A Deeper Look at Our Industry Benchmarks Calculator (HBBIP #87)

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If you thought that I was excited last week, when we discussed E.L.F. Beauty’s acquisition of RHODE Skin, then just wait for what we’ve got in store this week. It might not be a billion-dollar deal, but it’s worth a billion dollars to me. Or at least the value of a very nice dinner.

This week, CreatorIQ is unveiling a Very Special Project. In one sense, we’ve been working on this project since January; in another, more metaphorical sense, we’ve been working on this project for years. In still another sense, I’ve been working on it since nine years ago this week, when a bright-eyed bushy-tailed 21 year-old version of me started at Tribe Dynamics, back when the creator economy was just starting to hum to life.

Ever since then, people have asked me a lot of questions about that creator economy, and I’ve spent thousands of hours writing and thinking about it in attempts to find answers. In the end, all of those questions boil down to two seemingly simple asks:

• How is my brand doing?
• How is the industry at large doing?

There are many ways to answer those questions, but I think we’ve found the best way yet. And that’s why I’m so excited to tell you about it.

The Top Brand CreatorIQ Innovation of All Time (of the Week): the Creator Marketing Industry Benchmarks Calculator

Have you ever wanted to know any of the following things?

• How does your creator marketing program stack up against the competition?
• What are typical baselines for a creator marketing program to hit across key metrics?
• How do these baselines change depending on region, industry, social channel, and creator following size?
• How can I set more informed KPIs for my creator marketing program?
• Why is CreatorIQ awesome?

Well have I got news for you, buddy: the answer to all these questions and more has arrived. I’m so excited to introduce the Creator Marketing Industry Benchmarks Calculator, aka the CMIBC (as brought to you by HBBIP—iykyk!).

Like I said before, we—by which I mean pretty much anyone at CreatorIQ who speaks to customers or plans ways to improve our product—have been hearing those questions for years. The Calculator is just one of our many efforts to answer those questions, including AI-backed evolutions to our software and a new framework for program measurement.

So what is it? How does it work?

The calculator is a free, web-based tool that provides insights straight from CreatorIQ’s best-in-class data. Users input four parameters:

• Industry (27 options)
• Region (17 global regions)
• Social Platform (5 major platforms)
• Creator Tier (4 follower size brackets)

And then receive averages from brands that meet their input criteria. These averages are compiled across 15 ~ exciting ~ metrics.

But why tell you all this when I can show you?

Breakdown of  CMIBC

Yes, that’s my voice. Now you know why I stick to writing.

While I encourage you all to get into the calculator and play around with it (please don’t try to break it, though…we’ve been through quite the web development ordeal just getting it built), here are just a few of the neat things you can do with this information, if you favor a more targeted approach:

• Benchmark your program’s performance against peers in similar industries and regions
• Set relevant, data-driven KPIs
• Explore how different inputs affect outcomes
• Uncover performance trends by industry, region, or platform

All of these investigations should be tied back to a strategic alignment with your brand’s objectives. Don’t just look to generate big numbers—generate big numbers for a specific purpose!

Breakdown of questions for strategic alignment 

For more on how to tie the calculator’s metrics to your program’s strategic objectives, check out this blog post by yours truly. I couldn’t have written it better myself! And be sure to tune in soon on both CreatorIQ’s blog and in this very newsletter for more strategic insights and qualitative takeaways from the magical world of the CMIBC. 

This is just the beginning. Before the year is out, we’ll debut not only growth stats in the calculator, so that you can see which industries and markets are surging, but a feature that allows you to generate your own metrics for comparison to your desired set of inputs. (Psst: you didn’t hear it from me, but we might have this feature already on the backend if you ask nicely. So if you want to see stats for your brand, just send me an email.)

Very big things are still to come! Just as soon as we work out that whole ‘web development’ thing. If you know anybody good, email me about that, too. This is not a joke. This is the most serious I have ever been in one of these newsletters.

But all gripes about web development aside, I really couldn’t be happier to introduce the calculator to y’all. Just as the tool’s scope and complexity speaks to the creator economy’s impressive evolution over the last decade, this tool is a data breakthrough that I could have only dreamed of when I entered the industry nine years ago. And it’s immensely satisfying—truly a source of joy—to see just how far both the creator economy and our team have come.

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