What Retailers and Brands Need to Know about Influencer Marketing | Interview with Tiffany Hardin

In the second half of this interview, Emilie and Tiffany discuss the power of the creator economy, how to work with influencers, and the role of DEI when it comes to the creator economy and the larger trends driving modern culture. 

• 0:22: The creator economy is worth ½ trillion dollars; 165 million creators joined the creator economy in 2022. 
• 0:58: What you need to consider when using influencer marketing as part of your strategy. 
• 3:26: Influencers help fill the top of your funnel, tracking conversions and bringing them through the sales funnel is the responsibility of the  brand. 
• 4:50: You can also use influencers to build affinity and trust for a product and service. 
• 6:20: What it takes to be a successful creator who makes more than $50,000 per year. 
• 8:50: BIPOC creators are greatly underrepresented, they are less likely to get deals or be compensated fairly. 
• 11:00: Tiffany will be hosting seminar and educational sessions at ASD Market Week on social media, working with influencers, and how retailers need to change their marketing strategies. 
• 12:54: How to create solutions and strategies that meet the needs of your brand or company.
• 14:05: The key to successful influencer marketing in co-creation and collaboration.
• 16:48: Using social and creative capital to help BIPOC creators build generational wealth. 
• 21:05: Using BIPOC creators help diversify messages and become more relatable to your customer base. 
• 23:02: From the Little Mermaid to Spiderman, the positive impact of seeing characters of color for younger generations allows them to see themselves as being something more. 
• 25:54: How Budweiser failed in their influencer marketing, they put someone in harm’s way, and that didn’t need to happen. 
• 26:56: Everything comes back to culture and data.
• 31:52: How to take calculated risks with your current audience while talking to new ones. 
• 33:01: If you believe, you dream it, you can make it happen. Don’t be afraid of trying to build a sustainable career. 
• 34:18: Whether you're a creator or a brand, you need to have a point of view. 
• 36:28: You need support and help, build your tribe. 

The Creator Economy by the Numbers and the Role of Data

According to the Rakia Reynolds of Skai Blue Media, the creator economy generates half a trillion dollars in revenue. Emilie and Tiffany discuss how the creator economy is not going anywhere, it’s only going to grow. If you’re a brand or company that wants to work with influencers, the first question you need to ask yourself is what you want from your influencer marketing program. Influencer marketing is a souped up version of word of mouth marketing, it's the very top of the funnel. As a marketer, you want it to be top of the funnel strategy, you want to use it as a validation of your strategy, and to determine if the product you’re pushing is any good. 

When it comes to influencer marketing, you can look at it from two ways. The first is to fill a sales funnel. As a top of the funnel, you should be able to track the return on the program. The job of the influencer is to post content they make on your behalf. It is your job to bring the person they capture for you through the sales funnel. Brands should be using UTMs and have conversion tracking in place. The second way to leverage influencer marketing is for affinity and sentiment. You may want the affiliation to the product because of the influencers' ties to your target community. And that’s okay, it’s another way to validate if your product is good or not.&