Harsh reality, I know.

Sure, sending an influencer free product in hopes that they organically use it and it goes viral is a good idea in theory. But if there is no creator campaign that supports a business objective, you’re unprepared. You need a plan.

A marketing plan gives brands a plan to turn their marketing goals into measurable actions. If you apply this to creator marketing, it’s easy to understand how key components help brands more than sending PR packages. 

Start with the “Why”

• If choosing a creator comes before figuring out your goals, you’re off-track. What’s the goal, is it to convert your audience into sales, increase brand awareness, maybe reach a new audience? 

Know Your Target Audience

• Follower count isn’t actually important. What’s important is picking a creator whose audience resonates with the brand’s target customer. 

  • Who follows the creator?

  • What’s their niche? Who’s the Competition?

• Competitive analysis is important because it can reveal opportunities. What can the brand do to differentiate themselves? The goal isn’t to copy your competitors; it's to identify where you can do something a little different. 

Strategy Before Tactics

• How are you increasing visibility? By partnering with relevant micro-creators to build awareness and identity among a specific target audience. 

• What’s the tactic? Paid campaigns, sending product, defined content deliverables. 

Measure What’s Actually Important

• You can’t just blindly trust a creator, and partner with them again because they got decent views. You need to determine if their campaign worked. Depending on the objective, marketers may track engagement, website traffic, conversions, discount-code usage, or other valuable tools. 

The creator is not the strategy, they’re a part of it. 

Successful creator marketing requires thoughtful planning like any other marketing plan: a clear objective, specific audience, competitive understanding, strategic approach, tactics that have purpose, and results that can be measured. HubSpot identifies these elements as important components of developing a successful marketing plan. 

So, before sending that next PR package to an influencer with 100,000+ followers, ask yourself:

What are you trying to accomplish? 

If the answer isn’t clear, you probably don't have a creative marketing strategy, just an expensive package with a pretty bow on it.