Influencer partnerships become increasingly performance-based
With brands reducing the scope of their influencer marketing efforts, many creators may encounter fewer opportunities for brand partnerships, forcing them to be less selective about the brands they agree to work with, Skillshare’s Cooper said.
“[Previously], because they had so many people coming at them from so many different directions, they could be picky,” he said. “They could be picking who they worked with; they could be picking the structure…Creators [now] are just more open to performance-based models and different structures that, when there was a ton of money flowing around, they weren’t quite as open to.”
Over the past few years, brands have typically paid influencers a flat rate for each sponsored post, with those fees based largely on factors such as the size of an influencer’s following or their average engagement rate. But with the economic downturn driving brands to seek more meaningful returns from influencer partnerships, more brands will shift that payment model to center around the performance of each post.
Like Cooper, Krishna Subramanian, co-founder of influencer marketing platform Captiv8, has also seen a growing number of creators accept brand partnerships that pay them based on performance—which could include metrics such as how many sales their posts generate, for example.
“For CMOs, I think it’s always going to come down to, ‘How much is it costing for a new user?’” Subramanian said. “As these specific metrics become more and more important, brands are going to tap into influencers on this performance basis, because there’s very little risk for brands. They’re only paying for what they get [in return].”