A Great Influencer Brief Leads to a Great Influencer Campaign

The brand briefing for an influencer is an extremely important asset for every influencer marketing campaign, but are you including enough information to set your influencers up for success? 

Today, we're breaking down some of the core components that need to be included in any influencer brief, or what we at Carusele call "The Welcome Packet." We've seen brands pass over their briefs, not spending enough time thinking about what they want from the influencer upfront, and when this happens, major problems can arise later in the campaign.

Questions to Consider

First, let's start with some questions you should begin to ask yourself. While the list below is pretty general, hopefully it will inspire you to think about specific questions that will apply to your brand and your brand guidelines:

• Is it okay to have children in the content?
• Is it okay if they use non-competitive brands in the content?
• Is it okay if your product is laying flat on a table, or does it need to be propped up?
• Is it okay if they use a filter on top of the imagery to make it pop a certain way?
• What color scheme should the influencer try to match? 
• What color scheme should the influencer avoid all together?

The Balance of Creative Freedom & Guidelines

While the questions above get you into the right mindset about what information you need to include in your brand brief, it's critical to never say, "Well, let me just see what the influencer produces," because that's when you get in the biggest trouble.

Last year we conducted a survey with TapInfluence and gathered responses from 790 influencers about their work in the industry and how they hope to improve their work with brands in the future. One of the biggest insights from the survey showed that influencers want creative freedom, but equally important, they want good guardrails within which to work. So if you tell them, "Yes, I want to see your perspective and what you can do with our product, but within these guardrails," you're going to produce not only great content, but a great relationship with that influencer and the potential to continue to work together. Alternatively, if you're sending influencers back to revise their content two or three times, you're not getting the best work and you won't see the best results.

Other KeY Components to Include

In addition to our list, there are still other essentials that need to be included in the brand brief. At Carusele, our Welcome Packet is a part of the influencers contract, so we customize every packet to include all of the influencers responsibilities and guidelines they need to adhere to. This includes:

• Brand Guidelines
• Key Messaging & Legal Language
• Assignment Requirements & Details
• Featured Product Information
• FTC Compliance and Disclosures
• Approved Hashtags

So pay attention to the Welcome Packet or the brand briefing up front. Think about what you want and you'll end up with a easy running campaign that achieves your business objectives. And in case you need help setting up the other components of your campaign, check out our influencer marketing checklist or contact us today.