From a time when individuals used to go up to brands to buy products, we’ve come to a point where brands are now approaching individuals to promote their goods. This shift became possible only after the popularity of several social media platforms that allowed individuals to become as famous as celebrities.
Today’s economy is one made of the creators. The creator economy has become as large as a $100 Billion industry. This is not shocking at all given how we are all aware that our everyday lives revolve around social media platforms. They influence us and encourage us on which products to consume or not.
Meanwhile, Shopify has taken the creator’s economy to a whole new level. It has opened a new avenue for creators to earn money. For social media influencers who have millions of followers, there are two paths to choose from.
Either they can make money off promoting products of bigger brands, or they can start their own brand. Starting a new brand may have been a big deal before but, thanks to Shopify, it is only a 2 minutes job now. Creating an account on Shopify is as easy as pie. The challenge is not to create it but to use the right strategies to promote it.
Entrepreneurship made easy with Shopify
Shopify has made it possible for a layman to start their own brand without an entire team of investors backing them. If you have the right marketing strategy in mind, no one can stop you from becoming a big deal, and soon you’ll be competing with these “big” brands, with nothing but a few quick marketing techniques at hand.
One of the many upsides to Shopify’s creator economy is that while other brands are looking for influencers to promote their products, a creator can promote their own product without the need for a big marketing budget. If you have an audience on social media that’s interested in your product, all you need is a Shopify store and a few easy tactics to promote it on the social media platform that you’ve chosen.
Marketing is now possible even without a big fat budget
Denise Woodard, the owner of one of the big brands on Shopify, ‘Partake Foods’, was rejected by 86 investors for her packaged goods company before she started a store on Shopify. Her daughter tested positive for several food allergies and her search for healthy foods led her to the path of creating her own brand. In spite of being rejected by numerous investors, she is today one of the most successful brands on Shopify.
The only two things that Woodard had were good quality products and a meticulously curated emailing list. No money, no investors, and no allocated budgets for marketing. Just an email list is the success story of Partake Foods. This is the power of the Shopify creator economy. Offering a platform to not only the privileged ones but also ones who lack the privilege of money and support.
The recent Shopify-YouTube collaboration has made marketing easier
Recently when Shopify collaborated with YouTube, it offered the creators an opportunity to reach a larger audience by directly making their Shopify stores available to over 2 billion monthly YouTube users. The Shopify creator economy goes hand in glove with social media platforms like Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Patreon, etc. which allow the creators to promote their companies. What is required for a creator to have a successful business is to identify the platform that caters to an audience that’s most interested in their product.
“As consumers increasingly turn to social platforms to discover and interact with brands, Shopify’s integration with YouTube creates a new opportunity for independent brands to build their business within the creator economy,” said Shaun Broughton, Shopify managing director for Asia Pacific, while commenting on the recent Shopify-YouTube collaboration.
The power of social media in today’s business world
As suggested above, owning a brand alone on Shopify is of limited use if one doesn’t have a great social media following in place. There have been cases where people who had millions of followers on social media, became rich by marketing their Shopify store on their social media accounts for free.
One Shopify store that’s known to all is Kylie Cosmetics. The biggest reason why it became one of the most popular Shopify stores and one of the leading makeup brands is Kylie Jenner’s immense popularity on social media. The first ever product launched by the brand, a set of matte lipsticks, was sold in a few minutes owing to her crazy fan following. Clubbing the creator economy with eCommerce is what Shopify has brought to us by making eCommerce available to the masses.
Who would’ve thought that a social media icon would become one of the leading business personalities someday? While owning a brand or a business was a huge deal at one point in time, today there’s a small business owner in every house. The trick is to know your audience, create quality content and gain a good number of followers along with owning a Shopify store.
In an economy that consists of 50 Million creators worldwide, Shopify has created a space for them to earn money from sources other than influencer marketing. With the right marketing technique at hand and with enough followers on social media, one can compete with multi-millionaire brands today with only a small Shopify store.
The stories discussed above are living proof that you no longer need a big marketing team or a huge budget to promote your product.
Shopify today is collaborating with all major social media brands to allow creators to directly link their social media accounts to their Shopify stores. It makes it easier for both the creators and the audience to sell and buy stuff. While social media is one way to attract customers, Partake Foods’ success story proves that a simple emailing list is also enough to build a brand in today’s age.
The only difference between the multi-millionaire brands today and the creator’s economy is that while big brands can afford to spend millions on marketing and thereby grow exponentially in shorter periods, being a part of the creator’s economy requires potential, patience and perseverance. If one has the 3 Ps, it is hard for anyone to stop the brand from growing and competing with the “big” brands.
