How to Write the Perfect Influencer Marketing Brief

To capture an influencer's attention and set your campaigns up for success, you need to create a great influencer marketing brief.

Preparing a well-structured brief will keep your collaborations organized and prevent any potential misunderstandings. The influencers you partner with will be aligned on what you're looking for, and they'll work with you to achieve your objectives.

But how do you get started on writing the perfect influencer marketing brief? Below, we've highlighted everything you need to know!

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Influencer Marketing Brief Template

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What’s an influencer marketing brief?

An influencer marketing brief is a document that you send influencers you want to work with. The brief typically highlights your objectives, timelines, expectations, deliverables, guidelines, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for collaborations. It may also include legal clauses on disclosure and content usage rights. Briefs are a great way for influencers to understand what you’re trying to achieve in your collaborations. A clear overview of your expectations will help them create content that gets you better results!

Why should you create an influencer marketing brief?

A well-written brief is the foundation to any successful collaboration and a core piece of your influencer marketing strategy.

You may want to save time by knocking out a couple bullet points covering what you want when you contact influencers. But writing a comprehensive brief is a way for you to ensure there aren’t any unwanted surprises in your collaborations. Plus, once you create one, you’ll be able to reuse it for future campaigns!

There are several reasons why you should invest time into creating a great brief:

You can use the brief to pitch your brand.

Talented influencers get requests to collaborate from brands every day. So how do you stand out from the crowd? Creating a strong brief can be a way for you to pitch your brand in a creative way and convince them to work with you.

You and the influencer will be on the same page.

A brief can also function as an influencer contract. This means that influencers will be clear on what you want to achieve in your collaborations, so there won’t be any confusion over what you expect. It’ll also create a smoother collaboration process for both you and the influencer, since they’ll be able to reference the brief to review your guidelines easily.

Influencers can create content that meets your objectives.

If influencers understand your goals, they can use their skills to create content that helps you reach them. They’ll be able to alter the message they share with their followers depending on what you want to achieve.

You’ll have specific goals in place, which can be measured.

Because you’ve outlined your goals in your brief, you’ll be able to evaluate how the content performed according to your objectives and ultimately measure whether your campaign was a success and drove a positive marketing ROI.

The best briefs will help you create an effective collaboration process that generates great results and relationships! Here’s our handy guide on how to write the perfect influencer brief.

How to write an effective influencer marketing brief

An effective influencer marketing brief should include these 9 elements:

An introduction

Give an introduction of your brand and products! Understanding who you are and what you stand for are factors influencers take into account before accepting booking requests. They want to ensure they share your values and your products fit their interests.

In your introduction, you should explain who you are, what you’d like to promote, and why they should promote you.

This section is the best place for you to sell yourself and get the influencers excited about the collaboration!

Compensation

Specify what you’re paying and/or gifting for the collaboration. If you’re planning to send them any products or provide any services, be sure to highlight their value.

Campaign overview

Give an overview of the collaboration basics. They need a clear direction and understanding of your expectations to succeed, so be sure to cover:

• The social media channels you want the content to be published on
• The number of posts you want created
• Any branded hashtags, links, discount codes, affiliate links, or landing pages you want included in their captions or bios
• Any social media accounts you want to be tagged in their post
• Your campaign goals and KPIs

If you’re interested in establishing long-term ambassadorships with well-performing influencers, you can include a couple lines letting them know you might consider them as potential brand ambassadors in the future!

Laying out this overview clearly will give influencers a clear idea about what they need to do. They’ll be able to create content that conveys the message you want to share.

Campaign Deliverables

Describe the collaboration in more detail. There are several elements to cover in this overview.

First, add any initial instructions for the influencers. You can ask them to provide an address and phone number or to order products from your website.

Second, provide some guidelines for the content you want them to create. You can specify, for instance, how long one of their Instagram stories should be. You should also offer the influencer talking points they can use in their captions or emphasize in their photos. For instance, if your product is vegan and cruelty free, you can ask them to focus on that point.

Lastly, add a Do’s and Don’ts list to highlight specific campaign guidelines you want the influencer to understand. What do you want them to include in their posts? What should they avoid? This will clarify any potential confusion they may have about your expectations.

Inspiration

To give influencers concrete ideas of the kind of content you’re looking for, provide them with example posts you like or your brand’s mood board. You can also include suggestions for topics or angles they can create content around. This will help spark some inspiration!

Deadlines

Add any timelines or dates the influencers should be aware of, so they can plan accordingly. Is there a deadline they need to publish content by? Do they need to order products beforehand? These are dates you should consider adding to this section.

Content and results

To understand how your campaign performed, share detailed instructions on how you’d like the influencers to share links to their sponsored posts and their results with you.

Content usage rights

Are you planning on reusing any content from your collaborations in ads, websites, or social media? If so, add a clause indicating what type of rights you’d like to have over the content that’s produced.

Disclosing sponsored content

Most countries have marketing regulations in place that require brands and influencers to add a disclosure along with their sponsored content. What’s expected of you and the influencers can vary depending on the country you’re advertising in.

To ensure you’re not breaking any laws, provide clear instructions on how they should disclose their sponsored content. You can read our articles on disclosure regulations for the ASA in the UK & US FTC regulations, as well as the regulations in the Nordics.

Struggling to find the right partners to collaborate with? Check out our handy guide - How to find influencers on Instagram

Common influencer marketing brief mistakes

Your brief isn’t clear or contains too many bullet points.

Unclear briefs that are packed with text will create more confusion than guidance.

Influencers who don’t understand what you’re looking for in a collaboration will either reject your request or post content that you weren’t looking for. To make briefs easier to digest, it’s important that they contain concise, simple sentences. You should also use bullet points where you can.

You don’t give enough creative freedom.

Providing talking points is important, but tricky. There’s a fine line between telling influencers what to do and granting them creative freedom. We encourage you to provide guidance on what you’d like for them to highlight in their posts. But be careful with giving them too many requirements.

Strict limitations will make their sponsored content feel inauthentic. They’ll look like ads, which will result in bad engagement. Remember, one of the most crucial aspects of influencer marketing is the influencers’ authentic storytelling, creativity and content. But in order for collaborations to be genuine, you need to leave enough room to create freely.

You give the option of adding a disclosure.

Disclosure isn’t an option - it’s an essential part of influencer marketing. It’ll keep your collaborations transparent, so you can avoid misleading consumers.

Following proper disclosure practices will prevent you from running into trouble with the governing body that monitors marketing compliance in your country. It’ll also help you avoid any potential consumer backlash.

How to save time in the briefing process

Worried you won’t have time to create the perfect brief? With our end-to-end influencer marketing platform, the brief creation process is simple!

We provide easy-to-use brief templates to brands, which are tailored to different campaign goals and social media channels. When brands start creating campaigns, they’ll select a relevant template, then replace the highlighted text with their own - making them ready to collaborate in no time!

Final thoughts on influencer marketing briefs

A great influencer marketing brief will give a clear direction and understanding of your expectation. They’ll also be well equipped to create content that will help you reach your objectives and achieve greater success in influencer marketing.

If you're still not sure how to write a brief, then get in touch with our influencer marketing agency. We've written hundreds of briefs for leading brands.