What Is A Creator Marketplace & How Can Brands Benefit?

What does your influencer discovery process look like? If you’re just getting started with influencer marketing, you may be spending dozens of hours manually searching hashtags, scouring through the Instagram Explore page, or looking at various TikTok users. However, there’s a quicker and easier way to connect with well-aligned influencers.

Enter: the creator marketplace. Using a creator marketplace takes the time-consuming, manual work out of finding the right creator for your marketing campaign. Brands can streamline their influencer marketing campaigns by investing in a creator marketplace and matching with prequalified influencers.

What Is a Creator Marketplace?

A creator marketplace is a centralized network of content creators who’ve signed up to a platform with the intention of working directly with brands.

It’s a place where brands can publish their campaigns, knowing they’ll be seen by a network of highly engaged social media influencers, creators, brand ambassadors, and industry experts. Interested influencers can come directly to you instead of you having to go looking for them. This allows for faster processes and more authentic partnerships.

Which Platforms Have Creator Marketplaces?

You might be familiar with the term because of TikTok’s creator marketplace, but they aren’t the only platform that has one.

Other social media platforms, like Snapchat, have adopted similar platforms for creators and brands to connect. Instagram is also rolling out features to support its creators and testing new shop capabilities for influencers.

And creator marketplaces aren’t restricted to social media sites. Aspire has the only comprehensive creator marketplaces in addition to their outbound influencer search engine. Using an influencer marketing platform gives you the unique ability to see creators from all platforms in one place.

How Do Creator Marketplaces Work?

Because of the search features and pre-qualified participants, creator marketplaces are beneficial for both brands and creators looking for new partnerships.

Creator Marketplaces For Brands: Bring Creators to You

If you find influencers for your campaigns by using Google and searching social media sites like Instagram, LinkedIn, and the TikTok marketplace, you’re wasting valuable time. Plus, it’s not a scalable solution. Creator marketplaces are designed for brands to do the searching for you and allow for quick insights into a creator’s engagement metrics, average views, audience demographic, and more.

Set your campaign goals first, and then outline the partnership terms, including what incentives you’re offering. You'll use that information to create a campaign landing page that's posted to the marketplace. Creators search these landing pages and choose the brands they want to work with.

The top influencer marketing platforms will give you free access to a creator marketplace. For example, Aspire has a huge network with hundreds of thousands of highly engaged active monthly influencers who could be potential advocates for your brand.

Creator Marketplaces For Influencers: Access to Approved Influencers

For influencers interested in partnering with new brands and on new projects, a creator marketplace is a great way to do it.

When an influencer signs up to join the marketplace, the platform will conduct an extensive review of the influencer’s account(s) to determine that they meet the eligibility requirements.

Once the creator’s account has been reviewed and approved, they’re able to view and apply to the live campaigns on the marketplace. This ensures that when a brand searches the marketplace, they’re only connecting with influencers who have good engagement rates and authentic practices.

What are the Benefits of the Creator Marketplace for Brands?

In addition to creating a two-way discovery process for brands and influencers, there are many perks to utilizing a creator marketplace.

1. Eliminate manual searches

A creator marketplace can eliminate hours of manually searching for influencers. 

Through the marketplace, you get hundreds of proposals from interested creators and can fully source an influencer campaign in less time. With the Aspire Creator Marketplace, for example, you just create a detailed application page, and influencers will apply to join. This means you could set your landing page live on a Friday, and come back to your desk on Monday with lots of applications! 

2. Scale without spamming influencers

Instead of continuous cold outreach or following up with uninterested creators, use a creator marketplace to find influencers who authentically gravitate towards your brand. That way, you can build your influencer programs quickly without spamming creators or potentially hurting your brand image.

Not only can you easily find better leads, but creators will also come to you. And the right influencer marketing platform will have social listening tools so you can see who’s already talking about your brand. These brand advocates make for successful influencers because they’re already familiar with you and willing to discuss their positive experiences.

3. Connect with a diverse group of influencers

A creator marketplace helps you connect with influencers who come from different walks of life.

Partnering with creators of varied ages, backgrounds, body types, and other diverse identities is a must because diversity in ads is more important than ever. It also allows you to reach varied audience demographics.

By leveraging a creator marketplace, you can connect with a wide array of influencers who speak directly to different segments of your target audience. Aspire allows you to include specific criteria requirements to target diverse creators. For example, you could include that you’re interested in partnering with students in their first year of college or couples who are planning a wedding. While this information might not be on their social media profile, you can require it on your campaign application page. 

4. Find trustworthy, vetted partners

If you’re searching manually for influencers, you risk partnering with someone who’s being less than truthful about their influencer status. Maybe they bought followers, won’t follow through with your agreement, or even have a fake account.

Using a creator marketplace gives brands the security of knowing that creators have been pre-vetted and are reliable. For example, each influencer in Aspire’s creator marketplace has to pass eligibility requirements and even includes an audience authenticity score in each creator profile. This gives brands peace of mind knowing that everyone they contact has real followers, original content, and genuine engagements.

Streamline Search with a Creator Marketplace

If you’re manually searching for partners, there’s a good chance you’re missing out on prequalified influencers who are on the lookout for brands to partner with. Influencers on a creator marketplace have signed up to find new campaigns and you don’t want to miss the opportunity to partner with them. 

A creator marketplace will help you build influencer marketing campaigns quickly, connect with high-quality creators, and ultimately reach your target audience more effectively. Interested in seeing how a creator marketplace works? Request a demo.