Marketers are prepared to pay large sums to prominent online influencers in exchange for a mention of their brand, a new study has revealed.
According to research by Rakuten Marketing, UK marketers working on influencer programmes will pay celebrity influencers up to £75,000 for a post in which their brand is namechecked.
Meanwhile, YouTube stars stand to pick up £67,000 for every video that mentions a particular brand.
Similarly, marketers will pay Snapchat influencers up to £53,000 for every brand mention.
However, the amount brands will pay depends on a number of factors, such as the reach of an online influencer.
Indeed, marketers said they would not be willing to pay over £1,500 to an influencer on Facebook if they did not have more than 10,000 followers.
In addition, YouTube influencers with a similar reach can receive around £3,000 in exchange for a positive review, product demo or unboxing video.
Conversely, some sectors were found to be especially likely to pay way over the average in order to get a mention from the most prominent influencers.
For instance, premium fashion marketers are happy to pay more than £160,000 per post.
This could be a reflection of how online personalities are particularly influential when it comes to people’s fashion choices and driving consumers’ purchasing decisions.
Despite this large investment, many marketers appear to be unable to accurately measure how well paying influencers is working for their brand.
Just one in five said they could demonstrate the impact of this approach through indirectly influenced sales, while only half do so by tracking brand reach, the number of followers and online engagements, such as the number of shares and likes.
Furthermore, 38 per cent admitted they could not tell if a particular campaign had boosted sales, yet 75 per cent intend to step up spending on influencer campaigns over the next 12 months.
As a result, many marketers could need to pay much closer attention to how a campaign is working for them in order to work out if they are getting a good return on investment.
James Collins, Senior Vice President of Rakuten Marketing, commented: “Influencer marketing can be hugely effective, but marketers are commissioning expensive posts without understanding the real impact on the purchase journey.”
“It’s essential that marketers question influencer fees and use attribution tools to measure the effect of this activity in order to create strong, value-driven relationships between brands and influencers.”
Mr Collins stated that while awareness has always been difficult to measure, tools now exist to help brands measure how awareness affects sales and to “reward them on that basis, taking the understanding of performance beyond simple reach”.
“Things are getting more sophisticated,” he added.
Facebook influencers make £75k per post despite marketers’ limited metrics London Loves Business
