Influencer marketing expands your brand’s reach and speaks to a generation tired of overproduced and inauthentic advertising. Consumerstrust influencers’ recommendations(61%) compared to a brand’s social media account’s recommendations (38%).
Even if you’re familiar withinfluencer marketingand branded content, when it comes toinfluencer pricing, everyone seems to have an opinion. There isn’t a standard way to measure performance in influencer marketing, so determining the right influencer for your brand, what platforms you want them to broadcast on, and how much you should pay them can be complicated.
Factors to consider before partnering with influencers
Before reaching out to influencers, consider your strategy and goals.
What are your goals?
To gauge the success of your partnership, write out your goals and specifykey performance indicators(KPI) in a spreadsheet or planning document. The following KPIs are a good starting point:
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase sales (you can also track affiliate sales in as a KPI in Shopify Collabs)
- Increase followers
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketingis a sales model where a brand pays a third-party to recommend products or services to their audience. In return the third-party receives a referral commission. Most brands have an affiliate program because it’s low-risk and a commission is only paid after products are purchased.
When you set up an affiliate marketing program make sure youset it up and track itproperly. TheShopify Collabs appis built to help merchants create, manage, and track affiliate sales.
Find influencers to drive sales with Shopify Collabs
Shopify Collabs makes it easy to partner with creators, promote your products, reach new customers, grow your sales, and track affiliate campaign performance all from Shopify admin.
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Production arrangements
While production arrangements are likely something you won’t need to worry about, it’s still a good idea to be well versed on what that means. Depending on your business and partnership you may need to consider:
- If your influencers are expected to travel and what arrangements may need to be made?
- Do they need to rent a studio?
- What kind of equipment do they need for content creation?
Timeline for content production
Factor in how long it will take for the influencer to produce the content you need. Asking for multiple posts in a short time frame might make your offer hard to accept, especially with in-demand influencers who have other contracts to fulfill. To take that into account, bank in a few extra weeks for negotiations and final arrangements.
Instagram influencer pricing
The 2021average costfor an Instagram post was $1170 and $906 for an Instagram story. While these estimates are averagesinfluencers, it’s helpful to predict your budget.
Influencer rates should be based on follower count and engagement rate. However, there are other factors that can impact a rate, such as talent and access to a niche audience.
Typically influencers have rate sheets they have for the content they are willing to produce. Use those rates as defaults when modeling and predicting outcomes. Since the influencers understand their audience and reach, a partnership might not even require negotiation. According toInfluencerMarketingHub, the standard Instagram influencer rate sheet based on reach is as follows:
- Nano influencers (1000 - 10,000 followers): $10 - $100 per post
- Micro influencers (10,000 - 50,000 followers): $100 - $500 per post
- Mid-tier influencers (50,000 - 500,000 followers): $500 - $5,000 per post
- Macro influencers (500,000 - 1,000,000 followers): $5000 - $10,000 per post
- Mega influencers (1,000,000+ followers): $10,000+ per post
As a baseline, the industry standard is $100 per 10,000 followers. You can use the following formulas as generic guides:
$100 per 10,000 followers + number of posts + additional factors (i.e. expenses for shoot, usage, exclusivity) = total rate.
Alternatively, estimate an influencer’s base rate by calculating 4% of their following and adding the number of posts + additional factors to get your final rate.
TikTok influencer pricing
Theaverage costfor a sponsored TikTok is $3,514. That’s the second highest after YouTube which averages $4,491 per video. While the cost for a TikTok is three times that of an Instagram post, producing video content is more time consuming than creating a photo.
If you want to speak to a younger audience and have a budget, using a TikTok influencer is your best bet. TikTok is forecasted to reach41.4 million Gen Z usersthis year, surpassing Instagram’s 37.3 million. Plus, TikTok’s algorithm allows for a superior level of engagement, making your chances ofgoing viralmuch higher than on other platforms.
Since TikTok is a much newer app than Instagram the rates are even more varied.According to IZEA, the average cost per TikTok based on influencer tier is as follows:
- Nano influencers (1000 - 10,000 followers): $800 per post
- Micro influencers (10,000 - 50,000 followers): $1,500 per post
- Mid-tier influencers (50,000 - 500,000 followers): $3,000 per post
- Macro influencers (500,000 - 1,000,000 followers): $5,000 per post
- Mega influencers (1,000,000+ followers): $7,000+ per post
David Gaylord, whose companyBushbalmsells products to razor burn, dark spots, and other commonly ignored skin irritations the natural way, uses thisformula to assess influencer value:
Cost per thousand (CPM) of an influencer = Average # of views, likes, and comments, from their last 5 pieces of content/cost of content.
Factors that affect influencer pricing
There are several factors that affect influencer pricing beyond audience size and engagement rate.
Usage rights
If you want to have the rights to the content your influencer produces for advertisements or to later repurpose, chances are this will affect the influencer’s rate.
Exclusivity
An exclusivity-clause, preventing your influencer from working with your competitors, will likely cost you. Since this might block them from accepting lucrative deals, factor this in when you negotiate and budget.
Agency Fees
Many influencers are represented by agencies or managers, who typically charge additional fees.
Campaign length
运动长度将会直接影响到正无穷luencer pricing. A one time activation such as running a contest or promotion will cost less than a long-term endorsement contract. Building a risk-model, specifically for long-term partnerships, that outlines the best-case scenario can be helpful when determining your budget.
Post combos
If you’re interested in using more than one platform, you can ask your influencer to create content for two or more channels. The post combo will cost extra but maximizes the reach of the campaign by engaging multiple audiences.
Rush fee
It’s not uncommon for influencers to have existing contracts in place. Depending on how much time is given to an influencer for their deliverable, a rush fee may be applied.
Link in bio
Since you can’t put a link in a TikTok or Instagram caption, adding alink in biois a good idea if your goal is to drive traffic. This addition will likely cost extra.
Key metrics when pricing influencers
We’ve discussed what to consider before partnering with influencers and factors that affect influencer pricing. However, it’s also important to consider these metrics when determining financial outcomes. Here is a list of key metrics to include in your financial model:
Sponsored post %
It’s not unusual for sponsored posts to receive lower engagement, especially if influencers are posting a lot of them. Since this could drastically affect your projections, be sure to do your research when projecting impact.
Demographics
Demographics can also play a role in establishing your campaign metrics. For example: If your influencer has 30 thousand followers, a 5% engagement rate, and 50% of their audience is based in the US (and your store is only shipping to the US) your effective model could project approximately eight qualified buyers assuming a 1% purchase rate on engagement.
Follower Growth %
If your influencer's reach is growing rapidly, you could get a lot more views for your advertisement. Oftentimes, influencers don’t know how fast their audience is growing compared to others and it’s a helpful resource when planning.
Bots
Always check fake engagement and followers when planning to work with a perspective influencer. Look out for these three telltale signs of bottraffic:
- Sporadic follower growth
- Inconsistent engagement rates
- Low quality engagement (such as repetitive and vague comments)
Influencer marketing ROI
Measuring yourinfluencer marketingreturn on investment(ROI) is one of the best ways to determine if you’re paying the right amount for an influencer. To calculate ROI use the following formula:
(Total gain on investment - cost of investment) ÷ cost of investment
For example, if you invest $2,000 in your influencer marketing campaign and get back $9,000, your ROI is 350%.
Influencer rate sheets and results
While being able to calculate your ROI is a good indicator of whether an influencer partnership is worth continuing, you’ll need to hire an influencer before you know what your ROI will be.
Ask your prospective influencer for their rate sheet. This will have their rate information and likely include performance results as well.
Types of influencer partnerships
通常,有影响力的人将有一个press kitthat includes rates and types of partnerships available. Read on to learn about different types of influencer partnerships and how to choose the best fit for what you’re looking to achieve.
Affiliate marketing
As mentioned earlier,affiliate marketingis a sales model where a brand pays an influencer to promote their products or services in exchange for a commission based on sales resulting from their referral. Affiliate marketing is popular with brands because there are no upfront costs. Depending on the influencer, commission rates can be anywhere from 5% to 50%.
Brand ambassador
A brand ambassador is an influencer who will consistently share content about your brand and products. This is a long-term partnership and because your brand ambassador will be closely associated with your brand, it’s important you choose them wisely.
Sponsored content
A standard sponsored post will include either a photo or video and a caption. Typically, the influencer will create the content and in some cases the product or service is featured in it as well.
Gifting
Some brands will send products to influencers in hopes of a positive feature on their platform. While you might be able to arrange gifting in exchange for a shoutout with nano and micro influencers, this tactic is less effective with larger creators.
Giveaways
Giveawaysand contests are a great way to grow followers and brand awareness. These short-term partnerships can involve multiple influencers.
Your giveaway budget should outline the associated costs, the prize costs, and the predicted return. Giveaways generally produce a positive ROI, so you should aim to run a profit on your campaign. If you’re selling a product, that means your influencer budget and prize costs should be less than your expected sales return. If you’re running an awareness campaign your prize and influencer budgets should be less than the returned media value.
One way to predict media value is to determine how many impressions, followers, engagements, or other factors you are measuring and find an industry comparable to benchmark against.
Caption mention
Acaptionmention is similar to a sponsored post but usually without a visual. They can be used for any call to action and are a cheaper option because they require the least production costs and time.
Platform takeover
A platform takeover is when an influencer creates content for a brand’s account for a specific duration of time. Takeovers are most popular on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat. It’s best for increasing followers and expanding your brand’s reach. As a result, you might want to use a formula adding up different types of posts involved in the takeover, theinfluencer’s hourly ratefor planning, and the potential number of new followers from the partnership.
Create long-lasting partnerships with brand-aligned influencers who fit within your budget. Nothing is more effective than social proof and word-of-mouth recommendations which is what makes influencer marketing so powerful. Not sure how to connect with influencers? Shopify Collabs allows merchants to send influencers gifts and affiliate links to promote their products to the creator’s audience.
Influencer pricing FAQ
What do you need before you contact a prospective influencer?
Understand your business model and what success looks like before discussing a project and price with a prospective influencer.
How should you treat the influencer partnership process?
Treat the partnership process like a sales opportunity.
如何确定你的影响力竞选budg吗et?
Determine if you are comfortable paying on an affiliate basis, fixed payment, gifting, hourly rate, licensing deal, or a combination of the above.
How do you know what type of influencer you should approach for your business?
Look for an influencer with experience in that type of campaign and ask to see their rate sheet.
What additional benefits will you net with a successful influencer partnership?
You’ll build strong relationships with the creators you partner with. Building trust will lead to more organic relationships and trust among friends in the influencer community. Keep your relationships top-of-mind and your influencers will sing your praises to other creators.
How do you plan for and measure for a successful influencer campaign?
Associate all of your planning with a quantitative model. Even if you are making assumptions, it’s better to have something to benchmark against.