Glossary
Creator marketing & GTM glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms that come up when you run creator-led go-to-market for a technology product — from CPM and audience fit to usage rights and GEO.
Metrics & measurement
- CPM (cost per mille)
- The cost per 1,000 impressions or views. It lets you compare the cost of reach across creators and against paid ads; technical and B2B audiences usually carry a higher CPM because they convert better.
- Engagement rate
- The share of an audience that actively reacts — likes, comments, saves, shares — relative to followers or views. It signals how attentive an audience is, and often matters more than raw follower count.
- CTR (click-through rate)
- The percentage of people who click a link after seeing it. In a campaign it turns reach into site visits, and is an early signal of whether the message and offer land.
- CAC (customer acquisition cost)
- The total cost to acquire one paying customer — campaign spend divided by the customers it produced. It tells you whether a channel is economical.
- LTV / ACV
- Lifetime value is the total revenue a customer brings over the whole relationship; annual contract value is the revenue in one year. You judge acquisition cost against one of these — the standard CAC-vs-LTV framing.
- ROAS (return on ad spend)
- Revenue generated for every dollar spent — a ROAS of 3x means $3 back per $1 in. Creator marketing compounds over time, so early ROAS usually understates the full return.
- Attribution
- Assigning credit for a signup or sale to the channels that influenced it. Creator marketing is hard to attribute cleanly because much of its influence happens off-platform.
Audience & fit
- Audience fit
- The share of a creator's audience that matches your ideal customer. It is the primary lever in creator marketing: a smaller, tightly-matched audience can outperform a much larger, generic one.
- ICP (ideal customer profile)
- A precise description of the customer your product serves best. Creator selection should start from the ICP, not from follower counts.
- Vanity metrics
- Numbers that look impressive but do not map to business outcomes — follower counts, likes, raw views. Useful as context, but poor targets to optimize for.
- Reach vs impressions
- Reach is the number of unique people who saw content; impressions count every view, including repeats. Reach tells you audience size; impressions tell you exposure volume.
Creators & content
- Creator vs influencer
- An influencer is typically paid to lend reach and endorsement; a creator makes genuine content their audience trusts. For technical products, creator marketing means a real demonstration to a matched audience, measured on pipeline — not a paid shout-out measured on likes.
- KOL (key opinion leader)
- An expert whose opinion carries weight in a specific field — a respected engineer, analyst, or founder. In B2B and technical markets, KOLs drive outsized trust even with modest followings.
- Creator tiers (nano / micro / mid / macro)
- A rough sizing by audience: nano (1K–10K), micro (10K–100K), mid (100K–500K), macro (500K+). Tiers set rough rate ranges, but audience fit and engagement matter more than the tier itself.
- Dedicated vs integrated
- A dedicated placement is content built entirely around your product — a full review or tutorial; an integrated one is a mention inside a broader piece. Dedicated costs more and tends to convert harder.
- UGC (user-generated content)
- Content made by users or creators rather than the brand, often licensed for the brand's own channels and ads. It reads as authentic because it is.
Deals & rights
- Usage rights / whitelisting
- The right to run a creator's content as your own paid ads. It is priced separately from the base fee and often left on the table; whitelisting runs the ads through the creator's own handle for extra authenticity.
- Exclusivity
- A creator's commitment not to promote competing products for a set period. It lowers your risk and raises the rate.
- Flat fee, affiliate & hybrid
- Flat fee pays a fixed price per deliverable; affiliate pays per signup or sale; hybrid combines a reduced flat fee with a performance bonus. Hybrid is often the fairest split of risk.
Go-to-market
- GTM (go-to-market)
- How a company brings a product to market and acquires customers — the channels, messaging, and motion. Creator marketing is one GTM channel, best run as an ongoing motion rather than a one-off.
- GEO (generative engine optimization)
- Optimizing content so AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI — can find, understand, and cite it. The AI-era complement to SEO.
From definitions to a real campaign.
ActiVibe runs creator-led GTM end to end — matching on audience fit, outreach, briefs, contracts, review, and measurement.