Influencer marketing has established its place as part of companies' and organizations' marketing communications. According to IAB's survey, in 2022 Finland invested over 50 million euros in influencer marketing.
However, influencer marketing pricing raises a lot of discussion and amazement, even though it has a significant role in marketing budgets. In this article, we examine what influencer marketing prices consist of.
Influencer marketing is often perceived only as commercial collaboration in influencers' own media. However, influencers can be utilized in a versatile way, which brings several variable factors to pricing.
Read more about influencer marketing methods here.
Commercial collaboration, or media visibility on influencer channels
The advertiser pays the influencer compensation in money or products and receives visibility in return in the influencer's own channels. The collaboration is essentially comparable to advertising in any other media. Influencer prices are often based on supply and demand-based pricing. The advertiser should pay particular attention to the ratio of the influencer's actual reach, impact, and effort, so that the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) doesn't become unreasonably high. Influencers shouldn't be purchased based on follower numbers, for example, because many influencers only reach a small portion of their followers organically. The company's products and services also have their own value, so the marketer can agree with a suitable influencer that they will make the agreed posts in exchange for receiving products.
Content produced by influencers on brand channels
Influencers understand the rules of social media and are able to create authentic and engaging content for different channels. This quality content often serves as part of paid advertising or the brand's own content production. The expertise of influencers should be leveraged by creating content with them for the brand's own channels or advertising. The advertiser pays the influencer a cash compensation for the content and its usage rights.
Influencer as advertising face
Particularly popular, publicly known influencers can be utilized as the advertising face of campaigns. The company pays the influencer compensation for utilizing the influencer's brand and fame in advertising or other marketing activities. Using a well-known person increases advertising recognition and improves attention value and effectiveness.
Affiliate marketing
An influencer can offer advertising links together with an advertiser, which direct the influencer's content audience to purchase products or services from the brand's website. With the influencer, for example, a commission or other customer acquisition-based pricing can be agreed upon. At best, the collaboration model encourages the influencer to actively highlight the products in their content.
Events
Influencers can be utilized as drawcards at various events, such as shopping centers, stores, launch events, webinars, or festivals. Many influencers are also experts in certain subject areas and can give speaking engagements at company events. Events are generally paid as appearance fees, just like for artists or speakers.
PR collaboration
Influencers are happy to recommend products or services that interest them, which can also benefit their work. A marketer can approach influencers with various PR mailings, making it possible to gain publications on the influencer's own channels with the product or service. However, when it is pure PR visibility, the influencer cannot be obligated to provide visibility on their own channels. Therefore, the advertiser should consider how PR collaborations are carried out so that they achieve maximum earned media visibility.
Planning and implementing influencer marketing requires specialized expertise and resources from the party practicing it.
In addition to traditional media or advertising agencies, a marketer can use an agency specializing in influencer marketing as a partner. The agency is generally paid for planning a concept or strategy based on the company's goals, which guides influencers' content production toward the goals. The agency is also responsible for identifying suitable influencers, managing campaigns, reporting, and analysis. The collaboration may also include other activities, such as content production, event organization, PR package distribution, and so on.
When requesting quotes from parties specializing in influencer marketing, the marketer should clarify what services it pays for when working with different players in the field and itemize the work paid to the agency and the fees paid to influencers. This ensures operations are as transparent as possible, and allows analysis of the profitability of each influencer's activities in relation to goals, for example, in multi-influencer campaigns.
