Imagine this: You’ve secured Charli D’Amelio as an influencer partner for your upcoming marketing campaign.
This is a major catch.
The Dunkin’ loving, dancing queen of TikTok has a combined following of over 200 million people across TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Your brand is about to gain a ton of attention—it might even become the next sunset lamp or 5-in-1 spatula.
But this definitely is not the time to take your foot off the gas. You’ve secured an amazing partnership: Now it’s time to make the most of it.
Maybe Charli has never worked with a brand in your category before. Maybe there’s something super special about your product that you want her to highlight. Or maybe you have a clear vision of how you’d like Charli to make content about your product.
Enter stage left: A really good campaign brief.
A campaign brief provides clear guidelines and details about a marketing campaign. At its core, it includes information about the goals of a campaign, the timeline, the deliverables, and the vision.
When it comes to using briefs for influencer collaborations, the bones of the brief are still the same. But customizing a few key areas will go a long way in getting the most out of your partnership.
To better understand why briefs are important in the first place, I touched base with Senior Editorial Manager at Floor & Decor Ashley Biscan.
“For any content initiative, the brief is vital to the success of the campaign,” she said. “And influencer partnerships are no exception.
“The brief is the clearest way to set expectations and hold the influencer accountable. Without a sturdy brief, the output is likely to be misaligned with the brand and creates significant delays and frustration. Added revisions are needed and the authenticity becomes more and more lacking with each edit,” according to Biscan.
Another social expert I spoke with (who wanted to be anonymous due to her client work—we’ll refer to her as Jane), co-signs the above with an addition on brand safety: “Especially in the current social landscape when brand safety is imperative to success, an influencer campaign brief helps outline the goal of the promotion and the role of the creator in achieving these goals,” she says.
Let’s start by breaking down the crucial elements of an influencer campaign brief:
First and foremost, you want to equip your influencer partner with as much information about the campaign as possible. Include the campaign’s key message, target audience, purpose, and expected outcomes.
“I compose briefs in a deck format. Influencers are visual creatures, so I find communicating with strong visual references and concision is key,” advises Biscan. “All is lost with a scrupulous document and fine print.”
When deciding on the key message for your campaign, don’t get too bogged down in a script. “Most influencers have a specific way of talking to their audience, and when the message is overly scripted the campaign can feel inauthentic,” says Jane. “To rectify that, I typically recommend outlining 2–4 key message elements for the influencers to include in the asset—but without a script—to ensure that the audio feels natural.”
After the key campaign message is nailed down, include details regarding your target audience and the KPIs you’ll be measuring for the campaign.
Up next, outline the exact list of deliverables the influencer is responsible for.
When working with an influencer, you’ll agree on a set number and format of content for them to produce for you.
A good way to organize and give feedback on deliverables is through a platform like PRophet Influence, where you can upload deliverables, make comments and red-lines, and edit in one place. You want to be super specific when outlining deliverables—be sure to include the format, social channel, aspect ratio, final file type, and any other relevant details.
Up next, you’ll want to include a proposed timeline for the scope of work with key dates and reviews.
This is also a good place to outline what the review process will be like (if there is one) and invoicing instructions for the creator.
Lastly, don’t forget a description of the brand, voice, and mission. Add links to your social channels and web touchpoints and include any key notes about your brand message and how you position yourself and your brand ecosystem.
Here are just a few metrics you might measure during and after a campaign to determine how it performed:
Keeping tabs on relevant metrics will help you determine just how successful the collaboration was and plan for future campaigns.
At the end of the day, creating a campaign brief for your influencer partnerships is the first step to a successful collaboration.
Without clearly laid out expectations and guardrails, creators are left to guess what you want from them—and if that doesn’t crash and burn, it will at least add an additional round or two of edits to the production timeline.
But a brief is just the first step to working with influencers. To create long-lasting relationships with creators, you need to view it as a partnership. A brief provides guidance, but let the influencer take it from there. Let the creators create—and pay them fairly and on time.
