I’ve been digging into our campaign performance and I’m noticing something frustrating: we often agree with influencers on deliverables (like “5 posts, 1 story series”) but the success metrics we care about aren’t always aligned with what the creator is optimizing for.
For example, we might care about conversions to our site. The influencer cares about engagement rate and followers. So their creative strategy might drive lots of likes but not actually move anyone toward purchase. Or we’re measuring reach in one market, they’re optimizing for engagement in another.
It’s not malicious or anything—it’s just that we never explicitly connected the dots between their KPI and our business outcome.
We had one campaign where the creator delivered exactly what was asked for (10 Stories, 2 Reels, captions with product mentions). Numbers looked solid on the surface. But at the end, conversions were flat. When I dug in, it turned out the creator’s audience was mostly aspirational followers from different countries who loved the content but weren’t in our target market.
Now I’m trying to figure out: at what point in the partnership should you actually lock in KPIs with the creator? Do you do it in the negotiation phase with a contract, or do you have a pre-campaign planning call where you literally walk through what success looks like for both parties?
Also, how do you handle it when the creator’s natural strength (like high engagement) doesn’t match your primary metric (like conversions)? Do you ask them to shift their approach, or do you just acknowledge the mismatch and keep their role narrower?
This is a massive blind spot for most in-house teams, honestly. You’ve identified the core problem: people confuse output metrics with outcome metrics.
Output = what the creator delivers (posts, reach, impressions)
Outcome = what that drives for the business (conversions, ROAS, pipeline)
Here’s what actually fixes this: create a pre-campaign brief that explicitly states both. It should look like:
Creator Deliverables: 5 posts, 3 stories
Creator Target Metrics: 25k reach, 8% engagement rate (this is what they control)
Brand Success Metrics: 500 clicks to product page, $2k in attributed sales (this is what we expect from those deliverables)
Then, crucially, you do a post-campaign review of both. If they hit their metrics but you don’t hit yours, that tells you: the audience quality or message fit isn’t right for this creator. Don’t blame them, but also don’t hire them for this campaign again.
For the conversion question: if a creator’s natural strength is engagement but your primary metric is conversions, they might not be the right fit for this specific campaign. That’s not a judgment on them—they’re just optimizing for a different goal.
I’d say: hire them for awareness-stage campaigns where engagement matters. For conversion-stage campaigns, find creators with proven track records of driving clicks and sales.
One more thing: you need to track the full funnel. A creator drives 10k impressions. Of those, 500 click through. Of those, 50 purchase. If you’re only looking at clicks, you might miss that this creator’s audience has a 10% conversion rate, which is actually solid. Context matters.
I love that you’re thinking about this structurally! Here’s what I’ve seen work really well:
Have a 30-minute planning call before the campaign starts. In that call, walk through:
- What does success look like for the creator? (What are they optimizing for?)
- What does success look like for the brand? (What are we measuring?)
- Where do those align, and where do they diverge?
- If they diverge, what do we do about it?
Often, creators will actually help you think through this. They know their audience better than anyone. If they’re like “yeah, my audience usually researches a lot before buying,” that tells you their role might be more top-of-funnel.
Documenting this in the brief is key. Seriously, just write it down so there’s no ambiguity later.