Want to create an influencer marketing campaign that moves the needle? You’ll need to ensure all your bases are covered to reach your target audience and enhance brand awareness.
With decades of combined experience, we understand the nuts and bolts of creating successful brand partnerships—and we’ve created a handy checklist to help you reach your campaign goals.
This influencer marketing campaign checklist includes details from setting clear campaign goals to monitoring success, categorized into 5 parts that include:
We’ve packed a ton of value into this checklist, including an infographic you can save and use for your next campaign.
Set Campaign Goals
Every successful influencer marketing campaign begins with a clear objective. Clearly define what you or your client would like to achieve and how it fits into the overall marketing goals (brand awareness, increased sales, engaging a new demographic, etc.) so you can easily measure it when complete.
Campaign Timing
Timing is everything, and everyone needs to be on the same page. Plan your campaign to align with events, product launches, or other strategic times when your target audience is most engaged. Be sure to set due dates for:
Verify Budget
Making an offer or requesting a rate and defining clear deliverables and usage rights ensures there are no surprises on either end when the campaign is complete. Plus, it makes for a transparent start to the relationship, which can build trust and may lead to long-term business relationships.
Personalize Outreach
When reaching out to a content creator, pay attention to the details. Thoroughly look through their content and include mentions of what you like and why you think your brand is a good fit for their audience.
Influencers are looking for brands that fit their niche, so doing your homework can help you find the right type of influencer and increase your chances of bringing them on board—not to mention increase engagement rates of the created content.
Exclusivity
Conflicts of interest can arise in the realm of influencer marketing campaigns. Discuss agreements on whether influencers can engage with competing brands or if they’ll need to turn them down for the duration of your campaign or a realistic timeframe.
Legalities
Get a legal team to review the creative brief, concepts, and drafts to ensure they align with your company’s overall image and messaging. They should also review necessary contracts, NDAs, and adherence to legal requirements like FTC guidelines. MODERNSPEAK has an in-house legal team to review contracts to ensure transparency for our clients and the creators we work with.
Creative Brief
A detailed brief outlines campaign objectives, key messages, and content guidelines. It ensures everyone involved understands their roles and responsibilities. This can include a mood board, preferred calls to action, and other creative elements that will help the creator deliver the best possible content.
Content Requirements
Prepare a detailed explanation of what is expected from influencers in terms of content type, style, and tone. This includes the number of story frames, link in bio parameters, and campaign length. It may also specify which social media platforms or other channels you’d like the influencers to promote your products or services on.
Hashtags & Handles
Clearly define the specific hashtags and handles that will be used to enhance your campaign's visibility and alignment with other marketing initiatives. This will also simplify performance tracking.
Deliverables
Outline what specific content outputs, such as posts, stories, and videos, are expected from influencers. The clearer you are, the better, as this can prevent misunderstandings and ensure campaign consistency.
Content Approval
What will the process for reviewing and approving content before it goes live be? Setting processes for these will ensure the content aligns with your campaign goals and meets quality expectations. Remember, you are hiring an influencer to provide third-party endorsement, so allowing them to have creative license is essential to ensure engagement and build trust with their following.
Nice to Haves
These are additional elements that can enhance content but aren’t mandatory. For example, while you may include behind-the-scenes content to deepen the audience’s connection, it may not be essential to your campaign. Tell your creators about nice-to-haves in case they align with their unique approach.
Disclosure
Make sure the influencers know to properly disclose sponsored content to their audience. Transparency has always been important, but it’s even more so these days when audiences value authenticity stronger than ever.
Content Usage/Ownership
What are the content usage and ownership rights after the campaign finishes? Clearly stating who holds these rights is essential for managing future content.
Monitoring & Measuring Success
If influencer marketing campaign metrics aren’t tracked, how will you know how well they performed? Choose which tools and metrics you’ll use to monitor the campaign’s performance. This data will help you understand what worked and what didn’t, helping you to make more informed decisions and optimize campaigns in the future.
Save this checklist for easy reference when planning your next influencer marketing campaign.
Ticking all boxes on this checklist will help you create a campaign that represents your brand, meets goals, and ensures transparency.
If you’d like to simplify your next influencer collaboration ever further, get in touch with our expert team. MODERNSPEAK specializes in transparent and collaborative influencer marketing, taking care of everything from finding the right influencers for your campaign to managing content creation.
Connect with us today to learn more about what’s possible.
When reaching out to influencers, personalization is key as it shows you’ve done your homework. We recommend researching each influencer’s content, understanding their audience, and aligning your pitch to illustrate how partnering with your brand can benefit them specifically.
When crafting your message, always be professional and respect their boundaries, acknowledge their rates, and embrace their creative freedom.
When working with MODERNSPEAK, we make these connections for you. The diverse and talented creators on our roster have niche audiences that span travel, tech, and lifestyle industries, and we work with a network of creators beyond our roster to find the perfect fit for our clients.
Building long-term relationships with influencers requires consistent communication beyond the campaign. Comment on their posts, share their content (when it aligns with your brand), and send the occasional message.
An influencer is more likely to work with you again if you’re clear about expectations, deliverables, and feedback. Showing appreciation for their work with fair compensation and recognition will help you build a lasting, trusting relationship and leave a good impression.
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