Influencer marketing means paying, or sending free product to, people with an engaged following so they show your brand to their audience. I help UK consumer brands run it as a planned campaign: choosing creators whose followers match your customers, briefing them, agreeing fees and rights in writing, keeping every post within the UK rules on labelling ads, and measuring what the campaign sold rather than how many likes it collected.
What changes when a campaign is planned properly
- Creators are picked for their audience, not their follower count. I check where a creator’s followers live, their age range and whether the comments come from real people, so the budget reaches buyers in the UK.
- Every paid post is labelled before it goes out. Both the brand and the creator can be named in an Advertising Standards Authority ruling when a post is not obviously an ad, so I check the label on each draft, not after the complaint.
- You know exactly what you bought. A written agreement sets out the posts, dates, approval steps, payment terms and how long you may reuse the content.
- Sales are traced to the creator who brought them. Each creator gets their own tagged link and code, and results are read in your own analytics and order records, not from screenshots of story views.
Who this suits, and who it does not
This work suits UK consumer brands whose customers buy on the recommendation of someone they follow: skincare and beauty, fashion, food and drink, homeware, fitness, travel and consumer apps. It works best when you have stock ready to post out, a website that already turns visitors into orders, and enough budget to test several creators instead of staking everything on one.
It is the wrong choice in these situations, and I would rather say so before you spend anything.
- You sell to businesses on a long sales cycle. Buyers there want case studies, proposals and conversations with your team, which creator posts rarely provide.
- Your product sits in a restricted category. Gambling, alcohol, foods high in fat, salt or sugar, vaping products and investments all carry extra rules on who may promote them and to whom. Prescription-only medicines, which include anti-wrinkle injections, cannot be advertised to the public at all, by a creator or anyone else.
- You need a predictable cost per sale from the first week. Creator campaigns vary a lot from one post to the next. If you need steady numbers you can budget against, paid ads run against a single cost-per-sale target are the more reliable route.
What the work covers
Finding and vetting creators
I ask each shortlisted creator for their audience breakdown from the platform’s own insights: country, age, gender and how many followers actually see a typical post. I read their comments for signs of bought engagement, look at which brands they have promoted recently and check their past posts for anything you would not want your name next to. Most campaigns I would plan start with several micro-influencers in a tight niche rather than one large account.
Briefs and agreements
The brief tells the creator what the product does, the one message that matters, the claims they must not make (health benefits you cannot prove, “best” or “cheapest” without evidence) and the exact disclosure wording. It leaves the delivery to them, because scripted posts read as stiff and their audience notices. The agreement covers the fee or product, deliverables, approval rounds, any exclusivity and your usage rights over the content. For large or long-running deals, I recommend your solicitor reviews the final contract.
Disclosure and compliance
Under the CAP Code, advertising must be obviously identifiable as advertising. If you pay a creator, or send product and control what they say, the post is an ad and needs a clear “Ad” at the start of the caption or on screen, visible before anyone taps “more”. I ask for the platform’s own paid partnership label as well, but never rely on it alone. Even a no-strings gift is a relationship the Competition and Markets Authority expects the audience to be told about.
Tracking and reporting
Each creator gets a link built with the UTM link builder so their visits and orders show up separately in GA4, plus their own discount code for people who buy later or on another device. Where the budget justifies it, the link goes to a landing page written for that creator’s audience. Reporting covers spend, orders, revenue, cost per sale and how many of those buyers were new customers.
Reusing the best content in ads
A creator’s video often works better as an ad than anything a brand shoots itself. With the creator’s permission, it can run as partnership ads from their handle, which I can set up within your Instagram ads campaigns once the organic posts have shown which pieces people respond to.
How I run a campaign
- Agree the goal and the budget. We decide what success means (sales, sign-ups or sampling a new product), what a new customer is worth to you and the most you can pay to win one.
- Build a shortlist. You receive a list of vetted creators, the reason each is on it and their quoted fee, and you approve who I approach.
- Contact and negotiate. I deal with the creators or their management, agree terms and send the brief and agreement.
- Ship product and approve drafts. I check every draft for claims and labelling before it goes live, and you see it too.
- Go live and monitor. I confirm each post is up, labelled and linked correctly, and flag comments that need a reply from you.
- Measure and decide. Two to four weeks after the last post, we compare creators on cost per sale, rebook the ones who sold and drop the rest.
Problems I see most often with UK creator campaigns
- Labels hidden or added late. “#ad” tucked among a dozen hashtags at the end of a caption, placed in a comment, or added only after someone complained.
- Follower count as the only filter. A large account whose audience is mostly outside the UK delivers impressive reach and almost no orders.
- No usage rights agreed. The brand puts a creator’s video into its ads, then has to pull it or pay a second fee.
- Codes leaking to voucher sites. A creator’s code gets shared on a deals site, and the report credits them with sales that came from elsewhere.
- One big bet. The whole budget goes on a single post, so there is nothing to compare it against and no way to tell whether the creator or the product was the problem.
What you receive
- A campaign plan with the goal, budget split and the figure we will judge it on
- A vetted creator shortlist with audience notes and quoted fees
- A brief and written terms for each creator
- A disclosure checklist each creator agrees to before posting
- Tagged links, codes and checked landing pages for every creator
- An end-of-campaign report showing orders and cost per sale by creator, with my recommendation on whom to rebook
What it costs
There are two separate costs: my fee for planning and running the campaign, and the creators’ fees or product, which you pay to them directly. My fee is quoted in GBP after a first call about the campaign, and agreed in writing before work starts. Creator fees depend on audience size, format, the number of posts and how long you want to reuse the content, and I show you each quote before anything is agreed.
Next step
If you are planning a creator campaign, or one has already run and you cannot tell what it sold, book a consultation. Bring the product and its price, what a new customer is worth to you, your budget and any creators you already have in mind. If you have not yet decided whether creators belong in your marketing at all, a written digital marketing strategy with a budget split is the better place to start.