The Creator Economy has set a high bar for enterprises, pushing marketing departments to rethink their strategies. The creative explosion in content across social media platforms has fostered a fundamental shift in the media consumption patterns of consumers. Changing expectations and preferences in content consumption can affect brand perceptions and buyer actions. Marketing methods that once helped make authentic connections with customers and prospects through social media may no longer be effective. New ways to connect need to be crafted and pursued.
Engaging independent creators is a smart strategy for adapting to the changes. At a little over eight million and 70% below the age of 40, US independent creators offer a wide range of fresh and engaging content options across all popular social media platforms. Further, they can help created desired outcomes more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional content approaches.
Here are four reasons why it’s smart to include independent creators in your marketing strategy.
You Can Do More
While you may not want to completely abandon the highly polished production values in your videos or podcasts, you can shift a chunk of your budget to the more informal, off-the-cuff, and increasingly popular style of user-created content. Engaging independent creators on a project-by-project basis gets this content created faster, at higher volume, and at a lower cost than more traditional approaches.
You Can Save Money in the Long Term
Besides saving on production costs, you can publish content more quickly in collaboration with independent creators. This lets you track metrics more often which can give you more frequent insight into what’s not working so that you can stop or adjust sooner—saving costs in the long term. You can also work with independent creators to test new forms of content and try out additional social media channels at a fraction of the cost.
You Can Dynamically Form and Dissolve Teams
Sometimes you’ll need one particular set of skills; other times, you’ll need another. When you curate a pool of independent creators in your talent network, you can quickly assemble teams with the right skills for a project. Then you can then dissolve that team and rinse and repeat, tailoring each team with the independent creators you need.
You Can Pivot Easily
Content that worked last year may not work this year. Digital content consumption is continually evolving as creators publish new and different works. Engaging independent creators lets you shift your digital content strategies quickly to keep pace with changes in consumer preferences.
Including members of the Creator Economy is a smart marketing strategy for enterprises. Independent creators are a rich resource to keep marketing ROI high.
