentin Bordage, Founder & CEO of Kolsquare. For brands running campaigns across multiple markets, the challenge is no longer just finding creators. It is building a repeatable, measurable and trusted operating model. We believe this study shows how Kolsquare helps teams save time, strengthen decision-making and give influencer marketing the credibility it deserves inside the business.”
Forrester interviewed four senior decision-makers with experience using Kolsquare across retail, beauty, and skincare, and fashion organisations in France, Belgium, Europe and EMEA. Their experiences were aggregated into a composite organisation: a Europe-based consumer brand running 500 influencer marketing campaigns per year across 10 countries, with a team of 40 influencer marketing and PR professionals.
Interviewees described influencer marketing operations that were difficult to scale. Creator discovery relied on manual research, campaign content was tracked by checking social media platforms directly, and reporting was built from screenshots, spreadsheets and disconnected data sources. That made it hard for teams to compare performance across markets, spot what was working and prove influencer marketing’s impact to leadership.
The study also identified unquantified benefits, including stronger brand salience through social listening, better campaign performance through integrated analytics, reduced reputational risk through more informed creator vetting, and stronger internal credibility for influencer marketing across leadership and partner teams.
The full study, The Total Economic Impact™ of Kolsquare, is available HERE.
