Okay, so there’s social media marketing, social selling, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing. And now the latest buzzphraze: creator marketing! Yes, creator marketing is a thing – and a big thing. Luckily, it’s more of a blanket term that includes affiliate marketing, which includes influencer marketing. Basically creator marketing is what has emerged out of this new era of creator content.
Here’s an important distinction to make, creator marketing is new in the sense that it’s anyone who writes, edits, designs, and films content to publish on social media with an entrepreneurial motivation. Which means that includes amateur content creators too.]
When you add amateur content creators to the mixing bowl, the dough gets a lot thicker. It’s not just influencers and celebrities. We’re referring to every other person who turned their hobby into a side hustle. Like during the pandemic. Neat isn’t it?
Today we’ll take a little tour around creator marketing. Hopefully you’ll latch onto the next big thing in marketing – just like we did.
Creator marketing is big, and getting bigger
According to Hootsuite, as of 2021, 50 million people consider themselves to be creators on social networks. Businesses will spend $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022. In the U.S. alone, 72.5% of marketers will make use of influencer marketing by 2022.
That’s huge! Almost 3 quarters of U.S. marketers plan to work with influencers by 2022. That aligns with how the industry is growing — the influencer marketing was valued at $1.6 billion in 2016. It soared to $21 billion in 2024.
If creator marketing isn’t your buzzword now, it certainly will be in the near future.
Creators are genuine, and people love it
If there’s one thing new about creators, it’s the freshness, the authenticity — the Average Joe making the content. Sure, the social media celebrities and influencers still have their leverage. But there’s something about them that can sometimes feel too curated, too marketed.
In other words: influencer marketing (think millions of followers) can feel fake. Why? Because it’s often clearly a sponsored post in their picture-perfect world.
Conversely, we have the amateur content creator who has flaws to bare. Perhaps this person has an uncanny disregard to social properness. Iinstead, this creator displays a rich, genuine and human experience. Thus: more relatable. Consider the creator with the ring light vlogging on marble floors. Then consider the person in sweats just having fun. We don’t mean to sound like we’re judging hyper-famous influencers; they’ve certainly worked for their success. But it’s simply harder to relate to them when they’re so screechingly successful, no?
It shows. Influencers who have between 1,000-to-5,000 followers have the highest engagement rate (5%). That’s considerable when compared to influencers who have more (1.6% with more than 1 million followers).
Think about all the amateur content creators on TikTok now. Then think about how much engagement they collectively generate versus the few celebrities. Amateur content creators are starting to see their advantage in the industry.
Final thoughts
We’ve shared our thoughts on TikTok and covered how user-generated content is winning. We’ve hit a point in time when it’s no longer ad agencies and social media ads getting the job done. It’s the amateur creator.
That means in the coming future, it’d be good to create a creator marketing strategy. Think about collaborating with creators.
What’s your niche?
Who has already established an audience?
The fact of the matter is: your target audience is going to trust creators. And more than they trust a brand’s advertisement. In any case, be prepared to outsource your marketing to a creator.
Never forget that the talented and professional voice actors we have of Voice123 are creators to. Many can go far beyond just providing a voice over. Check out their lists of can-do’s; they might just surprise you! You can also contact our super-helpful Customer Success team; they’ll get you sorted with just the professional you need in no time!
