Digging Deeper Into Instagram Influencer Pricing: How Much Can You Expect To Pay?

Instagram influencers are often potent assets for your brand. These social media personalities can expand your reach and drive sales in ways conventional ads can’t.

Studies back this up. For example, research shows 60% of consumers trust influencers’ recommendations about what to buy, earning companies $5.20 for every $1 they spend on fees.

However, value for money still matters for your brand, which is where this post can help. It explores factors affecting influencer pricing and how much you can expect to pay for each tier (nano, micro, macro, etc.) Then, it looks at how to define your budget and various negotiation techniques you can use to get a better deal for your enterprise.

Why Can Some Influencers Charge So Much? The 3 Factors That Contribute To Pricing

Some influencers charge substantial sums of money for their services, even for just a few minutes of work. For example, Cristiano Ronaldo reportedly gets paid $3.2 million per post, while Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson can rake in $2.3 million for a similarly small amount of work.

Of course, most brands can’t afford top influencers. But it highlights just how varied the market is. These celebrity personalities can earn millions in a few hours, while others must spend years working to attract the same income.

Hence, knowing why some influencers can charge so much helps your brand make better investment decisions. Measuring these factors can determine if a specific personality offers value for money.

So, what factors affect influencer pricing the most?

Follower Count

Follower count stands at the top of the factors affecting influencer pricing. The more a social media personality has, the higher the fees they can charge.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s prices are sky-high per post because he has over 630 million followers on Instagram. Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, and Justin Bieber have similar popularity levels, allowing them to charge more than $1 million per sponsored post.

Follower count matters for pricing because it indicates the influencer’s reach. The more people who follow them, the more likely your advertising will hit a broad audience. As such, influencer salary by followers is a predictable metric (as revealed below).

Engagement Rate

But follower count isn’t everything. Influencer engagement also matters.

Instagram measures engagement with likes, comments, saves, and shares. These actions show the degree to which followers care about the content the influencer produces. If Cristiano Ronaldo had 630 million followers but an engagement rate of 0.1%, brands would down-value his account and pay him less for promotional materials.

Some world-class influencers have ultra-high engagement rates. For instance, David Dobrik (with 14 million followers) has a sky-high engagement rate of 21% thanks to his quirky personality and sense of humor. Corinna Kopf (with 4.9 million followers) has a similarly impressive 17.7% engagement rate, meaning nearly 1 in 5 people who view her content respond to it.

These high performances mean brands are more willing to pay extra for these influencers’ outreach efforts. Prospects are less likely to scroll past their content and move on to the next item, and more likely to engage with what they say and do.

Content Quality

Lastly, content quality can affect influencer pricing. The more effort the social media personality puts into creating brand-related material, the more they are liable to charge.

Pricing Tiers On Instagram: How Much Do Influencers Make?

Influencers usually make as much money as their follower count will allow (with some exceptions for those with higher or lower engagement rates and content quality). The more followers they have, the higher the fees they will often charge.

But what about specific numbers? How much do these influencers make per post? That’s the topic of this section. We explore the average fees everyone from nano- to mega-influencers can charge for their work.

Note that the figures quoted here are estimates. How much you wind up paying depends on additional factors, including your industry and negotiation skills.

Nano Influencers

Nano influencers have between 1,000 and 10,000 followers and often have among the highest engagement rates of anyone. That’s because the people who follow them have deliberately sought them out and enjoy hanging on their every word (instead of having them recommended to them by the algorithm).

Despite this, the amount they can charge per project varies significantly depending on their engagement rate and quality level. Payments aren’t enormous, but they are enough for many to make a start in the industry.

Nano-influencer pricing

Micro-Influencers

Micro-influencers have follower counts in the 10,000 to 50,000 range (up to 100,000 according to some analysts). These personalities often have a long-term, established presence on social media and are already working with one or two brands.

Micro-influencers are special because they offer a balance between niche audiences and volume. Most companies only have to work with a handful of these influencers to get results (whereas they might have to work with dozens of nano creators to generate the reach and impact they want).

As such, micro-influencers can charge more for their services, almost in-line with their follower count.

Macro Influencers

Macro influencers also sit in the sweet spot between engagement and reach. These influencers often have a niche audience and create industry-specific content for leads.

Macro-influencers have follower counts in the 100,000 to 500,000 range (with some reaching one million). These influencers can adjust fees based on their engagement rate and perceived content quality. Those with the best outreach are the most likely to command the highest fees (since the demand for them is so extreme).

Mega Influencers

Mega influencers sit at the top of the pile on Instagram with over 500,000 followers (or one million by some definitions). Some personalities in this category are regular people who worked hard and reached the top but many are celebrities.

Mega influencers have massive reach because of their universal appeal. However, their engagement rates are often significantly lower (most of their audiences only tap into their content infrequently). Consequently, their prices don’t scale one-for-one with their follower count.

Even so, if you want to leverage mega influencers expect to pay a lot of money. Per-project prices are often high, and only get higher the more famous the individual becomes.

So, how much do brands pay influencers in this category?

How to Determine Your Instagram Influencer Budget

Figuring out how much you should invest in your Instagram influencer marketing budget is essential. It lets you determine if a collaboration is worth the cost. While the rewards from working with social media personalities can be high, they can also wreck your business bank balance.

When determining your Instagram influencer budget, be cautious. Simply throwing money at creators doesn’t always work. Think about your aims and the best way to achieve them before handing over cash.

Consider Your Campaign Goals

Start by thinking about what you want your campaign to achieve. Do you want to raise brand awareness or drive more engagement? Are sales more important to you, or growth in follower count? Would you benefit more from user-generated content?

Your goals will determine how much you should spend and the influencers you approach. Some will help you drive sign-ups and sales, while others will boost likes, comments, and shares.

Allocate Your Total Budget

Once you have this information, you can estimate your potential return on investment (ROI). Calculating this percentage tells you how much cash you could make in addition to your spending, providing a clearer insight into what your budget should be.

As you increase your influencer budget, you should find the ROI increases. For example, upping spending from $1,000 to $10,000 monthly could increase your return on investment from 100% to 200%.

However, you will often notice a point where spending more on influencer marketing doesn’t increase sales by as much. For example, ROI could fall from 300% to 250% when you increase monthly spending from $30,000 to $40,000.

Therefore, you want your budget to occupy a sweet spot on the ROI curve. If ROI diminishes too much after a certain level of spending, your budget might be too high.

Plan For Additional Costs

When determining your Instagram influencer budget, consider more than influencer costs. Other fees may apply including the price of hiring professional photographers and videographers, post-production editing, and fees charged for connecting you to influencers who can help you. You might also have to pay additional fees for ads that promote the influencers’ content.

Overall, Instagram influencers are slightly pricier than those on TikTok. Therefore, budget-oriented brands might want to explore that platform’s options instead.

Measure ROI

Lastly, measure your ROI and adjust your budget accordingly as your campaigns proceed. If you notice spending increases return on investment, then increase your budget. Similarly, if ROI falls as you spend more, you reduce your budget and target more nano and micro-influencers.

How To Find Influencers That Fit Your Budget (And Avoid The Pitfalls)

Once you have a figure, you should be able to find influencers that fit your budget using the information in the tables provided above. However, you still need to be careful.

When looking for influencers, consider the following:

• Follower growth statistics. High-quality, relevant influencers often have positive follower growth, indicating they are still active on the platforms. Follower growth matters for engagement and helps social media algorithms promote content to a wider audience. Low-growth influencers (or those declining) could be unpopular or absent from their accounts.
• Demographics. The demographics of your audience also matter. While an influencer might seem aligned with you, their audience’s profile may suggest otherwise. For example, if you sell surf equipment to young people, don’t align with influencers with older audiences (even if the topics they cover intersect with yours).
• Bots. Also, watch out for bots pumping up individual accounts’ performance. While an influencer might have an enormous headline follower count, they may be talking to thousands of impersonal machines to improve their numbers.
• Sponsored post engagement. Finally, look at sponsored post engagement – the engagement figures the influencer gets for their branded posts. These can be significantly lower than their organic content.

Negotiating with Instagram Influencers: Tactics That Work

Instagram influencer pricing depends considerably on the outcomes of one-on-one interactions with social media personalities. How much they charge can vary significantly based on the tactics you deploy.

Understand Their Value

Start by working out the influencer’s value. Think about their worth based on what you know about them and your business.

Hootsuite recommends the following formula for calculating the rough value of an Instagram influencer:

Engagement rate per post + extras for type of post (x #of posts) + extra factors = total rate.

However, you can use sites that do these calculations for you if you don’t want to work it out by hand.

Once you have this figure, you can estimate their worth. If they charge more than their value, you can explore alternatives.

Be Transparent About Your Budget Constraints

When negotiating, you should also be transparent about your budget constraints. Telling influencers you have limited money helps you learn more about what they are willing to accept in payment.

Using this tactic can be helpful even if you know you have a lot more money in the kitty. Most influencers want to get paid, even if the fees they receive aren’t quite what they’d hoped for.

Add Incentives

Lastly, you can add incentives. Including extra perks like performance-based pay can increase the potency of your collaboration and encourage the Instagram personality to maximize the effort they put into your campaigns.