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It’s no secret that the fastest growing brands today have been built with influencer marketing.
Brands like FashionNova, Gymshark and Revolve all spend millions of dollars every year on influencer marketing to promote their products and drive sales.
That’s a lot of money...so how much should you have to spend to get the same results?
How exactly did these brands use influencer marketing to grow their business?
More importantly, how do you even get started?
Keep reading to find out the different ways you can work with influencers and how much you should pay them.
How to Work with Influencers
The influencer marketing industry has changed over the last couple of years.
The days of sending influencers free products and just expecting them to post to their instagram while you collect all the money are in the past.
Put simply: the influencer game these days is no “get rich quick” scheme.
But if you’re building a brand, an influencer marketing strategy is a MUST.
In fact, 75% of brands have a dedicated budget for influencer marketing. That means there’s more competition than ever for the best influencers. This also means that you need a strong influencer strategy to succeed.
There are two main ways you can get value out of influencer partnerships:
Direct Sales
The first way you can work with influencers is the most obvious way: you do a deal where you send an influencer your product and you pay them to post it to their profile.
Paying for a dedicated post to an influencer profile is the most direct type of influencer partnership.
This type of influencer partnership has the most risk.
As a rule of thumb only two out of every ten influencer posts actually drives sales, so you have to be prepared to do a lot of testing.
This is because so many things can impact sales:
- Not posting at the right time
- Posting too many ads (and getting ignored by followers)
- Fake followers
A less risky options for direct sales is an Affiliate Program—an ongoing arrangement that pays influencers a commission for the sales they actually generate.
Sometimes you can get smaller influencers or even larger influencers who REALLY love your brand to join your affiliate program in exchange for free product, especially if you have an established brand.
Influencers are not always willing to promote your product for free so these types of programs are to get off the ground. But it never hurts to try.
Content for Your Brand
One of the best ways to use influencers is to work with them to create content for your brand.
Influencer content gives your brand a more authentic feel. It also shows potential customers how real people use your product.
The greatest thing about influencer content is that you can use it across all your marketing channels, from paid ads to organic posts.
For example, if your business is already doing Facebook ads, one way to use influencers is to pay them to make engaging User Generated Content (or UGC) ads.
UGC ads can be the key to getting more sales, because having real people showcase and talk about your product can be WAY more interesting than a boring product photo that you might use in an ad.
Another great thing about using influencers to create your ad content is the price!
For a fraction of what you might pay for a pro-shot ad, you can get twice as much high-performing UGC ad material.
How Much to Pay Influencers
It’s finally time to talk money.
Instead of jumping to “how much you should pay,” let’s start by asking how much you should spend on influencers.
In other words: what’s your budget?
For Beginners
If you are just getting started, plan to set a test influencer budget of at least $500 to $1000.
With this budget you’ll probably be able to do a couple of test posts or five to ten pieces of influencer content to use in your own ads.
If you’re just looking to have the influencer make content and not post to their profile you’ll usually pay less.
Many influencers will work with you for a budget of $100 to $200 per video. Larger or more established influencers may charge $500 to $1000.
Affiliate Prices and UGC
One way to jumpstart an Affiliate Program is by paying a few influencers a small amount each month (say $100-$200) to be part of the program and make 2-3 posts to their profile over the month.
You would also pay them a commission based on the sales that they generate.
It may be beneficial to start by working with influencers for UGC content.
This way, you can see who is creating the best content and start to build a relationship with your favorite influencers. If they create content you really like, you can follow up your initial deal with a paid post.
The creators you choose might be a great fit for affiliates or brand ambassadors down the line.
Prices by Platform
How much do instagram influencers make?
Instagram by far is the most popular platform for influencer marketing today.
Instagram influencer rates can be a bit all over the map, but if you want an influencer to post to their profile, expect to pay about $10 per thousand followers.
Remember you can also usually negotiate any influencer rate.
TikTok
In our opinion, TikTok will get you the most value because the content is usually more entertaining and has more potential to go viral than Instagram or Youtube.
Right now, TikTok influencers are the least expensive to work with because it's the newest platform and not many brands are on the platform.
Less competition = lower rates.
On TikTok you can work with influencers with over 100k followers for $200 to $500 (which is pretty good!).
YouTube
YouTube influencers are definitely the priciest to work with.
Unlike Instagram or TikTok, where a new post is seen mostly in the first 24 hours, Youtube content can be seen days, weeks, months or even years later.
Working with smaller Youtubers can start between $500 to $1000 for a mention, and $2,000 to $3,000 for a dedicated review video.
Keep in mind that this pricing does vary by niche.
Now that you have an idea of how much to pay, here are a few tips to ensure you get the most out of your influencer campaign:
- Gauge the influencer’s enthusiasm. Make sure that influencer is excited to use your product.
- Create a Brief. A brief is an outline for the type of content you want them to make. Your brief should highlight talking points the influencer can reference about your product, and do’s and don’ts for the influencer to remember.
- Frequency can get you better results. If you can, spread out your posts over a few days or weeks so their followers have more chances to see your brand.It usually takes two to three posts to really start driving sales from an influencer partnership.
Influencer marketing, like most things, requires a bit of trial and error before it can really start boosting your brand.
It'll take a bit of time to learn what works best, but once you nail it, you’ll be in a className by yourself.
Ready to take the leap into influencer marketing? Let us help.
You can schedule a free strategy session with us here.