We ran a campaign across about fifteen creators with substantial followings. Reach was strong, engagement rates were above the benchmarks we had been given, and nothing happened to sales, traffic or search volume.
The post-mortem was more useful than the campaign.
Audience overlap with our actual market
The first and largest problem.
We selected on follower count and engagement rate, which are the numbers that are readily available, and did almost no work on who the followers actually were.
When we looked afterwards, several of the creators had audiences concentrated in countries we do not sell to. Two had audiences substantially outside our age range.
Reach to people who cannot buy is not reach.
Requesting audience demographics before selection is straightforward, creators can supply it from their own analytics, and we had not asked.
Engagement rate was measuring the wrong thing
The second finding and the more interesting one.
Engagement rate is likes and comments divided by followers. It is easy to calculate and it is a poor proxy for influence.
A creator whose audience likes everything they post has a high engagement rate and may have no persuasive effect at all. Liking costs nothing.
What we should have looked at, and now do, is whether the audience acts. Do people ask where to buy things. Do previous brand partnerships show evidence of response. Does the creator ever say anything critical, which is the clearest signal that recommendations mean something.
A creator who promotes everything is not endorsing anything, and audiences understand that perfectly well.
The brief killed the content
The third problem and the one that was our fault most directly.
We supplied detailed messaging requirements, mandatory phrases, and a list of things not to say.
The resulting content was uniform, obviously scripted, and did not sound like any of the creators. Their audiences noticed, and several comment sections said so.
The whole mechanism of influencer marketing is that a trusted individual says something in their own voice. A brief that removes the voice removes the mechanism, and what remains is an expensive advertisement in an unusual placement.
The campaigns I have seen work since have briefed on the objective and the constraints and left the execution alone.
No call to action anybody could follow
A basic error that we made and see constantly.
The content mentioned us and gave no specific route to act. No code, no link, no offer.
Which makes the campaign unmeasurable and, more importantly, makes it hard for an interested viewer to do anything with their interest.
Unique codes and links per creator solve both problems, and they under-report because people search rather than click, so they should be treated as a floor rather than a total.
One campaign is not a test
The structural error underneath the others.
Influencer content is one exposure to an audience that has never heard of you. Expecting a measurable sales effect from a single post is unrealistic for anything other than a discount-driven impulse purchase.
The programmes that work in this channel run over months with a smaller number of creators, repeatedly, building genuine familiarity.
We had spread a budget thinly across fifteen creators once, which produced fifteen isolated moments and no accumulation.
What we do now
Audience data before selection, always, and we decline creators whose audience does not match regardless of size.
Fewer creators, longer relationships, repeated over a period.
Objective-based briefs with the execution left to the creator, plus a review before publication rather than a script before creation.
Unique links and codes, treated as directional.
And a holdout region where we run nothing, which is the only way we have found to measure this channel with any confidence.
The disclosure point
Worth stating separately because it is a compliance matter rather than an effectiveness one.
Paid partnerships must be disclosed, clearly and prominently, in most jurisdictions, and enforcement has increased.
The responsibility usually sits with both the creator and the brand, so a brand cannot rely on the creator having handled it.
Making disclosure a contractual requirement and checking it after publication takes very little effort, and the campaigns where it is done properly do not appear to perform any worse.
Contracts and usage rights
The commercial detail that catches people out afterwards.
Content created by a creator belongs to the creator unless the contract says otherwise. Using it in your own paid advertising, on your own channels, or beyond an agreed period, generally requires specific rights that cost extra.
Agreeing usage rights up front is far cheaper than negotiating them once you have discovered a piece performs well.
Worth covering: where it can be used, for how long, whether it can be edited, and whether it can be used in paid amplification, which is frequently the most valuable right and the most often omitted.