Influencer Marketing
BUSA-X409.35
Influencer marketing drives customer acquisition, builds brand trust, and generates measurable revenue—and organizations now expect clear return on investment (ROI). As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes how content is created and discovered—including by AI-generated creators—marketers must plan, execute, and measure influencer marketing with ROI built in from the start.
This 6-week online, asynchronous course provides a practical framework to plan, evaluate, and execute influencer marketing in a business context—from small and mid-sized businesses to Fortune 500 organizations. Whether you are new to influencer marketing or building on existing experience, you will apply concepts directly to real-world scenarios.
You will identify the right creators, assess audience quality and trust signals, and align influencer activity with defined business goals. You will examine how influencer content operates across social and search discovery environments, including major platforms such as Instagram (Meta), TikTok, YouTube, and others, where content influences visibility, discovery, and decision-making.
The course examines how AI shapes influencer marketing across content, content creators (including AI-generated), and how content is consumed, and addresses ethical and regulatory considerations, including disclosure, brand alignment, transparency, audience trust, and parasocial dynamics.
Through applied work, you will build an influencer marketing strategy and complete a portfolio-ready campaign pitch you can use in interviews, client work, or internal presentations.
Recognized as a top-ranked influencer marketing course (#4, The CMO, 2026), this course prepares professionals to apply influencer marketing to real business challenges.
What you'll learn
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
- Evaluate the role of influencer marketing within the digital marketing ecosystem and its impact on business objectives.
- Analyze influencers and audiences using engagement metrics, trust signals, and platform data to assess fit, authenticity, and performance potential.
- Develop influencer marketing strategies aligned with customer journeys, business goals, and campaign objectives.
- Apply legal, ethical, and platform-specific requirements to influencer partnerships, content, and disclosures.
- Measure and interpret campaign performance using key metrics—including reach, engagement, conversions, and return on investment (ROI)—to inform strategic decisions.
Course Information
Course sessions
Section ID:
Class type:
This course is entirely web-based and to be completed asynchronously between the published course start and end dates. Synchronous attendance is NOT required.
You will have access to your online course on the published start date OR 1 business day after your enrollment is confirmed if you enroll on or after the published start date.
Textbooks:
No textbook is required for this course.
Policies:
Drop Refund Deadline:
Note:
Schedule:
Instructor:
Jennifer Neeley, M.S., Columbia University | B.A., UC Berkeley
Marketing strategist and educator specializing in digital marketing, influencer marketing, trust, and decision-making.
Jennifer Neeley is a marketing strategist, educator, and journalism-trained analyst whose work focuses on digital influence, trust, and decision-making in high-stakes and high-trust environments.
She teaches Digital Marketing and Influencer Marketing at UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies, where her courses examine how authority, credibility, persuasion, content, search, social platforms, and creator economies shape modern marketing strategy. Her teaching emphasizes applied judgment, ethical influence, audience trust, and the practical use of marketing tools in real business contexts.
Outside UC San Diego, Jennifer advises healthcare, technology, fertility, reproductive health, and expert-led organizations on strategic marketing, positioning, patient and customer growth, executive visibility, and trust-sensitive communication.
Jennifer is the creator of The Neeley Trust Framework™, a model for analyzing trust formation, ethical risk, accountability, and decision-making across marketing, media, and influencer-led communication systems. She also leads The Influence Project, a public scholarship initiative focused on influence, misinformation, AI-era visibility, and decision-making in contemporary digital culture.
Jennifer holds an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley.