How much should an Instagram post cost?
We hear that question over and over again from influencers, brands and agencies.
The fact is that even though the influencer industry has been around for almost 10 years, there is still no gold standard for how we price and value the work that is done. In this guide, our CSO and co-founder Jacob Holst Mouritzen will give you an insight into some of the things that apply when you have to price your work as an influencer, or as a brand you have to assess what should be reasonable to pay for a collaboration.
First, though, we need to take a ride in the helicopter.
Your price depends on the value you create for the buyer.
The first thing you need to understand is that as a seller, whether you are selling a sofa, a creative work or a service, you are part of a larger machine. We often talk about value-based pricing. This means that you set your price based on the value you can create. That is quite reasonable, but it is also not easy to do.
Especially because as an influencer (or for that matter a sofa seller) you are probably not the only one selling this exact product.
Therefore, the price is largely driven by the market. If an influencer with a similar value to you chooses to sell an Instagram post for 2500kr, it is probably difficult to convince someone to pay you, 25,000kr for roughly the same thing.
3 steps to better pricing.
1) Take control of your data.
The first thing an influencer needs to have under control is their data. Whether you are an influencer or a brand/agency, it is crucial to be able to set a reasonable price that you know what you can actually deliver – and what it is worth.
The first thing you should do is get an overview of your followers, how they are made up of age, gender, interests, geography, etc. It is reasonable to assume that if a Danish company wants to collaborate with an influencer, they are only interested in reaching Danish users with their message.
Therefore, if you have 100,000 followers, but 80,000 of them reside outside of Denmark, then you actually only have 20,000 followers that have any value.
If a brand wants to collaborate with the influencer internationally, it may mean less, but often many companies will have a “market” / country in mind, or a specific target group they want to reach. The better an influencer’s followers and audience match the target group the brand is trying to reach, the more it is worth to them.
2) Calculate value in relation to similar alternatives
The easiest way to determine your value – especially as the new kid on the block in the marketing industry – is to compare it to what your clients (brands and agencies) are already familiar with. And that's advertising prices, production, etc.
Another trick is to break the price into several parts. It is easier for a customer to understand and approve than if you send a large total price for everything. Therefore, you should break your price into the following:
- Price for the reach you create for the customer (i.e. how many people your content reaches)
- Price for producing and creating the content.
- Your brand value as a credible spokesperson (this part is clearly the hardest, but more on that later).
How to do it: Calculate the value of your reach.
In most forms of marketing, when you buy advertising, you pay for reach. That is, how many people will see it. It is calculated in something called CPM (Cost Per Mille), which means the price it costs to reach 1,000 users.
The so-called CPM varies from platform to platform, but since the vast majority of influencer campaigns in Denmark still primarily run on Instagram, we use Instagram's CPM as a benchmark. Right now, the CPM on Instagram is approx. 100. It fluctuates, but no one would find it completely off.
So - now that you have control over your data, you also know how far an average post will go.
In Danish – how many followers see your content when you post on Instagram. You can either see this in your Instagram account's insights, or you can see it via our tool.
To make it easy, here is an example.
Gennemsnitlig rækkevidde på Instagram pr. post = 100.000
Ca. CPM = 100kr
Dvs. det koster 100 kr at nå 1.000 brugere.
Du når 100.000 brugere.
Pris = 10.000kr
Why?
If you were to buy the same reach as pure advertising on Instagram, it would cost the company 10,000 kr .
That is, your reach, at a minimum, is worth 10,000 kr to them.
The more bullseye you hit on the target audience the brand wants to reach, the more it will be worth. Whereas if, as in the case above, you have a lot of reach outside the country (or the target audience the brand wants to reach), this will be worth less.
How to do it: Calculate the value of your content.
Your reach is only a small part of the value you create. And fortunately, it's rare for companies to just want an influencer to post a picture that the brand itself has sent, as pure advertising. Most often, as an influencer, you also create original and unique content for this very collaboration.
Sometimes you even act as a social media consultant, project manager, photographer, model, editor, creative concept developer, etc.
It is therefore reasonable that you should also be paid to produce the content, as a brand or agency would have to buy it on the side if they were to do any other form of advertising.
Therefore, you must also price this part.
What something like that costs is probably what you call elastic in meters. An advertising production can cost anything from 5,000 kr to +50 million. But it's probably fair to assume that very few companies will pay that much money for you to create content for them.
As a rule of thumb, you are rarely willing to pay more for production than you pay for reach. There are of course cases where this does not apply, but for most campaigns and collaborations it will be a good benchmark to use.
(Cases that can be mentioned where this does not apply are, for example, the larger video productions that many YouTubers make. Here, the brand often has to speak to a target group that it does not understand at all, and content is created that is cool, catchy and makes the brand or, for example, a public agency appear cool. Here, the value can often be significantly higher).
You should therefore sit down and consider what it is that you have been asked to produce? Is it a picture you need to make for Instagram? A series of pictures? Are you going to an event? Do you need a photographer? Do you need lighting? Are you going to produce high-quality video productions? Do you need to develop a small creative concept? Etc.
All of the above elements should be kept in mind when deciding what you should price your content production for.
Let's stick with the example above of an influencer with 100,000 reach. In this case (to keep it simple) they have been asked to deliver just one Instagram post with a really cool photo.
Here you will need to price yourself as a model/actor + a photographer and some time for creative thinking beforehand and probably some project management and post-production. You will also need to write sharp copy/text for your post.
We don't suggest breaking your price down into all of the above components, but it can help you look at what would be a reasonable price to charge for it.
You can also try to calculate it in hourly rates for yourself.
It would be reasonable to assume that you should get around 800kr per hour for this work. It's not expensive at all when you consider what an advertising agency would normally charge, for example.
If the task takes you, for example, 1.5 days to complete (from start of brief to final delivery), then you will spend approximately 10 hours at 800kr per hour = 8,000kr .
This gives an indication of a fairly reasonable price.
So, now we have calculated the value of both our reach (10,000 kr) and our content production (approx. 8,000 kr).
So we are at approximately 18,000 kr .
Now comes the hardest part though.
3) Price your brand value
As an influencer, you are worth more than normal advertising. It has been proven time and time again that content from influencers performs better on average than standard advertising.
The reasons are too numerous to go into in this blog post, but it is reasonable to assume that you can at least add 2.0x on top of the CPM price, simply because the reach you deliver has more impact than if the brand itself were to buy the advertising space.
That is, in good marketing language, your brand has a multiplier effect on the CPM of 2.0. So now the reach you deliver is suddenly not only worth 10,000 kr, but 10,000 kr x 2.0 = 20,000 kr.
In addition, you have to add your special brand value. And that is REALLY difficult. Because it depends on how well you are a match for the brand's target audience and how credible you are as an influencer in this particular area.
For example, if you have built a platform as the best in making beautiful and aesthetic cakes on Instagram – and you are contacted by a brand that sells something that can help make the cakes even more beautiful, then this is where you should have ice in your stomach and increase the price. Because your recommendation and credibility is extremely effective. And significant. Not only for the brand, but also for yourself. Imagine if this product or company later turns out to be absolutely terrible? It can damage your credibility and thus your business.
We will leave it up to you how much you want to increase your brand "multiplier".
But so far we've rarely seen anyone who can take much more than 10x. And that's only in very rare cases with a niche audience that's VERY hard to reach, and an influencer with a REALLY credible voice in that particular environment.
By default, most will probably be somewhere between 2.0x and 4.0x fire multiplier.
Finally, let's do the math again.
Rækkeviddens værdi = 10.000kr.
Indholdsproduktion = 8.000kr.
Brandværdi (rækkeviddens værdi x 2.0) = 10.000kr x 2.0 = 20.000kr.
Ergo: Din pris på et instagrampost i ovenstående tilfælde skal være:
Brandværdi + inholdsproduktion = 20.000kr + 8.000kr = 28.000kr.
The above framework has helped several of the largest and most prominent influencers in Denmark raise their pricing and earn more money per post. It is definitely not bulletproof, but it is a useful and simple way to approach your initial pricing.
Finally, if you are an influencer and want help with your pricing, sign up for Sheer here. It is completely non-binding, but gives you an overview of your data and we are happy to help with initial pricing if you have a campaign you need to run.
Sign up here and get in touch with us when relevant. We are always happy to have a non-binding chat.
