INFLUENCER MARKETING

Influencer Brief Template: How to Write a Brief + Our Influencer Platform’s FREE Template

An influencer brief is key to a successful campaign.

Once you have found the right influencer, it can be tempting to rush and launch the campaign after discussing just a few basic guidelines.

But don’t expect the influencer to know what you want magically.

Many of our clients have expected creators to produce perfect user-generated content without any indication and failed.

The solution is to have a solid creative brief.

A brief helps creators and influencers understand how your brand aligns with their audience and how to develop engaging brand stories.

For your brand, a well-written brief will confirm that you have chosen the right influencer for the marketing campaign.

You’re on the right page.

We’ll share our platform’s free in-house brief template and analyze all the factors to include in it.

As such, you can personalize our template for your marketing goals.

TL;DR

• Importance of Influencer Brief: An effective influencer brief is crucial for a successful influencer marketing campaign.
• Purpose of an Influencer Brief: It outlines campaign goals, deliverables, and legal terms, setting clear expectations.
• Authenticity Matters: A clear brief promotes authenticity and transparency, aligning influencers with your brand vision.
• Balancing Control and Creativity: It allows for creative freedom while ensuring alignment with brand expectations.
• Time and Energy Saver: Saves time and streamlines the marketing process by creating a standard approach.
• Building Long-Term Relationships: Clear guidelines and expectations foster trust and long-term influencer relationships.

Key Brief Components:

• Brand Overview: Describe your brand's values and unique selling points.
• Campaign Goals: State campaign objectives clearly.
• Creative Format: Specify the type and number of influencer content creatives.
• Details Matter: Include hashtags, approval process, and tagging instructions.
• Mood Board: Use images to convey brand aesthetics.
• Legal Guidelines: Mention privacy policy and legal considerations.

Common Mistakes to Avoid: Keep the brief concise, avoid excessive talking points, and allow creative freedom.

Conclusion: Preparation and planning are crucial in influencer marketing, setting the stage for a successful collaboration.

A reputable micro-influencer marketing agency can help you with all the required steps.

What Is an Influencer Brief?

An influencer brief summarizes the campaign goals and outlines the details of the deliverables and legal terms.

This standard document sets expectations for the influencer and explains what you want to achieve from this collaboration.

Think of it as an instruction manual for the project or a set of project documentation to follow.

Why Is an Influencer Brief Important For an Influencer Marketing Campaign?

Imagine your marketing campaign has started.

The influencer submits the content and you find it far from what you wanted.

You are furious and want to request a reshoot.

From the influencer’s perspective, they spent a lot of time working on your campaign, and you are now unfairly requesting a redo.

That’s why an effective influencer brief is vital for your marketing campaigns:

• It realigns your influencer marketing goals and KPIs with your influencer marketing team and management while you prepare the brief. That's because you can reevaluate your influencer marketing strategy, target audience and expected deliverables, ensuring you're on the same page.
• It helps you save time and energy. As a result, you can streamline your marketing efforts by creating a standard process for all your creator campaigns.
• It fosters long-term relationships with your influencer partners. When you set straightforward guidelines and manage expectations, you eliminate misunderstandings from the creative process. Both you and the influencer will have peace of mind that the content will be relevant to your brand vision.
• It allows content creators to stay genuine. Consumers value authenticity, transparency, and honesty. So, a straightforward influencer marketing brief is a cornerstone of campaign success. By understanding your brand’s essential requirements, influencers can create content that feels authentic to their style.
• You can pitch new potential influencers when you scale your campaign. You can use a shortened version of the brief when pitching influencers. That way, they will immediately understand what your brand aims to achieve from the influencer marketing campaign.

Pro tip: A brief with explicit guidelines on privacy policy and legal terms will help you and the influencer avoid Molly-Mae Hague’s situation.

She broke ASA guidelines on Instagram marketing. As a result, the negative press damaged her reputation and the brand’s.

Creative Brief Influencer Template

[Campaign Name] Brief

[Your Company Name]

[Date]

Company Background

• Company bio
• Core values
• Links to website, social media accounts, etc.

Campaign Summary

• The product that the campaign is for
• Type of campaign: one-time-only/ recurring
• Campaign goals
• Campaign objectives
• Strategy
• KPIs
• Brief overview

Campaign Details

Deliverables

• How many posts are needed during that campaign
• The social channels/websites where those posts should appear
• The precise dates and times for each post
• Brand social handles to ensure that the influencers tag the official brand instead of a fake account

Content Requirements

• Type of content: posts/Instagram stories/ YouTube videos
• Content description: personal experience/unboxing/etc.
• Voice/tone
• Key messages you want to include

Visual Guidelines

• The portfolio/Pinterest board with suggestions and references
• Specific requirements:
• Location
• Time of day
• Lighting
• Other objects except for your product and how they should be arranged

Text Guidelines

• Hashtags
• Keywords
• Caption
• Brand handle
• CTAs

Other Information

• Giveaway rules
• Dress codes

Dos and Don’ts

Do:

• Include the campaign messages in the post captions
• Make timely submissions
• Position the logo design correctly
• Include #ad #sponsored

Don’t:

• Use profanities
• Reference alcohol, drugs, or violence
• Criticize our brand
• Compare our brand to the competitors
• Include other sponsored products

What Should You Include in an Influencer Marketing Brief?

When writing an influencer brief, keep it short.

Ideally, it should fit on one page. Influencers skim marketing briefs that are too long and may miss out on important information.

Here’s an example from one of inBeat Agency’s clients:

Now, let’s review the most important elements you too can include.

1. Campaign Overview

The campaign overview includes what your brand stands for, your value proposition, and your unique selling points.

Describing your brand values is one of the essential parts of the influencer marketing brief.

This information will help the influencer understand how your brand message aligns with their target audience.

Here is a company overview example from an influencer brief we wrote for one of our clients - Pethappy:

“Our brand helps dogs with arthritis jump, run, and love life again. Our product is made in the USA with all-natural and organic certified ingredients. You can check out some reviews of pet owners talking about our product here: [link to any reviews you have].”

2. Campaign Goals

List the specific objectives of the campaign.

These can vary widely depending on your brand's needs and campaign type:

• Brand awareness: Increasing visibility and recognition of your brand, product features, or a product launch. Specify if the goal is to reach new audiences or re-engage existing ones.
• Engagement: Boosting interaction with the brand's content, including likes, comments, shares, and saves. Highlight the importance of authentic engagement that reflects genuine interest and conversation.
• Lead generation: Collecting information from potential customers, such as email addresses or sign-ups, for future marketing efforts. Emphasize the value of quality leads over sheer quantity.
• Sales conversion: Driving direct sales or specific actions, such as using a promo code, visiting a landing page, or making a purchase. Clarify how sales will be tracked and attributed to the influencer's efforts.
• Content creation: Generating high-quality content that the brand can repurpose across its marketing channels. Define the types and themes of content that align with the brand's image and campaign goals.
• Brand positioning: Shaping the perception of the brand in the minds of consumers. This could involve associating the brand with certain values, lifestyles, or quality standards.

Pro tip: For each goal, you can include measurable objectives using specific metrics, such as:

• Increase in social media followers or website traffic by a certain percentage
• Specific engagement rates or numbers of interactions
• Number of leads generated or conversion rate improvements

If needed, you can also outline the timeframe for achieving these goals.

Specify any campaign KPIs, milestones, or checkpoints where progress will be reviewed.

Insider tip: We generally prefer not to include these details in the creative brief but rather in the influencer agreement.

Here’s how this section looks for one of our clients, the ad blocker app Brave – notice that influencers can infer the campaign’s goal from its value proposition:

We prefer this strategy because we want to keep things as simple as possible for our content creators.

3. Campaign Deliverables

Deliverables are the things that your influencers should get you based on that deep understanding of your company and your current goals.

Make sure your creative brief template features:

• How many posts are needed during that campaign
• The platforms/websites where those posts should appear
• The precise dates and times for each post
• Brand social handles to ensure the influencers tag the official brand instead of a fake account

You should also be very clear on the type of influencer creatives you need.

For example, you may want Instagram Reels with unboxing videos, blog posts, or other types of content.

Include all the key details in these creative guidelines to streamline your influencer collaborations.

Here’s an example from one of our clients:

Notice that we’re very explicit in terms of numbers to streamline the influencer marketing process.

4. Content Guidelines/ Creative Storyboard

When writing an influencer brief, give as many key creative requirements as possible to explain how you want the creator to deliver the content pieces.

You may also want to include wardrobe, makeup, and scenery directions.

Describe specific ways how the influencer should shoot your product according to your key objectives.

Here’s an example from the Vietnamese hot sauce brand Chin-Su:

Notice that we’re very specific about the opener, subject, and CTA.

However, we give our influencers a lot of creative freedom between these lines.

Pro tip: We always advise our clients to find a balance between control and creativity in their influencer partnerships. Give the influencers the freedom to have genuine conversations with their audience while remaining in line with the brand’s expectations.

If needed, you can include some talking points like we did in the Aura creative brief:

5. Visual Guidelines/ Mood Board

Most social media is highly visual, so you will need to consider your customers’ aesthetic experience.

As the saying goes, an image is worth a thousand words; make sure your influencers understand what sort of pictures/videos they should post.

Pro tip: While specifics are reasonable, try not to limit your influencers’ creative freedom too much. Include only those visual requests directly related to your campaign’s strategy.

Here’s how you can be precise without being too limiting:

• Consider any special requests.
• Be very specific about the details that matter most to you.

For example, if you want to showcase your brand at sunset and only at dusk, ensure your influencers understand why that specific time of day is essential.

Otherwise, reshooting the photos or videos will take more time and money than expected.

Include a clear:

• Location
• Time of day
• Lighting
• Other objects except for your product and how they should be arranged

Pro tip: Make a portfolio or a Pinterest board with suggestions and references so that your influencers understand the style you’re looking for.

You can also create a mood board for your influencer marketing brief.

To do that:

1. Use images from your previous influencer campaigns
2. Pinterest features imagery of virtually everything. You can even include a Pinterest board in your influencer marketing brief.
3. Search for the imagery of competitors and their influencer marketing campaigns. Get inspiration to illustrate your ideas.
4. Use the Facebook Ads Library to see the ads of your competitors. Successful ads are those that have been running for over 3 months:

Insider tip: Follow social media channels of parallel industries, sign up for their promotional newsletters. You will discover content ideas and unconventional ideas if you step out of your industry’s best practices.

Alternatively, inBeat Agency includes video ad examples that our content creators can draw inspiration from:

6. Captions (Optional)

Your visuals should have suitable captions, so the catch is providing precise requirements without messing with your influencers’ muses.

Remember that you don’t want your influencers’ messages to sound too template-y.

Instead, aim for captivating and authentic content.

You can use an AI caption generator to create engaging captions on the go.

Include:

• Brand hashtags: This part is important because you want people to identify your campaign quickly and engage with it seamlessly.
• Important keywords: These are keywords that connect your brand with specific concepts according to the research you’re basing your campaign on.
• Call to action: Ensure the CTA fits your campaign goals. Here are some call-to-action examples:

Insider tip: When setting these outlines, consider what part of the marketing funnel you want to address.

• Top of the funnel: Focus on keywords that stimulate visibility.
• Middle of the funnel: Use keywords that encourage engagement.
• Bottom of the funnel: Leverage keywords that concentrate on purchase.

Insider tip: We typically create a separate section for the captions, links, and hashtags, but we include the CTA in the “creative storyboard” section. You may prefer to include them in the same section to ensure your influencers include these terms word-for-word.

7. Privacy Policy and Legal Guidelines

For US-based businesses, you can include FTC guidelines as a reminder.

For companies in Canada, refer to Influencer Marketing Disclosure Guidelines.

You can also use a privacy policy generator to help if needed.

Again, we prefer to include most of this in the influencer contract.

However, you can include these details in the brief to ensure compliance in very delicate matters.

8. Dos and Don’ts

Remember that social media platforms must clearly label all ads and sponsored content.

If your influencers don’t do that, you can face many problems.

Don’t hesitate to remind them of the rules on different platforms like:

• Instagram: Use #ad or the Branded Content tool
• Snapchat: Add a disclosure before the post

Other restrictions can include:

• A tone of voice that you don’t want the influencers to use
• Specific images and words you don’t want your brand associated with
• Everything that contradicts your corporate values

Here is what we asked our Brave app influencers to respect:

What to Avoid When Creating an Influencer Marketing Brief?

Writing an influencer brief isn’t always easy.

Most of our clients have made the common mistakes below.

• An influencer marketing brief that is over two pages is too long. Be straightforward and concise. Don’t bore the influencer with too many unnecessary details and long paragraphs of text. Use images and bullet points to make the brief easy to read.
• You included too many talking points that the influencer has to use. Content with several messaging points has less impact and feels forced or inorganic.
• You placed rigorous restrictions on influencer’s creative freedom. Outline campaign goals and essential talking points. But give the influencer freedom to decide how to connect to their audiences.

Beyond the Influencer Brief Template: How to Get the Best Creative Assets

As you can see, the briefing process helps you streamline your influencer partnerships and builds a stronger internal team.

This document also helps you get better creative content and have a blueprint for your future campaigns.

So, use the key elements in this brief above and avoid the common pitfalls we discussed.

Here’s the problem.

Even the best influencer template cannot streamline the creation process if you choose the wrong influencers.

So, make sure your content creators fit your brand values and campaign goals before kickstarting your social media campaign.

Alternatively, if you need to streamline your influencer discovery, try inBeat now – it's free, fast, and flexible.

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