Influencer marketing is booming. It now affects practically all sectors: fashion, beauty, travel, lifestyle, decoration, culinary, but also high-tech, e-health, financial services, responsible consumption, social and solidarity economy, culture, sport, well-being…
Two or three years ago, nano influencers, with less than 10,000 followers, were accessible to small brands for collaborations, in the form of a goodwill exchange, i.e. visibility in exchange for a product or service offered.
Today, solicited by big brands, for their great proximity to their audience, many nano influencers tend to be more demanding. They expect partnerships with brands to bring them revenue or visibility. However, some still accept collaborations in the form of an exchange of services, if they like the offer or the proposal. When it comes to a paid campaign, how much can it cost?
Factors affecting the cost of an influencer marketing campaign
There are several options available to you. You can run your campaign directly. In this case, you must define your influencer strategy, your action plan, the targeting of influencers, manage the relationship with them and manage the campaign yourself. Be careful, it’s not just a matter of contacting influencers on the fly, asking them to collaborate!
Learn more about how to launch influencer campaigns to support your development strategy.
You also have the option of using an influencer agency to carry out the influencer campaign for you. In this case, a certain budget is required. Another intermediate option: you can be coached to effectively manage your influencer campaign yourself. This coaching has a cost, but it is much lower than that of an influencer agency.
Finally, you can also use an influencer platform. To name but a few: there is Influence4You, Hivency, Octoly, Ifluenz…
It is generally an expense of a few hundred euros per month, not including the payment of the influencers. These platforms make it easier to get in touch with influencers, but they don’t exempt you from doing the upstream thinking, i.e. defining your strategy, your action plan and your targeting criteria.
The sector
Rates differ according to the sector. The more specialized the influencer’s positioning, the higher the rate. In this logic, a high-tech influencer costs more than a lifestyle influencer.
The size of the audience
The number of followers of an influencer conditions his level of remuneration.
But here, be careful to check the quality of their audience. To inflate their audience and therefore their remuneration, some do not hesitate to use bots or buy fake followers. But fake followers degrade the ROI of influencer campaigns.
Some big brands have been caught out. For example, the hotel chain Ritz-Carlton would have used influencers for its campaigns on Instagram, with 78% of their followers suspected of being bots, according to a report by Points North Group, dating from March 2018.
Here are 5 tips for detecting fake influencers
Social network algorithms favor posts that the audience interacts with. They make them more visible by moving them up in the feeds. And when an influencer shows a high engagement rate for his posts, it means that his audience gives him credit and that they are interested in his content. So, collaborating with such an influencer generates interactions around your brand and boosts its visibility. This is why the cost of a campaign increases with the rate of engagement.
But once again, beware of fake followers and their fake comments, artificially increasing the engagement rate. Before embarking on a partnership with an influencer, consider scrutinizing the comments on their posts. These should be pretty much correctly written and related to the posts.
The social network
Collaboration rates vary depending on the social network. An influencer campaign on YouTube costs more than one on Instagram.
The nature of the partnership
How many posts is the influencer expected to publish? Do you also want stories?
Who creates the content? Is it you or him? What type of content (posts, videos…)?
If you use an influencer to produce a video, it will cost you much more than a simple publication.
The appeal of the influencer to your offer or brand
An influencer who is interested in your offer or brand will be less fussy about their pricing. And if you’re a young brand, a nano influencer who is attracted to your offer may even accept an unpaid collaboration. Being creative and authentic can help you do this. To do this, create a campaign around your story, your universe and your values and put forward an experience.
Influencer rates
There is no official price list as such. But here is a range of prices charged by influencers:
- For an Instagram post, it is necessary to count between 1 to 1.5 cents per follower
- For an Instagram or Snapchat story, 4 to 6 cents X the number of views
- For a YouTube video, 6 to 10 cents X number of views
To this budget, add the value of the product or service you offer to the influencer.
These rates are valid for a B2C influencer campaign. B2B practices are quite different. You generally don’t need to pay influencers, unless you are using an influencer who is a speaker by trade for an intervention.
In summary, the price of an influencer campaign depends on different parameters: the size of the influencer’s audience, their engagement rate, the social network, the nature of the partnership… and the appeal of the influencer to your offer and your brand.
If your offer is innovative, you have every chance of seducing an influencer and lowering the bill, or even considering an unpaid collaboration with nano influencers.
And if not, you still have the possibility to activate the lever of creativity and authenticity by proposing an original campaign, which looks like you and which could make the influencers and their audience want to buy!
Would you like to get more information about influencer marketing? Contact us today.
