What is influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing that focuses on leveraging individuals who have influence over potential buyers to drive awareness, engagement, and conversions for a brand or business. According to McKinsey, influencer marketing is defined as “a collaboration between popular social-media users and brands to promote products or services.”
The key aspect of influencer marketing is that it relies on influential people rather than the brand itself to reach, engage with, and persuade an audience. Influencers often have a dedicated following on social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, and more. Brands collaborate with influencers by having them promote products or services to their audience. This could involve sponsored posts, product reviews, endorsements, unboxing videos, and more. The goal is to leverage the influencer’s credibility and relationship with their audience to organically drive awareness, interest, and sales.
Influencer marketing has become hugely popular with brands and businesses because it offers some advantages compared to traditional advertising. It enables brands to tap into influencers’ highly engaged audiences and leverage their credibility to authentically promote products. It also provides brands metrics and data around how influencer posts perform. Additionally, consumers today heavily rely on social media personalities and influencers for brand recommendations, product reviews and more. This makes influencer marketing an effective way for brands to reach and resonate with their target audience.
Why TikTok for Influencer Marketing
TikTok has exploded in popularity over the past few years and has become one of the top social media platforms, especially among younger audiences. As of 2023, TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide (1). With its continued growth, TikTok offers major opportunities for influencer marketing.
In terms of demographics, around 49% of TikTok users worldwide are female, while 51% are male (2). The largest share of users on TikTok are between the ages of 10 and 19 (3). This means influencer marketing on TikTok allows brands to connect with the coveted Gen Z demographic.
Additionally, TikTok’s algorithm is one of the best at serving relevant, engaging content to users. This increases the chances of TikTok influencers reaching a large, targeted audience with branded content. The short-form, entertaining video content on TikTok also lends itself well to influencer marketing campaigns.
In summary, with its massive reach among younger demographics and an algorithm optimized for engagement, TikTok offers an ideal platform for executing influencer marketing campaigns.
Sources:
(1) https://backlinko.com/tiktok-users
(2) https://explodingtopics.com/blog/tiktok-demographics
(3) https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/tiktok-statistics
Types of TikTok influencers
There are several main types of influencers on TikTok defined by the size of their follower count:
Micro, macro, and mega influencers
Micro-influencers have between 10,000 and 50,000 followers. They often have a very engaged audience in a specific niche. Macro-influencers have between 50,000 and 500,000 followers with a more widespread audience. Mega-influencers have over 500,000 followers and are the biggest celebrities on TikTok [1].
Nano influencers
Nano influencers are the smallest category, with only 1,000 to 10,000 followers. However, they tend to have extremely high engagement and credibility with their small niche [2].
Power influencers
Power influencers are not defined by follower count but rather by their authority on TikTok. They are pioneers on the platform with high engagement who set trends. Power influencers can be any size [3].
Understanding the tiers and types of influencers on TikTok is key for identifying potential partners for campaigns. The right influencer depends on your goals, target audience, and budget.
Finding the right TikTok influencers
When finding TikTok influencers to partner with, it’s important to evaluate their relevance to your brand and target audience. Look at the influencer’s content and determine if their personality and tone is a good fit for representing your brand authentically. Some key factors to consider include:
Relevance to your target audience – Analyze the influencer’s audience demographics and interests. Do they closely align with your own target audience? Partnering with influencers whose audience matches yours will help expand your reach.
Content relevance – Review the type of content the influencer posts and see if it’s relevant to your brand, products or services. Their content should complement your brand.
Personality fit – The influencer’s tone and personality should mesh well with your brand’s image. Look for influencers who are authentic when featuring brands so it comes across as a genuine recommendation.
Engagement rates – Look for influencers with high engagement and interaction on their posts, which indicates an active and interested audience.
Production quality – Review the general quality of the influencer’s content in terms of visuals, editing, captions etc. Higher quality content will better represent your brand.
Reliability – Check that the influencer regularly posts content and has a good track record of working with brands. You want to partner with responsible influencers.
By evaluating TikTok influencers based on these criteria, you can identify the best brand ambassadors that will provide great ROI on influencer campaigns.
Reaching out to TikTok influencers
When reaching out to potential TikTok influencer partners, it’s important to personalize your messages. Generic outreach is likely to be ignored. Study the influencer’s content and brand and explain why you think they’re a great fit for your campaign. Flattery goes a long way.
Offering free products is a good way to get influencers interested. Gifting them your product to try out and feature in posts is a win-win. But don’t expect influencers to create content solely in exchange for free products. Negotiate paid partnerships as well.
Before any campaigns, make sure to agree on deliverables upfront. Be specific about what content you want them to create, including number of posts, video length, captions, hashtags, etc. Spell out timelines, usage rights, and payment terms in a formal contract.
When reaching out, be polite and patient. Influencers receive many requests and may take time to respond. Follow up, but avoid pestering them. Building relationships takes time.
Sources:
https://officialsocialstar.com/blogs/blog/how-to-contact-influencers-on-tiktok
https://brands.joinstatus.com/how-to-message-influencers-on-tiktok
Negotiating TikTok influencer contracts
When partnering with a TikTok influencer, it’s important to negotiate a fair contract for both parties. Key terms to discuss include:
Rates based on follower count and engagement
Influencers will usually charge more for branded content based on their follower count and engagement rates. Make sure to research average rates for similar sized accounts before negotiating. According to HypeAuditor, nano influencers with 1k-10k followers charge around $100 per post, while mega influencers with over 1 million followers can charge $10,000 or more per post.[1]
Exclusivity terms
You’ll want to negotiate whether the influencer can work with competing brands during your campaign period. Most brands aim for some exclusivity to ensure the influencer is 100% focused on promoting their products/services. Though full exclusivity is rare, requiring a 1-3 month exclusive partnership is common.[2]
Usage rights
Clarify how, where, and for how long you can use the content created. Common usage rights include resharing on your brand’s owned channels indefinitely or within a set timeframe (e.g. 6-12 months). You’ll also want rights to utilize the content in paid advertising campaigns.
Managing influencer campaigns on TikTok
Once you’ve identified and onboarded the right TikTok influencers, the next step is to effectively manage the campaign and collaboration. Here are some tips:
Provide assets like logos, products, and brand guidelines – Give influencers everything they need to accurately represent your brand, like high-res logos, product samples, brand colors, fonts, messaging, and imagery (Social Insider).
Approve content before publishing – Review and approve TikTok videos before they go live to ensure proper branding, messaging, etc. Be sure to provide timely feedback.
Track performance with UTM links – Use unique UTM tracking links in influencer captions and bios to monitor traffic and conversions from each influencer. This helps track ROI.
Measure engagement – Look beyond vanity metrics like views and followers. Analyze meaningful engagement like shares, comments, click through rate and sentiment.
Give feedback – Provide regular feedback to influencers on what’s working well and where there’s room for improvement. This helps maximize results.
Stay organized – Use a social media management platform to keep all assets, communications, approvals, and performance metrics in one place.
Overall, managing TikTok influencer campaigns requires clear communication, organization, performance tracking, and optimization. Following best practices helps ensure collaborations are smooth, successful and deliver ROI.
Measuring success of TikTok influencers
Measuring the success of your TikTok influencer marketing campaigns is crucial to determine if your investment is paying off. Here are some of the key metrics to track:
Brand awareness and reach
Look at overall views, likes, comments, and shares generated by the influencer content. This gives a sense of how many people your branded content reached. You can also track engagement rate (likes + comments/followers) to see how well the content resonated with the influencer’s audience (Source).
Engagement rate
A high engagement rate signals the influencer’s audience finds the content compelling. Track engagement rate on each piece of sponsored content and compare to the influencer’s usual non-sponsored content benchmark. Large increases indicate the sponsorship was effective at getting quality engagement (Source).
Website traffic and conversions
Use trackable links in bios or promo codes to measure traffic and conversions driven by the influencer. See if followers are actually clicking through and taking action after viewing the branded content. Compare ROI to cost of the influencer partnership (Source).
TikTok Influencer Marketing Mistakes
When launching an influencer marketing campaign on TikTok, there are some common mistakes brands make that can negatively impact results. Avoiding these errors is crucial for running an effective campaign and getting the most out of your influencer partnerships on TikTok.
One of the biggest mistakes is not setting clear goals and expectations for the influencer campaign. According to Affable, brands need to determine what outcomes they want before reaching out to creators so they can find influencers who align with those goals. Whether it’s raising awareness, driving traffic, or boosting engagement, having specific objectives in mind from the start helps set the campaign up for success.[1]
Another error is relying solely on one-off influencer sponsorships instead of pursuing long-term partnerships. Building lasting relationships with creators allows brands to develop deeper connections with audiences over time. Campaigns with the same influencers on an ongoing basis tend to see higher engagement and conversion rates.
Failing to properly track campaign results and ROI is an additional common misstep. Without clear metrics and measurement in place, it’s impossible to determine the true impact of influencer marketing efforts on TikTok. Using unique links, promo codes, and in-depth analytics allows brands to quantify reach, engagement, website traffic, sales, and more to optimize future initiatives.
TikTok Influencer Marketing Best Practices
When doing influencer marketing on TikTok, brands should focus on best practices that align with TikTok’s audience and culture. Some important tips include:
Focus on authenticity over follower count. TikTok users value genuine creators who make entertaining content, not inflated vanity metrics. Work with influencers who authentically connect with their niche, not just the biggest names.1
Target specific niches. TikTok’s algorithm is very personalized, so influencer campaigns work best when narrowly tailored to particular subcultures and interests.2
Encourage user-generated content. TikTok thrives on participatory challenges and memes. Successful campaigns inspire fans to create their own videos engaging with the brand, expanding reach.3
The key is crafting campaigns specifically for TikTok’s unique platform and culture. With the right influencer partnerships and creative strategy, brands can authentically engage the TikTok community.
