In the second installment of our series on authentic creator partnerships, Acceleration Partners influencer expert Mandalynn Carlson discusses best practices for building strong relationships with creators.
Authentic brand-creator partnerships are crucial in the evolving consumer landscape, as more people buy from who they watch. Audiences look to creators who are either aspirational or feel just like them, and they take their recommendations the same way they would a friend. By partnering with creators who can speak to the problem their product solves, brands can tell their stories in compelling, appealing ways.
We talked about how to find these creators in our first post of this series. As a brand, once you’ve identified a creator that checks all the boxes, how do you connect with them and build that beneficial relationship? At Acceleration Partners, we have a few strategies that we’ve seen work for our influencer clients across the globe.
Be open to the creator’s unique approach. We love to work with creators who share their personal experiences with products, as those stories resonate much better with audiences compared to overly branded content. For that reason, we keep our communication with creators as open as possible and limit being overly prescriptive. Instead, we share themes and thought starters with the creators as a jumping-off point for their own storytelling and reviews. With this freedom, they can share the brand’s story with genuine excitement.
Set expectations. Given our breadth of experience working in the influencer space, we have a solid sense of the market when it comes to terms and deliverables. We’ll share those with our clients; once they’ve signed off, we’ll negotiate with creators. In those negotiations, we balance a fair deal for the creator’s time, value of their audience and content creation itself with the best value for the brand’s needs in terms of content usage in ads, specific language or disclaimers and other factors. We’ve recently found success on existing accounts by reaching out to creators and their agencies with an offer to set the baseline for negotiations. This move helps reduce mismatches between a creator’s rate and a brand’s budget.
Build a foundation for a long-term partnership. This, really, is the combination of the first two strategies, and brands have to commit to those throughout the creator relationship. I can’t say it enough: the most important step to ensuring a seamless partnership is recognizing and carving out space for the creator’s creativity in the content. When they have the freedom to be authentic with their content and audience and are compensated fairly, it opens the door to long-term success in the partnership because they feel valued and are excited to bring your campaign vision to life.
At Acceleration Partners, our Performance Influencer program offers a full funnel strategy for this type of growth. Our three-tiered suite of influencer services offers scalable, measurable, multi-touch, full-funnel influencer solutions for brands of every size, evolving to avoid fatigue through diverse creator partnerships. We’re not afraid to do cold outreach to new creators, and we have existing relationships with creators and agencies that we work with often. This overall approach translates to a smooth process that can scale: people trust our working style, and we always have a sense of how the market is changing.
We also have specialized ways to measure the success of influencer campaigns, then iterate and improve future campaigns based on performance data. Tune in for that info in our next post. In the meantime, if you have questions about how AP can help you develop your influencer strategy and drive performance, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
