How to properly negotiate with influencers?

Propose a more long-term influencer collaboration

Long-term campaigns can be a good way to negotiate influencers’ rates. Brand ambassadors or collaborations over several months, this type of partnership can serve the interests of both the company and the influencer. As partners over a longer period, the brand and the KOL can, for example, group together the contents shared with the target audience during the reflection around the collaboration.

Rather than establishing a «one-shot» campaign, the extension of the collaboration can also be an opportunity to get some content organically, notably through repeated mentions of the influencer and his audience. The long- term is certainly a more important commitment for the KOL with the brand, but it also guarantees him a more perennial collaboration in time.

Collaborate with a KOL who is already aware of your brand

We mentioned it above. Collaborations with a KOL who is already convinced by your brand can have a considerable effect on the influencer’s rates. Indeed, if the latter is a customer himself or has known about your products and services for some time, he will be more likely to accept a collaboration with you by lowering his rates. As he is already convinced, it will be even easier for him to explain the values around your brand, deliver the right message to his community and bring real performance to your campaign. This can be a real plus to negotiating his rates and thus, reduce the costs related to the collaboration.

Thinking about pay-for-performance, affiliate programs and their evolution

We talked about it earlier in this study. Affiliate programs can be an excellent way to control the costs related to an Influence collaboration. They are based on the real performance of a KOL in the context of a partnership with a brand and can avoid bad surprises. Thanks to the key performance indicators linked to the affiliation programs (CPS, CPA,…), the content creator and the brand can follow during and after the campaign, the concrete results obtained from the content published by the KOL.

Performance-based remuneration can bring new motivation to the KOL who knows the global objectives of your campaign, will be more likely to publish the right messages to his community. Again, this type of remuneration is part of the negotiations to be undertaken with the content creator and must be validated by both parties for it to work effectively. Depending on the results obtained, the collaboration with the KOL may also evolve, leading to a new and more sustainable type of partnership for example.

Offer a collaboration that contains other benefits and types of compensation

The «monetary» aspect is not the only possible way to compensate content creators in an Influence campaign. Indeed, to reduce costs, brands can propose other types of compensation in addition to a more gross remuneration.

Offering to participate in experiments, inviting KOLs on trips to discover new product lines, sending them the new products in advance to welcome their return and inviting them to share their opinions with their communities on the day of the official release, etc. There are many ways to compensate KOLs. This type of collaboration benefits can lead them to review their gross rates and thus, allow the brand to create a privileged link with the most relevant influencers for it while limiting certain costs.

Use concrete data from KOL profiles

Negotiating KOL rates when you’re new to Influence Marketing can be complex, especially if you don’t have any references. Some content creators with different community sizes can offer brands similar rates, making it difficult to understand the KOLs’ rates.

To properly negotiate influencer rates, it’s important to take into account several key Influencer data (and not only the size of a KOL’s audience) such as, audience size, engagement rate and post reach, etc, are all metrics a brand can rely on to review the expenses related to a collaboration with a content creator.

The engagement rate alone will allow you to know if a KOL’s audience is really sensitive and interacts with the published content.

Where the size of the community itself will not be able to give you such indications, to negotiate with KOLs and maximize the ROI of an Influence campaign, it may be relevant to use a technological solution such as Kolsquare allowing you to have, at a glance, all the performance data, potential target reached and communities of a targeted KOL profile.

This can allow you to rely on real statistics when negotiating the rates of a content creator to avoid investing too much on a profile for little results at the end of the campaign (in addition to allowing you to identify the most appropriate profile for your brand).