Marketing Happy Hour - How Brands Can Win in the Creator Economy | Stephanie Sandbo of LTK

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

In this episode of Marketing Happy Hour, I’m joined by Stephanie Sandbo, Chief Revenue Officer at LTK, to break down where the creator economy is headed, and what brands need to understand to succeed in it. As AI accelerates content creation and campaign execution, Stephanie explains why trust, authenticity, and real community remain the most valuable currencies for both creators and brands. We discuss how creator marketing has evolved, what brands often get wrong when they chase speed or scale, and how platforms like LTK help brands drive measurable impact without losing the human connection that makes creator partnerships work in the first place.Key Takeaways:// AI is helping brands and creators move faster, but speed alone does not build trust.// The creators who continue to grow are those rooted in real communities, not just reach.// Authenticity is no longer a “nice to have”—it’s a requirement for sustainable creator marketing.// Brands risk eroding consumer trust when creator partnerships feel overly automated or transactional.// The most effective creator strategies prioritize long-term relationships over one-off activations.// Platforms like LTK enable scale while preserving credibility and measurable outcomes.// The future of the creator economy belongs to brands that respect creators as partners, not placements.Learn more about LTK: WebsiteConnect with Stephanie: LinkedIn____Say hi! DM me on Instagram and let us know what content you want to hear on the show - I can't wait to hear from you! Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠Join our FREE Open Jobs group on LinkedIn: ⁠Join now⁠Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

AI is obviously exploding. It's helping our creators move faster. It's helping us internally do things, again, more streamlined. But on the consumer side, it's obviously eroding trust. And so I think right now we're in this era of let's try this out. Let's see what this is on the marketing side. But I think very quickly brands are already understanding that that is an erosion of trust. Welcome to Marketing Happy Hour, a weekly podcast helping marketing professionals build better strategies and hit career goals. I'm Cassie, consultant and your host through these. unfiltered combos with your peers. Grab your favorite drink and get ready for practical insights to support your journey in marketing. Today I'm joined by Stephanie Sambo, Chief Revenue Officer of LTK, a brand that I have known, loved, and used quite a bit across my career. Stephanie, welcome to the show.

So excited to have you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yes, absolutely. This is going to be a fun one. I think you're going to be able to really speak to both the brand side of things and also the creator side and how can we kind of combine forces to build campaigns that are impactful and helpful to both the brands and creators. So super excited to dive into that. But first, I have

to ask you, of course, what's been in your glass lately? I'm a purist. I would say alcohol-wise, I would have to go with a ranch water. So Topo Chico and I typically choose Lalo. It's funny. where our LTK is headquartered in Dallas, so it tends to be rooted in Texas drink, and so I think I got it from there. Outside of that, I'd say a glass of wine, maybe I saw me on long or a sauce there. Yeah, love that. No, absolutely, ranch water and wine, our two go-toes as well. So, yeah, great, great choices. Yes, water as well, right now we're recording in the morning. So right now is water. But yes, when it hits 5 o'clock, You know, you know what I know what you'll be sipping on.

So it's great. It's no balance, right? Exactly. Exactly. Well, Stephanie, can you just first share with us a bit about your career journey? I'm just curious, you know, how did you land at LTK? You were previously at Meta. You've also held some other positions within LTK.

So tell us all about that journey so far. Sure. Happy to. So, yes, currently I'm the chief revenue officer at LTK. Actually, you've been here for almost 11 years now. So pretty wild. I'm one of those people that, I don't know, I'm somewhere for three to four years. I get a little itchy.

I think what has kept me at LTK for so long, obviously I've worked within different roles and different titles within the organization, but I think whenever you're working with an industry like influencer that is evolving and changing so rapidly, it's almost like every six months you have a little bit of a different mission, a little bit of a different job, different challenges you're trying to solve. So it's very much kept me here and kept me super engaged. But yes, I would say early career, if you would have asked me when I was a child, what are you going to do when you grow up?

I would never have said anything related to sales, which is a huge part, obviously, of a chief revenue officer's focus. I think people don't love to use the term sales. Sometimes it feels a little bit icky. And I think that's just because it comes with this connotation of forcing something on people that maybe they don't want. I have like this very vivid recollection of when I was a child of even just like being a Brownie,

not even a Girl Scout, like super young. And having to go like door to door and sell cookies to people. And I was like, this is, I remember the gut feeling that I had. It was awful. I hated it. And then I think about like as I got a little bit older

and I was, I danced my whole life and we had to sell like high school flags, like banners that you could put on your cars to show school spirit. It was like a fundraiser. I remember standing outside of the grocery store having to try to sell people these flags and feeling like I would rather walk out into this street of cars than do this. And I think it was later on in my career, when I actually started, I found myself doing

a little bit more of the product side at a digital ad agencies. So a couple of Omnicom agencies earlier in my career. And one time I got asked to be on the pitch sort of like traveling team. It was a Mountain Dew pitch. and I was there representing product and I remember this like feeling that I had when I was sitting in the room with frankly all these other men and being able to just own my piece and also hold the energy of a room I never went back and I was like I need to do something that is client facing I need to do something where I actually feel like I can understand

what people want and then try to solve those challenges with whatever offering it was that I had. So for me, it's always been something where I have to be a user of the product that I'm promoting or, you know, organization that I belong to. And first that was Facebook, of course, then Instagram. And then very quickly fell in love with what was reward style. It transitioned to LTK and still an avid consumer of the product. So for me, it's just being a believer in what it is that you're trying to help marketers solve with your product. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm curious, too, you know, you've kind of pivoted between these marketing, you know, brand functions and more into these sales revenue realms. A lot of people are always trying to figure out how do I kind of pivot in and out of these different functions.

And how do I either get the confidence or even just understand what I'm into and interested in in order to make that step? So I'm curious, do you have any just tips or encouragement around that of just continuing to keep tabs on what you're interested? interested in in order to flex in and out of these positions that make the most sense for your skill set or passions? Yeah, the answer might seem basic, but it's like lean into where your natural curiosity lies, right? Sometimes we fight it. So for me, I had this understanding that I didn't like sales. I didn't know what sales was, right? And so I obviously with my age, I started in the era of like when Facebook pages were coming to be. And so digital was always something that I was super focused on doing in my career, what role within digital I did not know. And I just sort of

followed that natural curiosity and dabbled in a couple different things. I still love the product side of the house and I'm deeply rooted in working with our product teams so that they understand what our clients need in order to future proof their businesses. But I'd say just in general, whenever you are working in digital marketing, though, whether it's product, whether it's true sales, whether it's the marketing side, you have to understand a marketer's role. And so with that means you have to understand a lot about marketing, briefing, branding, measurement. And so it's nice to be in the digital realm because you can sort of dabble in a lot of different things and figure out what serves you best. And again, where your natural

curiosities lie. I always tell people all the time, and like just because you're in an influencer marketing role, for example, doesn't mean you can't be speaking to. the sales team or someone in paid media to kind of understand what they're working on not only from a personal curiosity standpoint, but it helps establish this rapport in the team where you kind of get what they're working on and what their goals are, right? So is there anything else that you'd say that you've done in the past that has helped you kind of understand what those roles are that would make most sense for you? Or is it just kind of doing them yourself and and exploring that way?

Yeah, I would say it's a couple things. One, if you're in an organization where you have the opportunity to have cross-functional collaboration, it's only going to make the entire organization work more fluidly, right? And work more seamlessly together. So building relationships with cross-functional partners is hugely important. I would say that if you are able to actually invite in different people, so we have, you know, a standing team call where we have it every single Tuesday, it's with my entire organization. I don't run the product team, right? I don't I don't run the engineers, but they're

often sitting in my meetings to understand what is the feedback of the client. How are they feeling about the things that we're building and vice versa? I always encourage my team to go sit in those meetings. I would say outside of the walls of your own organization, I mean, it sounds very basic, but networking is really so critical. I would say that that was the trigger for me. It was one dinner that I had with somebody who was in digital media and the advice to to me, whether people like it or not, was there's always value in being rooted to a company's revenue. And that was really early in my career because it's so black and white in order to see your impact. Sometimes that doesn't work in your benefit, but often it does, right? If you're

working hard, if you're focused, being tied to revenue. So taking advantages of people who have you know, had the opportunity to work in digital marketing or whatever it is that your passion is, different roles and sort of lived it a little bit ahead of you, listen to their advice, take it it feels like it resonates and try it. Yeah, yeah, great advice. I love this discussion around career. It's something I was want to infuse in these conversations, but want to, of course, dive into just the creator space and what you're doing at LTK. So tell us, if you don't mind, like I would love to know from your vantage point, where is the creator commerce headed in the next several years? What are some of your predictions that you anticipate coming up?

That's a heavy, great big question. It's loaded because there's, so much happening within the creator space right now. I would say some of the biggest trends that we're feeling and we're seeing is this algorithm change that is sort of, I would say, plaguing, right? A lot of the creator industry. You have so many creators out there who have built their businesses on the backs of platforms that they don't own, right? And so what we're hearing and seeing from creators and brands alike, like brands even, who are running their own brand pages on the likes of TikTok and Instagram, you name it, right? They're having a really hard time reaching the communities that they've spent the last several

years building and curating. And that is really the role that LTK has sort of staked its flag in, helping to course correct and own ever since our inception. So, you know, We really believe in and sort of coach our creators in owning as much of that community as they possibly can. Obviously, for those who don't know, LTK was created by a creator for creators. And so I think when you think about what the difference in platforms might be, right? It's one is more, you know, traditional social media platforms, like Instagram, for example. obviously the motivation there and having worked there, I can tell you, is advertising dollars, right? And keeping people hooked into engaging on that platform and returning as much as possible.

Whereas something like an LTK, which is like a standalone channel, is really serving the need of a creator in terms of connecting them with their community and helping them to sort of nourish and grow that community in a place where they can consistently reach that community set. So I would say this algorithm evolution is really rocking the boat, both on the brand side and the creator side. And so I think you're going to continue to see a shift in where creators are spending their time, right? Is it that I'm going to dedicate my full business to, you know, again, just an Instagram as an example where I feel like I'm having a hard time reaching people? And then again, I think brands are using that same playbook of where am I going to spend it. And then when you think about like the growth of a TikTok, for example, I think what we're feeling is this concept of like renting an audience, right? Because it's very easy to go viral on TikTok. But the challenge is

consistently being able to reach that community, whether you're a brand or a creator on something like a TikTok is really hard. And so I think what you're going to see is this pull and the search for both brands and creators to establish a presence where they can consistent. and again really authentically reach their communities. AI is obviously exploding. In some ways I absolutely love it. It's making us so much more efficient. We're working it in throughout our entire organization.

It's helping our creators move faster. It's helping us internally do things more, again, more streamlined. But on the consumer side, it's obviously a rooting trust, right? So it's funny, I was looking at my phone the other day, and obviously I have three children. have three children. It's obviously Christmas time. They were looking at this video of Rudolph and Santa and my seven-year-old goes, that's AI, right? And so even that age demographic understands that the things that they are seeing are not necessarily real. And they're

certainly not authentic. And so I think right now we're in this era of let's try this out. Let's see what this is on the marketing side. But I think very quickly brands are already understanding that that is an erosion of trust. I think why creator continues to grow so significantly is because these are real humans with real communities. And so I think you're going to continue to see this push towards taking advantage of and really capitalizing on that trust that comes with creators and doing so in platforms that keep that authenticity front and center. Yeah, absolutely. AI is definitely a discussion. The other thing, too, is just this surge of social connected shopping as well, which is

is, you know, something that consumers are just doing more and more of, and it's becoming easier to do that. And so I love that you all are giving people the opportunity, again, to shop through this route of social and to find and discover pieces that people are wearing, et cetera. And so it's really just kind of being at the forefront of these trends in a number of ways, which is exciting. Absolutely. And I would say on the shopping side, you know, obviously, LTC really, its mission is to help consumers discover the things that they love. And on the creator side, it's, it's to help them talk about the things that they love and that they're interested in. I think there's two sides of the social shopping coin, if you will. I think there's one where curating products and

putting it on the forefront of, this is my storefront, if you will. I think there's been a lot of buzz around storefronts and just like, this is the products that I would choose at this retailer or these are the products that I'm loving within this category across a number of different brands and retailers. I think that that has its place, right? If someone is actually there looking, you know, using marketing speak, very lower funnel, looking for a pair of shoes, right? I might go search someone's storefront for a pair of shoes, but I think where LTK is really headed in that vein is it's so much more social than that, right? It's so much more content-oriented than that. Because what builds that trust, which we know is like the currency that works so well,

is by me getting to know Cassie, not only like what shoes she's wearing, but like, where did you wear those shoes? And how did they feel? And if you have kids, did you wear them to drop off? And really just sort of, again, building that like connection with the audience that I think makes the shopping piece that much more effective. So I'm also curious as well, too, what do you feel separates high performing brand creator partnerships from the ones that don't quite land as well as they should. How much time do you have? Loaded question. I know. Well, there's a couple different things. I think the one that first comes to mind, which maybe feels the most obvious, but it's one that's often overlooked. It's just like the authentic connection between the brand and the creator themselves.

And so it's interesting. I think brands are so much smarter this day and age and thinking through that piece. But oftentimes, I think actually the number one KPI that we get when a brand common style TK is new audience acquisition. And so sometimes the natural response to wanting to drive new customers for a brand through creators is to use new creators. Use creators that have never ever used your product or linked to you and therefore you'll be tapping into a new audience. That absolutely can work. That's a playbook that I think with the right strategic lens and data sets can work for you. But at the end of the day, the best partnerships are one where the creator actually uses the product, is a customer of the brand, and wants to naturally weave that

product, that service, whatever it may be, into their daily lives. So it's not just, you know, this one hit wonder. So I'd say that's like foundational to a successful collaboration with a brand and a creator. I would say number two would be don't dictate, right? So, you know, if you're a brand and whether it's a new creator to your partnership or it's someone that you've worked with forever, sometimes there's a lot of speaking points that you hope that person says. And it's okay to educate them. It's good to educate them on what your brand positioning is and the different value, you know, ads that come with that particular product, but you certainly don't want to tell them how to say it

or when to say it because it does affect the authenticity of that content. we have so many creators who turn down partnerships and so I think that's so important right because if someone doesn't feel authentically connected or the brief doesn't speak to them you want them to have the ability and the authority to say this just isn't going to perform and brands always appreciate that so I would say those two things are really critical I think the last thing that comes to mind would probably be give a time especially when you're working with a partner like LTK we can give you full funnel data on that piece of content from you know the impressions that it drove to the earned media value all the way down to the clicks and then of

course the specific sales on that particular piece of content because brands get sales from LTK sometimes I would say like the patience window for it to drive a certain return on that ad spend can be minimal and what we always encourage is especially if it's a new partnership give it time like what are the signals that we should look at to say this partnership is actually working. Here's what it drove. No, it didn't drive the 5X return that some of these other creators drove, but you can see that there's value in it and let's use that partner again. So just being a little bit more patient with the performance that you're maybe trying to achieve

because otherwise you could overlook a really strong long-term partnership. Just kind of diving a little bit deeper into just goals with campaigns, for example, how do you recommend kind of balancing short-term revenue goals with long-term brand equity and creator trust? Oh, great question as well. When you are thinking about LTK and the performance metrics that you're able to drive, it's really easy for a brand to get very excited about the lower funnel impact because we can prove that out. And it's getting easier in this day and age to do that across the board, but I would say it's still this like shiny metric that sometimes it's very hard depending on what channel you're using to close that loop. And ROAS has its place, right? A performance, short-term performance goal has its place. But often, Oftentimes, if you are a marketer and you're trying to hit short-term goals, not only are you using certain creators that are speaking a certain type of way, so again, maybe it's a mirror selfie and you're saying, you know, I love this. Go buy it now, right? That's the call to action. On the marketing side, maybe you're playing with different lovers, like giving that creator a discount code or, you know, something that drives urgency. I think that always has, not always, but it has a place. And it makes sense in certain seasonal. periods depending on the brand. I think the challenge with only activating creators in that way, because I really do think of it as like a parallel layer cake, is that what is the long-term value that you're getting from that partner and that consumer? Do you want to have to pay a consumer

to come buy your product every single time and use a discount code? Or do you want to just be through your upper funnel marketing, your branded marketing with creators. So you want to be top of mind naturally, organically, so that you're not always having to pay for that discount code or perhaps that commission on sale. Right. And so we really do believe in a full funnel strategy. And again, you can plus up or plus down upper funnel and lower funnel, depending on what the goal is, what the season is, what the objective is. But a full funnel strategy is definitely where our most successful successful brands lean in, again, sort of marrying that branded storytelling, how does the sweater make you feel when you go throughout your day versus I'm standing in front of the mirror

and it's on sale today, go by it now. Yeah, absolutely. So kind of on that too, just would love to know brands who are thinking about joining or getting involved in something like LTK, any encouragement around that or just even like a case study example or something where you can share the impact, but also like how do brands get the most out of the platform in order for it to be impactful as well? You would have asked me a year ago, I would have given you a different answer. Actually, if you would have asked me eight months ago, I would have given you a different answer. We are really thinking about how we are showing up for our brand partners in the market and sort of reestablishing ourselves. LTK has been around for a very long

time. We are the pioneers in creator marketing and creator commerce more specifically. And with that comes a certain way of doing things, right? And so we have built this massive collaboration business where some of the biggest and the best brands and retailers come to LTK to partner with our quality creators, use our tools and services, again, to be able to see that full circle loop. What we've realized is that there's a massive market of brands that are looking to and trying to partner with creators because I think that's not a question mark anymore. creators are a marketing mix mainstay.

It's no longer a test and learn tactic. And so brands are having so many barriers of entry, especially if you're a smaller brand. And what we tried to do is really remove that. So we recently launched a new platform that is called the All In One LTK brand platform and it's entirely free. So we used to have an onboarding fee

and then we had SaaS fees that you had to pay order to access the tools and the creators that were on LTK, we've completely removed that barrier to entry because we really do believe in brands paying for their success versus paying to just access the platform and those creators. And so that fee then comes in those commissions. And really what that does is it drives a win-win-win. So if a brand is winning because a creator is driving some activity for them, that means the creator is winning.

And then that means that LTK is winning too. And we believe that that is the best long-term recipe for success. So now when brands come into LTK, they're coming in for free. And what we're doing is we're presenting them with a significant amount of immediate value. So they can come in today. And if they've been on the platform for some time and they just haven't joined this, this, what we're calling all in one brand platform, they're going to have a ton of content that creators have been able to post about them because they've been integrated with

with us for some time. We have over 7 billion pieces of content that are created on LTK every single year. It's an insane amount. And so you think about what that opportunity looks like for a marketer. Access to content is a huge challenge even today, especially if you're choosing to go the authentic route and not the AI route. And so you come in today and you can launch your brand profile, which essentially means now within the LTK app, not only do creators have their own profile that are shoppable, but brands do too. And it's essentially reposting the creator content that a creator's already posted about your brand.

And so it's your own sort of destination where you can represent yourself through the lens of creators to LTK consumers, which we think is super cool. So that's a huge piece. And then we've also launched our gifting suite. So essentially what that does, again, all for free is allow brands to very surgically understand which creators are driving success for them maybe which creators are driving success for their category but not them and which creators have the best content that they're really searching for and think would be brand additive

if they talked about their brand and start curating lists within the platform to then gift creators and we've built that functionality in such a way that's super automated to take the burden off the marketers because if you ask a marketer today that works in influencer marketing what's the most painful part of your job sending out getting is one of those things so really trying to solve that problem there'll be a lot more that we're building into this suite but again sort of democratizing that access to creators is something that we're super super passionate about yeah that's awesome so if we want to kind of stay tuned to a lot of those upcoming updates and even just check out what's already there now what's

the best way to do that online there's lots of different ways we have a huge huge social presence. Obviously, we're on LinkedIn all the time. You can find us at LTK, but then we also have a shop at shop LTK, and then we also have an LTKHQ handle on Instagram that we're constantly posting about. And then, of course, we have our website that you can always check out. I'd say the social sides of our platform are a little bit more fun to follow. This has been great just hearing about your career creator space and what your predictions are slash what you've seen in the past. And then also just learning more about LTK, so we'd love to stay in touch with you as well, Stephanie. So what are your favorite

platforms? Are you on LinkedIn? Where can we stay in touch with you too? Thank you. I would love to come back, and I'm definitely a listener, so I'm excited to continue to support you guys. You can find me on LinkedIn at Stephanie Sanbo, and then my email is Stephanie.sambo at altk.com. Yeah. Awesome. No, we'll definitely do a check-in here in a few months and see what some of the latest updates are, see what's new with LTK. But yeah, again, really appreciate you joining me today, Stephanie, and just sharing all the things. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Cassie. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love your feedback. And if you're ready to take things to the next level,

sign up for my weekly newsletter in the show notes. You'll get weekly career and marketing insights straight to your inbox. And if you have have an idea for a future marketing happy hour episode, shoot me an email. Hello at Marketing HappyHR.com. Thank you again and I'll see you next Thursday.