12  Influencer Marketing Terms You NEED To Know

I want to talk about different influencer marketing terms that both brands and influencers should know about. So, if you guys are new to our Blog, I work with brands on their influencer marketing campaigns. I help brands develop these campaigns from start to finish and work with all different influencers.

But I also work with influencers on pitching to brands through my one-on-one coaching and all the different programs that I have. So, I’m really in this unique space where I can kind of speak to both sides because I’m constantly working with all of you guys. So, this blog post is actually for the brands and influencers to brush up on some terminology, just so that you guys feel confident when you’re in your negotiation process when you are talking to one another.

Mostly for the influencer, like I know sometimes you may get a brand reach out to you and then you start Googling, like, what does this mean? So, I’m hoping that today I can go over some of the top terms that are used to help clarify what these terms are and give you a better understanding of the jargon used in our space.

01. Affiliate

As an influencer, you guys may hear a brand asking you if you want to be an affiliate of theirs. What this usually means is the brand is looking for you to promote them, and they will be giving you a unique link. Through this unique link, you’ll be able to promote the brand, and any sales that you make, you get a commission.

Affiliates are super standard in our industry. You’ll see brands often offering different commission packages for their affiliates, and the commissions can range. I’ve seen from five percent up to 30 percent, depending on the program that you are involved in. So, when you are working with a brand in an affiliate capacity, you’re not getting paid to post; you’re getting paid commissions off anything that you’re able to sell on their behalf.

02. Ambassador

Oftentimes, a brand may be looking for a brand ambassador, and a brand ambassador role is usually a longer-term role where the influencer is being paid to promote them over a series of times. So, this is not just a one-off post. This is actually what most influencers are looking to work with brands in this capacity, right, because it’s longer-term. Maybe it’s a three-month ambassadorship, maybe it’s up to a year ambassadorship, and this is when you’re working with a brand in a long-term capacity, producing different types of content for them in a paid way.

3. CTA, call to action

A lot of times, influencers, you’re going to be hearing brands saying, “Make sure to include a CTA.” And you may be like, “So, CTA is a call to action.” This is basically like, what are you going to be putting in your posts that’s going to drive some sort of benefit to the brand? Is it a swipe-up? Is it asking your audience to visit this website, to click a link?

These are the different calls to action. Maybe it’s “Follow this brand’s account.” That’s the call to action. It’s an action that the influencer is promoting on behalf of the brand, and obviously, these are always determined ahead of time, but that’s what CTA stands for.

04. CTR, Click-Through Rate

This is a metric that, as an influencer, you’re going to want to know. Your ability to drive clicks is a metric that brands are often measuring your success on. So, the click-through rate is simple. It’s the number of people that clicked a link that you’re sending, divided by the number of people that were exposed to the link.

So, let’s just say you have a hundred people that clicked a link, that did a swipe up, that clicked a link that you’re asking them to click, and a thousand people were exposed to it. But out of the thousand, only a hundred clicked, that would be a ten percent click-through rate. So, this is something that if the brand is asking you, “Can you please send over the CTR or the click-through rate?” That’s the number that they’re looking for. So, remember, it’s dividing the number of people who clicked the link by the people who were exposed to the link.

 

 05. Conversion Rate

This is also a similar concept, right? So, a brand is like, “Okay, a thousand people saw this,” or let’s make it easy, “A hundred people saw this post, and two people purchased.” That means out of the hundred, two people purchased. That is a two percent conversion rate. Now, this is a metric that brands want to measure your success on, right?

This is one of the things that they want to see if you’re able to bring results. It’s a wonderful metric for brands because they’re like, “Okay, this many people saw it, right? These were the total number of people that saw it, and then these were the people that purchased.” That’s the conversion rate, and that is a very magical number because, especially if you’re an influencer and you’re able to gather that information and show the brands what you’re able to do, this is how you get rebooked on campaigns, and can increase your pricing and working with them.

 

 06. Deliverables

To me, it sounds like a standard term, but to a lot of influencers that are just starting, they’re like, “What are deliverables?” Deliverables are literally what you’re assigned to do. So, a brand may be like, “You have to post three in-feed posts, five stories, one blog post. Those are your deliverables, what you need to deliver to the brand.” Oftentimes, this is obviously in a paid capacity, but you’ll find influencers that are working with brands and they’re doing things for trade or experiences. Maybe it’s a trip

So, the deliverables of a campaign are always decided ahead of time, right? This isn’t something that you wing. You want it to be very, very, very clear what the deliverables are before you go into a contract because the deliverables will be stated in the contract, and this is what you need to hand in or deliver on. So, deliverables are an important term because it’s the word that is used for what you need to hand in.

07. Dedicated Content Versus Integrated Content

So, if a brand asks you for a dedicated piece of content, they want the entire video to be about them. Imagine it’s just like a review of the brand, right? So, this is a more expensive buy-in because it’s all about the brand versus integrated content. This is usually a minute or two that you’re talking about the brand, and you’re plugging them into an overall story, and oftentimes, this is at the very beginning of the video. This is an integration, and it means, “Hey, I’m going to be providing value on YouTube.

I’m going to maybe be doing bullet points, and you can be spot one in my big story.” That’s an example of integrated content, and that is something a lot of brands are looking to get in on because it’s allowing the creator, the influencer, the person, the thought leader, to mention the brand authentically versus like a whole dedicated review on the brand. It’s just a little bit more natural to have them integrated.

08. Impressions

Impressions are funny because people will often get confused between impressions and reach. So, impressions are not unique. If you are watching a story, you know, a hundred times or watched a post a hundred times and looked at it each time, that impression counts, right? So, it’s the number of times that a piece of content is viewed. It is not a unique view.

It’s just overall views. So, an impression counts even if it’s just like on the regular page. I’m not sure if you guys can see, but like this, my viewing of one of these posts counts as an impression. Doesn’t mean I went in and clicked it and read the whole caption and did all that. Just being exposed to it counts as an impression.

 09.KPIs

key performance indicators. This is how brands set up their goals when they’re coming up with a campaign. So, when I’m meeting with my brand clients, we’ll often go over, “Okay, what are the goals of the campaign?” And, like, you can’t have too many, right? It’s just narrowing it down. So, maybe a KPI is brand awareness or maybe a KPI is Instagram follower growth or email lead generation. Like, what are the key performance indicators that are showing if this campaign was viable or not or did well? And these are something that the brand is going to have ahead of time.

Now, it’s just interesting for influencers to know what this term is because this is, again, what the brand’s goals are, and it helps you understand if you are helping them reach them, right? So, if a brand goes to you and they’re like, you know, “These are our goals,” it kind of helps you say, “Okay, well, I think this is what you should do to help you get there.

” I think in general, influencers should know about the brand’s KPIs because, for example, let’s just say a brand is looking to grow its followers on Instagram, and they’re like, “Oh, can you post this?” And you’re actually like, “You know what? We should do a giveaway because giveaways are going to help you better,” or whatever. It helps you as the creator come and give input to help them succeed because that’s what you want, right? When you’re working with a brand, you want them to lift off.

 

 10. ROI, Return On Investment.

The brands that are working with the influencers, don’t just want to pay and not see any return, right? So, that’s why those goals are important to understand what that return on investment looks like. So, let’s just say a brand, has goals of growing their email list, and they’re like, “Okay, we’re going to spend ten thousand dollars to grow our email list,” and as an influencer, you were able to help generate two thousand five hundred emails.

Two thousand five hundred. So, the way that a brand would then go in and do the math is they’re going to take, okay, what’s ten thousand divided by two thousand five hundred, and that comes out to be about four dollars. It’s four dollars an email, and that’s how a brand can say, “Oh, okay, I’m paying four dollars per email. This is in line with what I would want to pay.” So, this was a win for us versus if like the ROI was like, “Oh my gosh, we’re paying thirty dollars an email,” you know, this is like, this is not acceptable.

 

So, that’s how they’re able to measure success, and obviously, each brand has its ROI calculators, right? And that’s why the conversions are so important, especially if a brand is measuring ROI like on sales. They’re like, “Okay, well, I paid an influencer this, and I was able to get this many units sold, and this amount of units sold pays for my influencer and more. Like, there’s a profit on top. So, that is a positive ROI. So, again, it depends on the goals of the campaign. That’s how ROI is going to be measured. It’s not always sales-driven. It’s just based on the goals if you met them or exceeded them.

11. Whitelisting

So, whitelisting is basically when an influencer gives brands the ability to run ads on their behalf. So, what it looks like is the end, it looks like the influencer is running the ad, but in fact, it’s the brand that’s running the ad on the influencer’s behalf. So, if you see an influencer that has sponsored content and they’re talking about a brand, nine times out of ten, this is a whitelisted piece of content.

This means that it looks like the influencer is running the brand—excuse me, running the ad—but it’s not. Back in the day, what would happen is influencers would create content, and then brands would use that content and run ads to it, but they were seeing not as positive results, right? Because they’re still running ads, and people are like, “But if you had influencers running ads, then it’s like, oh, it’s coming through the influencer. This is going to help drive trust because you’re tapping into the influencer’s audience.”

So, whitelisting is something that is super on the up and up in our industry, and I think it’s an important term that you guys are aware of. And again, if you’re an influencer and you need help figuring out how much to charge for whitelisting, you can reach out to me below, and we can—I can help you decide that.

So, anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed This post. It was jam-packed with so much info. I’m so excited about it because I think it helps us all get in a really good head space about learning.