How to run your first creator campaign

The most common way a first creator campaign fails is not picking the wrong creators. It is starting without a way to tell afterwards whether it worked, which makes the second campaign as much of a guess as the first.

1. 1. Pick one goal you can measure

   Choose one: sales, sign-ups, or audience growth. Campaigns aiming at all three simultaneously produce content that serves none of them, and reports that cannot be judged.

   Write down the number that would make this a success before you spend anything. If you cannot name it, you will not be able to tell whether you got it.

2. 2. Set a budget and spread it across a test group

   For a first campaign, split the budget across five to ten smaller creators rather than concentrating it in one large one. You are buying information as much as reach, and one creator gives you a single data point that could be luck in either direction.

   Hold roughly 20 percent back. You will want to re-book whoever performs best while the campaign is still live, and that is the cheapest media you will buy all quarter.

3. 3. Shortlist on audience, not follower count

   For each candidate, check three things: whether their audience is in a country you sell to, whether the age and gender split matches your buyer, and whether their engagement is in line with others of their size. Reject on any of the three regardless of how good the content looks.

   Check the last few months of their posts for competitor sponsorships. A creator who promoted a direct competitor recently will convert worse and may be contractually barred anyway.

   Common mistake: Sorting a list by follower count. It is the one metric with the weakest relationship to outcomes, and it is the one every tool sorts by default.

4. 4. Brief tightly on rules, loosely on creative

   Be exact about the things that carry risk: claims that must not be made, the disclosure requirement, posting dates, deliverable counts, and competitor exclusions. Be permissive about tone, structure, and framing.

   Creators know what their audience responds to and you do not. Supplying a script is the most reliable way to get content that reads as an advert and performs like one.

5. 5. Set up tracking before anything goes live

   Give every creator a unique discount code and a tracked link, and add a how did you hear about us question at checkout. Each method catches people the others miss, and you cannot add any of them retrospectively.

   Record what each creator was paid alongside their tracking, in the same place. Cost per outcome is the only number that lets you compare creators, and it is impossible to reconstruct later from three separate tools.

6. 6. Measure per creator, then rebook

   Report per creator, not just per campaign: what each was paid, what each delivered in reach and engagement, and what each drove in revenue. A campaign average conceals that two creators carried it and six did nothing.

   Rebook the ones that worked at a longer commitment. Repeat partnerships almost always outperform first-time posts, because the audience reads the second and third mention as genuine use rather than a transaction.