The world of influencer marketing is changing all the time, and one of the key changes that we’re noticing is that brands and creators alike are looking to create more long term partnerships. There are a few interesting reasons for this, that tell us a little more about the trends we might expect from influencer marketing in the coming months and years.
With the creator landscape growing increasingly saturated, creators are becoming more strict around the products and brands that they choose to endorse, ensuring that they have true synergy with the brand.
Above and beyond the fact that working with people who genuinely like your brand is a good thing, why should brands be investing in these long term, authentic partnerships? What are the benefits for both parties and how can we ensure that the best partnerships are created?
Long term partnerships are more genuine
First things first, a partnership based on longevity looks a lot more genuine to the creator’s following. Gone are the days when a creator could endorse a product once for a bit of quick cash and then never work with them again. The consumer market has become a lot more wise to these kinds of collaborations, and inauthentic partnerships are often called out and disapproved of.
Ensuring that followers become familiar with the brand through consistent creator content brings home the fact that the partnership is genuine. Followers realise that creators must genuinely like the brand to be working with them so regularly, subsequently increasing trust around the brand and their offering.
Equally, for creators, it’s extremely valuable for them to be authentic, and long term partnerships really highlight this to their followers. Followers will respect their content and understand that it’s not just a one off post but a genuine collaboration based on the fact that the creator really loves the brand.
Brands can get more feedback with long term partnerships
No one knows a community as well as the creator who has built it. Therefore, content quality improves when it is being created by someone who knows their audience. With longer-term partnerships, there is room to gain feedback about what kind of posts people are enjoying and tailor the content to the audience in a way that one-off collaborations don’t allow for.
Brands will also be able to get genuine feedback from their target audience about the product or service they are offering, and this can be invaluable. Without the help of creators, this kind of market and audience feedback can take years to collect and be very costly. However, with a long term partnership with creators, brands will get these insights as part and parcel.
Long term creators are able to nail tone of voice
How many times have you seen a post and thought to yourself ‘wow that seems so inauthentic?’. One-off collaboration posts can seem like the brand has literally written the caption and orchestrated the content in order to fit their tone of voice, without considering the creator's natural tone of voice.
When this clash of tone of voice happens it can be so obvious that the collaboration isn’t genuine, and looks really bad on both parties. However, with long term creator partnerships, brands are able to harness the creator's voice and personality in order to create engaging content that is aligned with the tone of voice they would normally speak in. This makes the whole thing a lot more genuine and enables brands to harness the creator’s voice and personality as their own.
Long term creator/brand partnerships enable continuous content
Many brands are moving towards having an ‘always on’ strategy, meaning that they deliver content consistently as opposed to running one-off campaigns. The goal is that the brand will be able to target their audience and remarket to them at every stage of the customer lifecycle in order to keep them engaged.
Long term creator partnerships lend themselves to this kind of strategy, as creators are able to post continuous content that allows brands to stay at the forefront of their target audience’s minds.
How can brands create long term partnerships?
In order to reap these rewards, brands should be looking to team up with creators who will be able to genuinely endorse their brand on a long term basis. This means really doing their research and finding the right creators whose followings match the brands target audience.
There are so many benefits of partnering with creators in the long term, including a better rate for brands, and a more stable relationship for creators, which is hugely beneficial. If you’re currently working on a more short term basis, it is sensible to open the discussion to creators and see who would be able to offer a longer-term contract. If you can secure more junior creators on their journey upwards, this can be a great tactic and as they grow they can take your brand with them in an authentic manner.
If you’re ready to harness the power of long term creator partnerships, get in touch to find out more about how we can help your brand with long term campaigns.