Why Brands Are Missing Out on Revenue From the Creator Economy

The world of advertising has drastically shifted. Brands can’t create billboards and hope that their “How did you hear about us?” survey provides insight into their marketing strategy performance

The growth of social media and the creator economy created a host of new revenue opportunities for brands. Influencer brand partnerships have emerged as a wildly effective marketing strategy — 76% of consumers report making a purchase based on someone else’s recommendation. And, user-generated content (UGC) from influencers and creators is now considered the “most trustworthy content” by brand audiences

Brands can work with influencers with followings of all sizes — there’s no need to spend the whole marketing budget on working with a mega-influencer with millions of followers. A recent report from HubSpot showed that brands found the most success working with micro-influencers (10,000-99,999 followers) and macro-influencers (100,000-999,999 followers).

Instead of finding the biggest influencer to work with, look for the ones you can work with successfully in the long-term.

The longer a brand partners with an influencer, the more their audience will recognize the brand, and associate them with the creator they love. This strengthens brand awareness and increases the likelihood they’ll try that new product.

Long-term paid partnerships with brands are better for the influencer, too — they’ll know they have steady work from your company, they’ll know exactly how to do it right, and they’ll be able to more easily predict their income.

Vanessa Gyimah x Juvia’s Place

One example of a great long-term brand partnership is Vanessa Gyimah and Juvia’s Place. For at least three years, makeup artist and beauty influencer Vanessa Gyimah has been creating content for Juvia’s Place, showing off stunning looks created with their products, highlighting sales and promotions, and portraying the brand positively. For the past two years, Juvia’s Place has run a Mother’s Day campaign with Vanessa where she does her mom’s makeup with Juvia’s Place products.

Provide dedicated influencer support to harness the power of the creator economy

Building brand partnerships on Instagram, TikTok, and other social platforms starts with finding the right influencer in your company’s niche. Then, brands present a contract, outlining how the influencer will be compensated, what percentage they can earn via affiliate links, what the influencer will post, and more. Once both parties negotiate and sign the contract, brands can send products to the influencer, host them at an event, or send them on a trip. Then, the influencer creates content and encourages their followers to give the brand a try.

Finding and onboarding new influencers can be time-consuming, so creating long-term brand partnerships with influencers is far more lucrative. But in order for influencers to stay on with a brand, they need to invest in proactively maintaining that relationship.

5 biggest missed opportunities when brands work with creators

1. No formal internal support dedicated to influencer programs

Social media managers run multiple channels, create content, and balance priorities from across the organization. They don’t have time to build and maintain a brand collaboration strategy, and influencers won’t continue collaborations with a brand if they don’t feel supported.

By creating a dedicated influencer marketing team, you set up campaigns and collaborators for success from the beginning: Check out the NET-A-PORTER Affiliate Program and the Sephora Beauty Affiliate Program creative collaborator onboarding pages. Brand partners using ShopMy unlock custom-branded invitation pages for their affiliate programs to deliver a seamless onboarding experience for ambassadors.

2. Poorly written brand influencer contracts

Outlining exact expectations from the beginning of a brand partnership ensures everyone knows what they need to do and what they’ll get out of it. With weak contracts that don’t get into every detail of the brand-creator relationship, partnerships are doomed to fail. This is another reason why influencer marketing requires its own team to liaise with the legal team in building contracts

Contracts should include the following:
- How your affiliate program works, and what percentages influencers can expect to make
- Amount and type of content you expect, including formats and platforms
- Types of phrases to use, and what not to say
- Protections for the brand and influencer (talk to your legal team)
- How you’ll measure ROI and when/how payouts will happen
- The affiliate marketing technology stack and user expectations

3. Slow legal approval process for influencers

There are several stages within influencer brand partnerships that require legal collaboration. Some legal teams will want to vet potential influencers before bringing them on to represent the brand. Legal teams will always be involved in contract creation and negotiation, and in building post-creation guidelines for influencers.

And some legal teams may want to approve the language of each post, story, or video that represents the brand — this is where it can get sticky. If overloaded legal teams take days (or weeks) to approve post drafts, influencers will get frustrated and stop collaborating with the brand. Or, both parties will miss opportunities for timely brand influencer collaborations like new product launches, holidays, or celebratory milestones.

In order to fast-track legal approval, create clear guidelines for influencer content creation. You can even provide suggested scripts and captions.

4. Lack of creative support for influencers

Providing creative support for influencers — including brand style guides, sample images to emulate or use, sample copy to use or customize, and voice and tone guidelines — will lead to brand-ready content that influencers can quickly and easily create and post.

If they don’t know exactly what you want, they’ll likely create something different, and have to embark on a long process of edits, and approvals before finally getting to post their content. This, too, prevents the creation of long-term brand collaborations.

5. Inadequate affiliate tools and ROI tracking

When brands and creators can easily access their metrics — and track the revenue from their campaigns — they’re better equipped to keep creating content that resonates. And more motivated to share frequently to see the numbers rise. Without proper tracking, brands and creators alike are just guessing at what works, and won’t be able to prove ROI and continue funding their efforts.

Invest in the right tools to help your brand advocates and your influencer marketing team. Learn more about how ShopMy can help you start or strengthen your influencer marketing program — we can help you wherever you need support so you can get more impactful campaigns off the ground.

Long-term influencer brand partnerships generate more revenue

One-off partnerships are nowhere near as powerful as long-term influencer brand collaborations. ShopMy can help you build relationships with the right influencers — and track your brand affiliate program’s progress. Learn more about how ShopMy supports data-driven brand-influencer partnerships.