Influencer marketing is paying, gifting or otherwise rewarding people with an engaged social media following to feature your product or service in their content. The reward might be a fee, free products, a commission on sales or a hosted experience, and the content appears on the creator’s own channels, sometimes boosted with your ad budget.
How influencer marketing works
A typical campaign runs in five stages:
- Brief. You decide the goal (awareness, sales, sign-ups or content to reuse), the audience and the budget.
- Selection. You find creators whose followers match your customers, then check their real audience location, engagement and past brand work, often using their media kit and screenshots of their native insights.
- Agreement. A written contract sets out deliverables, timings, fees in GBP, approval rights, disclosure, exclusivity and usage rights if you want to reuse the content.
- Publishing. The creator posts, ideally in their own voice. You may also run the post as a partnership ad to reach more people.
- Measurement. Unique discount codes, UTM-tagged links and platform insights show what each creator delivered.
Campaigns can use one large account or many smaller ones. A micro-influencer with a local or specialist audience is often a better fit for a UK small business than a celebrity.
Why it matters
People trust recommendations from someone they already follow, and a good creator knows how to make content that suits the platform. For a product people need to see in use, such as skincare, food or homeware, that can do more than a polished brand ad.
The UK rules
This is where UK brands get caught out. Three sets of rules apply together:
- The CAP Code, enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority. If a brand pays or rewards a creator in any way and has any control over the content, the post is an ad. It must be obviously identifiable as one, usually with a clear #ad or “Ad” at the start. Affiliate links count as advertising too.
- Consumer protection law, enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority. Even when there is no control, such as a free product sent with no conditions, the creator must still disclose the commercial relationship. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, the CMA can now fine businesses directly for hidden advertising and other unfair practices.
- Joint ASA and CMA guidance for influencers sets out how to label posts. Labels such as “#sp”, “#collab” or a thank-you to the brand are not enough on their own.
The brand is responsible as well as the creator. The ASA publicly names creators who repeatedly fail to label ads, and sector rules still apply: gambling, alcohol and foods high in fat, salt or sugar have extra restrictions, prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public, and financial promotions need sign-off from an FCA-authorised firm. The full CAP Code and current regulator guidance are the reference; check them before each campaign, as they are updated.
Common mistakes
- Choosing creators by follower count without checking where the audience lives or whether it is real.
- Treating gifted posts as exempt from disclosure.
- Disclosure hidden below the “more” fold, at the end of a hashtag block or only in the video’s spoken audio.
- No written agreement, so usage rights, deadlines and edits are argued over later.
- Over-scripting the creator, so the post sounds like an ad and their followers ignore it.
- No tracking, leaving you to judge success on likes alone.
How to act on it
Start small: three to five creators whose followers look like your customers, a clear brief, a written agreement and a tracked link or code for each. Make disclosure a contract term and check every post when it goes live. Judge the results against a business outcome, not engagement rate alone, and reuse the content you have rights to in ads and on your site. If you want help planning creator work alongside your other channels, that is part of my digital marketing strategy and consulting.