Creating a Winning Influencer Brief: A Step-by-Step Guide

An influencer marketing campaign consists of many steps and elements, and to avoid any confusion in the process, effective communication between the brand and the creator is critical. And here’s when an influencer brief comes into play!

An influencer marketing brief is an essential part of every influencer marketing campaign. It’s a document that lets the influencers know about your brand, the campaign, and your expectations. But more importantly, it shows them what you stand for and whether their values align with yours. Knowing this, and understanding what each of you expects from one another can lead to more efficient collaboration.

Writing an influencer brief doesn’t have to be difficult, and once you know it, it’ll be easy to replicate and adjust your briefs for different types of campaigns. This guide looks into how you can create a working influencer marketing brief in only a few steps. Armed with these tricks and an influencer marketing brief template, you’ll have everything you need to streamline your influencer marketing efforts.

What is an influencer brief?

An influencer brief is a critical document for your influencer marketing campaign, as it provides information to the influencers who are working with you to develop a campaign. It’s a communication tool between the brand and the influencer that clearly outlines what the brand is about, and what are the brand’s expectations in terms of objectives, values, messaging, and deliverables. Influencer brief additionally sets the parameters of effective collaboration in terms of campaign timelines, do’s and don’ts, and expected outcomes.

Influencer briefs will vary depending on the campaign goals and expectations. However, an effective influencer brief usually includes the brand’s overall vision of the collaboration, the type of content expected from the creator, details of the compensation, and the management and review of the campaign.

Having a well-crafted influencer marketing brief brings clarity to the campaign for both parties, and can make the partnership between your brand and the creator much more productive and successful.

How do you write an influencer brief?

Once you know what to include in your influencer marketing brief, writing a new brief for every campaign will be quite easy. In fact, it’s very likely you will only need to modify your existing briefs. What’s important to remember is that an influencer brief doesn’t have to be lengthy. It should be concise and on-point and should address

• What you are looking for
• What are the campaign expectations
• What are the desired deliverables

We’ll take a look at each of the elements you need to include in your influencer brief below. You can also use our influencer brief template as you develop your campaign brief.

Step 1: Give them small info about your company

Influencers need to know who they are working with, so your influencer marketing brief should always start by introducing your company. In a few sentences, try to give short, but comprehensive information about your brand. Make sure to not only tell about what you do but also what your values and voice are. Emphasize the value your brand brings to the public, and how it can benefit their followers as well.

Step 2: Include your campaign objective

Next up is the campaign objective: to work for you, the creators need to know what’s expected of them. So, before you get into the nitty-gritty of the campaign, take your time to describe your goals. Here are a few details you may want to include as you cover your campaign objectives:

• Are you trying to increase brand awareness?
• Is the main aim of your influencer campaign sales, engagement, or traffic?
• Do you want to promote a product launch or the brand in general?
  The objective of your campaign will have a direct impact on the creative process the creator will take, so make sure to be clear on what your aims are.

Step 3: Don’t forget about the audience that you want to target

Another thing your influencer brief should be specific about is what is the audience that you are targeting. The details can include the following:

• The demographic of the target audience, including age and location
• Their interests and hobbies
• Their needs and pain points
• Their interest in other brands in the same niche

This will give the creators an idea of who you want to target, and will also help them understand if they are a good fit for your campaign or not.

Step 4: Choose Channels

Where will the campaign be carried out? Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are all popular influencer channels. The right platform for your campaign will largely depend on the content type, as well as your target audience. Often, influencers have a presence in more than one channel and can co-promote your product, brand, or event there. Once you know who your target audience is, it’ll be easier to choose which channel to carry out the campaign. List the channel you want to work with. If you’d like to carry out the campaign on more than one platform, include that too.

Step 5: Inform when you want the content to be posted

Your influencer needs to know when you expect them to post the content, so they can properly plan and execute the campaign. For example, if you are planning to launch a product, it’s important that you include all the launch-related dates in your campaign brief. Add also the dates when you’ll be expecting to see the first results. This way, the creators can plan and manage the content creation process to make sure everything is done on time.

Step 6: Add details about the compensation

Influencers want to be compensated for their efforts on time, so it’s important that you include the payment details in your influencer marketing brief. Tell them how you handle influencer payments, and be clear about when they will be paid to ensure that their experience with your company is positive.

Often, payments come not only in the form of cash but also in the form of products. If this is part of your agreement, include the details of the products, the delivery dates, and other details as well to give them peace of mind.

Step 7: Give step by step description of what should influencer do

In your brief, take time to give a detailed step-by-step description of all the steps you expect the influencer to take during the campaign. It can include the content creation process, from ideation to shooting, the posting frequency, the content review process, campaign management, the reporting. This will give them a glimpse into what they should expect from the start until the end of the collaboration, so there are no surprises.

Step 8: Talk about your company’s tone of voice

One of the reasons influencer marketing is so effective is that influencers choose to work with brands that reflect their values and share their tone of voice. Otherwise, the outcome won’t be genuine and it will be easy to see. You, as a brand, are likely to have a tone of voice. And it’s important that the influencer you work with understands it and is able to match with it. So, if you are leaning towards a serious, friendly, funny, or some other tone of voice, make sure to include it.

Step 9: Describe the content review process

Most companies have their own content review process when they take a look at the content created by influencers and approve it before it goes online. This is done to ensure that all content adheres to your brand standards and works towards your campaign goal. If you have a content review process, include it in your influencer brief so that the creator can factor that into the content creation process.

Make sure to include what your content review process entails, how much time it takes, and who will be responsible for the review. Touch upon the case when the content is not approved, and how you’ll move forward from there. Answer all the questions related to the content review process so the influencers know what to expect.

Step 10: Include hashtags and mentions

Many brands have their branded hashtags or come up with hashtags for specific campaigns, or product or collection launches. These hashtags help them to organize their content, and also to maximize brand exposure, and reach new people.
In case you have specific hashtags in mind for your campaign or would like the influencer to mention certain pages (for example, the page of your brand, or the account of a specific collection), include them in your influencer brief.

Step 11: Give post caption examples

For influencers not familiar with your brand, coming up with captions that match the tone of voice of your brand and its overall messaging can be hard in the beginning. In case you have ideas on what you want their post captions to look like, or have examples of previous effective collaborations, you can include them in your influencer brief. Give several post captions or story text samples so they will have an idea of where to start.

You don’t have to limit yourself to captions here. Get visual whenever you can. Include images and feed examples, even moodboards if you have them. This will significantly simplify the process for both the brand and the influencer.

Step 12: Campaign Do’s and Dont’s

The aim of the influencer brief is for you to provide a clear direction to the influencers when it comes to content creation and campaign overall. Earlier, you’ve already to some extent discussed what you are looking for. At this step, describe specific content guidelines on what creative or technical requirements you have. Additionally, make sure to mention if there is anything that you want to avoid. For example, if you want them to show their face and avoid including other brands in the photo or video, mention it.

Conclusion

A well-written influencer brief can make or break your campaign, and it’s no exaggeration. Think of it as the cornerstone of your communication with the creator. It should give all the essential information the influencer will need on your brand and campaign, but also should make them be excited to be part of your campaign! For this, make sure to allow them creativity and freedom to express themselves. Don’t be too pushy with your suggestions, and always be open to discussing ideas and offers.

When you are just starting, writing an influencer marketing brief can seem somehow overwhelming. Sometimes, you won’t even be sure what you want to achieve with your campaign before you sit down to write your brief. However, you’ll get the hang of it pretty soon, and after developing several effective influencer brief versions, you can start re-using and customizing them. And if you are not sure where to start, you can get started with our influencer brief template and edit it to match your campaign needs!