Audience research
Part of How to run audience research for beauty creator partnerships
Beauty creator partnerships competitor research starts with a written method
A checklist for auditing beauty creator partnerships competitor research, covering claim evidence, PECR and CAP compliance, and paid media checks.
What to take away
- Decide what you will treat as evidence before you look at a rival's campaign. Published reach and engagement figures are rarely defined, audited or comparable.
- Check three rule sets, because each one constrains a different part of the campaign: ASA and CAP advertising rules, the ICO guide to PECR, and the platform's own paid policy.
- Score every campaign on audience fit, format, disclosure and counting method, then compare only campaigns that match on all four.
- Cost the gaps you find with labelled assumptions in pounds, not one blended average.
- Write your method down first so a colleague can repeat the exercise next quarter.
Set the rules before you compare campaigns
Competitor research goes wrong when the comparison set is chosen after the data arrives. Pick the campaigns first, then fix the questions. A useful question set is short: who saw it, who engaged, what was disclosed, and how the numbers were counted.
Fix the comparison questions
- Who saw it
- Who engaged
- What was disclosed
- How numbers were counted
Gather the compliance evidence
UK advertising rules apply to creator content whether or not money changed hands. The ASA and CAP overview of UK advertising regulation sets out who regulates what, which is the baseline for judging whether a rival's disclosure practice is sound.
Decide what counts as proof
Email and direct message campaigns sit under separate rules from public posts. The ICO guide to the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations explains the consent position for electronic marketing. If a competitor's funnel relies on mailing a creator's audience, that guide tells you what had to be in place.
Build a scorecard you can defend
A scorecard is only useful if two people score the same campaign the same way. Give each of the four criteria a written definition and a simple scale. Audience fit needs a definition a colleague can apply, for example the share of a creator's commenters who mention the product category in the last ten posts.
Scorecard build order
- Write a definition for each criterion
- Set a simple scale
- Rank audience fit first
- Score format second
- Separate organic from paid
Rank audience fit and format
Start with fit, because a well-produced post aimed at the wrong audience distorts everything downstream. Our beauty creator partnerships audience research guide shows how to define the audience you are comparing against, which keeps the scorecard from drifting into taste. Format comes second, since short video, carousel, static and story each carry different production and media costs.
Check the paid media layer
Spark ads, boosted posts and search support often carry a creator campaign further than organic reach suggests. Google Ads best practices cover account structure, bidding and measurement habits that apply to any paid support you plan. Ask a platform's ads library what a competitor ran and when, then separate organic performance from paid.
Cost the gaps you find
Costing is where competitor research earns its place in a budget conversation. Do not price a rival's campaign from a headline rate. Rebuild it from line items: creator fee, usage rights, production, paid media and internal time.
Model a realistic budget
A fictional competitor runs twelve short videos in a quarter. At £250 per video, fees come to £3,000. Paid social usage rights at £120 per video add £1,440. Editing and shoot days at £600 a month over three months add £1,800.
Paid support totals £1,500, giving £7,740, or £645 per video. Those pound figures are illustrative. The structure still shows which line a cheaper rival cut.
Write the findings up
Findings land better when they quote the people you are trying to reach. Running beauty creator partnerships customer interviews alongside the desk research turns a scorecard into a reason to change plans. Keep the write up to one page per competitor and one page of recommendations.
Common questions
How many competitor campaigns should I review?
Enough to see a pattern, usually six to ten campaigns from three or four brands. Fewer than six and one outlier shapes your conclusions; more than ten and the scoring time outweighs the insight.
What if a competitor publishes no numbers?
Score what is visible: disclosure, format, posting cadence and the creator's audience. Note the missing data as a gap rather than estimating it, and treat any third-party estimate as a hypothesis to test.
Can I trust platform engagement rates?
Use them as a relative signal within one platform and one period, never as a cross-platform measure. Definitions differ, and bought reach sits inside the same totals as organic reach.
How often should I repeat the research?
Quarterly is usually enough for beauty and fashion, where seasonal launches drive the calendar. Rerun the cycle sooner if a competitor changes agency, platform or disclosure practice.
