Hey there, rockstars! 🌟 Ever been scrolling through your emails or DMs and stumbled upon an offer from a brand that made you go, ‘Wait, what do they actually want from me?’ Yeah, we’ve been there. In the world of influencer campaigns, brands are always cooking up exciting ways to collaborate. From the glitz and glam of Event Activations to the organic vibes of UGC Campaigns, there’s a whole world of campaign types out there.
But here’s the real tea ☕: not all campaigns are created equal. And just like you wouldn’t wear stilettos to the beach (unless that’s your vibe, then you do you! 💁♀️), you’ve got to pick the right campaign type that fits your style. That’s why we’re about to get right into learning about different campaign types. It’s not just about knowing what these are, but why they matter and how they can level up your influencer game. So, buckle up, beauties! Let’s look at the influencer-brand love story, one campaign type at a time! 💖🚀
Discount Codes and Affiliate Marketing
These are often entry-level influencer campaigns used by brands as a sales strategy. On the upside, you can generate reasonable income if you create viral content or have a highly engaged audience. Typically, though, the effort versus the financial reward often isn’t there.
- Nature of the Campaign: Brands provide products and ask influencers to offer a discount code or affiliate link to drive sales.
- Tracking and Analytics: Brands monitor these codes and links to gauge the influencer’s campaign success.
- Payment Structure: Influencers usually receive the product as a gift, with the primary income potential stemming from sales commissions.
- Prospective Earnings: Though upfront fees might be minimal or non-existent, influencers have the chance to earn considerable commissions if they drive sales effectively by creating viral content or having a highly engaged audience.
- Sales Driven Strategy: This approach leans heavily on direct sales, where the influencer’s income largely depends on the commissions from those sales.
- Potential for High Returns: With an engaged audience or viral content, this strategy can prove very profitable.
- Effort vs. Return: Many influencers find the effort outweighing the potential income, making it a less viable option for many.
- Navigating Offers: It’s essential to consider and potentially negotiate the terms, ensuring that the effort aligns with the potential earnings.
Weigh up carefully whether Discount Code and Affiliate Marketing Influencer Campaigns are right pathway for you. Often, it’s easier to decline these offers or try to negotiate a content fee for your work.
Competitions and Giveaways
Competition and Giveaway Campaigns give the brand the chance to grow their audience and collect valuable data, all while providing your audience with the thrill of potential rewards. As influencers, it’s important to understand the mechanisms and any legal requirements of these types of campaigns.
- Nature of the Campaign: Brands usually provide products or services for the influencer to promote as competition prizes or giveaways.
- Campaign Objective: Primarily, these campaigns are designed to boost the brand’s social media follower/ fan base, grow their email lists, or gather specific data from the influencer’s audience.
- Terms and Conditions: Always be clear on who is responsible for handling the competition rules. Overlooking this aspect can lead to potential conflicts, especially as the competition value rises.
- Prize Delivery: Establish clear lines of responsibility for announcing winners and sending prizes. While giveaways can boost audience engagement, managing the delivery logistics might outweigh the benefits. Whether choosing from post comments or another method, ensure there’s a clear and foolproof process to prevent errors like incorrect address details.
- Legal Considerations: Many jurisdictions have legal compliance requirements for giveaways. Have these been properly considered and implemented to avoid any liability falling back on you?
Competitions and Giveaways require thinking through all the elements of delivering the prizes and product to the winner, and in many states and countries has specific legal requirements. When done well, it’s great but make sure you’re considering all the aspects of the competition and giveaway before you commit to doing this type of campaign.
UGC Campaign
UGC is User Generated Content. Brands engage UGC Creators to create content that feels raw and authentic but isn’t – it’s sponsored content. UGC campaign content is typically used for organic and paid distribution by the brand and generally isn’t published on the UGC Creator’s account.
- Nature of the Campaign: Brands leverage UGC campaigns for a range of purposes: driving engagement, enhancing credibility, boosting brand awareness, and showcasing social proof.
- Casual vs. Professional: While the average person might tag a brand on social media casually, for a UGC Creator, it’s a monetised content creation opportunity.
- Influencers vs. UGC Creators: Not all UGC Creators are influencers. Influencers are used to get a wider reach with content that is published at minimum on the influencer’s channels and often reshared via organic and paid distribution by the brand. UGC Creators specialise in creating content for brand use that is not published on the UGC Creators account.
- Content Production Value: UGC campaigns produce content with a low production value, emphasising an organic look and feel, often crafted on phones and edited with apps like CapCut.
- Payment Considerations: Though UGC content might be paid fees lower than traditional influencer content, it offers easy entry points. And, brands often commission multiple content pieces from UGC Creators, offering increased opportunities.
Entry as a UGC Creator has a far lower threshold than an Influencer, so it can be a way to learn the ropes of being a professional content creator without the need to have built a large audience to attract brands for paid collaborations.
Content Whitelisting
You might have been offered a Content Whitelisting, Boosted Content, White Labelling, Creator Advertising Access or Paid Media Promotion. These are terms brands often use interchangeably. This type of campaign allows brands to post content and run paid ads using your account instead of your own.
- Nature of the Campaign: Essentially, it is a paid social advertising campaign completed through your account, not the brand’s.
- Multiple Terminologies: Content Whitelisting might be also be called as Boosted Content, White Labelling, Creator Advertising Access, Paid Media Promotion, Dark Posts or something similar. Brands can use these terms interchangeably.
- Building Trust: Brands use Whitelisting to build trust by using a familiar face for ads.
- Target Audience Control: This strategy offers granular control over the content’s target audience.
- Additional Brand Benefits: Brands can tap into their target audience through your fan base, they may use A/B or split testing to determine what type of ads work best to and often provide strong engagement and conversation rates.
- Traditional Whitelisting: Creators organically post content, and give brands permission and access amplify its reach as a paid ad. On TikTok, these are called Spark Ads.
- Generalised Whitelisting Access: This is a less common approach, where influencers provide wider access for brands to run any ads from their account, regardless of your participation in the creative or content.
- Enhanced Reach: Depending on ad specifics, Whitelisting can boost your reach as the brand spend to promote the content might expose you to new audiences.
- Strengthened Portfolio: A good Whitelisting Campaign can be added to your influencer portfolio, potentially opening doors to more opportunities.
- Lack of Oversight: Giving whitelisting access often means you can’t view or approve the any ads being run by the brand.
- Audience Overwhelm: Your followers might be bombarded with #sponcon. It’s important any whitelisted campaigns have a great alignment for your audience with the brand.
- Contract Clarity: Contractual terms and conditions for whitelisting agreements can be trickier to understand. Check you fully understand what you’re giving permission for when agreeing to this type of campaign.
Understanding the complexities of content whitelisting enables influencers to navigate this promotional strategy more confidently, optimizing its potential while safeguarding their brand identity and audience rapport.
Brand Ambassador Campaigns
The aspirational goal for all influencers, right? It’s the hype status of being an influencer – when a brand signs you to a longer term campaign, your hard work is really starting to pay off. Like most careers, Brand Ambassador Campaigns can take time and effort to become a consistent part of your portfolio.
- Nature of the Campaign: Brand Ambassador Campaign usually include a broad mix of tactics, from sales, brand and/ or product awareness to enhancing positive brand sentiment.
- Duration of Partnership: Unlike other types of campaigns, Brand Ambassador Campaigns usually run for several months or even years.
- Content Collaboration: Brands will often work with you to develop the content plan and content angles and give you greater input as to how the campaign will be delivered.
- Comprehensive Deliverables: Expectations run high, with content deliverables often required across multiple platforms, a high number or type of specific deliverables; and may include “always-on” content.
- Payment Considerations: A well negotiated Brand Ambassador Campaign can offer an excellent income. Strong performance of your content, professionalism and willingness to do the work, should set you up well for a contract renewal or extension.
TIP: If you’re self-managed (you don’t have an agent or manager), listen into 10 Tactics for Success as a Self-Managed Influencer for some extra resources around Brand Ambassador Campaigns.
Being signed as a Brand Ambassador is professional elevation for influencers. It’s a social proof of your impact and the trust a brand places in your ability to represent and elevate their image. Kudos!
Event Activations
Brands will often engage influencers for event activations. Think large scale events like SXSW, VidCon, TwitchCon, film screenings, product launches, store openings – and everything between. Event Activations are a great opportunity for you to boost your visibility and potentially, secured paid work.
- Nature of the Campaign: Brands collaborate with influencers for a wide range of events types, from large scale like VidCon or SXSW, niche events like TwitchCon and CreatorVerse, or other events such as film premiers (Barbie – need I say more?!) and store openings.
- Campaign Objective: Event Activations are usually to build brand awareness, create hype around products, boost credibility, and drive sales or event attendance.
- Campaign Term: most Event Activations are single events or part of a series, there’s often opportunities to leverage these for paid collaborations.
- Scope: For influencers, it’s all about knowing what you’re signing up for. Are you invited to enjoy the event and “be seen there”, or is there expectations for you to share it across your socials too? And hey, are they planning to make content with your face on it? Getting these details straight can make a big difference in how you talk money and ensure everyone’s on the same page.
When live events crash the digital party, that’s where Event Activations come in – mixing the buzz of real-life moments with the power of online clout. It’s like a cool jam session between brand stories and genuine influencer vibes, all set against some epic event backdrops. Go along for the fun but don’t leave money on the table if there’s opportunity to leverage your influence.
A note on Gifted Campaigns for Influencers
Before we wrap this blog post, a little teaser for you: we’re going to get into the nitty gritty ‘Gifted Campaigns’ in a dedicated blog post and podcast episode soon. Brands love gifting (aka sampling) freebies as part of their influencer game plan. And since our website search terms suggest you have a ton of questions about this, we’re going dedicate a whole episode to it. Be sure to subscribe or follow us on Instagram so you know when that content drops.
Alright, superstar! 🌟 Loved what you read here? Well, you’re in for a treat! Tune into our podcast, The Business Of Influence, and jump straight to Episode 15 ‘An Influencers Guide to Brand Campaign Types’. We get all chatty about everything brand campaigns. Grab your headphones, and let’s continue the conversation there. Listen now and level up your influencer game! 🎧🚀
