- name:
- measure-creator-roi
- description:
- Use this skill when creator spend needs defending or reading — "what's the ROI on our creator campaigns," "build the CFO view," "why does creator attribution look bad." Sets the attribution window creator content actually needs, the five-row CFO dashboard, payback-period math, week-one leading indicators, and the three attribution errors that silently understate ROI 2–3×.
Use when measuring or reporting creator-led growth. Produces an honest ROI readout a CFO can interrogate. The core problem: creator content converts on a considered timeline, and direct-response measurement habits systematically undercount it.
Fix the attribution first
- window: 14–30 days, not 7. Median time-to-MQL on a creator-sourced click runs 9–14 days (vs 2–4 for ads) — buyers read, save, consult colleagues, then convert
- view-through: lift studies show 8–15% incremental traffic that never credits to the post; measure it or accept undercounting
- separation: keep creator-sourced clicks out of the organic-LinkedIn bucket
Correcting these three typically recovers 2–3× in reported ROI without changing a dollar of spend.
Measure the funnel
Standard waterfall — spend → qualified clicks → MQL → SQL → opportunities → closed-won — with a behavioral click definition: tracked AND ≥30 seconds on-site. Reference points from network data: CTR on creator posts runs ~8–14% (vs under 1% for sponsored content), CPL ~€15–25 mid-market vs €55–90 on ads, MQL→SQL ~35–45%.
The CFO dashboard — five rows
- total spend to date
- qualified clicks
- effective CPL
- MQL → SQL → pipeline conversion
- payback period (months)
Payback = spend ÷ monthly gross-margin contribution of the closed-won it produced. A €5,000 quarter yielding €60,000 ARR at 80% margin pays back in ~1.25 months — state it that way, not as an abstract ROAS.
Week-one leading indicators
Before pipeline exists, judge on: CTR ≥8%, landing-page bounce under 55%, lead-form completion ≥10% of clicks. Misses on all three predict a weak cohort — fix the angle or the audience before spending more.
What good looks like
A great readout shows per-creator CPL against the funnel, uses the long window, counts view-through separately and labeled, and ends in a payback number. A mediocre one pastes last-click 7-day numbers into an ads template and concludes creators "don't perform." The overlooked failure: blending creator clicks into organic metrics, which flatters organic and buries the channel that earned them.
MUST use a 14–30 day attribution window. MUST define qualified clicks behaviorally (≥30s on-site). NEVER judge creator spend on 7-day last-click.