Influencer marketers are kind of expected to be magicians. They’re expected to own the entire process from beginning to end, plus cross-collaborate across teams, plus manage sometimes hundreds, or even thousands of external relationships. 

And most of them don’t feel they’re paid fairly to do so. 

At the beginning of this year, we polled 400 in-house and agency influencer marketers about their salaries, job expectations, and working conditions. 

In this piece, I’m going to walk through our main findings: 

• Influencer marketers feel globally underpaid (and they think the industry as a whole is failing them)
• Job satisfaction is somewhat high – for now, but the cracks are beginning to show
• The job is wildly misunderstood, leading to overloaded tasks and unrealistic expectations

The data is far from perfect, but I still believe that it can be useful in helping you benchmark your own salary, and hopefully find ways to increase your salary at your next opportunity. 

Note: This is just a quick summary of the big findings. Check out the full report for more extensive data (and the results we had from freelance influencer marketers too). 

So let’s answer the big question: how much are influencer marketers actually making?

How Much Do Influencer Marketers Make?

There’s an easy answer. Of our nearly 400 in-house influencer marketers, global average salaries work out to $49,981.

However, the real answer is more complex. Geography, gender, company size, years of experience, etc. – all play a role in determining what benchmark makes the most sense for you. 

Geography plays the biggest role in how much you earn

Splitting out salary by geographic region:

• North America: $86,947 
• Europe: $44,711 
• Middle East & Africa: $40,561  
• Asia & Oceania: $30,570 
• South America: $17,786

Yes, salaries in North America dwarf other regions – but not without cause. The cost of living is often significantly higher, and businesses pay a lot less to hire someone than they would in other regions. 

For example, according to Remote’s employee cost calculator, paying someone in the US would cost you an additional 8% of the total salary. Contrasted with an employee in Sweden, which costs you a whopping 32% of their salary in employer costs. 

It’s not the same playing field at all. 

That said, while geography determines how much you make, experience is also a huge factor. 

Experience means more than your title

If you’ve been in any marketing niche for any amount of time, you know that titles haven’t meant much since we started having “marketing pirates” and “growth ninjas.”

That’s still the case today – aside from the general changes in seniority, title doesn’t really impact how much you earn unless that title begins with a C. 

What really matters are the years of experience for influencer marketers. 

Salary breakdown by experience:

• < 1 year: $31,738 average 
• 1-2 years: $35,585 average 
• 3-4 years: $50,686 average 
• 5-7 years: $59,986 average 
• 8-10 years: $76,719 average 
• 10+ years: $96,619 average 

The biggest salary jumps appear at pivotal points in an influencer marketer’s career. 

In years 3-4, at a $15K salary jump, an influencer marketer is no longer considered a beginner. They’re more refined in their careers, and maybe they’ve understood enough of their niche to get strategy down. This is also where influencer marketers are skilling up. 

In years 8-10, the biggest salary jump happens: $16K. This is often the point for influencer marketers to either specialize and niche down or move into leadership roles. 

Which niches pay the best?

Of our in-house respondents, over 62% worked for ecommerce/DTC brands, while another third worked in agencies for those same kinds of brands. 

Of the most frequently represented niches:

Fashion and apparel, despite being the most popular niche, had the lowest average salary – it was the only niche that fell below the global average salary. 

Software, Health & Wellness, and Hotel & Travel tend to be higher overall purchases, which can afford higher salaries next to those higher margins. 

The Math Ain’t Mathin’: Salary doesn’t live up to the role’s demands

In fact, 6 in 10 influencer marketers said their salary didn’t accurately reflect their role and tasks. 

Another 7 in 10 said the influencer marketing industry as a whole is failing to pay marketers for the value they provide. 

Comparing averages based on the response to that question, influencer marketers only begin to feel fairly paid at $62,895 on average. 

Those who said their own salary and the industry’s salaries were fair earned over $20K more than those who answered no to both questions. 

Interestingly, when we compared the gender split between those who felt their own pay was fair, men earned 9% more on average – meaning that men have a higher threshold at what they believe is a fair salary.

The Impact of an Unfair Salary – by Region

While a $20K loss would stagger just about anyone, it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. 

We split the difference between what was considered fair and what wasn't by region. While it’s not a shock that the influencer marketers who said their salaries were unfair earned considerably less, the impact based on region is critical. 

Losing $17K only means an 18% loss of income to an influencer marketer located in North America. However, nearly the same amount is a loss of 30% to someone located in Europe. In the Middle East & Africa, there was a nearly 50% difference between what was a fair and unfair salary. 

Any loss of income is a loss of your direct buying power – and an unfair salary can have a larger impact based on the region you live in. However, a 50% loss of income means a completely different lifestyle, different priorities, and a wildly different experience in your career as a whole. 

Influencer Marketers Are in Task-Overload

I presented marketers with what I thought was an exhaustive list of possible tasks an influencer marketer might have to do in an average week. 

I didn’t even scratch the surface. Out of the nearly 20 tasks we laid out, influencer marketers responded, “D: All of the above."

On top of that, many marketers added tasks we hadn’t included – some of which weren’t even influencer- marketing specific. 

This tells us that not only were influencer marketers expected to be end-to-end experts, but also to be cross-functional.

Marketers are already expected to own the influencer lifecycle from A to Z – but when they own other things, like the budget, strategy, and collaboration with other departments, this is where they see the biggest salary increases. 

We also found that specialization can help boost salaries, like specializing in ambassador or affiliate programs, or even event management, can help add to your overall take-home. 

On the flip side, we found that high-execution-style tasks correlated with some of the lowest salaries globally. 

But that wasn’t all – influencer marketers who had cross-functional tasks were often also paid less. 

“Just go do social” – and earn 12% less

For many influencer marketers, managing a brand’s social media accounts – a full-time job in its own right – often gets swept into the weekly tasks for marketers who aren’t specialized in it. 

‍Four in 10 marketers I polled said that managing social media was also part of their weekly tasks. But, it wasn’t a primary focus, just an additional task that was added to their growing list of responsibilities.

This is a two-fold terrible decision. Not only are companies adding on what should be a full-time job (when done right) to an already overworked influencer marketer, but they’re also making their marketer divide their time between the two. 

Meaning that neither the brand’s social strategy nor its influencer marketing program is getting the dedicated time each needs to live up to its full potential. 

And marketers feel it, too – those who had social media added to their role reported 15% lower overall job satisfaction. 

But that’s not even the worst part: influencer marketers who also had to manage social media earned 12% less than their peers, on average, all for cramming two full-time roles into their ever-expanding work week.

The Overtime Crisis

That overloaded plate usually means working a little longer throughout the week to get it all done. We asked marketers how many hours they were contracted to work a week – and then how many they actually worked.

By dividing the annual salary by the number of contracted hours per week, we can estimate a rough hourly wage. By comparing that same salary to the actual number of hours worked, we can see how much money influencer marketers are losing in unpaid hours. 

‍Influencer marketers are losing over $1200 a year in unpaid overtime on average.

Globally, marketers average out at 2.9 hours of overtime per week. With the Middle East & Africa working a whopping 7.2 additional unpaid hours, and North and South America coming in at 4.6 unpaid hours per week. 

More Overtime = Less Satisfaction 

Unpaid overtime had a direct impact on job satisfaction – influencer marketers that reported the least satisfaction worked the most unpaid overtime. 

Working a large amount of unpaid overtime is part of your salary, after all. Not only do unpaid hours devalue your overall hourly wage, but they also eat into your personal time and destroy work/life balance. 

Marketers Remain Optimistic (despite work conditions)

While the situation has felt bleak up to this point, influencer marketers are generally optimistic about their jobs. 

Six in 10 marketers said they were satisfied with their jobs. 

However, many influencer marketers fell into the “somewhat” or “neutral” category, and while, yes, most lean satisfied, it means there’s room for improvement, and that most marketers are feeling a lack of enthusiasm in either direction. 

Influencer marketers were also optimistic about their overall earning potential – with over 57% falling on the “globally optimistic” side of the coin. 

However, there are very few that responded with “very optimistic” – which tells us that while things are okay now, they may not last. 

Over half of influencer marketers would recommend it as a career path, with nearly a third saying that they weren’t sure. 

Influencer marketers aren’t shy about job hopping

While influencer marketers love what they do – the cracks are beginning to show. They’re optimistic for now, but that optimism will wane the longer they’re with a company at a lower salary or longer working hours. 

And this becomes even clearer when you consider company tenure. We asked marketers how long they’d been with their current company – and the majority of influencer marketers have been with their current company for less than 3 years. 

• 3-4 years experience: 82.3%
• 5-7 years experience: 72.9%
• 8-10 years experience: 71.9%
• 10+ years experience: 65%
  

High turnover – even among the most experienced marketers tells me that job satisfaction is an issue. Whether marketers are chasing better benefits, work-life balance, or a higher salary, they’re not shy about switching companies to get it.

Internal teams don’t understand the value of influencer marketing

Only 4 in 10 marketers said they felt their teams and leadership truly understood their roles and the value they provide. 

We also found a direct correlation between job satisfaction and whether internal teams understood an influencer marketer’s role. There were higher overall numbers of “neutral” and “somewhat dissatisfied”, and lower global satisfaction from influencer marketers without that team backing. 

It’s critical for your team to believe in what you do. And they can’t really do that if they don’t understand your role from the start. 

If your team or leadership doesn’t understand your role, you’ll have to work harder to get others to see the value you provide. You’ll need to fight for budget, push back more often against unrealistic KPIs or asks, and you’ll generally not feel supported by your team. 

And it’s clear from these results that when a team isn’t invested in understanding and championing influencer marketing, those marketers report feeling less content in their roles within that team.

What It All Means

The conclusions that we can draw from the data are clear: 

• Influencer marketers are overworked – to the point of working several unpaid hours per week
• Their task list is too long and varied
• Their teams don’t understand their jobs well enough to support them

 This leads to high turnover, with even the most experienced and highest-paid influencer marketers being relatively new in their companies. 

Despite all of that, influencer marketers are globally optimistic about their roles. It takes passion to confront what influencer marketers do every day – and that passion is what’s driving many influencer marketers to stay in an industry that could do better for them.

The patterns we see suggest that while influencer marketers feel reasonably content right now, it may not last much longer. 

On top of that, while the salary at which influencer marketers feel they’re being fairly paid is over $60K, the global average sits at $49K. That’s a problem. 

And when 70% of influencer marketers agree that the industry as a whole doesn’t pay as well as they think it should, that’s a crisis. 

We’re no longer at a point where influencer marketing is in its infancy. Right now is the time to etch in norms for influencer marketers, and those norms cannot depend on unpaid working hours, teams that don’t understand what influencer marketers do or the value they provide, or salaries that don’t reflect the vast skills these roles require.

Want to go deeper? Check out the full downloadable report here!

Methodology:

We cut down a lot of this report for the blog, but the full results are free to download. In our full report, we’ve gone deeper on a lot of data points, including where freelance influencer marketers land in the equation, and who actually earns more between freelance and in-house marketers. 

We had 499 total respondents. 399 of them were in-house or agency, and another 100 were from freelance influencer marketers. We recognize that this data is not perfect, and while that imperfection makes this an equally imperfect report, we hope these patterns will help influencer marketers better advocate for themselves and negotiate better positions moving forward.

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