Creator Marketing

Creator marketing is the operating model rather than a tactic: a repeatable way to source, brief, approve, pay and measure creator work so the spend compounds instead of resetting each campaign. This path covers what that looks like in practice and where it differs from hiring an agency to do it for you.

Marketplaces, platforms and in-house programmes each have a different cost structure, and the honest answer depends on volume. Below a certain number of campaigns a year an agency is cheaper than the headcount to run it; above it the maths flips. The lessons work through that comparison and cover what a platform actually removes from the workload.

The build-versus-buy question comes down to volume. Below roughly a campaign a month, an agency retainer usually costs less than the internal time to source, brief, approve and pay creators yourself. Above it the maths inverts quickly, because the agency fee scales with spend while the internal cost is mostly fixed once the process exists. Knowing which side of that line you are on saves a lot of argument.

What a platform removes is the coordination work rather than the strategy. Discovery, briefs, approvals, contracts and payouts in one place means the marginal cost of the tenth creator is close to the cost of the first. The strategy, which creators, what offer, what the content should say, stays with you either way, and it is the part that determines whether the programme works.