Since the launch of platforms like Instagram and Snapchat starting around 2010, influencer marketing has emerged as a major industry. Brands recognised influencers as key figures in driving purchase decisions, and by 2015, influencer marketing had become an integral part of brands' marketing strategies and budgets. In the near decade since then, we’ve seen the rise of the creator economy. The industry has boomed and looks set to continue on a steep upward trajectory. From an estimated global industry value of $500 million in 2015 to a predicted $21 billion in 2024, this rapidly expanding industry is made up of multiple tiers of creators and influencers who are monetising their skills and influence, and turning content creation from a hobby into lucrative revenue streams. On the flip side, brands are only beginning to understand the nuances of how different creator tiers perform against paid media metrics. They are also struggling to transition from polished, brand-style influencer content to the more spontaneous, authentic content produced by nano and micro creators. So, let me debunk some of the common brand hesitations and we can explore how brands can effectively engage with this emerging creator generation.
The ROI of Real Connections
The differences between influencers and creators appear subtle, but those subtleties do lead to some distinct advantages that are putting creators ahead in how successfully a brand can connect with an audience. In previous years, brands often mistakenly assumed that influence was directly connected to follower count. However, today’s more developed phase of influencer and creator marketing provides clearer insights, and the data is clear: follower counts don’t necessarily equate to ROI.
The average conversion rate for creators is 4-8%, compared to 1-2% for mega influencers
Influencers often have broad audiences with whom they share a diluted connection. Their followers are less engaged and more sceptical, fully aware of the commercial, monetised nature of brand endorsements. In contrast, creators have smaller audiences with whom they are more connected to. These followers value what they perceive to be more authentic, quality content that is tailored to their own interests. They are often drawn to the creator through personal ties or niche interests, making them feel part of a genuine community. This trust drives more valued and effective product endorsements. In turn, this increases purchase intent. Using bespoke links or discount codes also allows brands to directly track an individual creator’s impact, providing solid quantitative data and an opportunity to learn, optimise, and refine future campaigns.
Scaling smarter
With the average nano creator charging between $100 and $500 for one brand video compared to the starting price of $10,000 for a mega influencer, brands can engage numerous creators for the same budget as a single influencer or reduce their spends. This allows them to produce a suite of varied content that also performs better. With so many publishing platforms to manage, this higher volume of varied content helps avoid content fatigue, and offers the ability to target multiple, highly engaged audiences with more tailored content. This does, however, present scalability concerns for brands who worry about the time and resources needed to manage a large pool of creators. Any talent partnership requires a search and recruitment process, high levels of communication, clear and well-delivered creative direction and feedback, managing the content and performance tracking. When multiplied across a large group of creator collaborations, this can add up to an overwhelming amount of work for any marketer, who is often juggling this demanding workload with other equally important responsibilities.
There are some effective solutions to these challenges, depending on the brand’s capacity to manage the work internally, and assuming they don’t have the budget or desire to offload it completely to a full service influencer marketing agency:
- Influencer Marketing Platforms: Think of this as the self-serve option. These platforms offer a wide range of services that allow you to search for, recruit and manage creators. Their comprehensive databases allow you to search for creators based on select criteria and advanced filters. If you have a clear understanding of your brief, the type of creator you are searching for and understand performance metrics and audience analytics, this is a great place to start. Campaign management tools will allow you to plan and track a campaign from start to finish, and most will offer access to content creation support, legal templates, reporting, analytics, and automated payments. Have no doubt, this is still a high level of administrative and creative work which requires someone who can navigate with time, knowledge and experience on their side. Many creators are not professional influencers, and they often need more guidance and guidelines to meet brand standards, as well as alignment on the output as well as deadlines, rights and compensation.
- Creator Content Partner: As is the case with most in-house agencies or teams, it’s impossible to have the headcount to cover the sheer volume of work and possess all the specialist skills needed to deliver on the modern media plan. We are increasingly seeing in-house teams look for trustworthy partners to take on overflow work, provide specialist skills to produce specific content or even support with project management and complex workflows. Delivering great creator content should be considered a specialist skill, and as such forging an alliance with a studio or agency partner who can help alleviate those administrative and creative challenges is a clever option. It allows a brand to set the overarching brief for a campaign, and then hand it over to the partner to take care of everything else from strategy, concepting, creator recruitment and management, up to the point of delivering back finished, on brand, optimised content. It’s a great cost-effective solution that allows the brand to stay closely aligned with the whole process, maintain a comfortable level of oversight and approval, but without having to do the heavy lifting themselves.
The magic of unpolished freedom
This final topic is what appears to be causing the most apprehension and misinterpretation among brands – what should good creator content look like? The answer is most certainly not like the brand’s latest TVC or OOH campaign. The whole point of creator content is that it is authentic, unpolished and frankly does not feel like a brand has had anything to do with it. That doesn’t mean that it won’t be entertaining, informative, and compelling enough to drive an action, it’s just not going to look like the rest of the brand’s content, and that is the whole point. Consumers are increasingly resistant to brand advertising because, whilst informative, it lacks relatability and the human connection. The saturation of overtly commercial content has produced a scepticism that is pervasive amongst all demographics, but especially in Gen Z and Alphas.
Creators specialise in crafting narratives around a brand’s brief, providing a more natural and genuine portrayal of a product’s benefits, efficacy or value. What brands need to focus on is partnering up with creators whose values, interests and aesthetics match their own, and then let them bring some of their own magic to concepts. They can still be provided with the strategy, objectives, and the main messaging points they need to hit, but beyond that offering some level of creative freedom will lead to more relatable and trustworthy content. The creator can also engage with their audience comments and questions, further solidifying individual connections, making followers feel valued, and building loyalty.
One last point to mention is that creators don’t need to be engaged to both create and publish content. Collaborating with creators to simply produce content then hand over so a brand can repurpose as needed is becoming more common. Whether for organic or paid media, this allows a brand to tap into the positive perception benefits of creator content. It can also be used to enhance the brand’s media mix. This is another cost-effective way to create a rich and varied content plan where traditional ads are complemented by quality creator content.
Sonali de Alwis is the Executive Creative Director at OLS. She works across all client accounts, driving creative excellence, and is a dedicated believer in using global insights and consumer trends to shape more effective work. She loves journalistic photography, elaborate recipes, going on far-flung adventures, and can often be found in one of the many south London food markets.