How to measure the success of a collaboration with a brand

When a brand collaboration is over, do you ever wonder “how to measure the success of a collaboration with a brand? What makes it a successful marketing campaign or not? Measuring the success of a collaboration with a brand is essential for both influencers and talent managers to understand what’s working and where improvements can be made

As an award-winning talent manager with years of experience navigating hundreds of brand deals, I’ve learned that success isn’t just about vanity metrics like follower count or likes. Sometimes your success is determined by aligning objectives, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), and ultimately driving real, measurable results. 

In this article, I’ll share proven strategies to evaluate the impact of your brand collaborations and ensure long-term success in your social media marketing partnerships.

The key elements of a successful brand deal or collaboration 

A successful brand deal or collaboration hinges on several key elements. First, clear objectives and expectations are essential, ensuring both you and the brand are aligned on goals. Whether it’s boosting brand awareness, driving social media engagement, or increasing sales make sure you know the point of the collaboration.  In fact, before you begin the partnership, make sure you both understand what the campaign’s goals are. These are questions you need to ask at the very beginning of your negotiation. 

Authenticity is crucial as well—your values, audience, and content style should naturally align with the brand’s image to create a genuine connection with the target audience. We can all see through creators that post content that makes zero sense for their brand. 

Strong communication throughout the collaboration is super important. It allows both parties to actively participate in planning, content creation, and campaign performance reviews. Life happens and things always come up that impact the campaign. Don’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call your agency contact if any questions or issues arise. 

Now I know this next element is super important to you as an influencer. Having creative freedom is key to a successful campaign. Content that feels natural and unscripted is more likely to resonate with your audience. I get it! Believe me, my creators tell me this all the time when reading briefs that are too scripted for their liking.

Finally, transparency and compliance with legal and platform-specific regulations are essential for maintaining trust with your audience and ensuring a smooth collaboration. Nobody wants to run afoul of the FTC, the governing body for Influencer online content. 

Worth noting, sometimes a successful campaign happens when a brand or an Influencer, reads the room really well, to either jump on a trend or conversely, hold on going live with content.  

Whether it’s about a trending topic or cultural hot conversation, when a brand and Influencer are tapped into their audience, listening to the conversations and capitalize accordingly, that makes for some great partnerships! 

How to track the success of brand deals

There are two ways to track the success of brand deals.  The first one is quantitative and involves tracking the numbers.

Yes, I’m referring to sales data, impressions, reach, views, plays and saves. The engagement on your sponsored content is what brands pay attention to. How many people did the content reach? How many people were moved to make a sale? How many people downloaded the app or whatever your call to action (CTA) was? This information is one way they track the success of a campaign. 

The other way to track the success of brand deals is via qualitative information. What were the comments on your content? What DMs did you get from your audience sharing personal stories or their experiences with the product? What sort of feedback did you get from posting the sponsored content?

I recommend you keep a folder of relevant and positive DMs and comments about campaigns you do to share with the brands. Those positive (and negative) messages aren’t tracked by any platform and they’re definitely feedback you want to share over to the brand. 

Showcase the positive outcomes, whether it’s increased brand awareness, enhanced product visibility, or boosted sales. By highlighting these achievements, you position yourself as a valuable asset to possible future collaborators, and increase the likelihood of working with this brand again. 

Metric and analytics to use to track brand sponsorships and collaborations 

I write this with a caveat. All the social media platforms, YouTube, Meta, TikTok that we know of now, are often (always?!) changing the metrics they track. So take this with a grain of salt about specifically what I mention vs what information is actually available to you at the time you’re looking. 

The takeaway here is that there is quantifiable information to look at. Currently what I track with my creators is this list of numbers : 

• Views
• Impressions
• Reach
• Saves
• Shares
• Reposts
• Likes
• Comments
• Play time

As an influencer, the ability to measure the success of collaborations through social media analytics is a powerful tool in demonstrating your impact to both brands and your audience.  Effectively communicating these insights to potential brand partners enhances your credibility and illustrates the tangible value you bring to collaborations. 

Leveraging successful collaborations to attract more lucrative opportunities involves creating a portfolio of success stories.  Yes, you’ll share these metrics across to each brand partner. But they also help you build the case for future campaigns with other brands by showcasing what a great investment you are.

Post campaign evaluation and reporting  

Comprehensive Campaign Recap for Brands

Your comprehensive campaign recap should be quite detailed including all the deliverables, performance metrics and any major highlights or audience feedback. Make sure to include all of the numbers I shared previously such as  engagement rates, reach and saves.  conversions, and any specific goals agreed upon with the brand at the start.

Qualitative Feedback from the Audience

In addition to the numbers, aka the quantitative metrics mentioned above, make sure you share the personal side of the campaign’s impact. This is the qualitative part of the campaign which includes any response and feedback from your audience such as DMs, specific comments and personal anecdotes.

This information is just as important as the quantitative metrics but aren’t captured anywhere unless you share them across to the brand. 

Suggestions for Future Collaborations

Don’t be afraid to provide constructive feedback on how the brand can do the campaign even more successfully in the future. If you had pieces of content that did well, you can suggest they whitelist it for a great impact.  This is a great way to show your commitment to the brand and it’s future success. 

Creating a Comprehensive Campaign Recap for Brands

My Influencers and I like to use Influence Kit to showcase the impact and reach of a campaign.  Influence Kit is a great tool that pulls in all the deliverables for a campaign and then presents a lovely visual to share with the brand.  

Influence Kit is dynamic, updating numbers every 24 hours, capturing all the metrics that you’d want to know. InfluenceKit makes it easy for Influencers to track, organize and analyze their influencer campaigns. I highly recommend it! It’s one of the many tools available to you to measure the campaign’s success.

As far as I know there is still no tool that captures the qualitative success of a campaign. Don’t forget to include screenshots of DMs and stories your followers share with you about the brand. 

The Value of Transparent Communication with Brand Partners

Transparent communication is essential from day one of a brand collaboration. It helps build trust between you, the Influencer and the brand. Being transparent also helps to ensure everyone is aligned on campaign goals and expectations. This helps you avoid any misunderstandings down the road. 

I’ve always found when I’ve got open, transparent communication with our brand partners, it helps either ensure a smooth campaign or navigate any challenges that come up, with ease.

What to do if a brand collaboration doesn’t go as planned 

When a brand collaboration doesn’t go as planned, you can’t take it personally. It happens. Oftentimes it’s for reasons out of your control so it’s not worth spinning your wheels as to why. As an Influencer you can put some money behind the content to boost it on social media. You can repost it later when perhaps it would make more sense. 

Whenever this happens, be up front and direct with the brand. Take responsibility if it was in fact your fault.  Be super transparent with your brand contact. Share across a couple solutions or adjustments you can make. 

Give feedback to the brand with perspective on lessons learned, where things might have gotten off track and how you can all do better next time. 

Know that brand collaborations don’t always go as planned. This could be due to a multitude of factors. I’ve had campaigns go awry because of events out of our control such as national weather emergencies or breaking news. I’ve had campaigns flop because there actually wasn’t any interest from the Influencer’s audience, even though we assumed otherwise.

Sometimes the timing is just off because it’s off. I’ve had an influencer share about a cozy soup recipe and there was a freak day of 80 degree sunshine in her city so nobody cared about a hot soup. 

Yes, a lot of the success of a campaign comes down to the numbers. But it’s truly about capturing the full story of the partnership’s impact. Make sure to marry the numerical data with personal anecdotes to showcase the true reach of the campaign. Know that each brand collaboration opportunity is a chance to learn more about your audience and how to work successfully with brands. 

After reading this article, I recommend how to get more deals as an Influencer for you. Keep on learning and growing your platform!

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