How To Negotiate Brand Deals as a Micro Influencer
Did you know that every offer you receive from a brand is negotiable?
I know it can be intimidating to negotiate with brands, especially if you’re a new creator. But if you’re equipped with the right knowledge going into a conversation with a brand, you can come out on top.
In this blog post we’re going to cover:
Learning about industry pay standards
The factors that can impact your rate as an influencer
My top 5 tips for negotiating brand deals
Being confident and knowing your value
If you don’t know me, I’m a micro-influencer (20k on TikTok, 12k on Instagram) and I’m also a full-time content creator so currently all of the money I make comes from my blog and social media platforms.
In 2021 brand deals typically made up just over half of my yearly income as a content creator and over the years, I've learned how to negotiate four figure brand deals for myself even as a small creator.
If a brand reaches out and wants to collaborate with you, don’t get overwhelmed! At the end of the day, you have three options:
Accept their offer
Decline their offer
Negotiate
Let’s get into the details of preparing to negotiate with brands.
Understand pay standards
Before you head into a negotiation, it can be helpful to understand industry pay standards and learn how much your peers are making from brand deals.
Here are three different resources where you can learn about industry pay standards.
Facebook groups
First, there are many different Facebook groups of content creators, influencers and bloggers that you can join and if do a search in any of these Facebook groups to see if others have discussed their rates, you’ll find some answers. Just search the word “rates” or “deliverables” within the groups and see what comes up.
People in Facebook groups are generally pretty transparent so because of this, these groups are usually a bit more exclusive to join. In most cases, you will need to be a content creator to join a lot of these and you may have to provide your blog URL or your Instagram handle to get approved to join the group.
Some of my favorites for this are the Hermana Influencer Network, rewardStyle bloggers, The InfluenceHer Collective, Boss Girl Bloggers and Freelancing Females, but there are plenty of others out there too.
These groups will help you gather more intel and factor in some real life examples to your pricing.
Online articles
The second resource I'd recommend checking out are articles on both Business Insider and HuffPost. Where some influencers have been interviewed by these publications and actually shared what they got paid for different brand campaigns. I actually even wrote a few of these for HuffPost back in my days as a ~freelance writer~ so I’ll link a few for you to browse:
Remember, these are just a point of reference. You may charge more or less than some of these creators depending on a few factors which I discuss further below.
Transparent pay platforms
And the third resources I wanted to recommend are very much like Glassdoor but for content creators and brand deals.
One is called F*** You Pay Me (great name) and in order to join, you will need to submit a review of a brand collaboration that you've done. And once you submit that one review to their catalog of over 2,000 brands that have been reviewed there, you'll see access to everyone else's reviews.
Another is called Clara for Creators, founded by ex-TikTok employee Christen Nino De Guzman.
On both of these platforms you can see how much creators were paid to work with certain brands, what their deliverables were, and how large their audience is. Creators can also share details like usage and exclusivity and also post reviews about how they’d rate working with the brand.
No one can determine your worth other than you.
It’s up to you to communicate your value to a brand, but if they can’t see it, that’s on them.
Calculating rates
Now when it comes to determining your rates and pricing yourself, it can be really tricky because there is no one size fits all pricing models for your influencer business. Not only that, but your prices can also fluctuate and change over time based on different conditions in the industry and also how fast you're growing online.
What I've done is created a list of all the factors that can impact your rate and I put them into two different buckets: creator-specific factors and then campaign-specific factors. I think breaking it down this way will be really helpful so you can determine what is just dependent on you as a content creator and what sets your rates versus some specific asks of the brand for their particular campaign that they're looking to cast for.
Creator-specific factors
Professional experience
As an example, I'm a former magazine editor and content director so those experiences make me unique as a creator and inform how I work with brands and they also increase my rates, often making them higher compared to other content creators who may have a similar following on their social media channels.
Engagement
If you have a highly engaged audience, that is something worth pointing out to brands and charging for accordingly. You can back this up by sharing a media kit with a more detailed audience breakdown or sharing screenshots of your analytics.
Expertise/niche
Say you’re a creator who mainly produces natural hair content and a brand wants to hire you to promote a product for natural hair, that is something worth charging more for because they are getting a hyper targeted audience with a very knowledgeable creator.
Location
A brand may be recruiting influencers based on location if they are trying to reach an audience in a particular city or state. I live in New York City and the cost of living here is more expensive than other areas so I also factor location into my rates.
Equipment
Do you shoot content with a DSLR camera? Use a drone? Do you outsource photography? Use paid programs like Photoshop and Lightroom to edit your content? Those are all expenses that you need to offset with the cost of your services as a creator.
Campaign-specific factors:
In addition to creator-specific factors there are campaign-specific factors based on what a brand might be looking for from you including:
Usage rights
Whitelisting
Exclusivity
Scope of work
Content type
Timeline
Revisions
Seasonality
Sensitive topics
Generally these factors can all impact how you choose to price yourself. If there is a short timeline for when the brand needs content drafts, that might trigger a rush fee. If the brand wants you to refrain from working with competitors for a certain window of time, you’ll want to factor in a potential loss of work if you have to say no to a brand deal from one of their competitors.
I also do a deeper dive on all of these factors in this YouTube video.
Best negotiation tips
Let’s jump into my top 5 negotiation tips that you can use when talking to brands.
1. Keep it short and sweet
You don't need to send the brand a long-winded email justifying the cost of all of your deliverables. If they ask you for a quote you can say “Thanks for reaching out! My rate for the requested deliverables is X. Please let me know if we can move forward.” That's it!
2. Get all of the details
They may not explicitly mention all of the deliverables when you first reach out, but that doesn't mean they're not thinking about them or that they won't try to sneak them into your contract later. So if they just asked for a quote for an Instagram post, make sure you also find out what the timeline is, if they want any add-ons like usage rights or exclusivity and what direction they want the content to go in.
3. Read your contracts
And wait, once you've read a contract, read it a second time and even a third. Even if you agree to terms with a brand via email, I’ve seen things that I didn’t agree to pop up in a contract before and I’ve had to ask them to amend the agreement. If you want a deeper dive on influencer contracts I have a YouTube video where I define three key terms to watch out for.
4. Stand your ground
If a brand is asking for a rate that is well below what you quoted them, just stand your ground and say “Thank you for the offer, however this is my rate for the requested deliverables.” I think of it this way—you might be looking to hire a plumber and the one with one year of experience and no reviews online versus 20 years of experience and great reviews will cost two different things.
5. Know when to walk away
It’s okay to say no. If you're saying no to something now, it means you're leaving room for something better to happen in the future. Last summer I only took on one brand deal which was a little nerve-wracking as a new full-time creator but there weren’t many brands that paid well and that I thought my audience would be interested in. Instead, I took advantage of that slower season to create new digital products and set up more passive income streams.
Being confident in yourself
Remember, no one can determine your worth other than you. For me personally, I know for me on paper as a micro influencer it might be surprising to a brand that I charge what I charge compared to other creators who have a similar audience size to me.
It’s on me as a creator to communicate my value to brands through my previous content, media kit, and pitch email. But if I put myself out there and they can’t see the value, that’s their problem and not mine.
There will be people who will question your worth, but as long as you never do and you're unwavering about that, the right things will find you and you will find the right opportunities for yourself.
Want more pitching tips? Check out my e-book!
