Creator marketing is undeniably one of the most essential forms of online marketing today. While a decade ago, it was limited to public figures and bloggers, in 2024, the influence of the creator economy is rapidly expanding, and brands now develop unique marketing strategies to get to their audiences.
So, how can you and your brand take advantage of this new way of marketing and ultimately scale using influencers?
Moreover, if you’re an individual wanting to launch your creator career, where should you start?
Keep reading and find all you ever wanted to know about creator marketing for brands & where you can head to start your creator journey.
So, whether you’re a business or an individual, buckle up, and let’s dive deep.
What is Creator Marketing?
Creator marketing is a strategy for promoting a brand, product, or service using the social media influence of online content creators.
Creators provide content they usually post and receive compensation for their work. On the other hand, brands get exposure in front of their most relevant audience, and it’s a win-win situation for both parties.
The impressive thing is that a creator can be anyone from anywhere, unlike a mainstream celebrity. Their influence consists of the content they create, not the number of followers they have on social media platforms.
A creator can be anyone: a travel enthusiast who films their own adventures on Youtube, a nail artist who takes pictures of their work on Instagram, or a marketing manager at a small firm that offers personal tips on LinkedIn.
Depending on your strategy, you can collaborate with:
- One creator with a large following
- Multiple creators with smaller followings.
There are different types and scales of creators. Some have millions of followers, like Liza Koshy, that promote brands, and others may have 10,000 followers or less, developing their reputation and following by being experts in their designated field.
They are the people who make the best quality content in a specific field, share the finest pictures, create unique and fun videos, and run the most informative discussions from which their followers can immensely benefit.4
What’s the Creator Economy
According to Statista, creator marketing is on the rise, and the value of this specific market between 2019 and 2021 has more than doubled, with growth from 6.5 billion U.S dollars to 13.8 billion dollars in the last three years.
To learn everything there is about the creator economy, make sure to check out our other blog, which covers pretty much everything.
What is a Creator
Creators are social media users that make original content that stands out in a specific topic or field. Unlike influencers, creators can have a smaller follower base and still monetize their content due to their originality.
So, a creator is a person who has the power to influence people’s purchasing decisions because they have significant authority, knowledge, a better position, or a unique relationship with their audience.
How to Find the Right Creators for Your Campaign
Creator marketing doesn’t involve only celebrities but users on social media that create original and unique content that stands out in a particular niche industry. Furthermore, Instagram is one of the most popular platforms for finding these creators.
To learn how to use Instagram to discover your best creators, check out our blog, How to Find Instagram Creators.
Moreover, you can use our database of 50M+ creators from every niche & get to the right creators in no time— click here to find out more.
The Value of Creator Marketing
At the beginning of the creator marketing days, the to-go strategy for brands was to do one-and-done campaigns with the creators. These campaigns were based on posts that weren’t particularly tied to a broader campaign or an objective. So, they simply promoted one product or service, and that was about it.
But now, brands allocate more of their marketing budgets to creator marketing. It is estimated that this industry will have grown to $10 billion by 2020, going up from $2 billion just three years before in 2017.
Additionally, 89% of the people surveyed by Mediakix in 2018 said that the ROI from creator marketing was better than other channels.
How to Develop a Creator Marketing Strategy
Creator marketing strategy, like any other marketing effort, takes calculated planning. Giving free stuff to creators and their followers is not a guarantee of success, but with a couple of tweaks and smart planning, you can get there.
1. How to find creators
Just like any other marketing strategy, the first step is research. Choose a social platform that is relevant to your business and stick to it. You can expand on other platforms, but in the beginning, sticking with only one is advisable.
In this phase, you should also determine what type of creators you need.
Based on your budget, you can reach out to:
- Creators with massive followings
- Smaller creators with around 5.000 followers
- Mid-range creators with 10.000-100.000 followers.
Keep in mind that larger creators with more followers require financial compensation, and you even might have to go through a talent agency. In any case, you should determine which creators you want to collaborate with based on your expected ROI and marketing goals.
Once you’ve determined the type of creators you need, you should decide where you’ll look for them.
There are multiple ways to find creators. At the end of this blog, we’ll cover some of the best platforms where you can find the needed creators.
2. How much do creators cost
The prices depend on the number of followers and their platform. For example:
- Creators with 50-500.000 followers on Instagram can charge $500–$5,000 per post
- Creators on Twitter with 1+ million followers ask for $2.000+ per post
- Creators with 1-10.000 followers on Instagram charge between $25–$250 per post.
The research is the most crucial part; it takes time and patience to find the perfect fit for your brand.
3. How to define a budget and strategy
Once you have an idea of the creator’s cost, you need to define the budget for the creator’s marketing campaign. Consider the time for all the activities involved with using this strategy, like the plan, execution, and review of the influencer program.
Like any other digital marketing campaign, this marketing effort involves careful observations and follow-ups.
According to Linquia, you should spend about 25% of your total budget for digital marketing on creator marketing. Their research concludes that it should be treated as any other digital marketing channel, becoming an integral part of the digital media plan.
You can use this creator campaign budget template made by Demand Metric to set and track your creator budget.
4. How to contact creators
So, you have your goal, message, budget, strategy, and the type of creators you want to reach.
Now all you have to do is actually reach out to them.
For creators with up to 10.000 followers, you can send them a DM on the platform they are on. Creators with a more extensive fan base get tons of collab requests, so you have a higher chance of reaching them via email. Inspect their profiles; you will probably find contact information in their bio.
For more information on how to reach out to them, check out this article on how to do influencer outreach.
5. Review your creator marketing strategy
Before starting your creator marketing strategy, you should have set deadlines in your content calendar to easily track the campaign’s progress. With frequent collaborations with creators, you’ll learn more and more different things you can improve on and have more successful campaigns.
Creator Platforms
Creator companies can benefit both brands & individuals trying to break into the creator marketing space.
Platforms like Heepsy, BrandAmbassador, SparkToro, Group High, or AspirelQ host millions of creators. You can quickly find the best fit for your business or sign up and be part of the community.
So, if you’re looking for creators or you’re an individual looking for a way to start their creator career, here’s a list of the top X platforms for creators.
1. Influencers.Club
If you want to cut down the outreach process in half and connect with the right creators immediately, you can get creators’ emails and reach out to them at scale.
Influencers.club can provide you with a targeted, ready-to-use database of creators based on your needs, requirements, and marketing goals.
What’s more, the data you’ll receive includes multiple data points on the creators, including:
- Follower count;
- Impressions;
- Engagement rate;
- Estimated reach;
- Content upload frequency;
- Influencer-specific demographics.
Here’s a free sample data of creators to see the service’s quality.
So, if you want to kick off your creator marketing efforts, and get the best possible results – contact our team & learn more.
Pricing: Three available pricing tiers (depending on the size of the ordered database)
2. Klear
Klear breaks down influencers into thousands of topic categories, making it easy for you to find the right creators for your niche. Furthermore, you get a few data points on the creators that can help you decide whether or not the creator is a right fit for your brand.
Lastly, Klear can help you measure the results of the campaign to help you determine which creator works best.
Pricing: There’s a free version & paid packages.
3. Traackr
Traackr is an influencer marketing platform that does influencer marketing from start to finish – from finding social media influencers to measuring the campaign results.
Traackr is a great place to discover creators and also manage your creator marketing campaigns.
It offers multiple filters that help you narrow down the right creators for your brand. Additionally, it comes with an app that enables you to measure the success of the campaigns.
Pricing: The platform offers annual and multi-subscriptions.
4. Upfluence
Upfluence in another platform that has about three million creators on it. So, you can surely find the right creators here; however, it might take you a bit more time.
Like the other platforms, you can filter through the creators through various data points.
Pricing: Multiple tiers per contact, starting at $795.
5. BuzzSumo
You can find both content and creators at BuzzSumo. Moreover, you can get insight into the creators’ engaged audiences on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social platforms.
Lastly, you can find any type of creator on this platform, from social media creators to bloggers, and journalists – the options are limitless.
6. Heepsy
Heepsy is a platform that hold millions of creators which all have more than 5,000 followers.
The platform filters out spammers and fake accounts, so you’ll be working with legit creators if you choose this platform.
Lastly, you can explore lists, export data, and reach out to influencers directly from the platform.
Pricing: Multiple tiers, starting from $49 per month.
8. GroupHigh
This platform hosts specifically bloggers. On the platform, you can find personal information and social media profiles of the creators.
So, if you’re specifically looking for bloggers, GroupHigh is the perfect platform for you.
Pricing: Multiple tiers starting at $179 per month + free trial.
Conclusion
The world of creator marketing has vastly changed in a short period of time, and trends change in a blink of an eye. But, if you follow the steps we mentioned, such as doing proper research, setting a budget, defining the goals, finding the creators, and properly planning your campaign, you may pave the way for a successful campaign.
The success of the campaign varies from brand to brand, and don’t get discouraged if you don’t succeed at first. It’s obvious that these days including a creator and developing a creator marketing strategy is beneficial for everyone.
