How to promote your business with creators: an online advertising plan with influencers and UGC

To promote your business online with creators, start with one goal and one customer group, choose the channel where those customers already spend time, and invite creators whose audiences look like your buyers. Order several formats at once — Reels, reviews and UGC for ads — and measure the result in sign-ups and sales, not likes. The simplest way is Blogger Bank: you describe everything in a task, creators apply themselves and the contract opens automatically.

Below is a seven-step plan for advertising a company online: from the goal, through choosing channels and creators, formats and the task, to measurement and scaling. It works for an online shop, a service business, an app or a manufacturer selling across Poland. If you run a local business and need creators from one city, go straight to the page with creators from a specific city — that is where we cover local advertising.

Step one: advertising goal and audience

Promoting a company without a goal usually ends with everyone having seen something and nobody buying anything. Before you spend the first złoty, write down in one sentence what should happen after the campaign. Most often it is one of three goals:

• Awareness. People should remember the company name and what it does. It suits a new brand or entry into a new category.
• Consideration. People should visit the website, join a list or ask about the offer. This is the stage where customers compare and look for opinions.
• Sales. People should buy, book or create an account. Here a specific action and its cost matter.

The second sentence describes the audience: who they are, what they need and what stops them from buying today. "Women aged twenty-five to forty" is not enough. Better: "parents of small children who have no time for shopping and worry the product won't fit". Such a description later tells you which creators to look for and what they should show. We explain the term in the glossary entry target group.

One goal per campaign is not a limitation but a condition for measurement. If you want to build the brand and sell at the same time, split it into two waves with separate tasks and separate results. How to break a goal down into stages of the customer journey is covered in our article on the marketing funnel with creators.

Step two: choosing channels — where creators fit

Online business advertising is usually a mix of several channels, and creators do not replace the others; they do something the others cannot. It helps to know what each channel is for:

• Creators and influencers bring trust and show the product in real life. Customers hear about the company from someone they follow by choice and see how the product works in someone's home, kitchen or car. It is the strongest channel when the company is new or when the product has to be shown to be understood.
• Paid social and search ads bring scale and precise reach to people with specific interests. They work best with good creatives — and this is where creators come back, because their content often performs better in ads than studio photos.
• SEO and website content catch people who are already looking for a solution. It is a long-term channel: results come more slowly but stay.
• Your own company profiles are where people land after seeing a creator. Make sure they are not empty.

Which platform to bet on depends on where your audience is. We cover getting started on specific platforms separately: Instagram for business and TikTok for business. To start, one main platform and one supporting platform are enough.

Step three: choosing creators

The most common mistake when advertising a company with influencers is choosing by follower count. What matters is whether the creator's audience are your potential customers and whether the creator naturally talks about topics close to your offer. When choosing, look at a few things:

• Topic. A home goods company looks for creators in the home category, a pet shop in pets, a service company for entrepreneurs in business.
• Comments. Read a few dozen comments under regular posts. Product questions and conversations between followers are a better signal than hearts alone.
• Past collaborations. See how the creator presented other brands: was it natural, was the ad labelled and did the audience accept it.
• Style. A creator who normally speaks calmly and to the point won't suddenly play a cheerful showman. Pick someone who already speaks in a way that fits your company.

Instead of one big name, it is usually better to invite several creators of different sizes. You get several different pieces of content, several audiences and a comparison of who performs best. The full list of criteria is in the guide how to choose an influencer for a campaign.

Step four: ad formats with creators

The same creator can prepare several types of content, and each works towards a different goal. For a first campaign, combine two or three formats:

• Reels and short videos. Best for reach and awareness. The creator shows the product in motion, in their own style and with their own commentary.
• Reviews and tests. Help at the comparison stage. The creator says what they liked and what they didn't and answers questions in the comments — this builds credibility.
• UGC for ads. The creator shoots a video or photos that the company publishes in its own ads and on its website, not on the creator's profile. It is a good way to get creatives that look like a friend's recommendation. We explain the difference in the glossary entry UGC.
• Partnership ads. The company pays to promote a creator's post, which appears with both the creator's and the brand's names. It combines trust in the creator with the reach of advertising. How to set it up and what to put in the contract is in our article on UGC in ads and partnership ads.
• Stories and live streams. Good for launches, limited offers and discount codes, because they work here and now.

Every advertising piece must be labelled as an ad. It is not a formality: the label protects both the company and the creator, and the audience doesn't feel deceived.

Step five: the task for creators

A good task saves weeks of revisions. The creator needs to know what to achieve, but it is worth leaving the way of telling the story to them — they know their audience. In the task, describe:

• the company and product in two or three sentences, without brochure language,
• the campaign goal and the one action you expect from the audience,
• the key benefit for the customer and one thing that must not be said,
• the format, number of pieces, platform and publication date,
• usage rights to the content if you want to use it in ads,
• the tracking method: a discount code or a tagged link.

A ready template and examples are in how to write a brief for a creator. We also describe the term in the glossary entry brief. If you are preparing a full campaign with a schedule and several waves, the influencer campaign plan step by step will help too.

Step six: measurement — sign-ups and sales, not likes

Likes and views tell you someone saw the content. They don't tell you whether advertising the company paid off. So before launch, decide what you will count and give each creator a separate tracking method:

• Discount codes. Each creator gets their own code. You see how many orders came from a specific person, even if the customer bought a few days later.
• UTM-tagged links. A tag added to the page address shows in analytics which piece of content brought the traffic and what people did next.
• Sign-ups, enquiries and orders. These are the main numbers. Compare them with what happened before the campaign.
• Content for ads. With UGC, check how the creator's creative performs in ads compared with your previous ones.

Give the campaign time: some customers buy after days or weeks, and one post is too little to draw strong conclusions. The exact way of counting is in the guide how to measure influencer campaign results, and return on investment is in the glossary entry ROI.

Step seven: scaling what works

After the first campaign you have data: which creators brought customers, which formats worked and which messages landed. Now you can promote your business more widely, but on proven elements:

• Go back to the best creators. Ongoing collaboration works better than one-off, because the audience sees the creator really uses the product.
• Add similar creators. Look for people in the same topic and with audiences similar to those who performed best.
• Use the best content in ads. A video that did well on the creator's profile often works well as a paid ad too.
• Drop what doesn't work. A weak format or channel won't improve by itself with a bigger budget.

When one campaign turns into several parallel ones with many creators, contracts and deadlines, organisation takes most of the time. That is when one place where you see all conversations, content and payments helps.

The most common mistakes when advertising a company with creators

The same mistakes come back in many companies regardless of industry or size. It is worth knowing them before you plan your first campaign:

• One post judged after a week. A single piece rarely shows the full effect. Customers need several contacts with a brand before buying, so plan a series rather than one post.
• A word-for-word script. When a creator reads text written by the marketing team, the audience hears it at once. Give them the goal, the benefit and the boundaries, and leave the rest to their style.
• No landing page ready. People who clicked the link land on the homepage and don't know what to do next. Prepare a page with the offer from the content and a simple path to buying or enquiring.
• No rights to the content. The company wants to use a great video in ads, but nothing about it was agreed. Put the scope of use in the task straight away.
• Measuring everything at once. When you track a dozen metrics, it is hard to decide. Pick one main number that matches the goal and look at it first.

How Blogger Bank solves advertising your business with creators

The hardest part of advertising a company with creators is that every stage — searching, agreeing terms, contracts, approval and payment — happens somewhere else. On Blogger Bank the full collaboration cycle is in one place:

• Instead of searching for creators across platforms and messaging each one — you describe the company, goal and formats in a task, and creators who fit apply themselves.
• Instead of guessing from data scraped off the web — you browse profiles that creators filled in themselves and choose people who match your customers.
• Instead of negotiating a contract with each creator — the contract with the chosen person opens automatically.
• Instead of messages scattered across apps and email — chat, content approval and safe payment are in one place.
• Instead of a spreadsheet to keep a big campaign under control — all chats, contracts and deadlines of many creators are visible in one panel.

Browse the influencer catalogue by category and city. Create a brand account and describe in your first task how you want to promote your business.