Write the review question before the campaign ships.
By Paul Taylor · Written from inside live campaigns, not from a content calendar.
At the start of September, the brand lead on one of our performance campaigns got on a call with us to review the first month. We read the brand’s attribution panel together. The lead was clear about its limits: it showed what the brand could measure, not everything the campaign had done.
We changed how we buy before the next cycle began, not at the end of the year. From that day, no new creator on that campaign gets the full rate until the brand can attribute the placement.
A week later we added a second line to the same decision. It is the part I would hand to a buyer. Check the measurement first: the link or code, where it lands, where it sits in the post, and what the brand can actually see. Judge clicks and sign-ups after that, inside the window you agreed. A zero does not prove the tracking is broken. A good week does not let anyone promise conversions. Measurement and performance get checked separately, before anyone decides to book the creator again.
Why a review written afterwards teaches little
A review written after the result explains the result. If you did not write down what success looked like before launch, you will find a definition that fits whatever came back. A strong month proves the plan. A weak month proves bad luck, or a bad creator. Either way, the next brief reads like the last one.
The review also tends to land on the worst day for it: the day a creator misses a date or a deal falls apart. That is the day you most want to change a rule, and the day you know least about why it happened.
What we write down before it starts
When we change a rule on a campaign, the decision goes into a note with two lines filled in on the day: how we will know in a few weeks whether it was right, and the date we will check. The review date exists before the result does.
When a deal dies, we record what happened and finish the day’s work. If it suggests a pattern, the pattern goes into the notes as a candidate, with the data needed to decide it, and the weekly review decides. In October, a question about how we price one group of creators was parked for the weekly review that way, instead of being settled in a reply written the same afternoon.
How to use this
- Before launch, write the signal that will tell you the campaign worked, and where you will read it.
- Put the review date in the brief. Hold it after the first cycle, while there is still a next cycle to change.
- In the review, check the measurement before you judge the creator: link, landing page, placement, and what your own tools can see.
- When a result disappoints, write the lesson down as a candidate. Decide it on the review date, with the signal you named at the start.
A review only teaches if the question was written before the answer.