As an emerging Shopify brand, it’s possible that you’re working with a relatively small budget while you get ramped up for growth. There are many ways to promote your Shopify store on a tight budget, while ensuring influencers and ambassadors are well compensated for their work — but to make things easier, we’ve created a budget calculator to help you compute the financial details of your influencer partnerships.
How Much To Pay Influencers
Use Aspire’s budget calculator to figure out how much you can afford to pay influencers based on your exact budget. For instance, if you’re starting with a budget of $40K, you may want to work with a larger selection of micro-influencers, instead of using up all your budget on two macro-influencers.
Note: Multiple factors affect pricing for influencers. The average prices in the spreadsheet are just a guide — you also need to take into account the value of your product, your potential financial return on investment, and the engagement rates of the influencers you hope to work with.
Most influencer marketing platforms will automatically calculate how much you should pay influencers — which is an added benefit of investing in a platform — but in the meantime, there are plenty of free templates to allow you to run influencer marketing campaigns manually.
Why Compensating Influencers Is Important
In the process of maturing, the influencer marketing industry has experienced some growing pains. In recent years, a handful of brands have been called out for not paying influencers fair rates or asking for too much without offering strong incentives.
It’s important not to just look at influencers as another paid ad space. They spend a lot of time creating, engaging, and building relationships with their followers — so when it comes to brand partnerships, they want to ensure they are being authentic.
In addition, influencers also provide the full production and amplification package. They spend hours crafting up creative campaign ideas, shooting and editing content, and building a story around your brand that they know will resonate with their audience, while also feeling authentic to their personal brand.
Influencer Payment Best Practices
There are many aspects that go into budget and influencer payment determination, such as time taken to produce content for the campaign, the relationship and history with a creator, the influencer’s metrics, exclusivity, quality — the list goes on.
So, how do you get the most out of your influencer budget?
Lead With Your Mission.
Influencers prioritize partnerships with brands that align with their personal values and have a positive presence on social media. In fact, our 2021 influencer marketing report found that:
- 74% of creators say that alignment with their personal brands is the most crucial factor when deciding to collaborate with a company, while only 4% say monetary compensation is the most important.
- 52% of creators want to work with brands that show up for the social issues and causes they care about.
Approach your partnerships by leading with your brand’s mission and values in order to get them excited about why you do what you do, not just what you sell.
Negotiate a Package Deal.
It’s important to look at influencers as an extension of your brand — a true partner. If they are a great fit and have expressed interest in working together but your budget doesn’t accommodate their rates, create an attractive offer for them. This could include:
- Contracting them for a long-term partnership of multiple posts at a discounted rate
- Turning them into brand ambassadors and giving them incentives such as a monthly shipment of free products, first access to new launches, promo codes, affiliate links, and more
- Offering them a high-value product along with an engagement boosting opportunity (i.e. $1K worth of product + giveaway opportunity + paid amplification/boosting of their post)
For more tips on working with a small budget, check out how this small skincare brand stretched its budget through influencer product seeding.
