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The Hidden Costs of Influencer Marketing

The Hidden Costs of Influencer MarketingPhoto by Merakist

Originally Posted On: https://radintelligence.com/the-hidden-costs-of-influencer-marketing/

 

Getting an influencer to join your marketing campaign seems like a dream come true. You get excited over the possibility of getting more shares, garnering publicity for your product and collaborating closely with a thought leader in your industry.

Unfortunately, reality is often disappointing and the same could be true for influencer marketing.

Most basic guides to the influencer marketing process discuss the influencers’ fees only.

Sooner or later, you’ll realize that agencies, managers and tools will also be a part of the billing. You’ll then get sucked into negotiating complicated deals, planning a timeline that could run for weeks and allocating an over-inflated budget.

That said, who’s in the long daisy chain of people that make money on influencer marketing? In this blog post, we’ve collected some of the key actors in the influencer marketing process so you’ll know what to expect.

Influencer marketing agency 

Some influencers are managed by an influencer marketing agency. Instead of directly communicating with the brand, the agency would negotiate deals or plan the campaign on the influencer’s behalf. Agencies usually charge brands based on a specific campaign.

Here’s how much it costs to work with some of the most reputable agencies in the industry:

Viral Nation –  Negotiates contracts, designs merchandise opportunities and provides media opportunities (i.e. event appearances, casting calls, content licensing) for their influencers. The cost of one campaign may range between a whopping $25,000 to $10,000,000!

Karios Media – An award-winning agency that offers influencer strategy, video production, digital planning and consumer insights. They charge an hourly rate between $150 to $199, resulting in the cost of one campaign amounting to $10,000 depending on the directive.

Zorka.Mobi – Provides clients with predictive media plans, influencer analysis and post-campaign reports. An entire project costs around $10,000 or they may charge $100-$149 per hour. 

Obviously, the cost may vary depending on the follower count of the influencers and scope of the campaign. However, if you’re planning an ambitious campaign with multiple influencers, you must prepare a hefty budget to execute a campaign that will meet your expectations.

Talent Managers 

As the influencer’s follower count grows, it becomes overwhelming to engage with thousands of fans, create compelling content and negotiate brand deals—all at the same time. To take some load off of their hectic schedule, they hire a manager to handle all brand negotiations.

Managers usually get paid through a monthly management fee or a percentage of the influencers income for specific campaigns.

Influencer fees 

We bet you’ll never forget the influencer fees for the campaign. At first glance, it only seems to be a talent fee, but a many factors may impact pricing.

Here’s what you need to consider according to Later:

Distribution fees – Includes the cost of featuring sponsored content on an influencer’s social media channel or website. The price will vary based on the follower count, content quality, engagement, popularity of the influencer, niche and demographic. Naturally, it costs more to collaborate with an influencer that has 1 million followers, than an influencer with 500,000 followers. However at times, depending on the quality of the influencers audience, cost variables can go deeper than just simply follower size.

Talent fee – Some campaigns require influencers to create content that’s exclusive to the brand.

A simple photoshoot or video has many associated costs which include the following:

  • Props (meals, furniture)
  • Location (booking an entire hotel room or swimming pool)
  • Travel (airplane tickets)
  • Outfits (bags, clothes)
  • Photographer / videographer / editors for the shoot
  • Cost of giveaways / free products
  • Hourly rate (This may include the time it takes to negotiate the deal, content creation, planning the campaign and more)

After considering all these factors, Later came up with a general estimate of distributing the content and hiring an influencer to create content. The overall cost may surprise you!

Influencer marketing campaign tools 

Besides the stakeholders involved, businesses should also consider the cost of tools used to analyze the results or identify influencers from a specific niche.

Here’s a list of top tools that you might use:

Keyhole – (starts at $29/mo) Allows users to track influencer and hashtag data (engagement, reach, impressions, shares)

Analisa – (starts at $59/mo) Collects data on TikTok and Instagram campaigns, identifies competitors and follower demographics, provides hashtag reports and uncovers social media insights.

Buzzstream (starts at $24/month) – Allows users to research influencers and keep track of conversations.

GroupHigh (starts at $8,000/month) – Allows users to determine an influencer’s or blogger’s contact information. Users can also get visual reports to identify top-performing influencers for their brand.

Creator IQ (vendor did not provide pricing ) – An influencer marketing platform for businesses and enterprises running a large-scale campaign. It is equipped with an AI-powered algorithm that can help users identify relevant influencers for their campaigns. More importantly, it lets businesses seamlessly collaborate with their preferred influencers and view reports in real-time.

Influencer marketing with Rad Intelligence 

The astounding number of stakeholders mentioned above is really just the tip of the iceberg.  Sometimes this drives advertisers to evaluate other marketing strategies. However, before you go down this road, consider influencer marketing platforms like Rad Intelligence.

For the uninitiated, Rad Intelligence is a platform with influencers that are willing to share your content. As an advertiser, all you need to do is to upload your already-made content and set a marketing budget on the platform and the CPC you’d like to pay.

The best part? There’s no need to spend thousands on one campaign! When influencers share your content on their social media pages, they get paid based on the number of unique clicks they get. Since payment is based on content performance, you’re guaranteed to get more bang from your buck. The most important core function of the Rad Influencer platform is the ease at which advertisers can run campaigns.  The product requires you to only set the CPC and designate your key targeting parameters.

During the campaign, you can view the results through your advertiser dashboard. This includes the total number of shared posts, unique clicks, conversions and shares in every post. You can even determine the top-performing influencers to improve the performance of your future marketing campaigns.   Since every RAD influencer is whitelisted for paid media amplification, you’ll be able to cherry pick the best performing influencers for ongoing paid distribution.

Ready to start your own influencer marketing campaign?

Launching an influencer campaign is fast and easy with RAD. All you need to is to fill out the form below:

Schedule a demo with our team to see how it works. Pretty soon, you’ll be seamlessly collaborating with influencers without the back and forth between multiple parties.

Schedule a time to talk here | calendly.com/jeremybarnett/15min

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