Launching an influencer marketing campaign is an effective way to leverage social media marketing to grow your company's brand awareness, and ultimately its revenue. In many cases, your audience of potential customers is going to be more responsive to content from their favorite social media influencer than they are to content that comes directly from your brand.
However, influencer marketing is also one of the least-understood types of social media marketing, leaving many companies unsure of how to start an influencer campaign. Below, we’ll clear up some of the confusion as we discuss the cost of influencer marketing and how to estimate the ROI of your influencer marketing campaign.
How Much Influencers Are Charging Brands per Platform
One major factor that can affect what influencers charge is the specific social media platform that they use. To help you estimate how far your influencer marketing budget will take you, let's take a look at the average price of working with an influencer based on their number of followers and their platform of choice.
If you would like to partner with a content creator on Instagram, you can expect to pay an average of $271 per sponsored post. Micro-influencers on Instagram — defined as influencers with less than 1,000 followers — charge an average of $83 per post. An Instagram influencer with more than 500,000 followers — known as "mega-influencers" — will typically charge $3,000 or more per Instagram post.
Recommended Reading: Find & Hire influencers to boost your marketing!
Snapchat
Until recently, Snapchat did not display users’ follower count, and Snapchat influencers based their fees on the number of views that their posts received rather than their follower count. As of November 2020, Snapchat users are able to display their follower count publicly. Nevertheless, many Snapchat influencers continue to structure their fees based on the number of views that a sponsored post receives. On average, you can expect to pay $10 per post, per 1,000 views when working with a Snapchat influencer.
YouTube
Like influencers on other platforms, most YouTube influencers structure their fees based on their number of followers, or "subscribers" on YouTube. However, YouTube videos can get many views from users who are not subscribed to the content creator. Because of this, YouTube influencers tend to charge more per number of subscribers than influencers on other channels.
Another reason why working with a YouTube influencer is typically more costly is the fact that high-quality YouTube videos are harder to create than other forms of social media content. With all of that said, you can expect to pay an average of $2,000 per sponsorship per 100,000 subscribers when working with a YouTube influencer.
Twitter tends to be one of the more affordable platforms for an influencer marketing campaign. This is partially due to the brief nature of Twitter posts; they are limited to 280 characters, but do also give users the option to add images. On average, Twitter influencers charge just $2 per post per 1,000 followers.
TikTok
TikTok is one of the newer social media platforms on the market, but that certainly hasn't hampered its popularity. On TikTok, users are able to post short-form videos that are less than three minutes long. These videos can include filters, music, or other audio enhancements. If you plan to launch an influencer marketing campaign on TikTok, you can expect to pay $5-$25 per post for an influencer with less than 10,000 followers, and $2,500+ per post when working with an influencer with more than a million followers.
Factors That Impact an Influencer's Cost
The average cost of an influencer campaign also depends on factors beyond channel and follower count. Here’s what you should keep in mind as you compare and negotiate payment structures:
Their Preferred Social Media Platform
As mentioned above, the social media platform that an influencer prefers can have a major impact on the price, with YouTube being one of the more expensive platforms and Twitter being one of the more affordable. The platform that your sponsored post will appear on is a major factor in determining whether or not an influencer's rates are fair and competitive.
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Their Follower or Subscriber Count
By far the most significant factor that determines how much an influencer charges per sponsored post is the size of their audience. Working with an influencer who has amassed hundreds of thousands of followers is going to be much more expensive than working with a nano-influencer who has only a few hundred followers.
It's also important to keep in mind that many mega-influencers with over a million followers will charge an additional premium for sponsored posts. This is due to their name recognition, which has value beyond the number of people who will see the post.
The Type and Amount of Content They Produce
If all other factors are the same, paying for a sponsored post that is only a few lines of text is going to be more affordable than paying for a video. Videos are much more labor-intensive and time-consuming for influencers to produce.
How often the influencer posts sponsored content is another factor to keep in mind. Some influencers are very picky about the products they sponsor and how often they do so. These influencers tend to charge more than those who promote products to their audience on a regular basis.
Contract Agreements Including Usage Rights
The final factor that can influence how much you’ll pay for influencer content is the unique details of your contract with the influencer. For example, if you wish to retain full usage rights for the content that an influencer produces, you may have to pay extra. Some companies also choose to structure their contracts so that the influencer is paid a fee that is based on the number of conversions that their sponsored post produces. Structuring your influencer contracts this way causes the price to increase or decrease based on the success of the campaign.
Considerations When Evaluating the Cost of Working With an Influencer
All of the factors we've discussed so far can certainly be useful for estimating the average cost of an influencer marketing campaign. However, the most accurate way to determine the cost of your campaign is to simply request a quote from the influencer that you would like to work with. Once you have this quote in hand, there are several important considerations to keep in mind:
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How Will You Calculate the ROI of an Influencer Campaign?
As with any digital marketing campaign, it’s essential to estimate the ROI of your influencer marketing campaign before you give it the green light. One of the simplest ways to estimate the ROI of an influencer campaign is to examine the performance of the influencer’s past sponsored posts, paying careful attention to the engagement rate. Whenever possible, ask the influencer for additional details regarding the revenue that their past campaigns have produced to get a better estimate of the ROI you can expect from your own campaign.
In addition to estimating the ROI of your campaign before it launches, it’s also important to calculate ROI after it ends. In some cases, this can be as simple as calculating the revenue of products sold through the campaign. If the goal of your campaign is to promote brand awareness rather than driving conversions, calculating its ROI can be a little more complex. In this case, you will need to evaluate the exposure that your brand receives and determine if that exposure is worth the cost of the campaign.
Does the Influencer's Rate Make Sense Based on Channel and Follower Count?
Once an influencer has given you a quote for a sponsored post, make sure that their rate is competitive with the industry averages. Take into account the factors we've covered, such as the type of content being produced, the channel where it will be published, and the influencer's follower count.
Sometimes, there are reasons why an influencer is justified in charging more than the average rate. For example, if an influencer has an especially high engagement rate, they may charge more than an influencer with the same number of followers and a lower engagement rate. Mega-influencers also tend to break from industry averages when setting their rates due to name recognition and the value associated with a product having their stamp of approval.
The demographics of an influencer's following can also impact the rates that they charge. The 18- to 34-year-old age demographic has long been considered the most lucrative demographic for advertisers, so influencers with an audience of this age demographic may charge higher rates.
If you discover that an influencer's rates are too far above or below the average rate based on channel and follower count, you may want to investigate further.
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How Did Their Previous Campaigns Perform?
Before you sign a contract with an influencer, carefully examine the performance of their past campaigns. Whenever possible, try to determine how much revenue those campaigns generated for the sponsoring company.
There are also several other types of data that you can use to determine the performance of an influencer's past campaigns. The number of views that their past sponsored posts received is obviously one useful metric to consider. You should also consider the overall engagement rate of these posts by looking at things such as the number of likes, comments, and shares.
Ideally, the influencer you’re thinking of hiring will be more than willing to discuss past performance and provide you with all the data you need to make a decision. If an influencer is unwilling to provide any details (and they aren’t bound by an NDA or contract), you should take that as a red flag and may want to look elsewhere.
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Once you’ve found an influencer that you would like to partner with, Popular Pays then enables you to easily and thoroughly vet them based on past performance, audience insights, and their current portfolio of content.
Get started on your search for the perfect social media influencer for your next influencer campaign — check out Popular Pay's industry-leading influencer database today!
