Influencer campaigns, run properly

Strategy and goals

Every campaign starts by naming the goal, because it changes almost every decision after it. An awareness goal points toward reach, creator variety, and top-of-funnel content. A conversion goal points toward fewer creators run more deeply, stronger calls to action, and tracking built to attribute sales or sign-ups rather than views. We agree the goal and the metric that will judge it before sourcing starts.

• Goal defined upfront: awareness, conversion, or a mix, with the metric that will judge success
• Audience and platform selection matched to where your buyers actually are
• Budget allocation across creator tiers based on the goal, not a default split

Most campaigns fall somewhere between a pure-awareness launch and a pure-conversion push, and being honest about that mix upfront changes how a campaign is judged at the end. A brand-launch campaign might reasonably prioritize reach and sentiment; a promo-code campaign might prioritize a specific tracked action. Naming this early avoids the common problem of a campaign being retroactively judged against a metric it wasn't built to move.

We also set a rough timeline at this stage — how far out from a launch or key date creator outreach needs to start, since negotiation, contracting, content creation, and approval all take real calendar time before a single post goes live.

Creator sourcing and vetting

Sourcing starts from audience fit, not follower count alone. We check for fake-follower patterns and inflated engagement, review past brand partnerships for conflicts or overlap with competitors, and look at whether a creator's actual audience — not just their bio — matches who you're trying to reach. Brand safety review covers a creator's recent content and history for anything that would be a poor fit for your brand.

• Audience-quality checks: follower authenticity, engagement patterns, audience demographics where available
• Brand safety review of recent content and posting history
• Conflict checks against existing or competing brand partnerships
• Shortlist built against the campaign goal, not raw reach

We describe creator size using standard follower-count bands. These are definitions, not performance guarantees — engagement quality and audience fit generally matter more than tier alone, and a well-matched nano or micro creator often outperforms a mismatched macro one on a conversion goal.

• Nano: under 10,000 followers
• Micro: 10,000–100,000 followers
• Mid: 100,000–500,000 followers
• Macro: 500,000–1,000,000 followers
• Mega: over 1,000,000 followers

Tier mix is chosen against the goal set in the strategy stage: awareness campaigns commonly lean toward a wider spread across tiers for reach and variety of voice, while conversion-focused campaigns commonly concentrate budget on fewer, better-matched creators — this is a general pattern, not a fixed rule, and the right mix depends on your category and audience.

Outreach, contracts, and briefs

We handle outreach and negotiation directly with creators or their managers, so you're not chasing DMs. Contracts cover scope, timeline, usage rights (organic-only versus paid amplification), exclusivity if needed, and disclosure requirements. Creative briefs are written to give creators enough direction to stay on-brand while leaving room for the creator's own voice, which is generally what makes the content perform. Content is reviewed against the brief before it goes live.

• Outreach and negotiation handled on your behalf
• Contracts covering usage rights, exclusivity, timeline, and disclosure terms
• Creative briefs balancing brand requirements with creator voice
• Content approval step before anything posts

Negotiation covers more than rate. Timeline (how far ahead of posting a creator needs product or information), number of revision rounds a creator will accept on their own content, and exclusivity (whether a creator can't post for a competing brand for a period around the campaign) all get set in writing before content is produced, since these are the points most likely to cause friction if left implicit.

Briefs are written to protect brand essentials — required messaging, disclosure, anything legally or factually necessary to include — while leaving format, tone, and delivery to the creator. Over-scripted content is usually easy to spot as an ad and tends to underperform content that reads as the creator's own voice.

Disclosure and compliance

Sponsored content needs to be disclosed clearly — this isn't optional and it isn't a creative choice. In Canada, Ad Standards Canada guidance and platform policies require clear disclosure (for example, #ad) on any content where a brand has provided payment, product, or other consideration. We build disclosure requirements into every contract and brief, and check that it's present before content goes live, not after.

• Disclosure requirements written into every contract
• Content checked for proper disclosure before publishing
• Guidance aligned to Ad Standards Canada and relevant platform disclosure policies

Disclosure requirements are explained to creators as part of the brief, not left for them to infer from general platform norms — expectations vary by platform and by the type of consideration provided (payment, free product, or both), and getting this wrong creates risk for both the creator and the brand.

Tracking and reporting

We set up tracking before content goes live — UTM-tagged links, unique discount codes, or affiliate links, matched to whether the goal is awareness or conversion. Reporting after the campaign covers what ran, on which creators and platforms, and the numbers those trackers captured. We report what the data shows; we don't project results we can't measure.

Awareness campaigns are generally tracked through reach, views, and engagement on the content itself, since there's often no single conversion event to attribute. Conversion campaigns are tracked through unique codes or links per creator, so performance can be compared creator to creator rather than reported only as a campaign-wide total. Where you have your own analytics or attribution setup, we align tracking to work alongside it rather than duplicating a separate system.