Note: thanks to Shane Barker for the inspo and Influence.Co for the data.
Hi All,
This is a special deep dive into an older dataset, but I think it shows something very powerful for all involved in the influencer ecosystem.
The last two years I heard a lot about Micro-influencers and the fact that they had higher engagement rate.
But at least in my experience, and now hearing from many in the industry, the micro-influencer segment is fraught with non-professionals and non-great content.
Make sure to listen to the 10-minute audio note attached for context and analysis.
My opinion: Engagement Rate should only be used to compare two influencers who, for all other metrics and brand fit, are equal.
That means, I wouldn’t compare a creator with 10k followers and 10% engagement rate to someone with 100k followers with 3% engagement rate.
I would compare two creators who have 100k followers… A with 3.5% engagement rate and B with 2.5% engagement rate. These two, because follower count is equal, I would compare with their engagement rate.
To reiterate: When all else is equal, compare engagement rate.
With this in mind I wanted to see, with data, if we were missing some other… better…metric to compare influencers.
On LinkedIn Shane Barker shared a great article that included a chart of engagement rates across a large variety of sized influencers.
That data was from Influence.co’s Engagement Rate and Pricing study.
Here is the cost of a sponsored post across the same size creators.
I combined the two data sets, added a bit of math…
and now we have Cost Per Engagement per size of audience.
Here’s the resulting chart in a google doc.
One more thing to add, this cost per engagement is from more than 2 years ago. The data involved is from 2017, and reported on in 2018. For all I know these numbers could have changed… maybe.
Clearly in this cost per engagement column we see that efficient money spent is spent on top creators. But that is obviously not the whole story.
Micro Influencers do have their place in the Influencer Marketing ecosystem. Every campaign is unique and every KPI is unique.
There are absolutely a need for using micro influencers in your influencer marketing mix. I just wouldn’t bet my house on them for every campaign for every brand.
Thank you,
Andrew Kamphey
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P.S.
Also, consider comparing this cost per engagement with the cost for paid ads on Instagram.
Data from Soulmates.ai on February 27th, 2020
Cost Per Engagement Compared to Follower Count