Content without strategy is doomed to fail. But yet, too much direction can lead to cookie-cutter content that fails to separate itself from the noise that consumers are subject to every single day. An influencer campaign brief can encapsulate your marketing strategy in a form that is helpful to content creators – providing them with the information they need to create engaging brand stories.
In this article, I’m going to walk you through a real life example of an influencer campaign brief we recently did for a client of ours. The idea for this brief is to get influencers, bloggers, and content creators excited to partner with your brand. Your goal is to make them smile, chuckle, and laugh at least a couple times before they finish reading the last page.
Here’s a couple overarching points I want to make about the influencer campaign brief document:
- It must be upbeat and inspiring, not dull and boring
- It needs to be comprehensive, but incredibly concise
- It should not be littered with text
- Ideally, it’ll be five pages or less – including a cover and a thank you page
These slides were all made for free by using Canva.
Page 1 - The influencer campaign brief’s title page
The first page is the icebreaker. It should leave a content creator with the feeling that the rest of the brief is going to be fun and interesting. You’ll want minimal text here as a couple images and a headline is really all that is required.
Page 2 - The objective of your influencer marketing campaign
Your second page should outline the objective of the campaign. This should not be “to create engaging content on Instagram.” It’s important to think about what your overall marketing strategy is, and how influencers and content creators fit inside it. You should have a strategy before you even consider running an influencer campaign.
Suppose you’re launching a new product, your objective may be to introduce it into the market by activating the industry’s top content creators. You don’t need to get too technical here, but it’s important for your partners to know why you’re running a campaign.
After you outline your objective, you’ll want to include 2-3 bullet points on how influencers fit into the strategy and what their overall objective is. So for your newly launched product, their objective could be written as “to help us introduce our new <insert product> into the market by communicating why it’s superior to competing products.” In this scenario, you’ll want to ensure that you describe how and why it’s superior, which can be covered later in your influencer marketing brief.
Page 3 - Prefacing the following page by adding context
Nothing special here, we simply want to give a bit of context for what the influencer can expect from the next page.
Page 4 - Inspiration for the visual aspect of the content
This is the most important page of your influencer campaign brief because it provides the content direction. On this page, it’s ideal to give several different examples so that influencers have enough information that they feel confident in creating content they know will resonate with their followers.
Keep in mind that the influencers you choose must be able to create the content you’re looking for without it looking awkward on their feed. For example, suppose you’re the marketing manager for a diet supplement brand and you’re hoping to have content creators post photos and videos wearing workout gear and consuming your products. It would not be responsible to expect content creators who never post in their workout gear to do so for you. Even if they agreed, their audience would be confused and expect that it’s forced. The content that you have in mind shouldn’t look out of place on their timeline.
Page 5 - Inspiration for the written aspect of the content
It’s never wise to force content creators into copying and pasting captions that you write for them. Your best bet is to give them a bit of direction and inspiration so that they can go ahead and write the captions themselves.
Assuming you value natural and authentic styled content, you’ll want to point it out in your influencer campaign brief. As you can see in the example above, we only provide a couple pointers. Based on your objectives outlined on Page 2, and the direction on this page, your influencer partners should have enough information that they feel confident in writing engaging copy for your campaign.
Page 6 - Lighten up the mood before diving into more specific requirements
This page is optional, but I like to include them in our briefs with the objective of prefacing the guidelines and expectations in a light and friendly manner.
Page 7 - Outline what the deliverables and guidelines are for your influencer marketing campaign
If you like to add structure to your influencer marketing campaigns by asking content creators for a set number of deliverables, this will be the page you outline this. Ideally, you’ve mentioned this in a prior email, so it shouldn’t be the first time they’re seeing it.
It’s also wise to include a few bullet points regarding the rules you have. Ensure that you keep this brief and to the point as adding too many will add frustration.
Page 8 - Your final page
Your final page should show appreciation. Any additional information that you need to convey can be done through email or phone correspondents.
An influencer marketing campaign brief will help you reduce back-and-forth with brand partners as it’ll answer most FAQs. It’ll also provide insight into what it’s like to be part of your team. Most importantly, it conveys what you’re looking for in your campaign in a light, friendly, and upbeat manner. If available, your influencer on-boarding email can include links to example posts from campaigns you’ve done in the past – just make sure you include a variety so that you don’t get cookie-cutter content.
If you’d like more information on how to create engaging influencer campaign briefs, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.
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