EP 17 Discrepancies in Pricing within Influencer Marketing

Sonia and Harley walk through recent influencer campaigns and the things that make them cringe, have their eyebrows raising, and what just doesn't make sense - plus a couple tips and tricks for creators looking to monetize under 5k followers.

Timestamps:

• [2:09] At this point, should we be going about pricing differently?

• [3:48] How long do Tiktok trends last?

• [5:38] How do you find brands that are looking for content?

• [8:58] More on budgeting and engagement.

• [11:31] Engagement seems to be going down.

• [12:18] Cost per 1,000 views.

• [18:25] Pricing for stories.

• [20:12] Recipe creation.

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LINKS:

Find Harley:

IG: @theharleyjordan
Website: https://www.theharleyjordan.com/

Find Sonia:
IG: @Sonia.elyss
Website: https://www.soniaelyss.com/

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00:00

Welcome to brand meet Creator Podcast with me Harley Jordan and Sonia Elise, a place where we pull back

0:06

the curtain and the trashy filters on the influencer marketing industry.

0:10

So pull up a chair and grab a notebook, it's time to shed some light

0:13

on the ever changing it's diverse

0:22

you know the drill, we have to start with something crazy to tap into us in the Insta world this week, Sonia, kick us off what has happened to you what have influencers done to you that just burst your bubble.

0:36

I have been victimized by influencers this week. I was getting not too bad of a week, but I am continuing to get influencers who are quoting me one rate, and then when I come back, and I give them the formal document and everything that's included, the rate somehow triples, as soon as they know that they want that we want them. It's like oh, yeah, I forgot this. And I'm like, girl, you already sent the numbers like I'm confused.

1:05

You know what, I've actually had a very similar situation this week. I also feel personally victimized by influencers, but I've been looking for influencers for a project. And I keep getting back this flat fee for usage this flat $500 fee for 30 days of story usage. And these people have like 400 views on their story sets on their stories on average. I'm like, you just use that. No, no, I don't want it. I don't want that anymore.

1:37

Oh my goodness, yes, the pricing does need to reflect the outcome in some ways. You know, like, I can't just you can't give me a flat fee without a justification here people.

1:48

So this leads us right into pricing. We want to talk about pricing because we see all of this crazy engagement changes over Instagram, Tik Tok. We know tick tock super volatile. I'm seeing a bunch of brands jump on Tik Tok right now. So I want to talk about the way we go about pricing at this point in time.

2:09

Yeah, I think pricing will always be a hot topic in the influencer world like it's there's no regulation. We've seen so many changes, the platforms change. Now we have new platforms, so people can continue to repackage and rejigger what they offer. I am seeing a huge spike in tick tock rates for sure right now. And

2:30

sounds good to know, to be honest.

2:33

It's just seeing people all over the board both like a spike where okay, we're getting closer to what's happening on Instagram. Maybe a real is 1500 and we're seeing something closer for Tik Tok.

2:45

I definitely agree. And it's actually kind of disconcerting to see that you can have an influencer that's charging $4,000 on Instagram, and then their tick tock rates for a very similar follower count or like 1000. Like that is just very, very different.

3:02

It really is interesting. But I also wonder if part of it is like the amount of like the way that the actual app works. So because tick tock is so fast in eating a trend and spitting it out and Instagram is a much slower burn. It's almost understandable why things would be less expensive for a similar follower count, because the amount of time that the content is going to be relevant is much less. So while 1000 to 4000 is a pretty big cut, I would understand why some brands and some influencers may be more interested in lower pricing on tick tock because they know that the content is just gonna be here today gone tomorrow and no longer relevant in the future.

3:48

What do we think the general burn is for tick tock? Can you even relate the views on Instagram versus the view on tick tock the engagement per se?

3:58

I think no. Because the not only is the algorithm so different, like I just can't, I can't I don't think that they're apples to apples even a little bit. Because the way that people use them is so different. And because the way that information is given is so different, like I think on Instagram, more people are willing to both watch and read. And on tick tock people are only willing to watch like the captioning is not a thing they watch. I don't think that people are like using linking and that type of stuff quite as much. They're just not trained over there yet. Whereas Instagram for many years has been building up shopping, tapping to tag checking out like there's way more commerce element on Instagram than there is on Tik Tok this month I am you know, casting for a client. And we are really looking for reach as one of the highest pieces of engagement. Yeah, so I think it really starts with the brand or the agency knowing what the goal of the call Campaign is when we're looking for the influencer. So really, it is an awareness campaign. So they are looking for high reach, we did cast with the option that the influencers needed to send in a screenshot of their most recent 30 days of analytics for things. So we're pretty tight on that in terms of where people were located, where their followers were located. And follower age was very important to us, because it is a little bit of an older brand. And with Instagram, you know, it's a sweet spot if you're gonna get people in their 20s, or people in their 30s, and up. So really verifying that we were getting the right age range was important to us.

5:39

Pause there, content versus awareness. How do you find because I get this question a whole lot. How do you find brands that are looking for content, everyone's worried about their awareness right now everyone's worried about their engagement,

5:51

I do think every brand is in need of content, there is no brand that is not in need of content. It's so expensive to produce. And it takes such a large team that the more content, the merrier. And any brand who isn't working that way is really a big mess right now. But I do think that emerging brands are really the ones that are probably looking for the most amount of content they're trying to keep up, they don't have as large budgets. And if you're able to provide a nice package of content for a reasonable price, I think that's incredible. So when you're looking around like 100k, two, I would say as low as like 75, or 50k, that might be a good sweet spot of brands that have a little bit of money and are looking for content,

6:35

the one thing that I keep bringing up is okay, if you are a solid content creator, and I'm looking at these people's work, so I know they are, um, go out to your local businesses go out to your local businesses pitch your services of actually just creating a package of content. Because if your pizza parlor down the street wants to bring you on for you know, 1000 bucks a month, that's an amazing retainer that you can make a little bit more money with, you can have one content day where you go to a pizza parlor, you make out these reels, you then put them to training audio, whether you pass them along, you know immediately or as weeks go by, and you can track that audio a little bit more like there's there's so much potential in the just content creation of it. If you are a small creator,

7:20

absolutely. I love this idea. Harley, I think looking local is so important. People are always looking to secure the biggest brand names, the up and comers, people that they see have recently gotten investing. And I think everyone is doing that. And including agencies, like we're all trying to get a piece of the pie. And I think a lot of times smaller people are getting overlooked. And it's also important to pitch yourself, maybe not just as like, Oh, I'm going to make you this content, but it's almost like social media support person. Because yeah, normally, these companies do want to have a social media presence, they know that it is expensive, or maybe out of their budget to hire a social media manager of some sort or an agency. So saying, you know, hey, I can give you a little bit of advice, I can create the content, and then you can post it and do everything else is a really great way to lower the costs. And that's also something that you could do for you know, a smaller social media agency, you could come in and say, Hey, I'm happy to create content for any of the clients that you represent, let me know. And that's how I've worked with a lot of people in the past. Maybe they weren't full time influencers, but they were photographers or other people who were trying to get a start more in the creative world. And they came to me and we were able to lean on them for short term projects, behind the scenes at a photo shoot, just getting extra video on set, it's been a really great way to discover new talent.

8:44

There's there's just something to be said about being local and having the person you're working with be right there. Like I know we're in a world of you can work anywhere. But it's so it's so helpful to be able to be in shop and create and all of that and have the vision there. Okay, pivot back now that we understand content versus awareness. So you're looking for reach here. Tell me more about tell me more about that budgeting thing?

9:08

Yes. So we were really looking for more for awareness. And the budget for the first month is relatively small, it's 5k. So I knew I was going to be looking at creators who were definitely in the 50k and under range. So they were pretty realistic that it was going to be probably four people at best. And we're looking at people who have anywhere from like 25,000, and then some had a little bit more 50,000. And we were able to judge around a cast and we're still working on it now. But for example, you know, I'm looking at two people both have a similar 50,000 follower range both have a similar quote, in terms of what their pricing is not identical, of course, but very similar. And then I looked at their engagement rate for sure. From there. One had a drastically lower engagement rate and I'm always hopeful that for an influencer that we're at around 2%. Until we get to a very high number, I like to see people with a healthy engagement rate of around 2% On an average. So that's personally what I look forward to start weeding it down. And sometimes it's just look, sometimes it's area, we did ask for an average reals. Yeah. screenshot. And that also was very widely vary depending on of course, like the following and how long they had been on reels. Because we were asking for a reel to be produced. So the views were really all over the place. But I would say most people's views are about the same as their full following. We were seeing at least at that smaller range, right? These are not people who have hundreds of 1000s of followers. But at the smaller range, we were seeing someone who has, you know, 30,000 followers, we were seeing somewhere around anywhere from 20 to 25,000 views on some of their reels.

10:48

I feel like engagement is just dropping down and down and down, though. And I think it's more average to see like, maybe 10%, I mean, I can depend on 10% of your follower count.

11:00

I don't know that views are indicative of health of an account, because you can never know for sure what's gonna happen to your content, you don't know when you're going to hit that virality. You don't know what else is going on that day, it could just be that the stars align. And that's fantastic for you. But it's not something that you can plan out. And it's not something you have control over. That's the real thing. It's like when people report or are looking for influencers, specifically, based off of impression reviews, that's really difficult because they don't have control Instagram, yeah, trolls that.

11:32

I just think in the last couple of months, I have seen so many creators with 100k, who like very typically get like 20k views on things. And that's pretty average. And especially if they have an older account, that's, you know, they grew so long ago, I don't know what to do about that.

11:52

I don't really think there is anything that you can do. I think it's more about like, telling yourself like this is what it is. And I need to either diversify in other parts of the platform and come up with something new that I want to start offering come up with a new idea. work more on my Pinterest following work more on my tick tock following do something else. Yeah, instead of just keeping all your eggs in the Instagram basket, because yeah, there's nothing you can do.

12:17

So with the pricing of that one of the things that I have seen across different platforms, like podcasts specifically, is a cost per 1000. Viewers. And I heard that metric from another brand that actually had a meeting with about my account the other day, they recommended or I think they they said their average, their typical protocol is $150 per 1000 viewers or something like that, which isn't that far away from my pricing. But I thought it was interesting to see that kind of engagement rather than or that kind of follower validation pricing. I don't know. Instead of based on follower count alone,

13:06

yeah, I think CPM or cost per million pricing comes from a very old format of marketing. So before Instagram ever existed,

13:17

which if you don't know is actually cost per 1000. Not million. Just to clarify.

13:22

Yes, yes, it is actually coming from an older form of marketing, where you were getting the views were being counted by the place where you were advertising with. So something like a magazine or a television show. They were of course, projecting how many views that this advertisement had gotten. And they would tell you, Okay, so the price that you paid, divided by how many people viewed, it gives you this CPM. And that's also very typical pricing for people who are advertising on Instagram and Facebook. So through the algorithm pushing out different ads, you get a CPM there or a CPC, which is a cost per click. So that's how much you were paying for each one of the clicks that you received. And so I think bringing that into influencer marketing probably starts with larger corporations and large agencies that were very used to that and they're trying to force a what do they say force a round hole into a square or a square peg? It's not my preferred version of pricing. I just fly like we just discussed we just discussed how is not possible to create an average views and you just are never going to know Yeah, we've seen people take such a dive over time. And what like you always are going to have to discount your pricing when your views are getting lower or it's not taking into account like your skill set. Maybe your niche right So many other things, it's not taking into an account. And it makes sense for something that's purely numbers based like advertising on Facebook business, right? Like putting an ad through there is like, very numbers base very rigid. There's no room for, you know, weird gray areas. But when you're a creator, it's different. You're coming up with a concept, you're acting it out, you are the face. Like, there's so many other things that are beyond just numbers that you're pricing for that it doesn't, to me doesn't make sense. We still use it for like the overall health of the campaign at the very end, because it may have included, you know, the campaign for a specific product may have included one portion of paid ads and one portion of influencer. So when we put it all together in terms of impressions and spend, we probably will come out with some sort of CPM. But yeah, it's really an old school marketing version. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't consider it for influencers, I wouldn't tell them that that's the way that they should price.

15:57

The other thing that we hear is the 1% model. 1% of your follower count is what you should be charging. And I think that rumor floated around far too wide. And I think that's why we see so many low rates and influencer marketing, because as much as we talk about, like the people that give us these outrageous, outlandish numbers, I also see the people where I'm like, I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that try again. And I literally said that, like five times this week, I literally, I DM to girl and I was like, girlfriend, send me your story views because I'm not letting you I'm not letting you in your 100k followers charge 250 for a story set?

16:41

Oh, gosh, yeah, that is quite low. I know. I think it's so hard. And also there's like a mentality to it that I think people don't discuss enough like pricing your own worth on his social media app is like, where do you even begin? It's like to asking someone like, how would you spell your firstborn? For? It's like, how, how do you price like your worth on an app, it's very difficult. And some people have, you know, they're self conscious, they have fraud syndrome, they feel like, you know, I shouldn't even be charging for this in the first place. Because maybe they didn't try to become Instagram. They just did, like you just don't know. And some people just have a bad mindset around money all together. So there's also that, but I agree, like, I don't ever adjust people's pricing when they send them to me, and maybe that's an issue that I should do. But as a business person, it is hard to be like, Hey, you should charge more because I'm negotiating on behalf of clients. But I definitely don't go under that. And I would, you know, rightfully hire them again and again. And kind of like see them up their rates is nice. Yeah. learning curve to though, you know, like, when you're first in any industry, you don't know, you take the first offer of the first salary, right? You don't know how to negotiate vacation days. Like, it's all things that we learned as we build repertoire in our industry. So it comes with the territory, and although it's unfortunate for us to look back and be like, Oh, no, I only charge 250 And I could have been charging 500 Like, it's fine. You learn to up your rates and like you keep moving on and that's fantastic. Right? Yeah, I mean, the other thing was stories is that they dissolve after 24 hours. So it's like, I hate like the pricing on story is so tough for me or like when people say that they're gonna price a story slide more because it includes a link. Also not understanding because again, the link like is gone in 24 hours and like it's the same 15 seconds either way. Not sure it's

18:49

a clickable element that booster and dammit,

18:51

I It's very strange to me. And I've been seeing that, like, you know, to me, the standard protocol when you post something new, especially a partnership is that you're going to share it on two stories, right? So when I'm contracting, I will say like three let's say it's three stories slides plus share the content two stories so that's technically a fourth slide but not really because like you didn't have to do anything besides share it and I had somebody price me for that slide. And I was like, that's no like you can't have I don't also have to pay for the fourth slide because you like are just hitting the arrow. That Instagram already created this feature for you. You're doing zero extra work. Oh man. This just takes us back to our previous episode where we where we talked about this. Pricing for extra work is fine. Adding things on just for nonsense is so silly.

19:43

I also had someone the other day tell me that she included 10 story slides in her package and are in her like typical ad in conglomeration with her her post I was like, I don't I don't want that. Yeah,

20:04

no, definitely don't do that. Yeah, we always tell people three three should be if you can't explain it in three, there's an issue.

20:12

Agreed. So we've talked about CPM, we've talked about this 1% model being not enough. We've talked about also niche being something that you can push rate with, as well as the time involved. And one of those examples that I've seen frequently is recipe creation, because your recipe creation is going to take so much longer to envision that to cook it to fold a video together to get the right angles, like there's so much more. There's so much more in that than like a random lip synching video. But in thinking about how much you can charge at that point, let's say what let's pull out a example. Let's say we have a account with 10k 10k account, they send you this recipe creation, we're going to put you in foodie world now, Sonia, you're no longer a beauty girl. I said $2,000, what would you say? I'm going to find your sweet spot,

21:15

I would say that $2,000 for 10k is not unheard of if if you're saying that a recipe creation takes a lot of steps, a lot of angles, a lot of photography, whatever else if the real could be broken up into two reels, but they shoot it all at once. So if they can figure out a way to give me two topics on the same recipe, so I have two pieces of content, but they didn't have to shoot it twice. And I get the stills that accompany that. So right, you're already going to have to be doing that. So they're gonna give me stills of like the process, the end process. And the final thing. Now however many total, that is up to the recipe creator, because I don't know what it takes in terms of steps. But my thought process is that if a recipe takes five steps, they would also have five still images. And then they would be able to remix their video two times once to give me the final recipe and wants to maybe like, teach me how to chop or some other sort of skill set that they're using within the video so that I can flip it twice 100%.

22:21

Okay, now let's take it lower. Let's take it lower, I have 2000 followers, and I give you that $1,000 rate for the same exact product.

22:33

I think that if you include some form of ad usage, and you can promote it on ads, I would be interested to me 2000 followers is not enough to be justifying for my clients. The amount of exposure, the content, yes. But if part of the package is like, Oh, I'm posting on my end 2000 followers just not enough for me. If they do some sort of amazing content creation, then yes, I'm it's like a good package, it could be an option if that includes a little bit of ad usage, perhaps. But I don't think that that explore what

23:13

is your low end for micro influencers. Five,

23:17

I don't normally pay under 5k. Yeah, and only just for, that's just for a post on the feed, if there are people that we have discovered that we've loved, that do really cool types of content, or that have a look that we're really looking for that have that lower end. And we just want them to create content. And that's a great partnership. And that's a good way to get started and get like your foot in the door. But for me, most of the time, we're recommending that people are, if they're looking for exposure and posting on the feed, we try and start closer to 5k.

23:50

That's an amazing point. Because let's bring back that content versus awareness thing. If you're under 5k. We're not saying that you can't sell that content, but you better be leading with the content, not with the awareness. Your your salutely strong suit is not your promotional pieces here,

24:09

for sure. I think it's a build. And that's unfortunate. And I'm sorry, if I'm crushing anybody right now who has under 5k. Hopefully, it's just like giving you something to work towards. And I'm not saying that there aren't brands who won't do it. This is my personal policy and the way that we cast for the brands that we work with, I am sure that there are brands that will do it. For me, it's like when we get under 5k and stuff ends up being $500 $250 $100. It just doesn't make sense. By the time that I'm signing the contract the W nine like the point of view, it's too much labor for not enough exposure. Now, if it's for content, and I'm coming to that person that was saying great, make me 10 reels or something for a package rate and here's $3,000 or whatever the rate is, then that It makes more sense because I'm getting a more long lasting partnership out of it, but for what we call a one and done, so someone who is posting a thing promoting that thing, whatever else, like a smaller package, under 5k, it's just too much work for something that is like, essentially, I could have said mode you for. So yeah, for a smaller brand that maybe isn't represented by an agency is going after people just you know, either from the founder or an intern or a very small team, it's very possible that you could get those paid deals. I'm just giving you my perspective, from you know, the way that we run our business.

25:34

I love this perspective, I do think there's so much to think about with this with this content versus awareness and how you can create packages that really make sense with how much you want to be paid to get out of bed, how much you want to be paid to do all of the things involved with emailing contracting, invoicing, creating like literally everything. So on that note, I'm going to leave you my friend, my listener to think on that to consider how you want to apply this to you. Thank you so much for listening. If you love to this rate review subscribe. I don't even know is that a YouTube thing? I'm still getting the hang of it. And if you have any questions, comments deep concerns, find us on Instagram at the Harley Jordan and Sonya dot Elise