Briefing Influencers for Beauty Content Creation
Great news — you’ve found the perfect influencers for your upcoming collaboration! You may have your creative concept and campaign messaging ready to share with those participating in the program, but it’s vital to take careful consideration when briefing influencers on product details in order to ensure content submissions are above and beyond your expectations. As a beauty brand, how can you ensure that the content influencers create for your brand is scroll-stopping and impactful?
In comparison to many other brands in the CPG category, beauty brands have additional elements to consider when outlining content creation requirements due to the nature of their product. While the vibrancy of color cosmetics are easy to showcase in images, product aspects such as quality, texture, and smell (especially you, fragrance brands!) are more challenging to relay.
Below are considerations beauty brands should keep in mind when briefing influencers to create compelling, clear content for a specific product, campaign, or initiative.
Content Cadence
Even though a skin care, hair care, or nail care product may feel nice on your skin, hair, or nails immediately, seeing the impact of certain types of products in these categories often takes time. According to Stylecaster, it takes about 28 days for skin cells to turn over, which means that almost all skincare products require at least one month of use before you’ll see results. Curating your content cadence to match the influencer’s posts to their product journey is important to craft a genuine story. It also helps to educate and set consumer expectations.
Tip: Take a multi-phased collaboration approach and ask influencers to capture content throughout their “product journey.” This way, they can build a story around their experience with and commitment to your product.
Product Terminology & Usage
Defining how to describe and use your product in captions or video content is key to ensuring consumers understand its benefits and overall effect. For example, posts marketing a makeup brush should incorporate specific details that help the consumer envision the feel of the bristles on the brush. Which sentence is more impactful?
- This brush feels so great on my skin and is just what I needed to apply my foundation!
- This brush is luxuriously soft, flat-headed, and provides even coverage for loose and pressed powders.
Providing influencers with the right beauty “buzzwords” such as contouring, highlighting, blending and more, is highly suggested to ensure you’re products are being spoken about and used in the proper format.
Tip: Create a list of acceptable and unacceptable adjectives to use to describe your product. Share How To videos with influencers, if applicable. Share the product landing page and any How To videos with the Influencer so that they get a deep sense of how your brand describes the product.
Packaging Necessities
Simply put — what aspect(s) of the product do you want consumers to see? Is it imperative for the ingredients to be shown? The brand logo? The product leaving the packaging?
Tip: Provide influencers with a few different options or recommendations around product placement. Ensure your guidelines aren’t too restricting, as influencers often cite that content with in-your-face product placement aren’t always their top performing posts.
Textural Considerations
Close up product shots intended to highlight texture and consistency don’t always end up being the most beautiful photos. While it’s important to give users an idea of how a product like a serum, as an example, would feel on your fingers and face, be strategic when prompting influencers with content direction to ensure quality control. You wouldn’t want to diminish the value of a wonderful product by showcasing it in a way that makes the texture look goopy or unappealing.
Tip: Avoid showcasing the texture of a product if there is any sense of concern in how the texture may appear in a photo or video. To control the way your product’s consistency is marketed, include pre-determined words and phrases in your brief used to describe its textural feel.
Other General Recommendations:
- Remember, the content your influencers are crafting will be available, at least for a period of time, for your brand to re-purpose on your owned and operated social and digital channels. Build your brief with your brand creative intentions in mind. (See: Releveraging Influencer Content)
- Review your brief with your creative team or designers who are experts in visually and verbally market your product.
- Depending on the scale of your program, offer to hop on the phone with an influencer to review the brief and build their storyline. Influencers often appreciate this extra step, which helps to build and strengthen your relationship with them! (See: Wining and Dining with Influencers)
- Develop short, easy-to-understand “product guidelines” that can be easily shared as a one sheet. These types of marketing materials are great for other types of brand partners, as well!
Many brands, like L’Oreal, are using AI tools like makeup mirrors to show the user what a shade of lipstick or blush, as an example, would look like on your face. Other brands, like Dermalogica, have developed skin care quizzes to help consumers make smarter purchase decisions informed by their problem areas and desired solutions. While these tools are great, they often aren’t the first introduction to a brand or product. Influencers act to connect with your audience and acquaint them with the benefits and value of your brand’s products with the goal of driving them to stickier tools and interactive experiences to bring them down the sales funnel.
With this is mind, build briefs that encourage influencers to create content that sparks more than one sense in order to create a lasting impression on a potential consumer. Even though briefs and requirements are vital in a collaboration, always make sure to empower influencers to impart their own style, align the content to their aesthetic, and allow them to use their creative expertise!
Now that you’re a content briefing expert, check out our tips for mastering influencer experiences!
ACTIVATE is a fully end-to-end influencer marketing platform, covering influencer discovery, program workflow, measurement, and analytics. The platform consists of an opt-in network of 150,000+ vetted and authenticated influencers. Pinpoint niche groups by leveraging our geo-targeting and micro-survey capabilities or dive in deep with our curated networks of creators. Notably, the networks span a diverse variety of influencers including ‘vegan foodies’, ‘outdoor enthusiasts’ , ‘bohemian stylistas’ (and more!). Need a hand? Leverage ACTIVATE Studio, our in-house team of influencer strategists to build out and execute custom influencer initiatives.
Want to learn more about ACTIVATE or Bloglovin’ ? Just drop us a note at research@activate.social.
