How To Wrap Up a Brand Campaign Like a Pro

Believe it or not, brand collaborations don’t just end when you hit publish.

In fact, there are a lot of loose ends to tie up after you put your content live, and if you want to impress your brand partners and get asked back as a repeat client, you’re in the right place.

Today we’re going to walk through all of the steps to properly wrap up a brand collaboration as an influencer.

I’ve worked with dozens of brands like Amazon, L’Oreal, and LOFT in my 10 years as a micro-influencer.

If you’ve done a brand partnership before, you know it’s never as simple as it seems. You handle a lot: reaching out, negotiating, redlining contracts, creating content, and engaging your audience. And that’s before we even get to reporting and analytics.

Campaign Wrap Up: Step-by-Step Walkthrough for Influencers

Let’s go over what to do after a sponsored post so you impress the brand. Doing this right can get them to ask you back for future collaborations.

Make sure everything looks good

As soon as you hit publish, make sure you properly upload all your content across platforms.

Check that your Instagram stories are in order and that all required hashtags or tags work and are clickable. Double-check your spelling and grammar to avoid simple mistakes.

Typos, wrong files, or posting on the wrong platform happen more than you think. Before doing anything else, confirm everything matches what the brand agreed upon.

Let them know your post is up

Next, email the brand with a link to your post and let them know it’s live.

Talking to friends in influencer marketing, I’ve learned how important this step really is.

Even if you agreed on the platform, date, or time, always notify the brand when you post.

There’s a chance that you are one of dozens, if not hundreds of influencers part of the brand campaign that you’re working on especially if you were cast through a third-party platform.

Make it easy for your brand rep to find your posts, so they don’t miss anything or search later.

Remember to screenshot your analytics

Next you’ll want to set a reminder on your phone to screenshot your analytics at 23 hours.

I advise doing it at 23 hours because Instagram Stories expire 24 hours after you post them.

Give content a full day of impressions so the brand can analyze its initial performance.

Do the same for static or permanent posts, so the brand sees how they perform in the first 24 hours.

Calculate your performance

Review your screenshots to calculate key metrics the brand will want to know.

Report analytics like engagement, reach, click-through rate, and video or story viewer retention.

Sharing these numbers helps the brand understand how your posts performed compared to your typical content.

Note that sponsored content usually performs slightly lower than organic posts. If your engagement rate was higher than average in your industry, be sure to highlight that to the brand.

Share your metrics in a wrap up report

Now it’s time to share your screenshots and numbers with your brand partner. I’m here to tell you that I have done this task in so many different ways over the years.

Some brands ask you to put your screenshots in a Google Drive folder, others will have you upload it to a back end or particular content platform.

The reason I don’t prefer those options is that I’ve found that they honestly leave out a lot of details. It’s really hard to paint an overall picture when screenshots are just kind of haphazardly flung in a Google Drive folder.

Without much context, the brand representative has to do more work to organize your content, especially if the screenshots are out of order or unnamed.

So while every brand has different submission preferences, I started compiling a campaign wrap up report last year, and brand partners have responded really well to it.

This, of course, will require a little bit of extra effort, but I think it’s worth it because you will really, really impress the brand when you do this.

What I have done for several past brand collaborations is to take my screenshots and analytics, put them into basically a beautiful PDF document with additional insights. It really helps tell an overall story to brands.

Very few people are doing things like this when they share metrics with brands, I think this is just such a great opportunity to get ahead, make a good impression and have a brand really remember you and want to ask you back for future partnerships.

Make Reporting Easy with My Campaign Wrap Up Template

I’ve actually taken my campaign wrap up report and turned it into a digital downloadable template that you can all access and use for your own brand partnerships.

My Campaign Wrap Up Template is fully editable within Canva. And it’s super, super easy to use. Drag and drop your screenshots into the template frames, replace the text with your own insights, and save the document as a PDF.

It comes in five colors, but you can customize it as much as you’d like. If you already have a branded color palette that you use, you can save those hex values in a Canva Pro account (try Canva Pro free for 30 days!) and automatically apply them to this template with the click of a button.

One recent brand partner who received the report said, “Oh my goodness, this little recap is amazing. I wish all creators would do this. Thank you x10,000!” 

Now THAT is the kind of response you want from a brand partner at the end of a collaboration.

All you really have to do is drag and drop in your screenshots, swap the dummy text with your own insights, download it and send it off to the brand.

Email them your recap report and invoice

At the end of the partnership, in a new, separate email I will send my campaign wrap up report along with my invoice.

You should send the brand an invoice now if you haven’t already, so you can get paid for your work.

And of course, be sure to include a “thank you” in this email that you’re sending them with your wrap up report and with your invoice with all of your payment details.

Campaign Wrap Up: Don’t Forget to Follow Up

The day that you send that invoice, set a reminder in your phone or put it on your Google Calendar to check in with the brand three months from that date. 

I think that it’s really great to make a habit of checking in quarterly with your brand partners to see what they’re working on, if there’s anything new on the horizon, and mainly just ask if there are other ways that you can support them. This will keep you top of mind for future brand partnerships.

Grab Your Campaign Wrap Up Template Now

If you’re interested in purchasing the campaign wrap up template to make your reporting easier, you can grab that here!

If you have any additional questions about the campaign wrap up process, leave them in the comments down below.

yours,

Austen 

Photos by Karya Schanilec

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