Takeaways From PI LIVE Miami 2023

Alyssa Stevens, Director of Public Relations & Social MediaIn early April, I headed down to the Sunshine State to attend PI LIVE Miami, a conference centered around building profitable partnerships through influencers, creators, affiliates, and more. I spent two days soaking up industry knowledge from top marketers, e-commerce brands, and leading content creators. 

The bottom line is that the consumer journey is no longer linear—in fact, it’s everything but. As marketers, we need to meet and influence consumers at every potential discovery point. What was evident during the conference is that the influencer marketing industry is continuing to grow exponentially. With more than 300 million people worldwide identifying as creators, it’s not surprising that Adobe recently reported that 25% of a brand’s consumers are creators with influence. Could 2023 truly be the year of the creator? 

In order to capitalize on the power of creators beyond their social media presence, you need to be strategic. Integration between cross-functional teams has never been more crucial and marketers need to think outside the box.  

Intrigued to learn more? Here are four key takeaways from PI LIVE Miami this year:

Climb Into the Mindset of Your Consumer

In order to market to your target audience, you have to develop a deep understanding of their mindset. Sounds simple, right? But that consumer discovery should also involve their social media search behavior. How does your consumer look for ideas on social media, find new influencers to follow, and embrace content trends? When marketers look to engage influencers, they should first search for their product/brand/campaign theme on social media to see the type of content and influencers the consumer would naturally find if they were to do this search themselves. From there, they can reverse engineer this process by creating a brief/campaign and choosing influencers that emulate what their target audience would find in the wild. This way, when the content comes to life and is posted on social media, it will resonate with the intended audience. 

Recruit Creators Like You Would Employees

The landscape has never been richer for brands to tap into their existing customer base to find influencers and content creators. But how do brands find them? Take an approach that’s similar to employee recruitment. Existing customers who know and love your brand will always offer the most authentic collaborations. Create a landing page on the brand’s website that invites influencers to apply to work with the brand and be part of their creator partnerships. From there, the brand can evaluate who in their existing customer base has social influence and also wants to support the brand in a more meaningful way on social media. This can cut out the guesswork for the brand while also leveraging authentic partnerships with its most influential customers. 

Use Generative AI to Inspire—but Not Replace—Creators

Chat GPT and its counterparts have taken the world by storm. As we embrace AI technology across various verticals, it’s important to consider how it can aid creators and human workflows instead of replacing them. Generative AI is meant to inspire and provide efficiencies with content generation. Content creators and influencers will still ideate with marketers around campaigns, but as AI evolves, they should also be empowered to bring it into the fold during the concept and content development phases to provide efficiencies. Creators could make one piece of content and then utilize AI to expand that content to multiple platforms, formats, and even languages! The speed at which AI can help create content is unmatched and if done in collaboration with a creator, there is no doubt it will revolutionize marketers’ ability to reach consumers across various content mediums. 

Don’t Be Afraid to Negotiate With Creators

The creator economy is exactly that. An economy. And the delivery of goods and services in exchange for monetary compensation is at the heart of a healthy ecosystem. Just like marketers wouldn’t take a magazine’s rate card at face value, they should also feel empowered to negotiate with creators. Think through the core deliverables that you really want and why, as well as what you can offer the influencer to sweeten the deal. Are you planning to whitelist/amplify their posts and offer them added exposure to new audiences? Will you be highlighting them on your social media or a website with credit to their page? Can you set up a revenue-sharing model based on post performance? All of these additional campaign attributes can help with negotiating influencer rates to ensure that a brand achieves the best deliverables/ROI from a collaboration and that influencers feel that their partnership is valued.