Influencer marketing has grown from trend to necessity in today’s digital marketing landscape.
Cashing in on this trend means finding out how to navigate an influencer rate sheet and what sort of costs to expect.
Incorporating influencers is all about creating a well-balanced partnership. Don’t let influencer rate cards catch you off guard thanks to this handy guide!
Think of an influencer rate sheet as a menu of an influencer’s services, complete with price breakdowns. Influencers create these rate cards as a way to make it easier for companies to know their compensation expectations and to determine more easily if the financial investment in their services can expect to produce a proper ROI (return on investment) for a brand.
What Do Influencers Charge?
Supply and demand tends to rule all aspects of industry in the modern global economy, be it items, services, or even labor. Per this principle, the sheer volume of influencers that exist across various platforms should drive the price downward, right? The important difference to influencer rate sheet strategy is actually contingent upon your entire influencer marketing strategy as a whole. Being able to mix and match sizes of audiences, find specifically niche-tailored content creators, and researching to build partnerships means even though the influencer industry only continues to grow, there is a winning combination that will work best for your brand (provided you invest time and planning).
Why Rate Cards for Influencers Vary
Influencer rate sheets can still vary dramatically based on the influencer strategy your brand is looking to implement, the types of influencers your brand wants to use, the niche or industry of both your brand and any influencer you’re looking to recruit, and popularity of each influencer to determine the likelihood of partnership. Let’s delve deeper into each of these points to understand an influencer’s expectations.
What Strategy Works For Your Brand?
If the thought of working with influencers has only meant trying to get the attention of an influencer with an obscene amount of followers across platforms to hopefully stand behind your product or service, think again.
Since “influence” is the main component of an influencer adding value to a brand, what counts of influence can easily vary by niche and industry. Influence can have a different meaning based on industry, company size, and end goal of connecting with audiences.
There are nano, micro, macro, and mega tiers of influencers (and potentially others if you want to fine tune descriptions of follower count), giving brands more options than ever to impact audiences of various sizes in different ways. Solely considering influencer rate sheets to determine your strategy is a quick way to lose out on maximum ROI for your budget. Since the main goal of influencer marketing should be to connect with people who will love your brand and services, consider planning to invest time in a strategy to offset prices and achieve even better long-term results.
What Type of Influencer(s) Should You Use?
Choosing influencers wisely hinges on more than just the breakdown of an influencer rate sheet. Influencers with different kinds of audience connection will produce different results. For example, if your main goal is engagement with posts, Micro Influencers on Instagram have an average engagement rate of 3.86% whereas Mega Influencers only average 1.21%. This disparity is even more major on TikTok where Micro Influencers have a 17.96% engagement rate compared to a Mega Influencer’s 4.96% average.
Factoring in platform(s) and the overall goal of the campaign is crucial to determining how much influencers charge in relation to your budget and purpose. If your only goal is eyes on your product, throwing money at a major celebrity will do the job, technically speaking. However, since celebrity influence overall is tanking compared to previous years, developing a strategy with different types of influencers maximizes impact without breaking the bank.
What is Your Industry Niche?
At the core of your marketing strategy, long before even looking at an influencer rate sheet, important factors to consider are your brand’s industry and niche. Some industries, like beauty or cosmetics, have heavy eCommerce competition and need to consider every avenue of strategy before committing to influencer rate cards that may not end up providing proper ROI. To develop a following in the first place, influencers found and capitalized on a niche that made them followable. This concept is essentially what you and your brand are looking to emulate by partnering with influencers. Therefore, for best results, more research on the front end of what drove their popularity and what elements of that align with your brand will make exponential difference on the backend.
When searching for influencers and considering influencer rate cards, your focus and expectations may shift if you also consider approaching them as content-creating partners instead of a one-off billboard-esque sponsored post. By thinking long-term, rates can fluctuate since it’s more about developing increasing rapport over time and investment than just a quick, one-and-done payout.
Does Popularity or Size of Audience Matter?
It would be easy to underestimate an influencer with a smaller follower count in the same way that it would be easy to fall for an influencer that is falsely inflating their count to attract business opportunities. The sway of celebrities and larger influencers is crumbling which makes more room for authentic users of brands and products an ideal influencer to integrate into your strategy. Given the lack of acclaim that usually warrants heavy marketing spending, forging genuine relationships with “smaller” influencers both gets you the audience increase you’re looking for as well as a content-creating partner. With that in mind when looking at influencer rate sheets, the investment level can mitigate your risk much more than courting “large” followings that may end up not getting the response or reach ROI that you had in mind.
The Price You Pay For Influencer Marketing
An influencer rate sheet, in essence, is a guide to the value of a partnership with an influencer and also a good clue into the kind of work you will want to entrust them with as well as the return you would anticipate. Consider that influencers create an influencer rate card with a sense of their value in mind and treat it like a business negotiation. If you have the angle of a long-term relationship or a dynamic role within your marketing strategy, that may be more appealing than staying married to their rates. How much influencers charge is as variant as the landscape of getting into influencer marketing at all. However, since this trend is only increasing over time, there are plenty of ways to begin working your way in. If you’re overwhelmed with options and ideas, don’t fret! USA Link System experts understand the multifaceted strategy angles that are gaining popularity and can customize a plan that fits your goals and budget. Contact us for a free consultation!
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