How do you run a micro influencer campaign in India
A micro influencer campaign runs in seven stages: brief, creator selection, contracting, seeding, production, approval and reporting, with four to six weeks as a workable planning range from signed brief to live content. Creator selection should use recent median performance rather than follower count alone, and production should not start before usage rights, revision caps and the posting window are agreed in writing.
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What counts as a micro influencer
Definitions vary, and the variation matters less than people think. Broadly, micro describes creators between roughly ten thousand and one hundred thousand followers. Below that is nano, above it is mid-tier.
The useful thing about the micro tier is not the follower band. It is that creators in it are usually large enough to have a defined audience and a consistent posting habit, and small enough that a brand collaboration is still a considered event rather than one of nine that month. That combination is why micro campaigns tend to produce content people actually watch, and why they also tend to be operationally messier than working with a single large account.
The trade-off is straightforward. One mid-tier creator is one negotiation, one contract and one deliverable to chase. Eight micro creators is eight of each. Anyone telling you micro is simply cheaper has not run one at volume.
The seven stages, and how long each actually takes
Stage one: the brief, three to five days
Product, audience, market, timeline, and specifically what you are measuring. A brief that says "drive awareness" is not a brief, it is a wish. Write down what evidence would convince you the campaign worked, because that determines whether you need reach, tracked traffic or reusable assets, and those three goals buy different creators.
Stage two: creator selection, five to ten days
Shortlisting, checking audience overlap against the audience you are actually buying, and getting median performance figures rather than follower counts. Expect some of the shortlist to decline or to be unavailable in your window. Building a shortlist with no slack is how a campaign loses two weeks.
Stage three: contracting, five to ten days
Deliverables, posting window, usage rights, whitelisting, exclusivity, revision cap, disclosure obligations and payment terms, all in writing. This is the stage brands try to compress and the stage that costs the most when it is compressed. Legal review on your side is usually the longest pole here, so start it early.
Stage four: seeding, three to fourteen days
Getting product physically into the creator hands with enough runway to use it before filming. This is a logistics problem that behaves like a logistics problem, and it is the stage most likely to blow the timeline. If the product ships from a warehouse rather than your desk, add a week.
Stage five: production, five to ten days
The creator shoots to the agreed brief. A good process reviews hook, pacing, audio and disclosure placement before the cut reaches the brand, because the fastest way to burn an approval round is to send a cut with a problem the agency could have caught.
Stage six: approval, three to seven days
One consolidated round of feedback, then revisions returned inside the contracted window. The failure mode here is not slowness, it is contradictory feedback from three stakeholders arriving separately over four days.
Stage seven: posting and reporting, one to three weeks
Content goes live in the agreed window. Reporting follows once the content has had time to settle, which for reels means at least seven days, because early numbers are not representative of where a post lands.
Add those up honestly and the answer is four to six weeks for a first campaign with creators you have not worked with before. Repeat campaigns with the same creators compress considerably, mostly because contracting and selection are already done.
How to choose the creators
Median view count over the last fifteen posts
The single most useful number available. It tells you what a typical deliverable will do. Ask for it, and be sceptical of anyone who offers you the best performing post instead. A creator whose median is a fraction of their follower count is not necessarily a bad buy, but you should be pricing against the median.
Audience composition, not audience size
Location, language and age distribution decide whether the audience overlaps with the one you are trying to reach. A creator with a large audience in the wrong cities is a large audience you are not buying.
Comment quality
Read the comments on the last ten posts. Real questions about the subject matter indicate an audience that pays attention. Generic praise and emoji indicate an audience that scrolls, or an audience that was purchased.
Posting consistency
A creator who posts three times a week has a live relationship with their audience. A creator who posts twice a month is asking your campaign to reintroduce them.
Prior brand density
A feed that is one sponsored post after another has an audience trained to skip them. Some brand history is a good sign, because it means the creator has been briefed before and can deliver to a spec. A feed made entirely of it is a warning.
The failure modes, in order of how often they occur
Production started before the terms were agreed
By far the most common. Everyone is enthusiastic, the shoot happens, and then somebody asks whether the brand can run the asset as an ad. Now you are negotiating from a position where the content already exists and you clearly want it. Agree the rights before the shoot, every time.
Buying follower count
The rate was set against the follower number, the content performed to the median, and the campaign underdelivered against a target that was never achievable. This is not the creator failing. It is a media plan built on the wrong metric.
Uncapped revisions
Without a cap, the campaign has no defined end. Two rounds is a normal cap. Beyond it, revisions are chargeable. Brands sometimes read a revision cap as the agency protecting the creator, when it is mostly the thing that gets the content shipped.
Scripting the creator word for word
You brief the points that must be made. You do not write the sentences. A creator reading your copy sounds like a creator reading your copy, and their audience will say so in the comments. If legal genuinely requires exact wording, scope and price that at briefing, because it is a different product.
Contradictory approval feedback
Three stakeholders sending three sets of notes over four days produces a campaign that misses its window. Consolidate feedback into one response, with one person owning the final call.
No disclosure plan
Disclosure is required under the ASCI influencer advertising guidelines and it is the advertiser's responsibility as much as the creator's. Writing the disclosure requirement into the deliverable specification removes it as a thing anyone has to remember on the day.
Measuring on day one
Reel performance is not settled in twenty four hours. Judging a campaign on next-morning numbers produces panic, and sometimes produces a decision to pull budget from the asset that was about to do the work.
What a reasonable deliverable structure looks like
For a first micro campaign, a defensible structure is one primary deliverable plus one supporting deliverable per creator, with usage rights bought for the assets you actually intend to amplify rather than for all of them.
The primary deliverable carries the message. The supporting deliverable, usually a story sequence or a shorter cut, carries the call to action and the link. Buying only the primary is common and it leaves the campaign without a route to a tracked click.
Beyond that, resist the urge to specify four deliverables per creator on a first run. You do not yet know which format works for that audience, and a large deliverable count front-loads cost into a hypothesis. Run the smaller structure, look at what performed, then buy more of the thing that worked.
This page is general guidance rather than legal advice, and it describes how SwayHouse works rather than reporting on campaigns we have run. SwayHouse has closed no brand campaigns to date, so there are no results or customer examples anywhere on this site.
Team SwayHouse