An influencer marketing strategy that starts with product

The short version

A paid post is a bet on a creator you don’t know yet. A gift is a much smaller bet. So use gifts to learn, and use money where you’ve already learned something. The strategy is a ladder with four rungs:

This is a strategy for DTC brands in categories people film: beauty, skincare, haircare, supplements, food and drink. If your product shows well on camera and costs less to make than a creator’s fee, it fits.

Step 1: Pick one goal and one number

“Awareness” isn’t a goal you can check. Pick one thing you want from creators this quarter and the number that tells you whether you got it.

• Content: posts you can reshare or run as ads. Count posts that show the product.
• Reach: people who saw the product. Count views, measured at the same point (say, 7 or 30 days after posting) every time.
• Sales: orders. Give each creator their own discount code and count orders on it.

Most brands starting out should pick content. It’s the one you get even when a post doesn’t go far, and it tells you which creators are worth more.

Step 2: Build a list by hand

You don’t need a database to find your first 50 creators. You need an hour a day for a week and a clear idea of fit. Fit beats follower count: a creator with 8,000 followers who reviews serums every week is a better first send for a serum brand than one with 300,000 who posts comedy.

• Your own customers and followers. Check who already tags you, comments on your posts or orders more than once. They like the product already.
• Your category’s searches. Search the problem your product solves (“dry skin routine”, “high protein snacks”) on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, and note who shows products like yours.
• Who your neighbours work with. Look at which creators post about brands next to yours, not your direct competitors.

For each one, check that their recent videos show products, that comments read like real people, and that they live where you ship. Our guide to nano influencers goes further on picking small creators, and how to get influencers to promote your product covers the outreach.

Step 3: Seed in waves

Send to 20 to 50 creators at a time, not one at a time and not 500 at once. Waves give you a group you can compare, and a natural point to stop and look at the numbers.

1. 01

   Ask first

   A short message asking whether they’d like to try it. It filters out people who don’t want the product before you pay to ship it. Use our gifting email templates.

2. 02

   Send something easy to film

   Full-size product, a short handwritten note, packaging that looks good opened on camera. A note, not a brief: a gift with required talking points feels like unpaid work.

3. 03

   Time the arrival

   Aim for the box to land two to three weeks before the moment you want posts, like a launch. Creators plan ahead, and products like skincare need days of use before an honest review.

4. 04

   Remind them to disclose

   The FTC’s guide for influencers says getting “free or discounted products” is a material connection to disclose. Put one friendly line about it in your note. Our disclosure guide has the wording.

Expect most creators not to post. In Traackr’s 2023 survey of 305 marketers, 61% said fewer than half of the creators who receive a product end up posting. That’s why this step uses product, not money.

Step 4: Find every post, tagged or not

This is where most seeding programs quietly fail. Creators often show a product without tagging the brand or naming it in the caption, and searching your handle won’t find those posts. If you only count tags, your post rate looks worse than it is and you cut creators who actually posted.

For about 30 days after delivery, check each creator’s new TikToks, Reels and Shorts and look for the product itself. Send one friendly check-in around day 14 to anyone who hasn’t posted. If someone stays quiet, read what to do when a gifted creator doesn’t post.

Step 5: Sort the roster

When the wave closes, put every creator in one of three groups. Keep the history in one place, like our free tracking spreadsheet, so the next wave starts smarter.

Watch for repeat posters: creators who post in more than one wave without being paid. They’re your best candidates for an ongoing deal.

Step 6: Pay the creators who proved themselves

Now a paid post is a much better bet. You’ve seen the creator’s content with your product, you know their audience responds, and they already like you. Price the post from what you’ve seen, not from their follower count:

• Take their typical views: the median of their last 10 to 15 videos, so one viral hit doesn’t set the price.
• Multiply by what 1,000 views are worth to you. A good ceiling is what you pay per 1,000 impressions in your own ad account.
• Add for extras you ask for: usage rights for ads, more than one video, exclusivity.

The influencer rate calculator does this math and shows how much of the fee a gift already covers. The influencer marketing budget post walks through it with numbers. Write a one-page brief for paid posts, agree the deliverables in writing, and make sure the post is labelled as an ad or paid partnership.

Step 7: Boost the posts that already work

The last rung is putting ad money behind a creator’s post that did well organically. On TikTok that’s Spark Ads: TikTok’s Spark Ads help page describes them as a format that lets you use organic posts in your advertising, and says you can use other creators’ posts “with their authorization”.

Only boost posts with a track record. A video that got real views and comments organically has already passed the hardest test. Ask for permission before you shoot the brief, agree how long you’ll run it, and pay for that use. More in influencer whitelisting and Spark Ads.

What to measure at each wave

• Post rate: creators who posted ÷ creators who received the product.
• Cost per post: what the wave cost ÷ posts that show the product.
• Cost per 1,000 views: what the wave cost ÷ views × 1,000. Use the CPV calculator.
• Engagement rate of the posts, to compare creators of different sizes. Use the engagement rate calculator and read what a good engagement rate is.

Here’s a made-up example to show the math. Say you send 40 kits that cost $25 each to make and ship: $1,000. Say 12 creators post, and those 12 posts get 150,000 views between them. Your post rate is 30%, your cost per post is about $83, and you paid about $6.67 per 1,000 views. Compare that with your ad account, and you know whether seeding is pulling its weight. Try your own numbers in the product seeding ROI calculator, or put a media value on the views with the EMV calculator.

Influencer marketing tips for small businesses

• Change one thing per wave. The product, the note, the creator size. Otherwise you can’t tell what moved the post rate.
• Don’t pay before you’ve seen a post. Your first fee should go to someone who’s already shown your product unpaid.
• Keep gifts as gifts. No deadlines, no required hashtags. Save those for paid deals.
• Reuse the best content. Ask permission to reshare, and pay for ad use. Read UGC vs influencer content for when to buy content instead of posts.
• Count untagged posts. They’re often the most genuine ones.
• Write things down. A roster with every send and every post is the asset that makes wave five better than wave one.