Getting Familiar with Influencer Rates

Now that you have started to look closely at influencers you might want to work with, you’ll start to ask yourself some basic questions. If you need help curating a list of influencers to work with, we recommend you read this article on list curation. 

The first question most people ask is, “How much do I pay people?” The quick answer is that prices in the influencer marketing industry are all over the board.

The two primary factors that affect price are an influencer’s follower count and their engagement rate. You can use our handy industry rate map to see the general spread of rates (per post on Instagram) for follower counts of any size.

You can find our full rate map here.

Once you get a sense of the range you might need to pay someone with the follower counts you’re looking for, the next variable to examine is their engagement rates. You can see influencer engagement rates for many of our profiles right at the top of their page. You can also see this data in a list once you’ve added them.

As a general rule of thumb, you can expect to pay influencers with a 3.5% engagement rate the average cost per post listed for their follower count in our rate data. You can modify that offer up or down from that average depending on engagement rate. As an example - the average rate for 50-75K followers (chart above) is $210. If an influencer with 60K followers has a 2.5% engagement rate, you might offer them $150. If they have 7% engagement they might expect $300. It’s not an exact science but in general pricing in the industry follows these guidelines.

This is simply because all posts are not the same. Lower engagement rates generally mean an influencer’s posts are seen by fewer people (Instagram’s algorithm deprioritizes low engagement rate content in users’ feeds). Low engagement rates also suggest an influencer’s audience is less engaged with them (and might listen to their product recommendations less). Here are two examples of how you might use rate and engagement rate data.

It’s important to get a sense of what influencers charge before starting to contact them. As you might expect in a new industry, most rates are negotiable and will vary if you’re offering free products, if the influencer loves your brand and feels it is on-brand for their account, and based on what channel (e.g. Snapchat vs Instagram) you are asking influencers to post on.