The first question you might be asking yourself when deciding when to start offering promotional services as an influencer, or “securing the bag”, is how much to charge brands.
The answer to this depends on your followers, engagement, what industry you are in and the type of content you need to prepare for the campaign.
In this blog post, we are going to cover some of the most important aspects to consider when working with brands as an influencer.
Table of Contents
When can I start reaching out to brands as an influencer?
Generally speaking, 10,000+ followers is a good time to start reaching out to brands. However, if you are in a smaller or local niche without too much competition you might find you can approach brands with much less.
Trying to stand out in competitive markets such as travel or fashion, you may need 100,000+ followers to start making the big bucks.
You might find when you get to a certain level, brands will approach you!
More followers, more money
To nail this point home, social media profiles with many followers will charge more to promote a brand or product. It is the easiest metric to judge how many eyes they can reach, so it’s more valuable to the advertiser.
As a brand, you will need to find out who your main target audience is. Which group of people are most likely to support your product and which influencer will have the most direct line to your target audience.
Brands don’t want to waste their marketing budget on an influencer with an irrelevant audience. That’s why it’s important as an influencer to define your niche and become an expert in your field.
A large investment in an influencer that’s irrelevant to a brand’s audience will be a waste of money. It’s important to clearly show who you are speaking to.
Engagement: the name of the game
But it’s not all about followers! Engagement plays a huge role in what you can charge brands. An influencer with 50k followers can easily charge more than someone with 100k followers if their engagement is higher. This is why it’s important to grow your Instagram with organic, targeted methods.
Influencers with higher engagement can charge more because brands know that a lot of influencers have fake or ghost followers. Simply put, there’s no point paying for the viewership of a large audience if they are not going to receive it.
The more engagement an influencer gets, the more expensive your influencer campaign can be, so keep that in mind.
Industry determines the cost
A luxury travel influencer will typically receive larger brand deals than a budget travel influencer.
This is because the products or services they are promoting will be of higher value. Higher priced products, usually equals to a higher marketing budget per viewer.
You will need to consider this according to what industry your brand is in as well.
Agency negotiation or direct contact
An agency or influencer marketing network will do a lot of the work for you (contracts, escrow, analytics), which is why they can often take a cut than if you were to just contact a brand directly.
However, they can provide access to a huge database of clients who are ready and waiting to work with you.
This doesn’t mean that an agency is a necessity, but it should be in your consideration when you are planning to do a paid promotion.
Content creation
The brand might want you to create photography or videos as part of the campaign. It’s important that you have a good idea how much time this will take you, if you need to purchase anything and even if you need to hire any creative talent to help.
The more work you have to do, the more you should charge.
Ethics and target audience
Finally, should you?
Many influencers come under fire for not doing their due diligence prior to working with brands.
Just because a dodgy mystery box website aimed at children wants to give a big check, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should promote them.
Taking care of your audience and staying true to your brand identity will pay off in the long-term.
