How Much Do Influencers Charge?
The rising costs of Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has recently joined the big league of high-end digital advertising options, with Instagram being the catalyst that drives its increased demand. Given that 70% of teenagers trust influencers over celebrities, it’s safe to say that influencer marketing is only going to get bigger.
Creating a highly engaging sponsored post isn’t a walk in the park. It demands creativity, practical understanding of the platform’s tools, time, labor, large social media followers, and other miscellaneous expenses. Brands can try it out themselves, but it won’t gather as much engagement as it should had it been tweaked by a macro or mega influencer. The reason why some Influencers charge an exorbitant price is because of their ability to influence customers buying decisions.
Before we jump right into the topic properly, we’d love to briefly discuss the factors that affect the cost of each influencer marketing campaign. Understanding the factors discussed below will enable you to adjust your budget accordingly to find a price that works for both you and the influencer.
Factors Affecting the Cost Of Influencer Marketing
Platform
This is more like the chessboard where the chess game is played. The social media platform you choose for your campaign plays a huge role in determining your cost. The cost of influencer marketing varies across channels. It’s as though each social media platform has its own unique ‘market’ rate. Instagram takes the lead when it comes to influencer marketing, followed by YouTube and SnapChat. Surprisingly, influencer marketing is less common on Facebook and Twitter.
Following
Influencer pricing typically varies greatly and takes into account the number of followers and fans the influencer has, the amount of engagement their posts generally garner. So influencers with a larger fan base & followers will usually charge more. The number of followers alone won’t cut it since some influencers buy fake followers to grow their accounts; however, the number of followers is the 1st metrics to look out for when selecting an influencer to work with.
Engagement
Engagement is one of the various alternative metrics brands use to checkmate influencers with fake followers. While it’s easy to buy fake followers, it’s harder to buy fake engagement (though, it’s not impossible). When influencers can get their followers to engage with their social media posts, the influencer marketing campaign becomes more useful for the brand as those followers are mainly engaging with the brand. Hence, the higher the engagement rate the influencer gets, the more expensive the cost you’ll be charged. When it comes to using only engagement metrics to evaluate the worth of an influencer, brands might have to consolidate more on all six factors affecting the cost of influencer marketing, especially with the on-going beta test that calls for the removal of Instagram like feature in some countries.
Product
The more expensive the product you’re trying to market is, the more cost you’ll incur from the campaign. Hiring an influencer to promote a well-furnished house will generally cost more than hiring an influencer to promote a facial cream.
Direct Partnership or Agency
Working with a talent agency is more expensive than working with an influencer directly because the talent agency would usually charge a commission for connecting you with the right influencers. Also, influencers that are part of a talent agency are often more experienced with influencer marketing and would command a higher fee.
Campaign
The more work the influencer has to do, the more expensive the campaign will be. Here are some questions to think about:
- How many posts do you want from the influencer?
- Who handles the content curation? You or the influencer?
- Do you want the influencer to cross-post to their other social media profiles?
- Do you want the influencer to keep the post on their profile permanently? (Some influencers delete their sponsored posts after the campaign.)
How Much Does Influencers Charge Per Sponsored Post?
Sponsored content from social media influencers is not getting any cheaper as the day goes by. The rising cost of influencer marketing is listed as one of the top marketing challenges when it comes to working with influencers; especially when it comes to video content.
According to a report from eMarketer, nano influencers (influencers, whose number of followers are between 500 and 5,000) make an average of $315 per YouTube video. The price of sponsored video content goes up, of course, for influencers with more massive followers and fans.
IgniteVisibility revealed that influencers, on the average, charge the following amount:
- Instagram Influencers: $1,000 per 100,000 followers
- Snapchat Influencers: Starts at $500 per campaign in 24 hours
- YouTube Influencers: Roughly $2,000 per 100,000 followers
Influencer Rates
Instagram influencer costs rise even more when they have more followers. Expect your social media marketing cost to go up if you engage macro (Power Influencers) & mega (celebrities) influencers to promote your goods or product.
Power-influencers (people with between 30,000 and 500,000 followers) will charge you on average $775 per post for video content, $210 for story content, and $507 for image content. Expect influencer marketing pricing to run into the thousands per post if you choose to work with mega influencers. Mega influencers (celebs) usually have more than 500,000 followers.
Cost of Influencer Marketing Cost per Platform
| Social Media Platform | Pricing |
|---|---|
| $25/1000 Followers | |
| $10/1000 Followers | |
| $2/1000 Followers | |
| YouTube | $20/1000 Subscribers |
| SnapChat | $10/1000 Followers or Views |
| Blog | $60/1000 Views |
Given the relative recency of its sudden rise, influencer marketing is still unregulated and uncontrolled in the digital marketing stratosphere. What this means is that there are no set rules or procedures on how to figure out the right influencers to trust, and, more importantly, knowing how much you should expect to pay.
How Do You Determine The Right Price To Pay An Influencer?
It’s the call of influencers to give you a price quote and the terms of their services, however, it’s equally your right to negotiate their rates. So here’s how to determine the right price range to pay an influencer;
- Through Influencers who have disclosed their rate per post
- Brands who reveals the set rate they pay influencers per post
- Influencer marketing platforms like TapInfluence & Revfluence with engagement calculators to standardize and recommend payment structures.
- Brands who work with influencer platforms and are open about how much they pay per post
These don’t tell the full story, though. Regardless of what the rates are, it’s highly crucial to look at things from a business standpoint and then ask yourself these questions
- What’s the potential ROI here?
- What’s the potential reach?
- How valuable is their audience?
- Does their type of audience correlate with your intended target customers?
- What have they done for other brands and products?
- How many views, likes, and comments did their sponsored & non-sponsored posts get?
- How many daily engaged followers do they have? What are the demographics of those followers?
After you’ve figured out answers to the above questions, then you compare and contrast by asking
- How much is it going to cost me to replicate this same result through other marketing efforts?
- How does this compare to other marketing efforts?
When it comes to influencer marketing, it’s essential to keep tabs with the data you need to evaluate and gauge the worth of an influencer. Influencer marketing is on pace to become an 8 billion dollar industry by 2020! So if you haven’t started collaborating with influencers to market your business on Instagram, now is the time.
