It’s no secret that influencer marketing, when done right, can boost brand awareness, conversion, community engagement, and more.
Still, many businesses are just opening themselves up to the possibility of influencer marketing. The positive results it can yield are a real eye-opener.
Some people remain doubtful about this group’s marketing power. Yet, the statistics do not support this skepticism.
Research indicates that 63% of people trust the messaging from influencers more than they trust brand messaging. Furthermore, 76% of marketers consider influencer engagement effective in garnering customer loyalty.
These statistics show that people significantly value influencer expertise. Accordingly, it only makes sense that businesses take advantage of this trust to improve their digital CX.
To start taking advantage of the ecommerce and community-building benefits influencer partnerships can provide your brand, you will need a solid influencer brief.
What Is an Influencer Brief?
An influencer brief is a document that outlines the influencer’s requirements and expectations. The brief should include everything from campaign goals and deliverables to legal terms and brand information.
The nature of an influencer brief will vary depending on your arrangement with the influencer in question. If you deliver gifts or complimentary services in exchange for promotion, you’re limited regarding requests. In contrast to this, paid influencer marketing gives you greater control.
Why Is an Influencer Brief Important?
You will be collaborating with an individual rather than an organization, so it might feel more informal than you’re used to. As a consequence of this, many businesses do not create effective influencer briefs.
Naturally, this leads to disappointing results.
To avoid such pitfalls, a comprehensive influencer brief is essential. This document will (indirectly) give your influencers the information they need to create compelling content on your behalf. Ultimately, this article will help influencers encourage customers to choose your brand’s product over competitors.
Remember, an influencer can create good content that isn’t right for your marketing strategy. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to promote robotic process automation software or working with a beauty influencer. You’ll need a defined lens through which consumers can view your products. An influencer brief can help the influencer create content with that perspective.
Challenges Associated With Influencer Briefs
One issue that may arise during this process is finding the balance between instruction and creativity. You’ll undoubtedly want specific results from this campaign – you’ll be keeping a close eye on user engagement metrics, for one – but you still need the influencer’s content to be authentic.
Influencer marketing is only effective because users identify with the influencer. They trust their opinion if the content they produce becomes inauthentic, if it mutates into advertising, raising red flags.
This renders the content a waste of time and damages the influencer’s brand. In some situations, the backlash can even lead to negative customer reviews. The ideal way to move forward is to give your influencer more freedom but still a rock-solid understanding of the outcome you’re looking for.
7 Tips to Write Better Influencer Briefs
If you’ve previously struggled to craft successful influencer briefs, you’re far from alone. Many businesses grapple with these documents consistently. Follow this seven-point guide, and you’ll have a far easier time moving forward.
1. Define Your Campaign or Program KPIs
This is an easy one.
When you create an influencer brief, you must ensure they thoroughly understand what you’re looking for from the arrangement.
Be clear about the user engagement and influencer marketing KPIs that matter most to you. Of course, to do this effectively, you need to know what you’re looking for before you approach an influencer.
Understanding these metrics can even help you identify an influencer who is better suited to helping you with your campaign.
Whether focused on improving engagement, reach, or conversion, providing explicit instruction makes it easier for the influencer to create content that fits your brand narrative. This is where using an influencer marketing CRM platform like Pixlee’s comes in handy; you can compare metrics between influencers during the influencer discovery process and analyze campaign success for each of your partnerships once they’re already in progress.
2. Secure Permission
If you’re harnessing an influencer’s true power, you’ll want to repurpose their authentic content on your brand’s channels, like social profiles or email marketing.
You’ll probably want to repost or promote their posts on your social media accounts. You might even want a physical reproduction for local markets – think billboards, flyers, or posters. Yet, you won’t be able to do this without agreeing with your influencer.
When a copyright agreement can be reached, it’s often mutually beneficial. You get trustworthy, engaging content that boosts your brand, and the influencer gets elevated credibility and even greater outreach.
An influencer marketing platform can then help you streamline the publishing process of your influencer’s content to your most important channels. Plus, you can share the success metrics from this content with your influencer, bringing value to the partnership.
Zebra Pen shares artist and graphic design influencer Bonnie Wong’s creations within their marketing emails, showcasing how she uses the brand’s products authentically.
3. Determine Which Social Media Platforms Are Included
The majority of social media influencers will operate on more than one platform. It’s not always clear which platforms would be included in an agreement. Even if you plan to repost the content on other channels, aligning at the campaign’s outset is crucial.
While you might think businesses would prefer that content be posted on every platform, that isn’t always so. Some platforms are less effective than others when it comes to influencer marketing. It’s also possible you might deem that some are not worth the price of admission; look at where your target audience is most active and focus on those channels.
Many businesses use data-driven decisions to determine the platforms they use. Although Facebook remains the most active platform, it could be that you’d prefer a platform that encourages users to engage with brands and influencers more readily – like Instagram or YouTube.
Pixlee’s Influencer Discovery feature allows you to compare the engagement levels of each influencer you’re interested in, helping you narrow down which individuals and channels you want to focus on for your campaign.
Regardless of what you choose to pursue, you’ll need total clarity before you get started.
4. Lock Down Specific Dates
Some businesses have needed help getting influencers to commit to specific dates, which can lead to issues on your end.
Your influencer marketing is almost certainly only one aspect of your more comprehensive marketing strategy. If you’re unsure when your influencer will deliver, this can throw off other activities that you might have planned.
You need to define dates before the collaboration commences.
It doesn’t hurt to be clear about how often and quickly the influencer needs to respond to you during the campaign.
5. Define Creative Expectations
You’ll have sought out the help of an influencer because you believe their content production fits well with your brand. But that doesn’t mean you must pass them all creative control over.
By giving them a good understanding of your brand – things like tone, brand voice, and visuals – they can craft content that works for both parties. This approach supports the creator’s content process while maintaining brand values.
It’s possible that you’ll have some non-negotiable expectations—some things that might have to be included or excluded. For example, you might want to focus just as much on the post-purchase experience as the product itself.
You’re looking for authentic content from your influencer, and since this makes influencers effective, finding a balance is critical. If you let your expectations
6. Confirm Content Volume and Formats
There are many different ways for influencers to produce content on your behalf. These will vary considerably from one platform to the next and can be significantly influenced by the product or service they’re promoting.
First, you must agree on the number of posts and content pieces the influencer will produce. Beyond that, you might have expectations about how they deliver this content.
Cosmetics brands like Milani tap into influencers skilled at video makeup tutorials to show their audience exactly how each product can be used best.
If you want to promote a software package, screen share software can be a tremendous asset in helping showcase the product. Drone footage is a good choice for physical locations, like wedding venues or property.
Ideally, you’ll collaborate with an influencer with some experience with the formats you’re requesting.
7. Specify Payment Delivery
While an influencer brief is primarily there to help you get increasingly effective results for your influencer marketing campaign, it’s also useful for practical expectations. Influencers typically collaborate with your brand for monetary compensation (like through affiliate links) or other insider rewards like free samples or exclusive event invitations.
The document must define the amount paid, how the money is delivered, and any other payment stipulations related to the content. Confusion and uncertainty regarding money are the last thing either party wants.
Most agreements require the signing off of content before it’s posted, after which payment is likely to follow. It’s also possible that you’ll have payment structures determined by the effectiveness of the produced content.
Solved: Effective Influencer Briefs
With these seven tips to lean on, you have everything you need to create an effective influencer brief.
Take note, top-quality influencer briefs will:
- Create clear creative expectations for both parties
- Confirm delivery and payment structures
- Define both influencer and more comprehensive marketing campaign goals
Follow the strategies above, and you can’t go wrong.
