Influencer Marketing

Quick definition

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which a brand works with people who have an engaged audience on social media or other platforms, such as creators, to promote a product or message to that audience.

Types of collaboration

  • Sponsored posts or videos.
  • Gifting or seeding products.
  • Affiliate or discount-code partnerships.
  • Longer-term brand ambassador roles.
  • Takeovers and co-created content.

Influencer sizes

Larger creators offer more reach. Smaller creators, often called micro-influencers, tend to have smaller, more niche audiences that can be highly engaged. Categories and size cutoffs vary between sources.

Planning a campaign

  • Define the goal: awareness, traffic or sales.
  • Choose creators whose audience matches your target audience, not just those with the biggest following.
  • Agree deliverables, usage rights and timelines in writing.
  • Disclose paid partnerships and other material connections. In the United States, FTC guidance calls for appropriate disclosure of material connections between a brand and an endorser. Other countries have their own rules, so check those that apply to your audience.
  • Give each creator a unique tracking link or code.

Measuring results

Unique tagged links and promo codes show the visits and sales each creator drives, alongside engagement and reach. Influence is often partly indirect, so not all of it appears as clicks.

Example

A skincare brand gifts products to ten micro-influencers and gives each a unique promo code and a tagged link to the product page. After the campaign, tagged-link visits and code redemptions show which creators drove the most sales.

Related marketing terms

Related KPIs

Related tools

Social Media UTM Builder

Marketing

Create a distinct tagged link for each creator or post so analytics shows which one sent visitors. It does not find creators or manage partnerships.

Sources