Many online marketers have been left somewhat bewildered by the recent face-paced growth in the presence of social media influencers. Such influencers appear to be offering an easy way to reach untapped audiences, but many marketers are not such how much they should pay for such exposure. Fortunately, a recent UK Blogger Survey conducted by the software specialist Vuelio gives some much-needed insight into influencer pricing markets in 2019.
Vuelio’s online survey was sent to 7,500 bloggers and generated 787 usable responses. After analysis, the findings showed that 78% of bloggers receive payments for up to 50% of their work. Bloggers who specialised in the nature, gardening, lifestyle, fashion, beauty, and parenting niches were the most likely to get compensated for over 50% of their work.
So, now for the crucial question – how much money do they get paid for blog posts?
Well, the stand-out number from the survey was £250. Meaning that for paid-for collaborations and sponsored blog posts, bloggers are most likely to get payments up to £250.
Twenty-seven percent of bloggers said they charge under £100 per sponsored blog posts and 30% said they charge between £101 and £250 for a sponsored blog post. In terms of paid-for collaborations, 23% said they charge £1-£100, while 29% charge between £101 and £250. Only 8% of respondents said that they don’t charge a penny for blog posts.
When it comes to considering the largest payments for collaborations, the survey showed that a mixture of super-sector and niche blogs attract the highest amounts. Two percent of respondents told the survey they charge over £1000 for each blog post, while 4% said they charge £1000+ for paid-for collabs. The bloggers who received the highest payments tended to specialise in combination, weddings, politics, travel, media & marketing, fashion & beauty or business blogs.
All the above findings are clear enough, but they don’t really make it any easier to determine which influencers are going to offer your brand the best value for money. For starters, the influencer sphere is becoming somewhat of a saturated market, so it can be challenging to get your brand message noticed. Furthermore, bloggers who have thousands of followers do not always have the largest influence – add to that the fact that followers are becoming more aware of shameless promotional posts from their favourite online personalities.
If your brand’s partnership with a particular influences does not appear genuine, it won’t be worth the investment. In addition, note that anyone can purchase ‘likes’ and followers and proclaim themselves to be an influencer even though their genuine reach is limited.
Identifying The Fakes
The secret is obviously to conduct thorough research before investing any capital. For instance, request a detailed breakdown of the audience demographics of the influencer. It will depend on your brand as to which demographics, such as age, gender or geographic location, and most important to you. Find out also what metrics a prospective influencer partner uses to measure their success – if they can’t provide you with any, be ready to take your marketing budget elsewhere.
Be sure to use tools like LikeWise to find fake influencers. LikeWise was created by The Social Chain Group and it uses the latest AI-technology to detect influencer fraud. During a particular campaign, one trial managed to uncover an influencer with a fake engagement rate of 96% who was charging almost £800 per blog post.
The real secret to influencer marketing success is to fully immerse expectation content about your brand’s products or services into an influencer’s brand. Don’t just pay for one-off promotional posts to advertise your brand. Instead, take time to find the right influencer partner – whether it’s a niche influencer with unique knowledge of your brand’s specialist field or a celebrity with international reach – and build a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with them.
And if you’re looking for marketing employees who know exactly how to work alongside influencers, Stopgap is the marketing recruitment company in London to go to!
