Influencer pricing: Money doesn’t grow on trees, but it does on Instagram!

Del Boy Deals

It’s true that money talks and it’s no different for influencers. They want to be paid suitably for their services and brands need to adhere to that. But how do you know if a creator is charging above the odds or if you’re getting a fair deal? That’s where influencer marketing comes in.

We’ve done the research, the campaigns and have the t-shirt to prove it. Our extensive experience and solid relationships with influencers means we know when your brand should be spending that little bit extra, and when we need to do our best Del Boy impression to negotiate. 

Instagram influencer pricing

According to the 2020 Influencer Marketing Outlook report, Instagram is the top social media platform for Influencer Marketing, followed by YouTube and then TikTok. Instagram influencer pricing can differ from other platforms like TikTok and YouTube, with the latter two being solely video based, Instagram provides more types of content to get a package deal on. Instagram did track an 80% year-on-year increase in video content though.  A creator may charge a certain amount for a grid post and stories separately, but will provide a discount if bought together. 

Rates for Instagram influencers will generally be more set in stone due to the reliability of campaigns on that platform, if someone is well established, they’ll have a pretty consistent engagement rate. TikTok views can be so up and down that it’s slightly more tricky for creators to nail down a set cost.

All about the price tag

We’ve had a lot of conversations with influencers directly and talent agents so we’ve seen what a vast variety of creators charge. However we’d be lying if we weren’t shocked by someone’s fees at least once a day. Naturally those with agents tend to be slightly more, given that the agent will take roughly a 20% cut. Though nowadays, those without agents are becoming few and far between!

A creator will determine a fee by how much time it will take to create their content, consider their reach/engagement (an engagement rate of 2-3% on influencers’ posts is what you want to look for), their following, the list goes on. The higher their numbers are, the higher the price tag is likely to be!

Work it out

From experience, we can normally take a rough guess on how much an influencer should charge based on their following, but to get that accuracy for clients, we work out their CPM rate. CPM is an expression of how much it costs to generate a thousand impressions. We do this by using first party impressions data from the creators and their standard fee. The lower the CPM, the better value for money you are getting. 

Added extras

It’s important not to forget two very key things that can increase an influencer’s fees – usage and exclusivity. Usage is how and if the brand wants to use the content an influencer creates for a campaign. If the brand would like to simply report on their own social channels, this is organic usage and most creators/agents are relaxed about this and might not charge an extra fee. However, if the brand wants to create an ad asset or boost the post to reach more people, this can hike up fees significantly. 

Exclusivity is pretty self-explanatory, can the influencer work with competitors? If not, the cost for them to work exclusively with one brand in a certain sector can increase the fee further (depending on how many competitors and how long exclusivity is needed for). 

Don’t take the biscuit

Whichever way you work it out, there is always room for negotiation. But, just remember that content creation is more than taking a pretty picture. It takes creativity, resources and a whole lot of time. Once you have that balance of what the brand needs and what the creator can provide, you’ll be a deal making master.

Share this on social media if yourself or a brand you know needs these services.