I just wrapped up my first major campaign in a new European market after spending the last three years in US and Russia, and I learned more about pricing mistakes in one month than I would have in years of guessing.
The biggest mistake I made: I assumed market dynamics in the new country would be somewhere between US and Russia. They weren’t. They were their own thing entirely.
Here’s what happened. I used my Russian creator pricing as a baseline (lower), adjusted upward based on what I thought European rates should be, and made offers. Almost every single creator said my offer was laughably low. I wasn’t even in the ballpark.
Turned out I was missing critical information about that market:
- Cost of living, which directly affects what creators need to charge
- Influencer density—if there are 10x more creators in a market, they’ll likely charge less
- Brand budgets in that market—which are completely different from the US or Russia
- Local regulations around sponsorships and disclosure (which sometimes require extra work from creators)
- Instagram penetration and behavior—different markets have wildly different posting frequency, audience expectations, etc.
What actually saved me was reaching out to a few agencies and creators already working in that market and asking stupid questions. “What do you normally charge?” “What do brands typically budget?” “What’s the weirdest rule about influencer posts here?”
From those conversations, I learned:
-
Rate cards are your friend. Several local agencies shared their rate cards (sanitized, no names), and suddenly I could see the actual market structure. Micro-influencers in that market charged about 40% of what they did in the US, but their engagement rates were also 60% higher (smaller, more engaged markets).
-
Brand budgets vary wildly. DTC brands in the US budget ~3-5% of ad spend on influencer marketing. In this new market, it was more like 1-2% (younger influencer marketing adoption). This meant I needed to pitch smaller campaigns.
-
Negotiation norms are specific to the market. In the US, most creators expect their first quote to be negotiated down. In Russia, you quote a price and that’s usually it. In this new market, creators seemed to expect a pretty aggressive negotiation. Knowing this upfront shaped how I positioned offers.
-
Non-monetary factors matter differently. In some markets, creators care about being credited and tagged. In others, they care about getting high-quality final footage they can use in their portfolio. Understanding what drives creators in that specific market changes how you structure deals.
I started keeping a simple checklist before entering any new market now:
- Get 3-5 rate card examples from local creators or agencies
- Ask about typical brand budgets (annual spend, campaign budgets)
- Understand local regulations that affect pricing (FTC-style disclosures vs. different rules)
- Figure out what creators in that market actually care about beyond money
- Get a sense of social media usage trends (is Instagram actually popular, or are people using something else?)
Take that info and you can make a reasonable first offer instead of throwing darts.
Have you expanded to new markets? What was the most surprising thing about how pricing worked differently?