Marketers are being asked to do more with less this year as economic uncertainties continue to impact bottom lines. In fact, many are bracing for no budget growth at all in 2025. Average marketing budgets dropped from 9.1 percent of company revenue in 2023 to 7.7 percent in 2024. This tight-budget trend is expected to continue into 2025. Luckily, we know marketers like you can make magic even on a tight budget, and we’re here to help.
Let’s get your influencer marketing budget justification airtight so you can secure marketing budget approval. Even with budgets shrinking, influencer marketing continues to grow and show healthy returns. We know influencer marketing investment pays off. And we’ll show you how.
In this article, we’ll break down how you can build your business case, present and secure your budget, then successfully implement it. From start to finish. We’ll also go over the current state of influencer marketing budgets and how you can use new Meta campaign attribution to make your budget stretch further. We’ve got all the facts, figures, tips, and tricks to help with your influencer marketing budget justification. Let’s get started.
The Current State of Influencer Marketing Budgets
While marketing budgets on the whole may be tightening, influence marketing spend continues to grow. In the United States alone, influencer marketing spend is expected to crest $9.29 billion this year. That’s up 14.2 percent year over year. This growth rate beats out digital ad spend (at 12.5 percent YoY) and social media ad spend (at 13.6 percent YoY). So plenty of brands are making influencer marketing investments, even over other key marketing sectors.
And that’s just in the U.S. Globally, influencer marketing has a market value of $24 billion. And influencer ad spending is projected to hit $39.33 billion this year. That nets out to $6.51 in influencer ad spend per internet user. And it makes sense why. Consumer preferences favor influencer marketing over traditional advertising methods.
Most brands — 80 percent of them — intend to have a dedicated influencer marketing budget for 2025. And 67 percent plan to increase their influencer marketing spending this year. On average, brands spend about 25 percent of their marketing budget on influencer marketing.
So how much are these influencer marketing budgets? Well, a healthy portion — 43 percent — of brands spend less than $10k on influencer marketing annually. Another 22 percent allocate between $10k and $50k for their influencer marketing budgets. While 14 percent spend $50k-$100k and 11 percent spend $500k or more. As always, your influencer marketing budget justification will depend on your needs, resources, and goals for 2025.
Why Invest in Influencer Marketing Budgets
But why should your CMO sign off on an influencer marketing budget at all? Plenty of reasons. Let’s look at the facts.
- 83 percent of marketers believe influencer marketing is effective in 2025.
- 82 percent of marketers believe influencer marketing generates higher-quality consumers than other marketing tactics.
- The average influencer marketing campaign generates 233,783 engagements.
- 49 percent of consumers make a purchase each month because of an influencer post.
- The average ROI for an influencer marketing campaign is $5.20 for every $1 spent.
Need we go on? Don’t worry. We will.
Influencer content is the gift that keeps on giving, especially in omni channel campaigns. If your decision-makers are looking for ways to stretch your marketing budget across many channels, influencer marketing could be your golden ticket. 63 percent of brands repurpose influencer-generated content on their branded socials. Another 56 percent repurpose influencer content for paid ads. And 50 percent use influencer content for their website and product pages. Plus 43 percent use it for email campaigns, and 9 percent for use in out-of-home activations like billboards
Build Your Business Case
To build a compelling business case to justify your desired influencer marketing investment, you need to know a few things. Begin by asking yourself these questions.
- What are your brand’s marketing goals this year?
- What’s a clear value prop that demonstrates why influencer marketing will help you achieve those goals?
- How will your influencer marketing strategy help you stay ahead of the competition?
- What are the risks and opportunities that accompany this influencer marketing spend and strategy?
When it’s time to present your marketing budget for approval, you’re going to want to have all the answers to any questions your CMO might have. That’s why it’s important to gather the data on these points early in the process.
Whatever your goals, it’s likely influencer marketing can help. Influencer marketing can enhance brand awareness, drive engagement, and ultimately lead to increased conversions or sales. But it’s not enough to tell your decision-makers that. You have to show them.
Support your claims with competitive analysis. Show how key competitors leverage influencer content to capture market share. And identify gaps in the market that your brand could fill.
Next, you’ll want to run a market opportunity assessment. Identify your target audience and any trends or influencer niches that align with your campaign goals. And bring the numbers! Highlight potential ROI from tapping into these groups.
Then it’s time to address risk mitigation. This means assuring your decision-makers that you have a plan to vet influencers, ensure brand safety, and set clear performance metrics to track the efficacy of your campaigns. It’s also not a bad idea to lay out a contingency plan to right the ship if campaigns ever go awry. That could include diversifying influencer tiers, adjusting messaging, or even reallocating budget.
We know, this is a lot. But a compelling business case is the first step to successful influencer marketing budget justification. If you want to gain that coveted marketing budget approval, you have to cover all your basics.
Leverage Meta’s Measurement Capabilities
Luckily, there are plenty of tools to help. Meta’s new AI-driven features make it easier than ever to customize your campaigns around the specific results that matter most to your brand. Whether you’re focused on total conversions, conversion value, or long-term customer loyalty, you can now tailor your influencer strategy to maximize high-impact outcomes.
One of Meta’s standout updates is its new attribution models, which focus on incremental conversions — AKA sales that wouldn’t have happened without your ad. This is huge for showing the true value of your influencer campaigns. Meta’s tests saw a 20 percent boost in incremental conversions, proving that influencer-driven efforts are making a measurable impact on your bottom line. It’s not just fluff.
Meta is also expanding integrations with external tools like Google Analytics and Northbeam, giving you a clearer picture of your cross-platform performance. By connecting your analytics, you can track how influencer content performs across the entire customer journey — not just on Meta’s platforms — helping you optimize spend and prove the broader value of your campaigns. This integration can shed light on how your influencer marketing efforts contribute to overall strategy.
Plus, Meta’s AI-powered optimizations will continually fine-tune your campaigns based on real-time performance. This ensures that your influencer marketing efforts continue to evolve to deliver the best possible results. With Meta’s automation working behind the scenes, you can rest assured your campaigns will be continuously optimized, leading to higher ROI and better outcomes for your brand.
Use Data Points That Win Over Decision-Makers
Now that you’ve got all that data, you need to put it to good use. Marketers love data for good reason. The proof is in the pudding. Don’t be shy about rolling out the numbers that help justify your influencer marketing budget. Be sure to outline:
- Conversion metrics like return on investment (ROI), customer acquisition cost (CAC), and lifetime value (LTV)
- Cost comparisons that show how cost-effective influencer marketing is for your brand compared to traditional advertising tactics
- Industry benchmarks that prove influencer marketing’s prowess, like engagement rates, cost per thousand impressions (CPM), and return on ad spend (ROAS). Be sure to tailor these to the social platforms and influencer types you intend to use in your campaigns as the numbers can vary by channel and influencer tier
- Case studies from successful campaigns that show desirable results you want to replicate
The data will be even more delicious when it helps you secure the influencer marketing investment you need.
Present Your Budget Request
Alright, you’ve done all the heavy lifting to get your budget request in order. Now it’s time to present your influencer marketing budget justification in hopes of securing your marketing budget approval. Take a deep breath.
Your presentation should cater specifically to your stakeholders’ priorities, concerns, and decision-making process. Basically, know your audience and give them what they want, how they want it. A good way to make sure you do is to run a stakeholder analysis before you present. Then tailor your messaging accordingly.
And don’t think you have to do all of this from scratch. Presentation templates can help you structure your budget request clearly and professionally. They’ll guide you through how to incorporate compelling data points, visual aids, and concise narratives that align with (and even exceed) stakeholder expectations.
While we wish you smooth sailing in your budget request presentation, you should also be prepared for a bump or two. Objections are a natural part of the budget request process. You just have to know how to navigate them. Try to anticipate potential objections before you present and come prepared to answer any related questions.
Think about any concerns your decision-makers may have about ROI, influencer credibility, scalability, and more. Come with well-researched answers to their questions and data to support your findings. It’s also a good idea to have some risk mitigation strategies and examples of past successes in your back pocket to ease their worries.
Implementation Timeline and Resources
Every good influencer marketing budget has an implementation timeline and allocated resources. Whether you’re trying to secure budget for Q1 or the entire year of influencer marketing spend, it’s important to outline how and when resources will be used.
Develop a clear phased approach that breaks down campaigns into manageable stages. For example, the breakdown for a single campaign may have a four-phase approach that includes: strategy development, influencer selection, content creation, and then post-campaign analysis.
Once you’ve determined your phases, it’s time to detail the resource requirements for each one. This may include influencer fees, content production costs, or subscriptions to metric tracking companies. You should also consider any technology needed for each phase. Maybe you need analytics software for tracking or to work with a platform for campaign management. These should all be noted.
Of course, you’ll also need the resources of your team. Identifying key roles for team structure can help ensure your budget is most efficiently allocated. The more comprehensive and actionable your budget plan is, the more likely stakeholders will be to trust in your vision.
Monitoring and Reporting Framework
Last but certainly not least, it’s time to track track track! If you want the most bang for your buck and to prove to your decision makers that the influencer marketing budget you proposed is worth their investment, you’ll have to deliver measurable results.
Use KPI dashboards to track the key metrics you identified in your business case. These should provide real-time insights into how your campaigns are performing. And be sure to establish a regular reporting schedule to keep stakeholders informed of your progress.
It’s also a good idea to set performance benchmarks based on either your own historical data or industry standards. These can help you contextualize campaign results and assess how you’re really doing.
Finally, don’t be afraid to identify clear adjustment triggers. If there’s an underperformance in engagement or sales, reassess your strategy. One great thing about influencer campaigns is that they’re fairly easy to adjust on the fly. So identify the weaknesses in your campaigns and strengthen them as you go.
Go Secure Your 2025 Influencer Marketing Budget
There you have it. You’ve got all the goods on how to approach your CMO and internal leaders to ask for the Q1 influencer marketing budget you need. You know as well as we do how lucrative influencer marketing can be for your brand. Now all you have to do is make your case, wow your higher-ups, and secure the funds to go out there and work your marketing magic!
Here at The Shelf, we do a lot more than write blogs full of must-know-info. We help brands like yours run kick-ass campaigns. If you’d like assistance running influencer marketing campaigns in Q1 or beyond, please schedule a strategy call today. One of our experts will help you discover the best way to utilize our full-service agency. We love to see our brand partners succeed.
Can’t wait to see all the influencer marketing magnificence you dream up. Wishing you a happy, generously budgeted Q1!
About This Author
Ariana Newhouse | B2B Writer
I am a freelance writer and comedian based in Los Angeles. While making people laugh is my jam, it’s not always the company brand. So, I strive to make people feel something. My writing philosophy is collaborative, empathetic, and humanistic. At the end of the day, no matter the message, there are real people on both ends of the process.
