Mistakes of Negotiating with Influencers

A couple weeks ago, someone on my team posted about the reality of negotiating with influencers.

It looks like an extreme example, but my team literally deals with this every single week.

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People like to say that influencer rates are like the wild west, and it’s true. Unless you have a solid grasp on the market and strong negotiation skills, you’ll get stuck paying rates that make zero sense.

If you’re like me you have a background in paid media.

Most leaders inside of eCommerce brands are PRO’s when it comes to spending money on Meta. You probably spent 90% of your time learning the nuances of Meta, but may be missing a skill in your arsenal of marketing weapons: negotiating with influencers.

The question is: how do you actually set up an influencer deal to become a win-win?

Let’s start with the mistakes people often make.

Mistake #1: Asking "What's Your Rate?"

If you would like to give away all your money in your cash reserves account, just ask this question above.

Asking someone’s rate is guaranteed to have this negotiation start at the influencer’s highest price.

What you should be doing instead:

First, figure out your budget based on your target CPM—this could be anywhere from $20-40. Calculate the influencer’s average views for your desired set of deliverables, to back into a budget range that makes sense.

Then kick off the negotiations by making a reasonable offer. Start on the lower end of your budget, with your full wish list of deliverables.

Mistake #2: Not Leveraging the Terms

One of my favorite ways of negotiating is through terms.

As the old saying goes, your terms, my price, your price my terms.

Many people don’t know how many options they have available to them when negotiating with influencers.

They see these deals as a one and done post, instead of a potential long term partnership.

So here's a list of deliverables we can use in our back and forth with the creator:

• Reels, in-feed posts, TikToks, IG stories
• Extra organic tags on content
• Dark post UGC
• Usage term length
• Category Exclusivity
• Whitelisting access

Compensation:

• More Free Product
• Monthly retainer
• % of ad spend on creative in paid social
• % of sales from affiliate link or Codes
• Featured on website / blog / newsletter

All of these are available to you to leverage.

My suggestion is to always get usage rights upfront as a part of the deliverables. It’s much easier to negotiate on the front end, than after the content has been posted and you realize you want to boost it in an ad.

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Mistake #3: Not having enough deals in the pipeline.

The most leverage you have in a negotiation is being able to walk away from the deal table.

You can create this leverage by always having multiple deals being negotiated.

So if you are trying to sign five influencers for an upcoming promotion or product launch, you need to source 20 creators who fit your budget and scope overall.

You need to take a mindset that no one deal is more important than the rest.

Many times the rates influencers have set are because they were paid one time by a massive Fortune 500 company. Other times, it’s because that influencer just doesn’t really want to work with you, and that’s not a partnership you need to be chasing after.

Live by this rule: Always be sourcing.

Mistake #4: Too Much, Too Soon.

I have so many calls with CMOs of eCommerce brands who say the same thing.

“We paid this influencer $15k and nothing happened.”

This is a result of too much too soon.

When you are starting to pay influencers, you need a strong base to start from. I love having a product seeding program that’s generating 50+ posts a month before paying influencers.

Why?

It gives you leverage.

My suggestion is once you have a successful seeding program, start with just $5-10k/month in paid influencer spend. We have brands we started with at $5k who are now spending $50k/mo on influencer marketing.

Remember, influencer marketing isn’t magic. It’s digital marketing, so test it like you would any other channel.

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