How do you craft a compelling brief and contract for your influencers?

1 Define your objectives

The first step is to define your objectives for the influencer marketing campaign. What are you trying to achieve? Who are you targeting? How will you measure your results? Your objectives should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. This will help you align your brief and contract with your overall marketing strategy and budget.

2 Identify your influencers

The next step is to identify your influencers, who are the people who have the trust, authority, and reach to influence your target audience. You can use various tools and platforms to find and analyze potential influencers, based on criteria such as niche, location, audience size, engagement rate, and content quality. You should also check their previous collaborations, reviews, and reputation. Once you have a shortlist of influencers, you can reach out to them and gauge their interest and fit for your campaign.

3 Create your brief

The brief is the document that summarizes the key information and guidelines for your influencer marketing campaign. It should include a brief introduction about your brand, product, or service, and why you want to work with the influencer. Additionally, it should list your objectives, target audience, key messages for the campaign, deliverables such as type, format, number, and frequency of content that the influencer will create and share. Creative direction such as tone, style, theme, and call-to-action should also be outlined in the brief. Furthermore, it should detail the timeline with deadlines, milestones, and schedule for content creation and distribution. The budget should be specified including payment method, amount, and terms for the influencer. Lastly, legal aspects such as ownership rights and usage of the content, disclosure and compliance requirements, confidentiality and termination clauses should be included. It is important that the brief is clear, concise, consistent with your brand identity and values while leaving room for the influencer's creativity and input as they know their audience best.

4 Negotiate your contract

The contract is the legal agreement that formalizes the relationship and obligations between you and the influencer. It should be based on the brief, but go into more detail and specificity. This includes the parties involved, such as their names, contact details, and roles; the services to be provided, including description, scope, and quality standards; the compensation, like payment method, amount, schedule, and conditions; as well as terms and conditions like duration, renewal, termination of the contract, dispute resolution process, warranties, and liabilities of both parties. Furthermore, all signatures should include date and place of signing, as well as both parties or their authorized representatives. To ensure clarity and avoid any ambiguity or confusion in the contract's language, it is recommended to consult a legal professional before finalizing and signing.

5 Monitor your campaign

To monitor your influencer marketing campaign, you should track and measure the performance and impact of your influencer's content. This can be done by using metrics such as reach, engagement, conversion, and ROI. Reach measures the number of impressions, views, followers, and subscribers that your influencer's content generates; engagement evaluates the number of likes, comments, shares, and clicks that your influencer's content receives; conversion looks at the number of leads, sales, downloads, or sign-ups that your influencer's content drives; and ROI is the ratio of the revenue or profit that your influencer's content generates to the cost or investment that you spend on the campaign. Additionally, it is important to collect feedback from both your influencer and your audience in order to improve your campaign.

6 Review your results

The final step is to review your results, which means analyzing and reporting the outcomes and learnings of your influencer marketing campaign. You should compare your results with your objectives, and identify what worked well and what didn't. You should also acknowledge and appreciate your influencer's efforts and contributions, and maintain a good relationship with them. You can also use your results to optimize your future campaigns and collaborations.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?