What influencer campaign management actually involves

Influencer campaign management is everything between "we want to work with creators" and a finished campaign you can measure: finding the creators, agreeing fees, briefing, approving content, getting it live, watching the results, changing course and paying everyone. Finding creators is the part people picture. In my experience it's about 10% of the job.

Someone once told me they thought a campaign manager's job was just finding creators. I mean, yes. Finding the right ones matters more than anything else we do. But it's where the work starts, not where it ends.

Once you have a shortlist, here's what comes next:

1. Outreach. So much outreach. Most creators get more brand messages than they can answer, so a clear, specific first message matters.
2. Negotiating fees. Always negotiating. Deliverables, usage rights, exclusivity and timing all change the price.
3. Aligning timelines. Product has to arrive, concepts have to be agreed, and the posting window has to match the launch.
4. Chasing. Lots of chasing.
5. Getting concepts approved. The creator pitches the idea, the brand signs it off.
6. Getting content back and giving feedback. Then getting that approved. Then more feedback. Then another approval.
7. Going live. Finally.

Every step has a person on the other side with their own schedule, and a delay at any one of them moves everything after it.

While all of that is happening, we're also zooming out. We check the campaign data, look at social listening to see what people are actually talking about, and watch which creators and which pieces of content are performing.

That's how you spot what's working, what isn't and where to change direction. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a campaign is not stick to the original plan. Has the plan changed? It usually has.

Social listening also tells you what's already happening without you. When rhode launched in Spain on 30 September, the Sephora in Madrid was packed, with queues around the rhode shelves. The official marketing had been an announcement and a countdown. But 117 Spanish creators had posted about rhode organically in September: 180 posts and 10.6 million views, more than double the spring. When enough people are talking about a brand, the launch has already happened. A campaign manager who sees that conversation building can plan around it instead of starting from zero.

The right creator isn't only the one with the right audience. It's the one with the right idea. When Kyra started TikTok creator marketing for Original Penguin, part of Perry Ellis International, in September, Emma Codd, Kyra's Director of Campaign Management, credited the casting with setting the first month off: one creator fitted several looks from the collection into a single video. The brief didn't ask for that. Picking someone who'd think of it did.

That's also why the roster keeps changing. You learn from each round which creators the audience responds to, and the next round of casting starts from there.

Chloe Nutkins, Kyra's Head of Finance, calls her side of influencer marketing "the bit nobody films". It's three things:

• 
  Making sure creators get paid, and on time. Creators remember which brands paid late. It affects whether they want to work with you again, and how hard they work when they do.
• 
  The cash. A campaign with dozens of creators means dozens of invoices, in different currencies, on different terms.
• 
  Knowing what a campaign actually cost, not just what it looked like. Fees, product, shipping, usage rights, paid amplification. You only know your real cost per result, whether that's views, sign-ups or sales, once all of it is in.

It's the slightly unglamorous part that makes the glamorous part possible. If it goes wrong, nothing else about the campaign matters much.

So yes, I find creators. I also negotiate, coordinate, chase, analyse, solve problems, approve, adapt and occasionally put out a few fires along the way.

If you're hiring for the role or deciding whether to run campaigns in-house, plan for all of it. The skill isn't any single step. It's keeping every moving piece working together, and knowing when to change the plan.