A creator posts a 30-second try-on video wearing your hoodie. It gets 400,000 views. Your Shopify dashboard shows 15 orders that day. Good day. But did those orders come from the TikTok video, from your Instagram story that went up the same morning, or from the Google ad you've been running all week?
If you're a small clothing brand working with TikTok creators, this question comes up every single time. And most brands answer it badly — with guesswork, vibes, and a vague sense of "sales went up when she posted."
That works until you're deciding whether to pay Creator A £500 for another video or shift that budget to Creator B. Then you need actual numbers.
Why clothing brands have it worse than most
Clothing sits in a weird spot for attribution. People browse, save, think about it, then buy three days later. A customer might see a TikTok video on Monday, visit your site on Tuesday from a Google search, and buy on Wednesday by typing your URL directly. Every analytics tool will attribute that sale to direct traffic. The TikTok creator who started the whole chain gets zero credit.
Fashion purchases also involve more comparison shopping than, say, a phone case or a supplement. Someone sees your brand on TikTok, then checks reviews, looks at your Instagram, maybe reads a thread on Reddit. The buying journey is messy, and traditional last-click attribution misses most of it.
Then there's the volume problem. If you're gifting product to ten creators a month and three of them post in the same week, isolating which creator drove which sales becomes genuinely difficult without proper tracking.
The promo code trap
Most clothing brands start with promo codes. Give each creator a unique code — JADE15, MARCUS20 — and count redemptions. Simple enough in theory.
In practice, promo codes leak within hours. Coupon aggregator sites scrape them from comments, DMs get screenshotted, and someone's mate shares the code in a group chat. A customer who was already on your site, about to check out at full price, Googles "[your brand] discount code" and finds JADE15. Jade gets credit. She didn't drive that sale.
One streetwear brand I read about audited their codes and found that roughly a third of redemptions came from coupon sites, not from the creator's audience. They were paying commission on sales the creators had nothing to do with.
Codes also train your audience to expect discounts. Once people know your brand runs codes, they'll hunt for one before every purchase. That erodes your margins on sales that would've happened anyway.
What actually works: tracked links
Instead of a code, you give each creator a unique link. When someone taps it, the click is logged with a timestamp and an anonymous identifier. When that person later buys from your store, the purchase is matched back to the click.
The customer doesn't see a code, doesn't get a discount, and doesn't change their behaviour at all. They tap a link, browse your store, and buy if they want to. The attribution happens quietly in the background.
This solves the leakage problem because there's nothing to leak. A link in a TikTok bio isn't going to end up on RetailMeNot. Even if someone copies it, the attribution stays tied to the click, not to a reusable string that anyone can type at checkout.
Setting up tracked links for TikTok creators
The process is straightforward:
Create a unique link for each creator. Something like yourbrand.com/go/jade or a short link that redirects to your store. Each link is tied to that specific creator in your tracking dashboard.
Tell creators where to put it. TikTok bios are the main placement. Creators can also use it in their Linktree or equivalent. For individual videos, they can mention "link in bio" — TikTok doesn't allow clickable links in video descriptions for most accounts.
The link does the rest. When someone taps through, the click is recorded. If they purchase within your attribution window (usually 7-30 days), the sale is matched to the creator.
Check your dashboard. You'll see clicks, conversions, and revenue per creator. That's the data you need to decide who's worth another collaboration.
Reading the data
Once you've got a few weeks of data, patterns emerge fast.
High clicks, low sales: The creator's audience is interested but not buying. Could be a pricing mismatch — their followers might skew younger with less spending power. Or your product page might not be converting well. Check if the landing page matches what the creator showed in the video.
Low clicks, high conversion rate: A smaller but more engaged audience. These creators are often the best value. Their followers trust their recommendations and actually buy.
Big view count, few clicks: The video entertained but didn't drive action. This happens a lot with comedy-style content where the product is secondary. Not necessarily bad for brand awareness, but don't pay performance rates for it.
Spikes that fade quickly: TikTok traffic is bursty. A video might drive 80% of its sales in the first 48 hours. This is normal — plan your inventory accordingly if you're running limited drops.
What about TikTok Shop?
TikTok Shop has its own affiliate system where creators can tag products directly. If you're using it, sales through TikTok Shop are already attributed natively. You can see which creator sold what.
But TikTok Shop takes a commission (currently around 5-8% depending on category), and many small brands prefer driving traffic to their own Shopify store where they control the experience, own the customer data, and keep higher margins.
If you're selling through your own store rather than TikTok Shop, you need your own attribution. TikTok's built-in analytics will show you video views and profile visits, but they can't tell you who actually bought something on your Shopify site.
Some brands run both — TikTok Shop for impulse purchases and their own store for the full collection. In that case, tracked links cover the Shopify side while TikTok Shop handles its own reporting.
Paying creators based on real data
Once you have per-creator sales data, you can structure deals differently.
Instead of a flat fee for a video, you can offer a base rate plus a commission on tracked sales. The creator is motivated to make content that converts, not just content that gets views. And you're not overpaying for a video that goes viral but doesn't sell anything.
Some brands go fully commission-based with newer creators — no upfront fee, just a percentage of tracked sales. This works well for testing new relationships. If the creator drives sales, both sides benefit. If they don't, you've lost nothing but product cost.
The tracked link data also helps with negotiations. If Creator A drove £2,000 in sales from their last video, you've got a concrete number to base the next deal on. No guessing, no inflated media kit numbers, just actual revenue data.
Getting started
If you're using LinkOwl, setup takes five minutes:
- Sign up and connect your store
- Create a tracked link for each creator
- Send them their links
- Sales are attributed automatically
There's no monthly fee — you pay 5p per attributed sale, billed when you hit a £5 threshold. For a clothing brand doing 100 influencer-attributed sales a month, that's £5. Compare that to influencer platforms charging hundreds monthly whether your creators sell anything or not.
Start with your top three or four creators. Give them tracked links before their next posts. Within a week, you'll have real data on who's driving purchases and who's just driving views. That's the information you need to spend your marketing budget where it actually works.