How Much Does Influencer Marketing Cost?

Influencer marketing is becoming increasingly popular, with 37 percent of marketers portioning off some of their budget to cover influencer marketing costs and many of them planning to increase their expenditure. It’s hardly surprising because there are many influencer marketing cost success stories, and 81 percent of marketers who have tried it consider it an effective method. But how much does influencer marketing cost? Understanding what content creators charge makes it easier to set your budget and get the best possible return on your investment.

How Much Does Influencer Marketing Cost?

Setting Your Influencer Marketing Budget

Most marketers have a defined content marketing budget, but many now have a subset of that budget earmarked for influencer marketing cost. The funds are for campaigns that employ the services of talented content creators across a range of social media platforms. But a budget is much more than the total amount allocated for a given period. It’s an important part of managing business expenses and calculating the return on investment for every campaign. If you don’t know how much you’re spending, it’s incredibly difficult to know if you’re getting value for money.

When you’re determining your budget, you need to consider the various aspects that have an impact on influencer costs:

Platform

When it comes to running an influencer marketing campaign Instagram is a top choice, with 91.9 percent of influencers ranking it as the most important platform. YouTube and Facebook are also popular choices. Costs for working on the most popular platforms are generally higher because there’s a greater demand for influencer services there.

Audience size

An influencer’s audience size is a good indication of his or her reach. A larger reach usually comes with a larger price tag. However, keep in mind that reach isn’t synonymous with engagement and some influencers may even inflate their audience totals with fake followers, so always do your research. Additionally, keep in mind the product you’re selling and the target market you want to reach. If you’re selling a big brand internationally, you’re going to need an influencer with international reach; if you’re promoting your local restaurant, you need a local niche influencer.

Engagement

Influencers work hard to engage with their audiences, encouraging viewers to like, share, and comment. The influencers who manage to generate the highest levels of engagement often command the highest prices.

Scope of the campaign

Obviously, you won’t pay the same for a series of YouTube videos as you would for a sponsored tweet on Twitter. The amount of work involved in creating and sharing content has a direct relationship with how much you’re likely to spend.

Agency fees

You may want to contact influencers directly, but if you do you need to carefully research their work and making sure their audiences are genuine, which takes time and money. The alternative is to work with influencers through a marketplace or influencer agency. There’s far less risk, it’s quicker and easier to find the right person for your campaign, but there may be additional agency fees involved.

Influencer Marketing Cost Examples

As with anything, influencer marketing cost vary significantly, and the final costs depend on what kind of campaign you require, the quality of the influencers, and how good your negotiation skills are. In some cases you may be able to come to an arrangement that doesn’t involve cash. For example, statistics from 2016 reveal 83 percent of influencers claim fewer than half of brands offer cash. Of course, it’s also the case that only 24 percent of influencers accept more than half of the offers they receive. If you want to make sure your proposal is at the top of the pile you need to make sure there’s a good incentive for the influencer, so take the time to learn about expected costs:

Blogs

Need knew content? Asking an influencer to provide a guest blog is a great way to get it in a  cost-effective manner. Some influencers may contribute to your site in exchange for a backlink to their own blog, which helps both of you to improve your SEO, while others are happy to create content for less than $25 per post. The cost for a paid post  depends on several factors.  One factor is the number of impressions a blog receives in a given time period. The bloggers receiving more than 500,000 monthly blog impressions are in a position to charge upwards of $5,000 per post.

Instagram

Often, the amount an influencer earns directly relates to the size of that influencer’s audience. On Instagram, a good rule of thumb is $1,000 for every 100,000 followers.

YouTube

Video is becoming one of the most important tools in a content marketer’s arsenal, with studies suggesting internet users watch an average of 1.5 hours of video online every day. The popularity of video combined with the effort involved in creating video means influencers on YouTube expect to receive $2,000 per 100,000 followers, with prices escalating rapidly for those YouTubers with over 1 million followers.

Snapchat

The calculation for the influencer marketing cost of Snapchat campaigns works on the number of active views because audience size is unknown. Costs range from $500 up to $10,000.

Final Thought: Money Isn’t Everything

Influencer marketing is an important aspect of content marketing with the potential to improve your brand reach and sales. It’s important to understand that the influencer marketing costs involved could wreck your campaign before it’s even underway.

Understanding the influencer marking cost can lead to several benefits. First you are in a better position to make fair proposals to influencers. Secondly, you can reject job quotes that are excessively high.  You’re in a much stronger position to get a solid return on your investment. Just keep in mind that sometimes you get what you pay for. How much an influencer charges isn’t the only consideration to keep in mind. Think about the influencer’s reach, audience demographic, voice, preferred social media platform, and work ethic.