Best Practices for Managing your Partnerships

Did you know that **56% of brands use the same influencers** across campaigns? That means that maintaining strong relationships with your brand partners is key to your success as a creator. Not to mention, glowing reviews certainly make landing new partnerships easier! To help you really wow your brand partners, we put together these best practices for managing your partnerships to maximize success.

Keep all campaign information organized

Make sure you keep your campaign information in order to avoid getting behind on deadlines or having to reshoot. Paying attention to details in the campaign brief and ensuring your content fits guidelines is essential for standing out. Check out the following tools to help you organize your campaigns and keep track of important details such as required hashtags and talking points.

• Trello: If you aren’t familiar with Trello, the system is similar to a bulletin board that has been ordered. Simply set up a campaign board similar to this one and start creating cards to manage your partnerships. Trello lets you add deadlines, attachments, checklists and more to make tracking your partnerships easy!
• Notion: Notion is similar to Trello, except that you can easily swap your board view for alternatives like the list view where you can see each brand partner. Each brand can be given their own page for adding campaign details, deadlines, and their own board for creating required content.
• Kitly: Kitly was designed with creators in mind, and they make sharing post campaign insights even easier. Within Kitly you can add deliverables across a variety of different platforms, the rate you have agreed to, and use the notes section for important information from the campaign brief. Kitly will even send you a reminder to upload your content before the deadline!
• Read your campaign brief thoroughly

Submit campaign content early

Imagine if everyone submitted their content right at the deadline. Aim for 48 hours in advance when possible to give your brand partners wiggle room (and yourself should there be a need for any adjustments). Your brand partners will appreciate the extra time to review. Plus avoiding working up to the deadline ensures a less stressful time creating for you!

Respond within 24 hours to all campaign communications

It’s easy to get behind on email, but make sure your brand partners know they are a priority in your inbox. Do your best to let partners know if you are busy or will not be responding to emails for a certain period of time. Should you come across any issues with the campaign, be sure to let them know immediately! After letting them know, you can work together on finding a solution to any roadblocks you may have encountered.

Over-deliver

Everyone loves feeling like they got more than they paid for. Easy ways to over-deliver include cross-promoting content on other platforms or sharing an additional post on a new platform you are building up. For example, if you post an Instagram Reel, why not share it on TikTok and as a Pinterest Idea pin too? This provides your brand partner extra value without a lot of additional time on your end. Other ways to add value include providing a few extra images to your brand partner to choose from or an extra story slide.

Send post-campaign reports

What better way to show your partners how valuable your collaboration was than sharing all those 🔥 stats?! Make it easy to say yes to continuing to work with you by sharing post-campaign reports. You can check out a full post on post-campaign reports here! Your report will likely vary based on the campaign goal. Here are a few tools to help you when creating your post-campaign reports!

• Canva: Canva lets you do it all, and post-campaign reports are no exception! Keep the branding on point and make your own with the tips from our article on post-campaign reports.
• InfluenceKit: If you’re looking to save time on your campaign wrap-ups, InfluenceKit is a great option. They help you create automated reports to share with your brand partners that are continually updated. ****(1 free automated report)
• Kitly: Similar to InfluenceKit, Kitly lets you create automated reports to share with your brand partners. Reports are created using a hashtag or brand tag to help them source the correct content and stats are then automatically updated. However, you cannot edit their reports or add notes. (1 free automated report)

You may be wondering what you should do if your campaign stats fell short of the targets. Don’t ignore this! Be proactive in addressing why that may have happened and how it could be resolved. We always want to highlight the positives, but acknowledging any shortcomings and how they may be improved in the future is key to creating a lasting partnership.

Send invoices in a timely manner

Nobody wants to receive a bill for services months after the fact. Be sure to send your invoices in a timely manner but not before services have been completed and your post campaign report has been shared. Unless of course you have negotiated payment before the campaign commences, then send away!

• Willa Pay: Send invoices easily via the Willa Pay app with a 2.9% processing fee and the option to get paid instantly! Say goodbye to follow-up emails on those unpaid invoices. Not to mention, access to our creator community and education library for helpful content like this!
• Kitly: As part of their campaign management services, Kitly is expanding into invoicing as well with a staggered fee arrangement: free members pay a 3.5% platform fee + standard card fees (2.9% + 30¢/transaction), pro members pay 2.5% + standard card fees, while those on the publisher plan pay 1.5% + standard card fees. Pro members pay $8.99/month while those on the publisher plan pay $18.99/month.

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While following these steps doesn’t guarantee a long-term partnership, we know they’ll certainly help!

Your Action Plan

1. Decide where to organize your campaign
2. Add your current campaigns to your new system
3. Check in after a week or two to see how the system is working & adjust as needed

Test your knowledge

https://willapay.typeform.com/to/TkCnJPhV

What advice do you have on managing your partnerships and fostering long-term relationships?

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