According to the Sprout Social Q3 Pulse Survey, 80% of marketers agree influencers are an essential part of their strategy.
That doesn’t mean everyone has mastered influencer marketing. In fact, our 2024 Influencer Marketing Benchmarks Report shows most marketers struggle to measure the ROI of their influencer campaigns because of the complexity of influencer marketing.
For example, while the average engagement rate for the fashion industry is around 1.53%, its engagement rates on TikTok are much higher at 2.26%. Similarly, while the food and drink industry has a low average rate of 1.19%, it thrives on Instagram with a 2% engagement rate.
These conflicting factors are some reasons why marketers often struggle with influencer pricing and budgeting to get an optimum return on their investment.
This article will help you navigate the complicated terrain of influencer pricing to help you optimize your influencer budget. You’ll also find out what types of influencer partnerships are your best bet and how to fine-tune them.
The impact of influencer marketing
Working with influencers can benefit businesses in several key ways. In a survey of 300 influencers and 2,000 consumers across all platforms, Sprout’s 2024 Influencer Marketing Report found that influencer marketing can:
- Increase sales. Almost half (49%) of consumers make purchases at least once a month because of influencer posts.
- Provide product insights. A majority (62%) of frequent buyers are more likely to share product feedback with influencers, rather than brands directly.
- Further reach. Influencers allow brands to reach more people and specific groups through their loyal followers.
- Build trust. Trust in influencers is growing, with over 30% of people trusting influencers more than they did six months ago. This trust in influencers can translate to trust in a company’s brand.
Our report also found the impact of influencers is being felt outside of social media, with 80% of people more willing to buy from brands partnered with influencers beyond their social media content.
Types of influencer partnerships
One major factor that impacts influencer rates is the type of partnership you enter into. Here are the most common types of influencer agreements, and how they impact pricing.
Sponsored content
A typical influencer-sponsored post is usually a photo, video or reel promoting your product to their audience.
These will usually be driven by the style of content the influencer creates, but in-house marketers often work alongside an influencer to ensure brand alignment.
Affiliate
Affiliate marketing works slightly differently. Instead of paying for a sponsored post, an influencer is paid based on a commission of the sales referred by the content they’ve created. This can be a more budget-friendly way of working with several influencers at once.
An affiliate method can be a more accessible form of influencer pricing, but it’s worth noting that you may have to modify your affiliate rates based on the influencer you’re working with.
Influencer takeover
During takeovers, an influencer posts content on your main channel, rather than their own. This can be a way to refresh your strategy, but you’ll often need to work closely with the influencer to determine the goals and type of content expected.
An influencer takeover usually lasts a day, but can be longer depending on the needs of your campaign.
Competitions or giveaways
These are situations where you partner with an influencer to give away a free sample of your products or host a competition.
This approach is often combined with a like/follow system that can boost your account’s engagement. The cost of these collaborations will likely be similar to a sponsored post, depending on the length and complexity of the competition.
Brand ambassador
This is a long-term form of influencer marketing, where an influencer promotes your brand regularly across their platform.
These partnerships are similar to celebrity sponsorship deals. As a result, they’re often much pricier than one-off sponsored content, but can be more beneficial in the long run with the right influencer.
How much does influencer marketing cost by platform?
Successful influencer marketing and management demands that you work with influencers with a similar audience to yours. Often, this determines which social platform they’re operating on, which impacts the total influencer marketing cost you’ll need to pay.
Here are some considerations for each platform, as well as some average costs for sponsored influencer posts.
Instagram influencer marketing pricing
Instagram remains one of the most popular influencer marketing platforms available. The majority of its user base is between 18-34, and its focus on photos and video make it an ideal platform for creative campaigns.
Instagram influencer marketing will likely cost more if you’re asking for a sponsored Reel, rather than an image post. On average, you should budget around $10 per post per 1,000 followers.
TikTok influencer marketing pricing
TikTok remains one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. That popularity extends to the influencer scene, as over 100,000 TikTok influencers are active across the app in the US alone.
To work with one of those leading figures, you’ll need to budget appropriately. The cost of TikTok influencer marketing ranges around $10 per post per 1,000 followers.
Facebook influencer marketing pricing
Despite being one of the oldest social media platforms, Facebook remains an important marketing channel for businesses targeting certain demographics.
When working with a Facebook influencer, you should expect their pricing to be around $20 per post per 1,000 followers.
YouTube influencer marketing pricing
As creators of long-form content, YouTube influencers often attract high engagement for their work.
One popular strategy is to sponsor a YouTube influencer in order to feature a short advert for your product within their videos. Or, you might work with an influencer on an entire video focused on your product.
Costs for YouTube influencer marketing also vary depending on the video length, alongside their audience size. You should expect to pay around $20 per 1,000 subscribers.
X (Twitter) influencer marketing pricing
Though it’s gone through many changes in the past few years, X is still one of the biggest social media platforms. Since it’s a text-based platform, it can also be a cheaper way to invest in effective influencer marketing.
The average cost of hiring an influencer for your X/Twitter marketing strategy is around $2 per post per 1,000 followers.
Snapchat influencer marketing pricing
Though not as big as the others, Snapchat still boasts millions of daily active users. Its quick-fire video content approach also means it’s an ideal platform for certain businesses.
You should expect to pay around $10 per post per 1,000 followers for a Snapchat sponsored post.
Factors that affect how much influencer marketing costs
Alongside an influencer’s chosen platform, several additional factors impact influencer pricing. You should consider each of these seven factors before you start to work out your ideal influencer budget.
Size of the influencer
An influencer’s size is arguably the most important factor, as it determines how far your influencer marketing will reach. As a general rule, there are four approximate influencer sizes:
- Nano-influencers: 1,000-10,000 followers
- Micro-influencers: 10,000-100,000 followers
- Macro-influencers: 100,000-1M followers
- Mega-influencers: 1M+ followers
The bigger an influencer is, the more you’ll have to pay them. Using an influencer marketing tool, like Sprout, helps you find authentic influencers who are the right size for your campaign and budget.
Content type
The length and complexity of the content required from an influencer will impact the total price. For example, a single image post by an Instagram influencer will cost you less than three separate Reels.
This is often determined by the influencer’s platform, but also the types of content they usually produce.
Timeline
If your campaign is time-sensitive or requires multiple posts, you’ll likely need to pay more.
It’s always worth tracking your campaigns in a content calendar through an influencer management tool like Sprout, so you can keep strict timelines for campaigns and track delivery of every post.
Exclusivity agreements
An exclusivity agreement ensures an influencer isn’t simultaneously promoting your competitor’s products.
This is usually beneficial, as it means you’re not losing any potential customers thanks to a post about a different product. But it will likely come with an added cost.
Different pricing models
You can agree to pay your influencers in different ways. Some popular examples include pay-per-post, pay-per-view or pay-per-subscribers.
It’s always worth outlining your goals for each influencer marketing campaign first, as this will determine which pricing model is the most beneficial.
Length of your campaign
If you’re planning a long-term campaign with an influencer, this will naturally incur higher costs.
Plotting out content in a single interface, and easily managing approvals, can streamline more elaborate influencer campaigns and help reduce campaign costs over time.
Posting across multiple channels
Some influencers have large followings across several different platforms. Working with someone like this can ensure your campaign takes advantage of multiple channels.
However, you’ll need to factor the cost of posting across several platforms into your influencer pricing agreement. If you’ve decided to work across several channels with one influencer, make sure they’re tracking metrics across every post.
How to budget your influencer marketing costs
As these many factors and platforms show, influencer pricing can spiral out of control if it isn’t handled appropriately. Here’s how you can invest sensibly in influencer marketing, allowing you to drive successful campaigns that don’t become excessively expensive.
Define your goals
As with any form of digital marketing, successful influencer campaigns begin with clearly defined goals.
First determine the audience you’re looking to target. Then, outline the core aims you’re hoping to achieve with each piece of influencer marketing. Reliable goals can include:
- Building your brand awareness
- Improving your sales with a particular audience
- Increasing your follower count
- Generating new leads
- Furthering your social proof and community engagement
- Encourage more user-generated content
Ensure that you’ve clearly defined these goals before you start to search for an influencer, as they’ll gear you in the right direction.
Find the right type of influencer
You must source and work with the right influencer from the get-go to remain within your budget. Define the type of influencer you’re looking for and their audience as the first step in finding the ideal influencer.
For this step, it’s worth investing in a dedicated influencer marketing platform. Tagger by Sprout Social offers over 50 search filters designed to help you find authentic influencers that match your brand’s core values.
This reduces the time and costs associated with sourcing influencers early in your campaign.
Refine your value proposition
The influencer-brand relationship is a unique one. It’s important to remember that all influencer agreements should be mutually beneficial. Just like you, influencers also deserve to work with brands who value their time and creative effort, and offer them benefits in return.
At this stage, you can control your budget by refining your value proposition for influencers.
Consider what your brand can offer them, and work this into your approach. This might involve event invites, free merch or promotion on your account.
By treating influencer marketing as a two-way street, you’ll craft stronger relationships that result in successful campaigns.
Calculate ROI
ROI (return on investment) is the most important metric when considering influencer pricing. It clearly tells you whether the money you’re putting in is worth the expected result.
Apply this formula to calculate the ROI of a potential influencer campaign, as you’ll need it before you negotiate with an influencer.
(Total expected gain on investment – Cost of investment) / Cost of investment x 100 = ROI%
Remember to calculate it only after you’ve outlined your goals because your expected gain may not be strictly financial. It might also refer to increased trust in your products or other brand reputation boosts which are difficult to quantify.
Factor in operational costs
Influencer marketing can incur many creeping costs that eat up your budget.
To avoid this, discuss every aspect of production with your influencer before you agree to a deal, such as who is paying for any studio time, travel costs or other people like editors or crew members.
An influencer may have factored these costs into their price already. But if they haven’t, and you aren’t aware, these operational costs can balloon quickly.
Establish a delivery schedule
Late projects can affect influencer pricing too. That’s why it’s worth defining a content delivery timeline so both parties are clear on expectations.
Make sure you’re creating a brief, sharing this with your influencer and tracking everything through a single interface like Sprout’s Influencer Marketing tool.
Track your metrics
Track your metrics during and after your influencer marketing campaign concludes.
Tracking performance during a campaign helps you understand how your audience is engaging with the content. It also gives you an opportunity to modify or pivot future posts based on the current performance.
Meanwhile, tracking metrics afterward shows how successful the campaign was, based on whether it met your goals.
Ensure you’ve determined the right metrics to track based on your campaign’s goals. And then review this data to figure out what’s worked and what requires improvement next time.
Start an affiliate program
By using an affiliate program, you can control costs to make sure you’re only paying influencers on a success-based system.
This also improves the value you get from influencers on your campaign. However, it’s important to agree to an affiliate rate based on each influencer you work with, as their requirements may differ.
Refine your budget over time
Much like with many other marketing strategies, influencer marketing is a strategy that thrives through experimentation.
Once you’ve worked with a handful of influencers, compare how each campaign went, and how you found the process of working with them. Ask yourself, how much do influencers make our company right now? Use this information to determine the ideal cost and result for your company moving forward, and then apply this in your next negotiation.
By continuing to refine your budget and your expectations, you will gradually improve the results of your influencer marketing across all social platforms.
Implement successful influencer strategies without breaking the bank
Influencer pricing is not always easy, but it can be mastered.
Treat any influencer you work with respectfully, while keeping a close eye on your budget and the returns on your investment. With experience and careful tracking, you’ll find the right formula for your budget and strategy.
As you experiment, use Sprout’s influencer marketing budget template to keep a birds-eye view of your influencer costs and to help better negotiate contracts moving forward.
