Your Weekly Creator Marketing Update🚀
12.01.2025
Hello and welcome to the first edition of your weekly creator marketing update for 2025 🎆
🎤 What influencer marketing budgets should look like in 2025
TL;DR
In 2025, over half of brands plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets, with some allocating up to 30% of their marketing spend to this area. Key strategies include focusing on long-term partnerships, emphasizing video content on platforms like YouTube Shorts and TikTok Shop, and integrating both celebrities and micro-influencers to enhance engagement and reach
HEADLINE QUOTE
Brands are increasing their investment in long-term paid influencer campaigns, says Julianne Fraser, founder and CEO of influencer marketing agency Dialogue. These engage creators for up to six months and span various platforms and narratives. It’s a means for breaking through an increasingly competitive and saturated influencer marketing landscape, she says. “Brands are finding it increasingly more important to establish genuine and authentic creator relationships, achieved by long-term campaigns.”
OUR TAKE
Let’s break down the article per segment, and review with our take.
📖 Storytelling: Upping the ante
Our take on this is a familiar one, and with budgets on the rise - brands will need to balance the need for hype and volume with authentic, meaningful stories. The influencer industry has typically been assigned lower comparative budgets than other departments for spend (i.e paid media, etc), this translates directly to increased accountability and - also - scrutiny. Influencer departments have been in a niche position where a functioning strategy could lead to great results without taking the spotlight too much. This is rapidly changing, and with that, we’re seeing more performance driven (read: short-term conversion based results) requirements.
Brands and departments will have to find the balance between performance and storytelling in order to provide sustainable, long-term results. Flooding the internet with sales-based messaging has lead to great success for many brands, but perceptions are shifting and the need for creators to drive meaningful brand-led narratives should not be overlooked.
As per below quote; this approach could come in a variety of shapes and sizes:
Including creators in travel & events
Long-term partnerships
Pushing for IGC to link with offline retail
Cou Cou plans to invest more budget into content collaborations including creator travel features and the brand’s Cou Cou Talks series. For Australian ready-to-wear brand Asta Resort, activities that go beyond a tag in a single grid post is a priority, including brand trips and events. Brands across the board are also prioritising investment in long-term partnerships with influencers, ditching one-off spon-con posts. Pdpaola wants to use video content to bring consumers into its newly opened Manhattan flagship, so it is bringing creators in to make content in the space.
⚔️Macro vs micro influence
One of the side effects of higher budgets means influencer departments have more money to spend, and without a fully built out influencer/creator pyramid, this could lead to money automatically being pushed into the celebrity/macro tier level, and an absolute must for performance driven & awareness deliverables. What I find interesting in the article is the below quote discussing the “longtail”
It’s about capturing this longtail, Nord says, by working with smaller creators and influential customers as well as the “digital one percenters”. There’s a way to go, he says: “Brands aren’t yet getting into like all the nooks and crannies of the internet that we need to reach into.”
The longtail of influencer marketing requires an advanced set up with a larger team of influencer/creator specialists that are able to utilise their skillset beyond “inbound” partnerships, and dive into the creator space on a much more granular level.
The brand’s marketing split is about 15 to 20 per cent is macro/celebrity; 75 to 80 per cent nano/micro/mid. “We see someone with 1,000 followers as an influencer if she aligns with the values, passions and interests of the Cou Cou girl,” she says. “Someone who’s in the world, someone whose taste people in their real day-to-day lives respect and appreciate, is actually likely to have more impact than an ‘influencer’ (in the typical sense of the word) that has 50,000 followers — but might not actually have much impact on those around them.”
I cannot emphasise the importance of integrating a fully fledged influencer pyramid that ensures every single tier is well represented, scale, efficacy, impact, and brand-building are all vital to the success of an influencer department.
And most importantly - remember that influencer/creator marketing is a human-to-human business; as demonstrated here by British Comedian Joe Lycett in this sketch.
🤖 AI investments
As budgets are increasing for many businesses, it means more output is required and can often lead to increased pressure. Tech is incredibly important when it comes to scaling up influencer efforts, and I’d be interested to see how AI / other tech is able to support teams in a meaningful way that doesn’t harm the human aspect of dealing with creators.
“However, we remain cautious about automating relationship-driven aspects of our strategy, as authenticity is core to our approach.”
🛑TikTok watch
As TikTok is starting to see a lot of its US-based creators leave the platform, budgets will shift along with them. While it’s not sure what the final outcome will be, I have seen many US-based creators leave the app, and focusing on their other platforms in order to remain relevant. This will likely mean budgets will shift, and new opportunities will arise for creators, and it remains to be seen what these platforms will do to help to support this shift.
Though a TikTok ban in the US is indeed on the cards, brands aren’t changing their strategies and investments just yet as we wait to see what happens. If a ban does come into effect this year, the majority of their TikTok spending buckets should reallocate to other video socials like Instagram and YouTube Shorts, Nord says.
That concludes a break-down of each component of the article - how do you think 2025 will shape up for influencer marketing?
🏭Industry Headlines
🖥️'Maybe you'll realise what you have is good enough': Why influencers are facing a pushback
It's hard to say whether the de-influencing movement is impacting brands just yet. We know online giants like Asos, Boohoo, and Pretty Little Thing have struggled with falling demand and changing consumer habits in recent years. However, let's not forget that many timelines are still flooded with influencers. In 2023, the global influencer marketing industry was estimated to be worth $21.1 bn this year, more than doubling in size since 2019.
❌ TikTok ban: supreme court appears inclined to uphold law that could see app barred in US – as it happened
In his final statement, Noel Francisco, TikTok’s lawyer, implored the justices to enter an administrative stay or a preliminary injunction on the ban, which is slated to go into effect on 19 January.
📈The four trends to watch in the 2025 creator economy
As a whole, the creator economy continues to significantly transform, moving beyond simple influencer marketing to a more complex and integrated ecosystem. All signs point to the maturation of influencer marketing, as brands and creators move toward long-term brand ambassador programs replacing one-off influencer collaborations.
📊 What 2025 has in store for influencer marketing, according to experts
Bringing both customers and influencers along, she said, can provide twofold benefits: “Influencers provide their engaged communities and content creation skills, while top customers support the brand from a monetary standpoint,” she said in an email.
🔮 2017 marketing trends – meet the micro influencers
And we’ll share this little bonus article that I wrote on 2017 influencer marketing trends, so we can compare against those of 2025.