Influencer marketing works because it does not feel like advertising: a recommendation from someone you follow carries more weight than an ad from the brand; personal branding works on the same trust. For a smaller company it is rarely about a celebrity with millions of followers. It is usually a creator with a few thousand followers in the right city or niche: a food creator in Leeds, a DIY account on TikTok, a parent posting family days out. Famous faces endorsing products are as old as advertising; what YouTube and Instagram changed is that anyone can build an audience, and brands can work with them directly. Think of it as content marketing where someone else tells the story.
When it works for a smaller brand
It works best when the creator's audience overlaps with your customers and when you have something to show: a restaurant, a holiday home, a salon, good-looking products, a service with a visible result. For a B2B service it rarely works (see B2B and B2C); posts by the founder on LinkedIn usually do more.
Three small creators in your region beat one big one with an audience you never serve. Look at who comments, not at follower counts: real questions and replies say more than a large number.
| Arrangement | What the creator gets | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Product or experience | A free product, meal or stay | Still advertising, and must be labelled |
| Paid post or video | A fixed fee per post, story or reel | How many, where, and how long it stays up |
| Affiliate code | A commission on each sale through the code | Easy to measure, slower to build |
| Footage for your ads | A fee to run the video as your own ad | Agree duration and channels in advance |
Fees range from a free product or a night's stay for a local creator to hundreds or thousands per post for a large audience. The last row is often the most valuable: a good creator video frequently outperforms a polished commercial as an ad on Facebook and Instagram.
Labels that make a paid post clear, and labels that do not
#ad Our new range ...upfront, before the reader taps more
AD on the imagevisible without reading the caption
Advert | ...a plain word anyone understands
#sponan abbreviation many people do not read as advertisingnot clear
collabdoes not say anyone was paidnot clear
... #leeds #food #adburied at the end among other hashtagsnot clear
Following the UK influencer guidance of the ASA and CMA. Platform tools such as Paid partnership help, but the guidance advises a clear label as well.
The disclosure rules
Across the EU, the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive bans editorial-style content that the advertiser paid for without making that clear; national regulators then set the details, and Belgium, for instance, wants the label in the language of the post. In the United Kingdom the ASA and the CMA publish joint guidance for creators: a clear label such as #ad or Ad, upfront and prominent, before anyone has to tap "more". Abbreviations like #spon, vague words like collab, and #ad buried among a dozen hashtags at the end do not count. Platform tools such as Instagram's Paid partnership label help, but the guidance still advises a clear label as well.
As the brand, you share the responsibility. A badly labelled post is misleading advertising, and regulators can and do act against brands, not only creators. Brief every creator on the label before they post, in writing. To plan creator posts alongside your own, use our content calendar template; how the platforms rank them is covered in Instagram algorithm 2026.
What to agree with a creator, in writing
- What they make: how many posts, stories or videos, and on which channel.
- How it is labelled: a clear label upfront, plus the platform's own tool.
- What they receive: product, stay, fee or commission, and when.
- Whether you may reuse the footage in your own ads, for how long and where.
- How you measure results: a link or code per creator.
- What happens if the post does not go live or does not match the agreement.
What brands ask before working with creators
Does a gifted product need a label?
In most markets, yes. If the creator features your product because you gave them something, it is advertising and must be disclosed.
What is a micro-influencer?
A creator with a smaller, engaged audience, often a few thousand to tens of thousands of followers. For a local business that is usually the right fit.
Is user-generated content the same thing?
Not quite. With user-generated content, creators or customers make material that you publish or run as ads. With influencer marketing, the creator posts on their own channel.