Am I Crazy? Paying $5,000 to an Instagram Model

Men may look and follow but women may buy. These brands probably have an advertising plan and are running some types of paid advertising to target female demographics. My guess anyways.

I will make three assumptions but I do not really know.

1) Some marketing managers have a budget to spend. They heard that Instagram was the last cool thing. But they are too lazy or too incompetent to do thorough research. So they spend $ 5,000 in order that their product for women is seen by men...

2) A little more seriously, maybe they have solid data proving that men often suggest (or buy) a particular garment to their girlfriends or wives?

3) Or that men often make positive reinforcement (compliments) when they see their girlfriends or wives buy the same clothes they have seen on their favorite Instagram model?

In any case, often enough to justify spending $ 5,000 in advertising.

I always hear about Instagram models being desperate to do deals, I'm sure they would love to get hooked up with these $5,000 clients... from what I hear most models on instagram would be happy with $100 (and that's girls with a TON of followers).

This is what separates idiots from marketers. A marketer can make a calculated decision whereas an idiot cannot.

5000$ is not exactly much for the big brands.
Take a model with 2.000.000 followers for example, and let's say 5% of them are women, which would be a VERY LOW percent.
Let's say 20% of those 5% followers would see the picture.
2000000 * 0.05 = 100000 women
100000 * 0.20 = 20000
So, 20 thousand targeted potential buyers see the picture, what would be a conversion rate? Let's set it very low, say, 3%.
20000 * 0.03 = 600 people will buy the product.

How high would the product need to be priced in order to go even?
5000(used for advertising) / 600 = 8.33 dollars.

Are they priced at 8.33 dollars? NO.

Now, note this.
I've given you very low percents, when it came to amount of females being followers.
I've given you a very low percent of actual women that will even see the picture.
I've given you a very low conversion rate, 3%? People following these profiles are often very interested in fashion, both men and women, I bet they could get like 20% ctr at least in at least some part of that audience.

What if the ctr would instead be 6% and product price be 59$?
20000(number of targeted followers) 0.06 * 59 = 70.800$
And the bar is STILL set very low.

Now, few more things.
1. Models often have a MUCH higher following than 2 million people and you should consider that many more women(or whatever you're targeting) than 20% out of the targeted group is going to see the picture.
2. Men can still buy those things for their friends, girlfriends, wives, whatever, maybe even themselves(you never really know these days, lol), some will also just tell their female friends about the new shirt or whatever, always gotta take that into account.
3. Say you get one female buyer out of this. She goes to the store, buys a product, what happens at the same time?
a) There's a decent chance she'll buy another product from that brand.
b) There's a decent chance she will come back and buy from that brand while she wouldn't do that if not for the advertising.
c) She can go with friends, which happens very often, and they all would buy those new clothes.

Let's say this girl goes out shopping with 3 other friends, they at average buy 2 products, at different prices.
What happens if you multiply this one example by a few thousands? A LOT MORE PROFIT.

4. There's always a reference created in the brain once you see a product from the specific brand, if you start seeing it more and more, the chance of buying from that brand will increase as well.

I just typed "Swedish instagram model", cause I live in Sweden and that's the first I came up with, what do I get? 3 instagram profiles at the top, 1st one has 2.8m followers, second has 400k and the third one has 1.4m. You do more searching and you'll easily find girls with 5, 10 or even 20 million followers.

And someone here even called them idiots for marketing this way, LOL.

Some of them make more, some make less.

You can get a great deal paying a few of them five times the price you quoted, and you can pissing money down the drain by paying some of them $500.

Generally speaking if you are a bit creative though it's pretty easy to get people looking for "Instafame" to want to promote for you. When I was in middle school everyone wanted the Air Jordan because all the cool kids had them - you can create the same effect on Instagram - not just amongst your potential buyers, but a well constructed campaign will do the same thing for you towards buyers as well.

You're assuming they know nothing. What if they've tested and know the exact metrics and know exactly what they're getting?

One thing I've learned while working for international businesses is, most have budgets where they have to spend the money regardless If it makes sense or not.

Just because a business is huge doesn't mean it's efficient.

You're not crazy.

But first . . .

I like Sid and Yukon's take. Out of the box thinking and often spot on. The higher up the food chain you go in corporate, the bigger the per annum ad spend, and often the less justification you have to give for it. And this works across most departments. If you have a $20 million budget and only spend $19 million, two things will happen. The higher ups will want to know why you didn't spend the million and the following year you'll likely only have a $19 million budget. So budgets really are often spent merely to ensure you have a similar budget the following year, and in some cases (paradoxically) to make it appear like your department is operating efficiently. I say paradoxically, because as Yukon and Sid pointed out, the ad spend is not always spent wisely.

Going back to your question, Rushindo, brands will examine the follower demographics of the insta-famous and use that data as the basis for their product placement and endoresement decisions: ad spend, products, ad times. Typical budgets are a few hundred USD for one-off placements and several thousand USD for campaigns that involve an agreed upon number of posts. Typical budgets. It depends on the demographics. 100K target followers might earn you a few hundred USD per post; 500K may well earn you $1,000, $2,000 for a single post endoresement. And the ROI makes it worth it, and we can easily see the evidence: becoming insta-famous and earning a high income for product endorsement is a thriving career option. Only 36 companies in the U.S have budgets of over $1 billion a year; the majority of ad spend decisions are based on much smaller budgets and decisions themselves are intensely researched before being green-lit.

I have a lot of respect for the (mostly) young men and women working as Instagram celebs. It shows get-up-and-go. To some of us it may seem shallow, but the world is evolving (as always), and the celebs are merely responding to demand. Had it been around when I was young and pretty, I'd have done it myself.

- Tom

many companies buy advertising on newspaper (or similar) because they think it's good advertising like 30 years ago

market changes every year, old publicity is old (it not works anymore)

That is crazy money on one influencer. The phrase "All eggs in one basket" comes to mind. Personally, I would split that perhaps into 4 or even less and aim for instagram members who have the audience you actually want to sell to.

Numbers are all well and good, but I'd rather give my money to someone who is building an engaged audience, with 5k followers on Instagram with the audience I actually know are interested than someone with 500,000 followers that is a hit or miss situation.

The bonus with going lower as well is these accounts are approachable, you'll be able to communicate with your influencer better - this means you can ask them about things like engagement metrics and audience demographics. Its easier to arrange a better deal.

Hope this is food for thought.

Its like the impressions vs conversions dilemma. What do you want? Sales or exposure? 100k is okay for exposure, but I'd prefer to convert and make sales for a lesser number.

If you assume that they only have male followers you are highly mistaken. I happen to have such model friends and their male/female stats are almost 50-50, sometimes more than that. Women like to follow other women for a whole bunch of reasons, vanity, envy, copycats, female fans, shopping/fashion addicts, blogging ideas, model hunters, photographers, etc. This argument is false the same way you'd think that Oprah has more male followers, because there's a bunch of women guests in the show. NOPE ! 70%+ are women.
Another thing is that people forget that companies frequently pay piles of cash simply to create brand awareness to new customers. Coca-Cola is over a century old and the most known brand, but that they didn't stop pay for advertising to the next generation of buyers. Same goes with fashion. The reason they are paying is because these models are anything but stupid, and they've picked up the methods we the affiliate marketers have been using for years, to make extra cash. For example they can fire up a multi blast (email, blog post, FB/instagram/youtube) at the same time in their multi-channel lists about a product, and not only keep the free stuff the brands send them, but then use them as giveaways in competitions to increase their traffic and signups even more. I've done stuff like this all the time, and they are very effective. Not to mention they get to have revshare from the ads around their posts. So they have multiple streams of income, and sponsorships or solo-ads are just a few of them. One example is Michelle Fan, who got a 20 million deal with Lancome for putting makeup tips on Youtube and then a second deal for co-branding with L'Oreal that made her new startup worth HALF A BILLION. Now that's some serious dough for a fashion blogger. And all those girls out there are taking examples like this as a guide to do the same. YouTube is packed with such girls, same with Instagram and Pinterest. This proves yet again that a) Pictures do worth a thousands words b) the money is always in the list. c) word of mouth WORKS. Learn to use social media, and you have your self a cash cow running almost on auto-pilot. Its 90% strategic partnerships and 10% implementation.

It’s crazy money on one influencer from our perspective, but not from everyone's. Here’s a quick example:

H&M is pretty much a budget line of clothing, so it’s not crazy expensive and accessible to most people. Their marketing budget is 3.5 percent of the entire group’s sales, excluding VAT. At least, that’s what they say as they generally prefer not to reveal actual figures. In 2015, they did around $24 billion in sales, so their marketing budget was probably around $840 million. Now, $5,000 is pretty much a drop in the bucket when you take that budget into account.

And, as Yukon, Sid Hale, and Tom Addams all said, with these large corporations, they have to spend the money or they’ll end up with a lot less of it the following year. Plus, the interrogation, of course.

However, they also can’t afford to throw it at any old thing because they still have to show results. If there’s one thing corporations are great at, it’s analyzing the crap out of everything. They analyze efficiency, productivity, ROI and tons of other things, including whether or not the wind is blowing from the right direction and the stars have aligned properly to launch a new campaign.

And many employees learn to do even more just to make sure they can back up their decisions. This trend of employees being happy and feeling comfortable to make decisions on their own? Yeah, not so much with the corporates. Think of them more as fascist states where you have to support every decision, including the time you went to the bathroom, with a stack of papers 3 feet thick.

For companies like that, it’s also about exposure as much as it is generating direct sales. They want eyeballs on their brand and getting even a small percentage of 2,000,000 people to really see their products & brand for $5,000 is a steal. They pay a lot more than that for TV ads and though millions upon millions of people might see the ad, the percentage that will actually register what they’re seeing is minimal.

And remember, many women go out shopping with their significant others and they always ask for an opinion. If a guy has an image stuck in his head, there’s always a good chance he’ll show her what he saw on Instagram and she’ll buy it because he likes it.

Access to eyeballs does cost money.

But you could probably find someone that has the following that is not actively into promoting and negotiate a much better offer.

Art

Yeah, you're missing a lot by a few miles.

1. Instagram "models" don't get paid a lot of money for product placement. That's like saying porn stars make a lot of money. They don't.

2. Instagram "models" make their money through other... questionable means. See TagTheSponsor

3. Yes, you are crazy if you pay an Instagram "model" $5,000. Go ahead and see how it works out for you.

You are assuming that most of the followers are men. There are bisexual women, lesbian women and women who want to know what other women are up to. At least half of the women I know are somewhat to keenly interested in what other women are up to. Some even have an Instagram account.

A few random thoughts...

> Corporate types do spend their budgets to avoid getting said budget cut. Back when I worked in engineering, your department budget was a measure of your place in the food chain. Bigger budget, more status. I knew that if I wanted a fancy new piece of equipment, my best bet was to requisition it during the last month or two of the budget year. Even if the request was turned down, it often got added to the next year's budget request.

> The idea that Instagram models, or any quasi-celebrity, attractive woman dresses to impress men is wrong. Women get gussied up to impress other women. I once had breakfast with a VERY attractive real estate agent in my Toastmasters club. I complimented her on her outfit and remarked that she was going to get a lot of male attention that day. She told me that she never dressed to impress men. If she wanted male attention, she'd do her showings in a pair of Daisy Dukes and a halter.

> Just because it could be difficult to track a positive ROI to paying one model for one picture does not mean the advertiser is dumb. Look at the outrageous sums paid to some "famous for being famous" airhead to get her to sit in your club and drink your booze for a few hours. Do that with enough bimbos with enough followers, and suddenly your club is the hot place to be. Same principle here. If enough of these "influencers" wear your stuff, it looks like you're everywhere so you must be the next big thing.

While tracking results to specific ad placements is like breathing to a direct response marketer, the same can't be said for a branding campaign.

Most of Kylie Jenners followers are women.

I wish I had back a fraction of the money I've spent on these very things over the years.

I know the way to a woman's heart...

I used to sell lingerie (anyone remember "Don't Be Shy"?) via mail order. About half my customers had male sounding names.

What a awesome niche to be in... Yea the cool thing about that is the demand your talking about and yeah also the income. Sounds like you know what is going on and keep it up and I am sure you will get where you want.

if thats true, then yes men buy these things for their girlfriends

sometimes for their wifes, whatever makes more sense

in reverse who buys the clothing for men? Mostly women.

I think it's not bad as you think. Men like to see beauty women on bikini, some of them love their girlfriend will buy it for a gift such as.

Clothing brands need to catch on through influencers, if they don't they die and no amount of non-influencer ads will ever save them. So this instagram setup seems like a perfect opportunity for clothing brands. A clothing brand doesn't need to make instant ROI at all. They need a big influencer to flaunt it which will lead to many little local influencers to bite and wear it, and once they start wearing it the local masses start buying.

Wow. Where do I start?

First of all, clothing brand are about being seen. The more people you see in these brands, the more you wonder about them. This makes you want to go check them out. People who want to be popular and in the latest fashion usually fall for stupid things like this. The rest of us don't care.

If they're paying a model to wear something from their brand, it's because their following is large. And I promise that they aren't doing something stupid like just send that model one outfit. They're going to give them enough outfits to leave an actual impression on their followers.

As far as their target market, you are 100% wrong. It is not mostly men that follow those accounts. Women follow them too. Also, if men see a model in something that they like, they may run out and buy it for their gf/wife/whoever. Don't think they're just watching the accounts to get their rocks off. That may be true to an extent, but it doesn't stop the fact that the more they see it, the more likely they are to go out and buy it.

Considering all of that, the amount of money they spend really isn't all that much. They're establishing brand awareness. What is that worth to you?

Cause men want to buy those same dresses and bikinis to decorate their ugly ass wives to try and make their sex lives exciting again. I've read a story where a dude pays this super fine girl $6,000/month to live and sleep with him. Basically to be his girl.

I believed if this is not picking up in the market this kind of advertisement has been long gone, but since that this is still on that means they are doing the right thing, sometimes being a businessman means you have to think outside of the box and look on every angle

Some of these models have crazy followers, some as high as 700k. Say for instance only 5% who follow them are women (although there will obviously be a lot more), your potential audience could be 35,000!!

Some of these Instagram models have crazy followers of around 700K. Say for instance only 5% are women (obviously they have more!) then you'll have a potential reach of around 35,000!!


Now with all that being said, do I think your CRAZY paying 5,000? Yes.

Does that mean you probably won't make over 5,000 in sales from the promotion? No, but I think there's better ways you could go about doing things...

I would target people who have a big following but are not quote on quote "models" or "famous". Look for those who have around 5K+ followers but also look at their latest posts and see how many likes they are receiving? Look at their comments. Do their followers engage and does the user engage back? Are they mostly male or female?

The reason I think this would be more successful is these users are more engaging and 'in touch' with their followers.

Also you can message these people and majority of them will promote for FREE for you. That's right FREE!! Why? Well they just simply love a freebie. Some may want money but not all will. Those who do you'll probably only be looking at around £20-£50.

Just note not all woman users have all men following and interacting with them. There's a fitness model called Kayla Itsines - her female following is CRAZY! She's built some sort of female fitness army!!!

I hope this helps
Sam

It's all relative. If it is a big company or a big player ...paying $5K could be nothing to them. Maybe someone like people in here it may be huge. But many in here live in a "fishbowl" and do not realize how the World operates outside of here


- Robert Andrew

if i were you, i will use that 5k for building a god damn list my friend ..

seriously ..and scale from there ...

well i think may be they are just targeting men so that they may buy some for their girlfriends/wives or they might encourage them to buy, aye?

It's a Smart move, possibly most of these men would love to see their wives, girlfriends wear this, so why not buy it for them.

"popular Instagram models" get a lot of traffic, samuelbreezey is right on

the rest of us have very little ideas how much in reality

do your own research - it will blow your mind, i did it on celebrities
and just to give you a hint: one of them gets more traffic a month
than all websites mentioned or linked to on this page per year.

The thing is, you can actually tab into this traffic.....however only
for a minute or two, then you're post is on page 2

So post a lot, once per minute, if they let you, what will not happen,
but think creatively - there is always a way to make things happen
that nobody thought to be possible previously.

It depends on the size of the company / budget of course, but if the model has the right following, paying $5,000 to post a single picture can easily be worth it for the exposure.

Yes, Instagram marketing are growing like huge and I had tried but you needs a good female model to make followers in your instagram account then you can ask men peoples about buying products and sell them. Instagress also helps to do a lot of good marketing with Instagram now a days.

A clothing brand is about being seen and doesn't need to make instant ROI.

The profit most times come from the multiplier effect such exposure generates. So, I don't think it's crazy they spend $5000 on Instagram models.

Dude, there are women making a MILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR on IG. These are the trendy fashion bloggers and they are like 22 years old. Google it for yourself if you don't believe it. You wanna talk about Internet Marketing - LOL.

if you have started your own new brand so 5000$ too much ... if your brand is old and have some Good reviews in market so 5000$ nothing for this bitch ... pay him from me 1$

Not all models get paid a crazy amount...and even though a lot of the viewers may be men, those men follow, upvote and like those attractive pictures which gives them better rankings. The better rankings they get, the more consumers will view them...men and women.

Other channels can be very lucrative for advertising products on. This week I bought a toy-niche product from Amazon that I saw posted on Reddit.

Yeah maybe the fact that a lot of those men may have wives and girlfriends they buy the products for.

this thread is three months in...

..so

did the investment in the model pan out?

was it worth it?

-Ike Paz

Well, it is kinda crazy but I'm sure they have an allotted budget for it.
However though if your business doesn't target global market then sponsoring well-known people might help in advertising too.

I have never paid that much lol. For my ecommerce business, the most I paid for an influencer to put on my shirt is $2,000.

They might cost a bomb but they gave me instant result. (To know what works and what doesn't)