How to Leverage the Creator Economy to Get More Sales

Today, everyone has the opportunity to become a content creator thanks to the accessibility of a free account and/or cheap publishing platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, and many others. Most of these online spaces are free and that appeals to people who want to publish their own content.

These platforms are also easy to use, and you don’t need to already be an expert before you can share your content. For instance, you don’t need to be a professional podcaster to generate a following and build a career in this creator economy. In fact, many podcasters have no experience in radio, television, or any other broadcasting arena. They simply buy a microphone and if people like what they have to say, they generate followers quickly.

The creator economy opened the door for everyday people to build audiences around their ideas, humor, expertise, and personal stories. Some earn through ad revenue, platform payouts, paid subscriptions, premium content, online courses, speaking engagements, and brand partnerships. Others turn content creation into a full business model with several revenue streams spread across multiple channels.

What does this mean for your business? Well, there’s an opportunity here to tap into this creator economy to reach new audiences, generate more leads, sales, and build your brand by reaching an influencer’s audience. Imagine being able to put your product or service in front of tens of thousands of targeted people without having to source them yourself. When you partner with influencers, that’s exactly the kind of opportunity you get.

A thoughtful creator partnership can help a small business get in front of the right people faster, drive engagement, improve conversion rates, and generate measurable results without burning through a massive ad budget. Better yet, it can feel far more personal than traditional advertising because creators often have deeper connections with their followers than brands do.

Some creators don’t have enough fans to make it worth your while, but many have large, loyal followings and sometimes one partnership is all you need to get a good flow of leads and sales. When you partner with a creator who has a strong influence in their niche, you can benefit without having to do any groundwork. All you need to do is come to the table with a generous, irresistible offer.

Influencers are the ultimate advertising opportunity.

How much time do you spend crafting ads that hardly get a response? How much money have you wasted buying advertising spots that generate such a low return you wonder if it’s even worth doing again?

Advertising is a numbers game, but it doesn’t have to be a major challenge. By pursuing opportunities with influencers, you’ll be able to reach a more targeted market without much effort. It’s not a replacement for your other advertising opportunities, but it can be an excellent supplement.

The best creators are powerful partners because they know how to tell stories in a way that makes people care. Their audience listens to them, replies to them, and buys from them because the relationship feels real. Whether someone follows a YouTube star with millions of fans or one of their favorite creators with a smaller but loyal community, the effect is similar. People pay attention when they hear a creator's recommendation from someone they already like.

That’s especially true in social commerce, where people discover products, ask questions, watch demos, and buy without ever leaving the platform. Social commerce keeps shortening the distance between interest and action. A creator mentions a product, shows how they use it, answers a few comments, and suddenly followers are clicking through. Social commerce works because it feels like guidance, not a hard sell. Social commerce also gives brands a more cost effective way to reach shoppers when compared to broad ad targeting. And as social commerce keeps growing, businesses that ignore creators will miss out on shoppers who already expect to buy directly from content.

Working with influencers has the potential to help you:

• Expand your reach to new audiences.

• Increase sales and signups.

• Move people forward in the buyer’s journey.

• Help you get more content.

• Increase brand awareness and reputation.

• Support long term growth.

If you’ve been looking for more ways to grow your business and expand your reach, keep reading because in this article, you’ll learn best practices you can apply to generate conversions by partnering with creators.

Step 1: Identify relevant creators in your niche.

As with any marketing or advertising strategy, the first thing you need to do is identify potential creators for a partnership. When it comes to influencers, there’s a big pool to choose from. Some are experienced and well-seasoned, while others are still rookies in the content creator arena. You’ll probably find your target, relevant audience within both of these groups, but experienced creators will bring you bigger results simply because they have more followers and a stronger influence over them.

The toughest part is choosing your partnerships. You need to make sure you engage the right people, especially since you’re choosing creators to carry your brand identity and vision forward to the masses.

If you’re looking for influencers on Instagram, find people who have a decent following with numbers that tend to rise rather than decrease, even if their total number of followers isn’t huge. Pay close attention to small-scale Instagram influencers because they tend to have a stronger bond with their audience, which generates more engagement.

That means looking past follower count and asking better questions. Do they speak to the kind of people you want to reach? Do they have smaller audiences that are highly engaged? Do they create content that feels honest, useful, and consistent?

You want partnerships with people who are consistent, great with people, and treat their audience well. You will be associated with the influencers you work with, and if you choose people who have a reputation for being disrespectful or rude, your plan might backfire.

Be cautious about partnering with controversial influencers who have a habit of dismissing, angering, or alienating a group of people in a negative manner in order to build up their platform. They might be profitable, but it could cost you your reputation.

It’s one thing to have strong opinions (there’s nothing wrong with that), but you don’t want your brand associated with creators who thrive on putting others down. Look through comments and older videos to get an idea of how each content creator relates to their audience before making the decision to reach out.

That’s why micro creators deserve serious attention. They may not deliver celebrity-level reach, but they often bring stronger engagement and a more believable message.

Step 2: Work out compensation.

If you want a creator to take your offer seriously, understand their business model first.

Many creators are juggling income from ad revenue, platform payouts, paid subscriptions, affiliate links, premium content, online courses, sponsorships, and speaking engagements. Some are trying to move away from unreliable platform payouts. Others want more stable brand partnerships or long term partnerships.

Partnering with a content creator, they will expect adequate compensation for providing you with access to the audience they’ve spent sometimes years building. Depending on what you have to offer and what each creator wants, you might compensate them with money, free goods or services, or discounts.

Some creators prefer flat fees, while others want performance-based deals or hybrid models. Many are open to one off campaigns, but the best ones are often looking for long term partnerships that support consistent income and long term growth.

You can also make your pitch stronger by thinking beyond cash. Offer a free account, early access, discounts, or custom bundles to help them promote products in a way that fits their audience.

The more enticing your offer for compensation, the more likely you are to land partnerships with influencers. If you’re looking for people who will promote you for free, those are called brand ambassadors and there’s a completely different approach to that aspect of marketing.

Step 3: Approach your target creator(s) for a partnership.

Once you know who you want to work with, it’s time to send them a proposal of sorts to see if they’re interested. If they’re on YouTube, go to their profile and see if they’ve provided an email address. If they haven’t, find their website and contact them through their form or whatever email address they’ve published. If they don’t have a website or you can’t find it, ask if there’s a way to contact them in the comments section of their videos, podcasts, or blog posts. If they’ve been a guest on someone else’s show, contact the host to see if they can share their contact information.

When you do get the chance to approach an influencer about partnering with you, it’s critical to keep their best interests in mind because they’ll want to know what’s in it for them. Take the time to understand what they need, what their goals are, and who their audience is in terms of demographics. Ask what formats work best for them. Maybe it’s short-form video, Instagram posts, or long-form content across multiple channels. Also, ask about the right tools they use to track performance. Some use native analytics, while others rely on tools like Sprout Social, affiliate dashboards, and CRM tools to track leads and conversions. If your team uses CRM tools, make sure you’re ready to capture and follow up on leads properly. It helps to schedule a live meeting, at least over Zoom. This way, you can both get a feel for each other’s personalities and ask questions on the spot. Having a live dialogue in real time will go a long way in helping you form your partnership.

A word of caution

When forming your partnership, don’t forget about the requirements put forth by the FTC regarding social media influencers. For instance, your influencer will be required by law to label sponsored/paid content, so your commercial relationship is clearly visible. They’ll need to do more than just add sponsored hashtags to posts, and video endorsements must disclose your relationship in writing and verbally in the video.

If a content creator refuses to follow these guidelines, don’t work with them because you can get in trouble if they don’t. Remember that a partnership is supposed to be 50/50, and if they aren’t willing to follow FTC guidelines to stay on the right side of the law, then you might end up with bigger problems down the road.

How to leverage content creators for advertising opportunities

There are a variety of ways you can leverage influencer partnerships to advertise, and here are the most effective.

1. Use programmatic influencer marketing

One of the best methods to reach your ideal market is by using programmatic influencer marketing. This is a modified version of programmatic advertising, which has been around for many years. In short, programmatic ads are distributed automatically through various platforms at once. The ads displayed to each user are personalized and the content depends on factors like a user’s interests, demographics, and websites they’ve visited.

Programmatic influencer marketing puts a unique twist on this tried-and-true method. Rather than having your ads displayed across an ad network, you get influencers to endorse you on the platforms where they already have a presence.

You can then place their endorsement anywhere else where users are a match to your influencer’s audience. This ensures your content will be seen by people who are more likely to align with the endorsement.

This strategy works especially well when paired with social commerce, allowing users to move from discovery to purchase quickly.

As you advertise your business using your influencer’s endorsement, it will also help them gain more exposure and increase their follower count. It’s truly a win-win partnership for everyone involved.

2. Use retargeting/remarketing

It’s worth establishing a plan in your contract that allows you to use remarketing on your influencer’s channels. This way, you can set up a retargeting campaign that will show additional ads to your influencer’s followers who already interacted with their endorsement of your business. This is too valuable to skip. Some influencers won’t go for it, but some will, and it’s worth asking. You can always try to sweeten the deal with extra compensation if you feel like it’s an exceptionally good market. When combined with social commerce, this can significantly improve conversion rates and deliver stronger measurable results.

3. Have your influencer “take over” your social media

This is something fans go crazy for. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the excitement comes from, but people love it when their favorite creators take over another brand’s social media accounts. This can drive engagement and increase visibility quickly.

Schedule a day for your influencer to take over one of your accounts, like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You can have a pre-set purpose, like having them handle a Q&A session for a product launch, or just let people know ahead of time that there will be a takeover and “anything goes.” However, on the back end, have everything planned out so nothing is left to chance. What’s appropriate will depend on your specific business.

A social media takeover will bring more of their fans to your channels, and you’ll gain new audiences, additional followers, subscribers, and leads in the process. In turn, your existing followers will be made aware of your influencer, and they’ll benefit just as well.

The challenge here is to set your rules and process ahead of time so that everyone involved knows the boundaries and nothing inappropriate gets posted to your account. For example, agree on what swear words are okay (if any), and have a plan to moderate any live chats, like on YouTube. You should always ask your influencer to send you their plans in advance so you can make the final approval and have your team post it rather than giving them access to your account. However, this won’t work for a live takeover.

Before engaging in a live takeover, be sure you can trust your influencer and change your passwords immediately after the session is complete.

4. Promote your influencer’s content

If you’ve partnered with a creator who produces content that reaches a lot of people, consider paying to promote the pieces of content that feature your business. You can either boost their posts directly from their social media accounts or get permission to repurpose their content and incorporate it into your own marketing efforts, like PPC ads or other paid promotions. This allows you to scale high-performing posts and improve reach in a cost effective way. It’s also a great way to support creators while strengthening your brand partnerships.

Increase your revenue with influencer partnerships.

The creator economy continues to expand, with more people building businesses through content creation, paid subscriptions, platform payouts, and brand partnerships.

Now that you know how valuable influencers are to work with, it’s easy to see why so many businesses sponsor content creators and powerful partners or collaborate with them on projects. The right influencer can help you reach new audiences in your market – people who trust them and will see your business through that same lens. Focus on strong audience fit, provide real value, and use the right tools to track your results.

If you’re looking for a powerful and affordable marketing technique, you won’t be disappointed by influencer marketing.