How can you be sure to get the most out of your influencer investment? It starts with understanding the current compensation rates and what they are based on—and according to new research from warm contact influencer network Intellifluence, a new pricing paradigm appears to be emerging. The firm’s recent survey analyzes real-world compensation demands by influencers within its network.
“As [we were] collecting and collating the survey responses from our influencer base, what we started to notice is the old methodology of pitching the $0.01-$0.02/follower linearly based on audience size is effectively dead,” said Joe Sinkwitz, CEO and co-founder of Intellifluence.
41 percent of influencers say brands are not offering adequate compensation in their pitches
“What appears to be happening now is logical separation as one moves from nano to micro and up through macro influencer tiers,” he added. “If you look at any of the charts of the responses, it would seem that that among peer influencers and aspirational influencers alike as follower levels increase the ratio of audience to desired compensation begins to adopt an exponential growth curve.”
“We were able to confirm the compensation expectations by comparing received responses with the top 250 or so influencers’ accepted pitches,” Sinkwitz added. “These influencers are well over 1 million in reach and sure enough are expecting $10,000+ in true compensation for their efforts despite what their previously stated minimums were. Their expectations matched the nano and micro influencer curves. This is going to be very helpful for not just our brands but those working external to our network, as the compensation ranges have definitely shifted to match constrained supplies on the high end.”
$209.88 is the average expected compensation for Facebook influencers per post
“It’s also important to note that the curvature is network agnostic,” he continued. “Whether the influencer was primarily focused on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok didn’t matter. The raw dollars figures are obviously different due to the difference in effort required, but the curve kept showing up.”
“What this tells us is with relatively few compensation data points on newer networks in the future, or on a constant refresh of real world data on completed transactions, it should be possible to extrapolate with a reasonable degree of certainty on what an influencer is likely to accept—or reject—eliminating wasted pitch time,” Sinkwitz concludes.
Moving forward Intellifluence intends to incorporate the survey data and develop a machine learning driven pricing guidance software wizard for future brands.
