15 - An Influencers Guide to Brand Campaign Types

In the influencer marketing space, we talk a lot about the deliverables and pricing of influencer campaigns, but not really enough about the different [00:01:00] types of brand campaigns.

So today's episode is dedicated to the Influencer's Guide to Brand Campaign Types. As influencers or content creators, being aware of the different brand campaign types will definitely help you when it comes to reviewing the brief, pricing and delivering your campaigns. Understanding these different campaign types also will set you up for success with the brand knowing that you're all on the same page and you're going to meet their expectations.

So if you're a TikTok creator, you're doing Reels, stories, YouTube shorts or videos, blog posts, or something else, we're not talking about the delivery mechanism of the content, that is the platform you're creating content on. Rather, we're talking about the different types of brand campaigns. Okay, let's get started.

These discount codes and affiliate links are tracked by the brands so they understand how successful your efforts in marketing their content is. This sort of campaign usually includes a gifted product for you. And typically it's a low or no fee campaign, but it's often accompanied by promises of you being able to generate good fees based on the sales you generate.

However, for many creators, the effort required to create reasonable income through discount codes and affiliate marketing simply isn't there. If you've been offered this type of brand campaign, really weigh up carefully whether it's the right pathway for you. Often it's easier to decline these types of offers or try to negotiate a flat content fee for your work. In other words, a fee that's not based on commissions.

Before agreeing to deliver a competition or giveaway content piece, there are some important things you need to consider. Think about who is responsible for the competition terms and conditions. This might seem easy to overlook, but people can get very agitated if they have a complaint about the way the competition has been handled.

Have a think about what the value of that giveaway is and how the terms and conditions are going to be implemented. Make sure it is very clear who is responsible for delivering the prizes or the giveaway. While these types of campaigns can be good for your audience growth, If you have to manage the logistics and costs of delivering prizes, you really need to consider the overall cost to you for working on this type of campaign.

Again, choosing winners can be time consuming and then relaying all that relevant information can also be time consuming, and if you make a mistake, like a typo in the address details of a winner, what happens when the winner doesn't receive your prize? These are just a couple of examples of the importance of managing the mechanisms of any competitions and giveaways.

You wanna have as little responsibility as required for the delivery of prizes and really put that onus back on the brand.

They can be lots of fun. You can really engage with your audience and enjoy the gift of giving, but make sure you're considering all of the aspects of the competition and the giveaway before you commit to doing this sort of campaign with the brand. Ask them all the important questions and make sure you're satisfied with how it's going to be delivered and executed before you agree to that type of campaign.

But for a professional UGC creator, they create this type of content for brands. And get paid for it. Brands use UGC campaigns for different marketing strategies, including to drive brand engagement, improve brand credibility and authority, increase brand awareness, and provide social proof of their product or service being loved out in the market.

And these types of campaigns can be really short and sharp, or they can be ongoing. Usually with UGC created content, there is a low production value. So that means it's usually filmed on your smartphone and edited in something like CapCut. The reason for this is the content. is designed to look organic.

Fees for UGC content can often be lower than influencer content because there's a low threshold or barrier for entry as a UGC creator. We said that UGC creators don't need to have a big social following like an influencer does. Although the fee can be lower, Often brands will commission multiple pieces of UGC content.

There's lots of different names for it and different brands will use these terms interchangeably. Whitelisting is a paid social advertising campaign through your own influencer account, your own social media account, rather than the brand account channels. What it does is it gives brands a way to Post content and run paid ads using your account instead of their own.

So if you've really built up a great niche and a great audience base in a specific area, brands will love getting access to get straight into their customer base. And they might use White listing to split test or do AB testing. And that's a way to determine what sort of content, in other words, what sort of ad is going to perform best with their target audience.

There can be different strategies used in whitelisting. So the traditional whitelisting is when the creator posts content organically and then gives the brand access to boost that post within Facebook's Or Meta's ad manager as a paid ad and on TikTok, these are called spark ads, but it's the same thing.

And this is the most common form of whitelisting. Another form of whitelisting is the generalized whitelisting access. And this is when you might give a brand whitelisting access to run any creative that they want from your social media channels. This content. sometimes might not even include you in them.

Whitelisting campaigns can be beneficial for you as an influencer or a creator. Depending on the ad content, you might be able to benefit from more reach and larger audience.

One of the reasons that you might get this bigger reach and larger audience is that that paid brand spend the money they put behind the ad means that you'll get exposure perhaps to audience that haven't yet interacted with your content. And it could be beneficial in that you can strengthen your campaign portfolio, so these are the brands that I've worked with, which you should be able to then leverage into more paid work for yourself.

So make sure you only collaborate with brands that really strongly align with your audience interest. You don't want to start getting a whole bunch of unfollows on your account because your audience is getting absolutely bombarded with Sponcom. And finally, you might have a lack of understanding around the terms relating to the whitelisting.

When will you be paid? Let's talk about brand ambassador campaigns now. True brand ambassador campaigns should be the aspirational goal for influencers. I love working on brand ambassador campaigns. These are when a brand works with you for an extended period of time, many months, or a year or more. These types of campaigns usually include a complete mix or a strong mix of different campaign tactics.

So it gives you a little bit more say in the approach, which is always fun. You'll usually be provided with a generous amount of product to make sure that you, Always being able to genuinely show that you're talking about the product, demonstrating the product, being a raving fan about the product.

With brand ambassador campaigns your campaign deliverables will usually be high and that often you'll need to deliver content across. Multiple channels. So it won't just be one social media channel. It might be multiple platforms that you need to deliver content across. There will be very specific campaign deliverables and you might always be required to deliver always on content.

It's my favorite type of campaign to do. If you're self managed and you don't have an agent or a manager, listen in to our episode on 10 tactics for success as a self managed influencer. It'll be linked in the show notes and that'll give you just some extra resources around that brand ambassador piece.

There was a new store activation in recent months in my local community and. The queue went down the block and all the product in the store sold out in the first, I can't remember, it was like 20 or 30 minutes. And that was simply because the brand chose a well aligned influencer for that store opening and that activation.

Now I'm sure they had PR. associated with the event activation as well. But when it gets into mainstream media too, you know that there's a really great alignment there. And that's where influencers can bring big values to brands. Event activations can often be a one off event or an event series. So think about, you know, you might be asked to go to a film opening, as I said before, or an event like South by Southwest and deliver.

But if there's additional deliverables from you required, think about whether It is worth your while to position a fee for that event activation. Before we wrap up today's episode, I want to let you know that we're going to be dedicating an entire episode to gifted campaigns in just a few weeks. I'm smiling as I say this because.

So if you're in the space, it's quite likely regardless of where you're sitting in terms of career progression, you are going to be offered gifted campaigns. Let's chat about that in a full dedicated episode so we can really get our heads around what responses you can give to a brand when offered a gifted campaign.

Until next week, stay creative.