See how much you should be paying for influencer content and check whether you're paying too much. Use Companion’s Benchmark Value Calculator to find out what this content is worth.
Influencer Benchmark Value (BMV) is an algorithm we’ve developed to measure the earned media value of influencer campaigns. It is based on what one would typically pay influencers for the content, using the data from thousands of global influencer marketing campaigns.
Benchmark Value measures the followers and engagement of your influencer’s post and tells you how much money that post’s earned performance is equivalent to, as in, how much money a brand would normally pay an influencer for content with the following and engagement your post earned.
Benchmarked
We know how much a brand usually pays for content because we benchmark the posts to thousands of campaign data points across the world.
Value
So the “benchmark value” is simply your post’s earned performance, benchmarked against the industry and translated into a currency metric so you can easily compare the earned result with what you paid for.
Worked Example
For example, you might have paid $400 to an influencer to make a post, but you don’t know if that was the right price for the engagement it achieved.
So, you now find the Benchmark Value of the post and if the Benchmark Value is higher than $400, you know your post has performed better than the average for the price you paid.
So how do brands use this metric? As an ROI metric? Or an earned performance metric? Or something else? Go to our next question!
When to use Benchmark Value?
When you want to know how your content compares to the industry standard.
When you want to know if you’re valuing your influencers correctly.
When you want to show your colleagues what your influencer campaigns are contributing to the business.
When you want to justify budget on influencer campaigns, or ask for more.
A KPI for measuring performance
Benchmark Value is a KPI for measuring performance, it sits alongside other KPIs such as engagement and reach, but because it’s a currency metric you can compare it with your costs, your budget, and your ROI from other channels.
It’s a performance metric which informs your financial decisions.
And that’s why influencer campaign managers use Benchmark Value to make granular decisions on running campaigns, but Marketing Directors use it to demonstrate influence’s value to the wider business.
We can show you best practices and benchmark your whole campaign, just get in touch with us today and we’ll set up a demo.
Use Benchmark Value as a KPI to compare your brand performance with your competitors.
Here’s how to do it:
Which one was higher? Which was more valuable?
Of course this is just comparing one post, we can give you the Benchmark Value for entire campaigns, just get in touch today and we’ll set up your free demo.
Let’s say that you want to compare different types of influencer content with each other, for example gifting campaigns with launch events.
Were the higher costs of organising an event worth the engagement the posts earned?
Let’s use the Benchmark Value Calculator to find out.
You spent $250 on an ambassador’s post launching a new colourway for a dress.
Two weeks later you organised a big product launch for the whole collection and paid the same influencer $500 to attend and they shared a Story of the event on Instagram.
You put both pieces of content into the Benchmark Value Calculator.
Post of dress: a BMV of $500
Story at event: a BMV of $1500
This tells you that the Benchmark Value of the event content is 3 times higher than the post for the dress.
Yet, you only spent 2 times as much on the event as the post: $250 on the post and $500 on the event.
Therefore even though the event Story is more expensive, its earned performance was much more valuable.
This is just comparing two posts, Companion’s Benchmark Calculator can value a whole campaign – just get in touch and we’ll demo it to you.
Benchmark Value enables Influencer Marketers to justify their budgets. It’s a KPI they can use to compare with other marketing channels such as paid social.
The marketer can now point to the $1500 Benchmark Value of the influencer’s Story at the brand’s event, and compare with the cost of a sponsored Instagram post, a print ad, or a TV spot.
For example:
A Sponsored Instagram Ad cost $750 to the influencer’s $500, but it only earned as much reach as $750 pays for. Whereas the reach of the influencer’s $500 Story was unrestricted by budget and earned a Benchmark Value of $1500 – 2x the reach of the Sponsored Ad, and therefore justified the spend.
These may be affected by:
The nature of the relationship with your influencer
Content rates may be impacted by the nature of your relationship with your influencers. For example, the exclusivity or length of a campaign, or even whether the campaign is for a product or a category.
The value of the product
If your brand is promoting a car, rates will likely be higher than for campaigns for chips!
The exposure or popularity of your influencers
The number of brands that an influencer works with impacts their rates, as does working with prestige or mass appeal brands.
The Content Usage rights
The agreements which govern your Content Usage rights, such as agreements global vs local rights or timing of usage, will affect your rates with influencers.
The affinity an influencer has for your brand
For influencers who have a proven organic love of the brand, or influencers known to value luxury product or mass appeal, their rates will change accordingly.
The size of the influencer’s following
Influencers with a smaller following tend to have a higher quality engagement with those followers than a macro influencer with millions of followers, giving them a more valuable relationship with each follower. Therefore we weight Benchmark Value accordingly, valuing engagement with a micro-influencer’s post slightly higher than that of a macro-influencer.
