# Influencer tracking Human Guide

## What This Is For
Influencer marketing drives significant revenue but is notoriously difficult to attribute because customers often see a post, leave the platform, and purchase days later through a direct. It gives the agent a clearer input/output frame for influencer tracking: what context to ask for, what decisions to make, and what usable artifact to return.

Use this as a human-readable version of the Influencer tracking agent skill. It is meant for marketers, operators, founders, and other non-coders who want the workflow without reading agent-specific implementation instructions.

## When To Use This
- Use this when you need a repeatable process for influencer tracking.
- Use this when the task needs judgment, examples, constraints, or a clear output format rather than a one-off prompt.
- Use this when you want to hand an AI assistant enough context to produce a usable marketing artifact.

## When Not To Use This
- Do not use this when you only need a quick factual answer.
- Do not use this when the work depends on private data you cannot share with the assistant.
- Do not use this as a replacement for legal, compliance, financial, or medical review.

## What You Need Before Starting
- The goal or business outcome you want.
- The audience, customer segment, or market context.
- Any source material the assistant should respect, such as notes, briefs, examples, URLs, or brand guidance.
- Constraints such as tone, length, channel, deadline, region, or approval requirements.
- A clear definition of what a good final answer should look like.

## Step-By-Step Workflow
1. State the job clearly: "Use the Influencer tracking guide to help me with..."
2. Add context: audience, goal, offer, channel, source material, and constraints.
3. Ask the assistant to identify missing inputs before producing the final output.
4. Have the assistant follow the skill-specific guidance below.
5. Review the result against the final checklist and ask for revisions where needed.

## Skill-Specific Guidance
- When managing 10+ influencer partnerships and tracking them in a spreadsheet
- When needing to prove ROI of influencer spend to leadership with first-party data
- When running gifting campaigns and needing to separate organic versus paid post attribution
- When comparing performance across platforms (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) in a single dashboard
- Go to **Shopify Admin → Discounts → Create Discount → Amount off order**
- **Discount code**: `JANEDOE15` (creator handle + percentage)
- **Discount type**: Percentage — 15%
- **Applies to**: All products (or specific collections if needed)
- **Minimum purchase requirement**: $30 (to ensure positive ROI)
- **Usage limits**: Enable "Limit to one use per customer"
- **Active dates**: Set campaign start and end date
- Click Save and send the code to the influencer

## Decision Points And Nuance
The original skill emphasizes: Overview, When to Use This Skill, Core Instructions, Step 1: Set up UTM links for each creator, Step 2: Create unique discount codes for each creator, Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Step 3: Track attribution in Google Analytics 4, Step 4: Track discount code revenue.

Use these questions to steer the work:
- What is the intended audience or buyer?
- What source material must be preserved?
- What should the assistant optimize for: clarity, persuasion, accuracy, speed, creativity, or conversion?
- What examples represent the desired quality bar?
- What should the assistant avoid?

## Common Mistakes
- **Important**: give influencers the shortened link and instruct them to place it in their link-in-bio, not in the post caption (Instagram captions do not have clickable links).
- **For Instagram, links must go in bio** — give influencers a link-in-bio URL and tell them to reference "link in bio" in their caption; caption links are not clickable

## Copy-And-Paste Prompt
```text
Use the Influencer tracking human guide.

My goal:
[Describe the business outcome]

Audience:
[Describe who this is for]

Context and source material:
[Paste notes, examples, links, or existing copy]

Constraints:
[Tone, length, channel, timeline, must-include items, must-avoid items]

Before producing the final output, ask me for any missing information that would materially improve the result.
```

## Final Checklist
- [ ] The output matches the original goal.
- [ ] The audience and context are reflected in the answer.
- [ ] Important constraints and source material were preserved.
- [ ] The assistant made the relevant decisions explicit.
- [ ] The final artifact is ready to use, review, or hand to the next person.

## Source
This guide was generated from the finsilabs/awesome-ecommerce-skills skill entry for `influencer-tracking`.

## Source Skill Notes
These notes preserve the nuance from the original skill. Use them as supporting reference when the workflow above feels too generic.

# Influencer Tracking

## Overview

Influencer marketing drives significant revenue but is notoriously difficult to attribute because customers often see a post, leave the platform, and purchase days later through a direct or organic channel. The solution is using both UTM links (for web traffic) and unique discount codes (for purchase attribution) together — these two signals complement each other and provide reliable attribution across devices. Most of this setup requires no custom code.

> **Note:** For full influencer campaign management (discovery, briefs, deliverables), see @influencer-marketplace-integration. This skill focuses purely on attribution and analytics.

## When to Use This Skill

- When managing 10+ influencer partnerships and tracking them in a spreadsheet
- When needing to prove ROI of influencer spend to leadership with first-party data
- When running gifting campaigns and needing to separate organic versus paid post attribution
- When comparing performance across platforms (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) in a single dashboard

## Core Instructions

### Step 1: Set up UTM links for each creator

Create a unique UTM link for every influencer and campaign combination. Use Google's Campaign URL Builder at `ga-dev-tools.google.com/campaign-url-builder`:

| UTM Parameter | Value | Example |
|--------------|-------|---------|
| `utm_source` | Social platform | `instagram`, `tiktok`, `youtube` |
| `utm_medium` | Always `influencer` | `influencer` |
| `utm_campaign` | Campaign name | `spring-2026`, `black-friday` |
| `utm_content` | Creator handle | `janedoe`, `johndoe_fitness` |

Example URL: `yourstore.com/?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=spring-2026&utm_content=janedoe`

**Shorten the link** for Instagram bio use: use Bitly or a custom short domain. Store the mapping between short URL and UTM parameters in a spreadsheet.

**Important**: give influencers the shortened link and instruct them to place it in their link-in-bio, not in the post caption (Instagram captions do not have clickable links).

### Step 2: Create unique discount codes for each creator

Discount codes capture purchases that happen via direct/organic after the initial influencer visit — the UTM link alone misses these.

---

#### Shopify

1. Go to **Shopify Admin → Discounts → Create Discount → Amount off order**
2. Configure:
   - **Discount code**: `JANEDOE15` (creator handle + percentage)
   - **Discount type**: Percentage — 15%
   - **Applies to**: All products (or specific collections if needed)
   - **Minimum purchase requirement**: $30 (to ensure positive ROI)
   - **Usage limits**: Enable "Limit to one use per customer"
   - **Active dates**: Set campaign start and end date
3. Click Save and send the code to the influencer

**Pro tip**: Use Shopify Flow (Plus) or an app like **Glew** to automatically tag orders using a specific discount code with the influencer's name — this makes attribution reporting easier.

---

#### WooCommerce

1. Go to **WooCommerce → Marketing → Coupons → Add coupon**
2. Configure:
   - **Coupon code**: `JANEDOE15`
   - **Discount type**: Percentage discount — 15%
   - **Minimum spend**: $30
   - **Usage limit per user**: 1
   - **Coupon expiry date**: Campaign end date
3. Under **Restrictions → Allowed emails**: optionally limit to new customers only

---

#### BigCommerce

1. Go to **BigCommerce Admin → Marketing → Promotions → Create Promotion**
2. Set coupon code, discount amount, and usage limits
3. Set an expiry date matching the campaign end date

---

### Step 3: Track attribution in Google Analytics 4

For all platforms, UTM tracking works through GA4 automatically: