The short version: Influencers fall into roughly seven working categories, from nano creators with a thousand followers to celebrities with millions, and each one needs a different brief, budget, and level of trust. Bigger is not automatically better, cheaper is not automatically more authentic, and the biggest mistake brands make is treating every influencer the same way when they run wildly different businesses.
Why this still confuses so many businesses
I spent the best part of a decade being one of these people. At my peak I had close to 250,000 followers across Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, and I got booked for brand campaigns paying anywhere from £500 for a single sponsored post to £4,000 for a multi-platform package with a video. I also spent years on the other side, briefing influencers for client campaigns. Both experiences taught me the same thing: most people trying to run influencer marketing don’t know which type of influencer they’re talking to, so they brief them all the same way, pay them the same way, and then feel confused when the results don’t match.
There isn’t one type of influencer. There are at least seven, and the differences between them matter more than the follower count on their profile.
The seven types of influencers you’ll come across
Nano influencers (1,000 to 10,000 followers)
These are ordinary people with a small, tight audience, usually built around one interest such as gardening, gluten-free baking, or a specific city’s restaurant scene. Their engagement rates are often the highest of any category, sometimes 5 to 8 percent, because their followers are friends, neighbours, or people who share the interest. Many nano influencers treat this as a part-time income stream alongside a regular job, in the same way people look for genuine work from home income, and they’ll often work for free product before they’ll work for cash.
Micro influencers (10,000 to 50,000 followers)
This is the category most small businesses should start with, and the one most agencies push because it’s easy to sell as “authentic.” Micro influencers usually charge between £150 and £800 per post depending on platform and format, and they’ll expect a proper brief, a contract, and payment within 30 days, not “we’ll send you the product.” A lot of them run this as a genuine small business, with a media kit, rate card, and past campaign stats ready to send over.
Mid-tier influencers (50,000 to 500,000 followers)
This is where influencing becomes a full-time job with a team behind it, sometimes a manager negotiating on their behalf. Rates jump to £800 to £5,000 per post, and you’ll often be dealing with an agent rather than the person directly. Engagement rates drop, sometimes to 1 to 3 percent, but reach goes up significantly, so this tier works well for awareness campaigns rather than direct sales.
Macro influencers (500,000 to one million followers)
Fees here start around £5,000 and can go past £20,000 for a campaign with usage rights and exclusivity clauses. You are now buying media, not friendship. Expect a formal contract, a legal team on their side, and turnaround times of weeks rather than days.
Celebrities and mega influencers (over one million followers)
Fees can run from £20,000 into six figures, and the relationship is closer to booking a spokesperson than working with a creator. This tier makes sense for national brand awareness, not for a small business trying to sell 200 units of a product this quarter.
Niche and industry influencers (B2B, LinkedIn, YouTube experts)
These are people with modest follower counts, sometimes under 20,000, but enormous trust within a specific industry. A LinkedIn voice in accounting software or a YouTuber reviewing industrial equipment can move buying decisions for a £30,000 product far more effectively than a lifestyle influencer with a million followers ever could. Rates vary wildly, from a few hundred pounds to several thousand, because there’s less standardisation in this space.
UGC creators and employee advocates
This is the newest category and the one most people miss. UGC creators make content that looks like an influencer post but is never posted to their own audience, it’s handed to the brand to run as an ad. Rates are usually £100 to £400 per piece of content, and no follower count matters at all because the content never touches their feed. Employee advocates work similarly, using your own team’s existing networks, and cost nothing beyond the time it takes to brief them.
What each type costs, in real numbers
- Nano: free product, £50 to £150 per post
- Micro: £150 to £800 per post
- Mid-tier: £800 to £5,000 per post
- Macro: £5,000 to £20,000+ per post
- Celebrity: £20,000 to six figures
- Niche/B2B: £200 to £5,000, no consistent pattern
- UGC creator: £100 to £400 per piece of content, no posting involved
These numbers shift by platform too. A TikTok video from a mid-tier creator often costs less than the same person’s Instagram carousel, because TikTok content is faster to produce and the platform itself still drives more organic reach without paid boosting. If you’re comparing this against other paid channels, it’s worth reading up on alternatives to Facebook ads for small businesses before you commit an entire budget to one influencer tier.
How to work with each type, step by step
The process changes depending on who you’re talking to. Here’s what I use with clients, broken down by the size of the person you’re approaching.
Working with nano and micro influencers
- Find them through hashtag search or a tool built for it. I’ve used Combin for Instagram growth and discovery work to find creators whose actual audience matches a client’s target customer, not just their follower count.
- Message them directly, don’t send a generic mass DM. Mention one specific post you liked.
- Offer product plus a small fee, even for nanos. Free product only deals train people to expect nothing, which weakens the whole ecosystem.
- Send a one-page brief: key message, three things to avoid saying, hashtags, deadline, and whether you need the content for your own ads later (this needs a separate usage rights fee).
- Pay within seven days of posting, not thirty. This tier remembers who pays fast.
Working with mid-tier and macro influencers
- Expect to go through a manager or agency, and budget an extra 15 to 20 percent for their commission.
- Request a media kit with real analytics screenshots, not a follower count screenshot. Anyone can buy followers; fewer people fake a 90-day reach report from the platform’s own dashboard.
- Put usage rights, exclusivity, and revision limits in writing before you agree a fee.
- Build in a two-week lead time minimum for content approval and platform scheduling.
Working with niche and B2B influencers
- Treat this less like a transaction and more like a genuine networking relationship, because these people care more about being right than being paid, and a bad brand fit will cost you their trust permanently.
- Offer them early access, real data, or a co-created piece of content rather than just a fee.
- Let them keep editorial control over the actual claims, and only insist on factual accuracy, not tone.
If your team is stretched thin doing the outreach, research, and follow-up that all of this takes, it’s a task that suits a virtual assistant handling admin and outreach rather than pulling your marketing manager off strategy work to chase invoices.
The part most brands get wrong
Here’s the uncomfortable bit. Everyone tells you micro influencers are more “authentic” and therefore better value than macro or celebrity deals. In practice, once you add up sourcing time, negotiation, contract admin, content review, and the fact that you need six or seven micro influencers to match the reach of one mid-tier creator, the total cost per thousand people reached is often higher with micros, not lower. I’ve run both types of campaigns for the same client in the same quarter and watched the “authentic” micro batch cost more per sale than the single macro post, once every hour of internal time got counted. Nobody wants to say this because it makes the whole “micro influencers are the smart choice” narrative look shakier than it is sold as.
That doesn’t mean micro influencers are a bad choice. It means the decision should be based on your actual cost per outcome, not on a vague feeling that smaller equals more genuine. Some of the biggest follower counts I saw in client campaigns were 20 to 30 percent inflated by bought or bot followers, and some of the smallest accounts had audiences that converted at three times the rate of a “verified” macro account. Follower count on its own tells you almost nothing.
A simple way to choose who to work with
Ask yourself three questions before you approach anyone:
- Do I need awareness (go bigger, fewer creators) or trust and conversion (go smaller, more creators, longer relationships)?
- Can I verify their engagement is real, not just their follower count? Ask for a screen recording of their analytics dashboard, not a screenshot, which can be edited.
- Am I budgeting for the fee, or for the fee plus the admin time it takes to manage the relationship ?
When I spoke at the Israel Networking Hub about digital strategy, one thing came up again and again from the room: the businesses getting the best return from influencer work weren’t the ones with the biggest budgets, they were the ones who picked two or three creators and built a real relationship over a year, instead of running one-off campaigns with a different stranger every month.
Frequently asked questions
What’s the difference between a micro influencer and a macro influencer?
A micro influencer typically has 10,000 to 50,000 followers, charges £150 to £800 per post, and usually deals with you directly. A macro influencer has 500,000 to one million followers, charges £5,000 upward, and you’ll almost always negotiate through a manager or agency with a formal contract.
How much should I pay an influencer for one post?
It depends entirely on their tier: nano creators often work for £50 to £150 or free product, micro influencers charge £150 to £800, mid-tier creators run £800 to £5,000, and anything above that moves into macro and celebrity pricing, which can reach six figures.
Are micro influencers better value than bigger influencers?
Not automatically. Once you count sourcing time, contract admin, and content review across several micro creators needed to match one macro creator’s reach, the cost per outcome is sometimes higher with micros, so the decision should be based on your actual cost per result, not on assumptions about authenticity.
How do I check if an influencer’s followers are real?
Ask for a live screen recording of their platform analytics dashboard rather than a static screenshot, and look at engagement rate against follower count. A healthy rate is usually 2 to 8 percent depending on tier; anything far below that with a large following is a red flag for bought or bot followers.
