Brand and creator relationships
Investing in your relationships with creators is something every brand should pay attention to. Especially when you collaborate with creators frequently throughout the year. But what does it cost? Building up a sustainable relationship with your creators has so many benefits. In this article we tell you more about it and how you can sustain and maintain a good relationship with your creators!
For a lot of brands, social media is a relatively low cost advertising medium. A creator carries out the assignments of the campaign that align the company’s brand strategy and generate sales by increasing product visibility on their social networks. Brands often base their decision to collaborate with a certain creator on the number of followers they have. In most cases, the collaboration is only a one-time thing. Once the campaign is over and the results are in, the brand evaluates the metrics. If a creator doesn’t meet the desired short-term goals. This results that brands in some cases are less likely to collaborate with the creator again. Sounds familiar? In that case, maybe the following tips can help you out to gain better success at your next campaign and help you start working on your relationship with your future creators.
Treat creators as brand ambassadors
First things first, when you’re about to start an influencer marketing campaign, it’s important to think about who exactly you want to collaborate with. Make a selection not only based on followers, but see what their values are? Who is their target audience? Is the style of their content in line with your overall branding?
@Asos took a great example of this. They even gave the creators they teamed up with, a name: insiders.
There’s a lot of diversity within the creators they selected for the campaigns. All of them still fit within the core of Asos’ values.
This can be seen for example in creators' fashion senses, body shapes, amount of followers, and much more. The “insiders’ make sure that for a long period of time they continuously keep on posting content enriching the image of Asos. In which they keep on increasing relatability and transparency of the content.
And if possible, try to create a multichannel partnership! It of course requires time and strategic planning, But if successful, your relation with influencers will grow strong. The content for one campaign can be used effectively across more channels. This will also help the creator grow themselves.
Win-Win
Show that you take your creators seriously! They’ll highly appreciate it if you really care about their style and voice of their content. Think about the next campaigns together and see what’s possible to make the most of it. In the end, you will end up knowing and trusting each other even better through highly customized communication. After all, communication is so important when it comes to running collaborations. Did a campaign have different results as expected? Talk about it with each other and see what can be done next time. More importantly, share your goals with the creators before you start. Maybe they have ideas to help you reach it which you haven’t thought about yourself yet! In the end, they know their followers the best and what type of content or message works best to create interaction.
Be dedicated and devoted
A good relationship between you and your creator doesn’t happen from day to day. In order to develop enduring partnerships, the approach alone can come with costs. Not only does it take time but in some cases financial costs to convince a creator to collaborate with you. It therefore calls for the right knowledge and experience in finding the right creators and how the negotiate the right way. Be aware that managing your day-to-day relationship and how to negotiate long-term contracts takes time as well. Find out beforehand what the creators’ interests are and you’ll see they’ll appreciate the dedication you show during the first conversation about a potential collaboration.Invest in your relationship with creators by showing interest in other topics than content creation from time to time.
What the creator appreciates in a brand relationship
Unclear expectations, unrealistic rewards, and lack of communication and commitment. These are the things that bothers creators the most. It’s hard for a creator to work with a brand when they don’t outline exactly what they want. On the other hand they also want the right amount of creative freedom. However, it also goes for when both brand and creator fail to specifically agree on expectations about deliverables. So be prepared and as clear as possible! Share are the details the creator needs to know for your campaign but try not to stage them too much.
What they do want is to approach campaigns creatively, while still meeting all the deadlines and specifications. So keep it open but with enough guidelines so the creator understands the desired messaging and can still tell the story in their own words, their own way.
In order to improve the run of collaboration and the relationship between you and a creator, it helps to set up agreements. This way neither the brand or the creator will end up with unexpected surprises. Both will know what is expected from their behalf. If one of the parties breaks the agreements, consequences will be used as incentive for them to keep their promises.
Keep focus
So in order to sustain meaningful relationships with your creators take enough time to explain and time to listen. Building the trust that always delivers the results that exceed expectations. We all know that we quickly swipe further as soon as an ad comes up on our feed. We want to follow real humans, not brands. We’re more likely to believe an actual person reviewing your product or service. Creators are experts on this so focusing on building strong creator relationships and championing your creators as strategic partners, your creator programs will flourish beyond expectations!
