Should you give a creator a discount code?

Say you sell merino socks, and what you want people to know is that the sock stays dry on a long wet walk. Three creators are filming in October, ahead of the first cold week, and somebody on the campaign suggests each of them get their own discount code. It sounds like one small decision, and it's easy to agree to before anyone has said what it's for.

It also arrives carrying a promise nobody said out loud: that afterwards you'll know what the videos sold. That promise is the part worth slowing down for. A discount code does two separate things, and you can want one of them without wanting the other.

What are you handing over?

Two things, on one string.

A price. A discount code changes what the viewer pays. That's an offer, and it belongs to whoever ends up holding the discount code, whether they watched the video or were sent it by a friend who did.

A name. An order placed with a discount code arrives in your records carrying something only your videos gave out. That's the name, and it's the part people are usually thinking of when they say the discount code will tell them how the campaign did.

The two travel together because they're one string, but they answer different questions. The price question is whether you want the viewer to have a reason to move. The naming question is whether you want to be able to tell the orders that carry it from the rest afterwards.

Neither one needs the other, and the things sitting next to a discount code show it. A tracking link attaches a name and leaves the price alone. Going the other way, a discount everybody can already get does the price and adds no name, because anyone can arrive holding it whether or not your videos exist. An affiliate link attaches a name too and hangs the creator's pay on what it records, which is a different arrangement rather than a different instrument; that difference has its own section below.

For the socks: the campaign wants the discount codes for the name. Nobody has argued that the sock needs a discount to sell in October. What the team wants is to see which of the three videos did something.

What does a discount code tell you?

It tells you that somebody typed it.

That's real, and it's more than you had. It's also narrower than what the team above is asking for, and the boundary was drawn in the guide on how to tell whether a creator video worked. That guide sorts everything you might look at into three piles, and it's direct about the third, the one it labels What nobody can settle: "Whether the person who ordered on Tuesday ordered because of the video. Nothing on the screen and nothing in your records answers that, and no arrangement of the first two piles turns into that answer."

Orders already sit in that guide's second pile, the one your own records hold. A discount code doesn't put them there. What it adds is a name on some of them, which is a real gain, and a name doesn't make the third pile any smaller.

So take the count for exactly what it is: this many orders carried the discount code. That part is not an estimate, and it's the whole of what the discount code settles.

Everything the team actually wanted is the third pile again. Whether the video is why any of them ordered, the count can't say, and the two ways it goes wrong point in opposite directions. Somebody who was already going to buy socks this week, and who picked the discount code up in the comments on their way to the checkout, is inside the number without the video having moved them. Somebody who watched, thought about it for a week, and came back through search is outside it, having been moved. There's no correction that turns the count into the answer, because what's missing isn't a factor, it's the third pile.

For the socks: the team wanted to rank the three videos by what they sold. Discount codes can't do that. What they can say is whether an offer put in front of those three audiences was used at all.

Where does the cost of the discount sit?

On the margin of the orders that carry it, which is a different pocket from the campaign.

The guide on how much to budget for a TikTok creator campaign lays out four lines: the fees, the product and getting it to the creator, work past the rounds you agreed, and the money behind the ads. The first three buy videos and the money behind the ads buys what happens to them afterwards. A discount code buys neither, so it isn't a fifth line on that page.

Two things follow. The total isn't yours to set when you set the budget, because it's decided by how many orders carry it. And you pay it on every order that carries it, including the ones you'd have had anyway: the person who was buying socks regardless still gets the discount. That's the same population the third pile is about, the people you can't sort, showing up as a cost rather than as a question.

So the discount is a different kind of spend from the four lines, decided by different people at a different time. Say so out loud to whoever owns the margin before the creators are told what their discount codes are.

For the socks: the fees, the socks themselves and the shipping are all on the campaign's page. The discount isn't, and the person who signs off on the campaign budget isn't the person who'll notice this one.

What changes if you put pay on it?

The record stops being only yours to read.

Give a creator a commission, meaning a share of the sales their discount code or affiliate link records, and that record is now the thing their pay is calculated from. It's still a record you read afterwards. It's also a term of the agreement, which makes what counts, when it counts and who checks it things the two of you have to settle rather than things you decide on your own later.

Whether to do that is a different question from the one this guide answers, and it belongs to the guide on when you pay a TikTok creator, which rules performance out as something a payment date can sit on. Take it there. The rest of this is about the version with no money hanging on the discount code.

For the socks: nobody has proposed paying on sales. The creators are being paid a fee for the videos, and the discount codes came up afterwards.

What does a discount code add to the brief?

A line, and it has to be there before anyone films.

A discount code does its two jobs only if it goes out through the video, so the video has to say it or show it. That makes it a thing the video has to do, decided before anyone films rather than after the draft lands. By the test in the guide on what belongs in a creator brief, it goes in the brief: it's a thing only you know, and the creator can't invent it. The exact string is yours to supply and to check, because a string that doesn't work loses both jobs at once.

Disclosure is separate and doesn't move. Paying a creator creates a material connection between you and them, and the FTC's guidance for influencers is that such a connection should be disclosed clearly, where people will actually notice and understand it. The guide on retainers says the same, and the guide on sending free product goes further: the connection doesn't turn on whether money moved at all.

• Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers

Read it yourself, and if the stakes are real, ask a lawyer rather than us. A discount code isn't a disclosure. What has to be disclosed is the arrangement behind the video.

For the socks: the discount code would go in the brief next to the line about staying dry on a long wet walk. The creators were already going to say the videos are paid, and none of that changes because there's now a discount code in the videos.

So when is a discount code worth giving?

Take the two jobs separately, and issue one only if either survives on its own.

Give it for the price when you want the viewer to have a reason to act while the video is in front of them, and when you'd still want that reason there if nobody ever showed you the number afterwards.

Give it for the name when you can say in advance what you'd do differently depending on what the number says. Write that sentence down before any discount code is issued. If it doesn't exist, the number will arrive and nothing will happen.

If the only reason on the table is to find out whether the videos worked, that's the answer a discount code can't give.

For the socks: neither job survives, and the second one fails in a way worth watching for. The price case was never made. So the team tries to write the naming sentence, and what comes out is if the offer goes unused, stop offering one. That reads like a decision until you ask what it would change. Stopping means not offering a discount the team had no reason to offer in the first place, so the sentence does nothing whichever way the number comes back. What the team wanted was the ranking, and that was gone two sections ago. So the socks campaign runs no discount code, and the fees, the socks and the shipping are the whole of what it costs.

That's not an argument against discount codes. It's the same two tests, run on a campaign that turns out not to need one.

Frequently asked questions

One of the videos went up without the discount code in it. Can we still read the number?

In one direction. If the discount code was used, whatever your sentence said about it being used still holds, and the missing video doesn't change that.

A silence is the one you can't read. The offer only went out to the audiences that heard it, so nothing coming back may mean the offer was refused, or may mean a third of the people you counted on were never asked. Say which video it was and read the rest for what they are.

We already run a discount everybody can use. Does a creator need their own?

If it's the same discount, the price job is already done and a creator's discount code adds no reason to act, because the viewer can see the discount whether or not the video mentions anything. A deeper one is a different question, and it's the price test again rather than this one.

That leaves the naming, so decide it on the naming test alone: what would you do differently depending on what the number says?

One thing to settle if you issue it. A viewer looking at two discounts has no reason to prefer the one your videos handed out, and the record won't tell you which discount any given buyer would have used. Settle whether the open discount stays visible next to the video at the same time.

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