Creator marketing has moved well beyond the days of one-off influencer posts.
It’s now a structured, data-led channel capable of driving everything from brand discovery to bottom-of-funnel purchases. But only when executed properly.
As a leading Melbourne influencer marketing agency, we pride ourselves on doing it beyond properly – and doing it the best, across all things content and creators.
In a recent training / refresher session, Ash Bell – our Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager – unpacked just how modern creator campaigns actually work.
If you’ve ever been unsure about what Sticki actually does, you won’t be much longer.
From creator sourcing and performance reporting to the campaign process and usage rights, Ash’s session provided a practical look at how Sticki approaches influencer and content-led campaigns for brands – now packaged in this here blog.
For marketers more familiar with performance channels like Paid Socials (aka. the bread and butter of our sister-agency, DataSauce), understanding the fundamentals of creator marketing is increasingly important. Particularly as creator content continues to fuel high-performing ad creative across platforms.
Here’s a breakdown of how Sticki runs campaigns from start to finish.
Content and creators, that much is clear.
But the Sticki team works across seven core services.
Across all services, creator campaigns are built using data and technology to guide decisions – from identifying the right creators to measuring campaign performance.
But, and this is a BIG common misconception… Sticki does not manage talent in-house.
We’re a creator and influencer marketing agency, NOT a talent one. Which means our partnered creators operate as independent contractors, allowing Sticki to work with any creator regardless of their location, agency representation, or management structure.
Whilst the Sticki team maintains strong relationships with many Australian talent agencies, we’re a content agency. And we’ll reiterate this as many times as we want!
Sticki remains independent from direct talent management. Meaning campaigns get access to a much broader creator pool of millions (yes, millions!) of potential creator profiles.
Creator campaigns can look simple from the outside.
An undiscerning eye might look at them and wrongly label influencer content as “just another TikTok video” but in reality, the execution behind the scenes follows a very clear structure.
A typical Sticki campaign includes the following stages:
This finely-tuned and structured process ensures campaigns remain aligned with the brief while still giving creators room to bring their authentic voice to the content.
Based on audience size, creators are typically grouped into tiers. Not Sticki-exclusive tiers, but rather industry standard creator tiers in line with universal definitions of follower sizes.
While larger creators provide scale and visibility, smaller creators often deliver stronger engagement. Nano- and micro-creators tend to have highly loyal audiences and can be particularly effective at driving discussion, community interaction, and bottom-of-funnel actions like purchases. Larger creators, on the other hand, offer reach. But their audiences are often broader and less concentrated in specific markets, such as Australia.
Choosing the right creator tier depends heavily on your campaign objective.
Creator costs vary widely depending on audience size, engagement, and deliverables.
Unsurprisingly, cost-efficiency almost directly correlates to follower-count. Micro- and nano-creators often have the lowest rates, while still delivering strong engagement rates.
Some creators (particularly in the micro to mid-tier range) may also be represented by talent agencies. In these cases, management typically adds a 20% service fee to the creator’s rate, but it does differ case-by-case.
However, strong negotiation can significantly impact campaign costs.
In one recent campaign, the Sticki team secured a creator with 400,000 followers for $2,000, proving just how flexible creator pricing can be when approached strategically.
Read more about budgeting for creator campaigns here.
Usage rights are a critical part of creator campaigns – particularly when content will later be used in paid advertising. You can’t just yoink people’s UGC or creators’ content and start running them as brand ads and influencer whitelisting ones without consent, willy-nilly.
Every Sticki campaign includes organic usage rights in perpetuity, meaning brands can repost creator content across their own channels indefinitely.
However, paid usage rights require additional agreement and fees.
Paid usage involves running creator content through advertising platforms such as Meta Ads. And in such cases, contracts must clearly specify:
Importantly, the usage period begins when boosting starts, not when the content first goes live. Typical paid usage windows range from 7 to 90 days, with 90-day usage for micro-creators generally costing between $1,000 and $2,000. But again, it varies.
It’s all to do with our Sticki technology, designed to help make all our decisions data informed. From sourcing creators with the most obscure of interests, to sentiment analysis and on-platform performance, our Discovery & Reporting tools keep an eye on the prize.
Sticki’s platform identifies creators using two primary methods:
The tool also includes a social listening feature, allowing the team to identify creators already posting about a brand or using relevant hashtags – which helps surface authentic voices that are already aligned with the brand.
In terms of refining creator searches effectively, Ash recommends several basic filters to start with, then going granular later on.
When contacting creators, filtering for profiles with a visible email address is strongly recommended.
DMs can be unreliable – especially if your first contact disappears into the dreaded, sometimes unmonitored “Message Requests” folder – whereas email outreach tends to produce faster and more consistent replies.
Once a campaign concludes, Sticki delivers a comprehensive wrap-up report. It includes:
And because content is very much measurable (contrary to popular misconception), performance analysis evaluates both quantitative metrics and qualitative insights.
Quantitative analysis includes key metrics such as:
Sounds familiar, hey? After all, much like all other performance channels, content can be reported on in a very similar way. An equal and effective lever that generates real results.
At the same time, qualitative factors are assessed – including the effectiveness of the hook, storytelling approach, and average watch time.
This combination of data and creative insight helps identify both the top and bottom performers within the campaign, informing future ideas and optimisations.
Unlike some performance channels, creator marketing success isn’t always defined by a single metric. However, several indicators provide strong signals of effectiveness:
And when it comes to user-generated content (UGC) repurposed for Paid Social, the usual ad metrics come into play too, like ROAS and CPAs and click-through rates (CTRs).
When campaigns generate high engagement alongside strong reach, they typically indicate that the content has resonated with the audience. And that’s where creator agencies like us deliver the biggest value – creating content that audiences actually want to engage with.
Sticki started as one of the first influencer marketing agencies to approach creator marketing as a structured, data-led discipline.
It’s probably why we’ve grown so exponentially over the years.
Effective campaigns combine:
For many brands and performance marketers, UGC and all sorts of creator content are also becoming an increasingly valuable input into paid media strategies, often providing high-performing creative assets that can be repurposed across advertising platforms.
And when executed properly, creator campaigns can deliver both cultural relevance and measurable results. That is, in essence, Sticki.
If you’re keen to learn even more, or finally get started on a campaign (be it influencer, UGC or the very smart decision of an ongoing Content Library system), get started here.
Everybody say thank you Ash!
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