Is $1m for One Instagram Post Value For Money?
I can hear you all saying, surely the $1m is a typo and it should be $1k? Well perhaps a few years ago it would have been but not in 2020.
UK based social media experts HopperHQ first produced their Instagram rich list in 2017 which showcases the top 100 celebrities, sports stars and influencers, detailing their follower numbers and estimated cost per post. They have just released their 2020 list and for the first time there is someone who could command a fee of $1m for a single post.
So who is this influential person?
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson
Yes, its the former WWE wrestler come actor with a following of over 187m, overtaking Kylie Jenner who has been in No.1 spot for a long time with 182m followers.
The 10 celebrities who can charge the most per Instagram post are:
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, 187m followers - just over $1m per post
Kylie Jenner, 182m - $986,000 per post
Cristiano Ronaldo, 225m - $889,000 per post
Kim Kardashian, 176m - $858,000 per post
Ariana Grande, 191m - $853,000 per post
Selena Gomez, 180m - $848,000 per post
Beyoncé Knowles, 149m - $770,000 per post
Justin Bieber, 139m - $747,000 per post
Taylor Swift, 135m - $722,000 per post
Neymar da Silva Santos Junior, 139m - $704,000 per post
(Source: Hopper HQ)
Note that there isn’t one politician or business mogul to be seen…
So what does this mean in practise, what would they actually do for these astronomical fees? And perhaps more importantly is it worth it?
Usually this involves the celebrity/influencer posting a picture or video with the company’s products or they often run competitions on their behalf. Below are a couple of examples:
Kevin Hart & Usain Bolt - PokerStars
Click on the image to go to Instagram to view the video
PokerStars is an online gambling platform who decided to use Kevin Hart, a well known American Comedian and Usain Bolt, arguably one of the best athletes of all time for their campaign. They wanted to expand the awareness of the brand as part of the #gameon campaign, so buy using two very famous people from different walks of life, coming together to create a funny chicken wings eating video refereed by the world’s No.1 poker player Daniel Negreau, they tapped into a huge and diverse audience. Now on the face of this is a strange combination however this video had almost 2m views during the course of the campaign. Now I don’t know what it cost to get these 3 celebrities involved but its a pretty big reach for 1 post to achieve.
Kloe Kardashian - Amazon
Click on the image to go to Instagram to view the post
If you don’t know who Kloe Kardashian is, she is a socialite and part of the famous Kardashian family who stared in the Keeping Up With The Kardashians reality show. The reality TV star broke the news of her pregnancy on the show and to capitalise on the moment, Amazon partnered with Kardashian to help her prepare for the subsequent baby shower. The Instagram posts allowed her followers into her exclusive event and very clearly thanks Amazon for offering all the baby products she needs in one place, making her baby shower registry so easy for her. She even went as far as linking to the registry so fans could see what she had on her list. Now this campaign not only gave Amazon access to her massive following, and in turn their sphere of influence, helped Amazon to highlight a new service to customers, but it also would i’m sure result in revenue for Amazon with fans clicking through to look at products.
Its impossible to quantify the sales Amazon achieved with this campaign but with almost 4.3m likes on the one post i’m sure it helped them achieve what they wanted.
Now you may have noticed in both of these examples that the celebrity has stated that their post is an advert. This was introduced to make it clear to their audience that they are being paid to post on behalf of a company, and they must now do this if they were either paid to publish it or received gifts in return.
So, is it really worth paying all this money for one post?
Well in my opinion it’s only worth it if a business can afford for it not to work or at least aren’t expecting a direct return on investment (ROI). You can’t argue that these celebrities and influencers have huge audiences and one post from them can give brands huge exposure but equally as important brands need to ensure that they select the right person to promote them and that the content is going to engage with their customer. It’s not suitable for a lot of brands.
If you compare the cost to other forms of high profile, large audience advertising such as TV advertising during the Super Bowl then it suddenly doesn’t appear overly expensive given you get in front of a huge, engaged audience and you also get the endorsement of someone that their following admire and want to be. With the TV audience of 102million viewers, an average 30 second advert during the Super Bowl costing between $5.1 and 5.3m (excluding the advert production cost which could cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions) and competing with 42 other adverts shown during the game.
I would argue that one post from ‘The Rock’ represents better value – 187m genuinely engaged followers, content with longevity that lasts a lot longer than 30s seconds and isn’t competing for the same audience with 42 other brands – making cost per view approx. 0.0043p!
Influencer marketing is an increasing business and more companies are looking to these ready made audiences to increase reach to piggyback on an already engaged and mostly tailored following.
Now thats all very well for big businesses who can afford $1m but is this strategy affordable for smaller businesses?
Well the good news is that there are so many active influencers now across so many industries that with some good research and negotiation skills you can still use this technique on a smaller scale. The important part is to make sure you use someone that is relevant and will provide the value you are looking for. You can do this manually which would take a lot of time and effort or you could use some of the new platforms which help you search for influencers, some examples are below but there are many more out there now if you search for them:
Upfluence - they have a database of over 3m influencers across the world covering a range of industries/topics. You can search through their database using keywords to narrow down who the best influencers are for your needs. There is also a very useful Google Chrome tool which allows you to analyse someone’s social account yourself to see if they are suitable for you.
HypeAuditor - this tool helps to rank influencers for you and shows you what topics they normally post about and the countries they have most influence in. Its not that cheap a tool at $299/month but it depends how active you want to be in this space if this cost is worth it for your business.
Post For Rent - this is a more cost effective option with a free Lite package which is commission based when you make a booking, or various packages for self service or managed service options. This platform allows you to search for influencers yourself or you can create a brief and influencers then pitch for the work, which is less time consuming that finding them yourself.
Most of these platforms offer free trials, so if its something you are interested in I would recommend trialing them to see what suits your needs best. What I would do is ensure that you really think about what you want to achieve first, how you are going to measure the success of it and what budget you are comfortable with first before signing up. This will ensure you get most of the trial as often they are time limited and you are more likely to find success if you have put the up front work into thinking about the campaign.
So if you like what you hear and think I can help your business please feel free to contact me and we can have an initial free, no obligation chat about your business and the support you may need.
