Maybe you have already started working with TikTok influencers, or perhaps you are contemplating getting started. If TikTok is uncharted territory for you, learn more about the platform before determining whether your company is ready to launch a campaign with an Influencer. By reading this article you’re already well on your way to discovering more about the platform, by gaining an insight into how to work with TikTok influencers and which factors you should take into consideration.
What is TikTok?
Just a quick look into what TikTok is all about. TikTok is a video-centric social media platform where you can see and share videos up to 3 minutes across an array of topics. It’s a creative space for those who wish to make fun, artistic and inspiring videos that they can share with other people. According to SensorTower, TikTok was one of the most downloaded social media apps worldwide in January 2020. Today the platform has around 800 million monthly active users, making it one of the most prominent social networks across the world.
Targeting a younger audience
If your brand wants to tap into the purchasing power of Generation Z, TikTok influencer marketing is definitely worth considering as the platform assists you in achieving brand exposure and reaching your target audience. TikTok content resonates with Generation Z, and the influencers active on the platform are already masters of producing inspiring and creative content that catches followers’ attention.
Work Effectively with TikTok Influencers
Setting up the right KPIs and objectives will help you to succeed and execute your campaign, as well as to identify the type of influencer that will be the best match.
First of all, you need to establish a clear goal and know why you want to work with TikTok. The strategy around your influencer campaigns may differ, so it is important to consider the purpose and goals before getting started on a new campaign. Is the purpose of the campaign to increase brand awareness surrounding a specific product or service, or is it all about converting more sales? If your goal is to drive sales, you may want to focus on an influencer who works within a specific niche; one who may be less well-known, but more aligned with your target audience. Therefore, knowing your audience is crucial if you want to create a successful campaign. Nonetheless, knowing your audience goes far beyond considerations of age and location – whilst you will of course need to take these factors into account, you also need to be aware of the interests of this target group. Perhaps you have already set up personas for your company meaning that you can easily use them in your influencer campaigns. If you haven’t, it would be a good idea to start now.
TikTok Influencers
As with other social media platforms, a TikTok influencer is someone who influences other people. They can often be pinpointed by being tastemakers or trendsetters based on the number of people that are following their accounts who have a genuine interest in them and the content they share. If you are looking at influencer marketing from a marketing perspective, the worth of an influencer can be evaluated according to factors including a number of followers and engagement rate. But sometimes these two indicators aren’t enough, and it is also necessary to consider whether the influencer is the right fit for your company when it comes to the ‘look n’ feel’.
As we have mentioned in one of our previous articles, influencers typically have a high social standing which inspires consumer confidence in the product or service that they promote.
How to get started
First of all, you need to make sure that your company’s target audience engages with the influencer you select for your campaign. The whole point of working with influencer marketing is to ensure that you reach your target audience through a trustworthy representative within your niche. Below we have outlined some tips on how to find the right influencer for your company:
#Hashtags
So how do you start your search for TikTok influencers? A good starting point is to search for hashtags, as this will help you to filter the types of profiles that are relevant to you. The majority of videos posted on TikTok use certain hashtags, making this a highly useful search tool.
If your company operates within a specific niche, searching for industry-relevant hashtags, in particular, may help you to target the right influencers – but only if they have used these tags in specific posts. If influencers are using a specific hashtag, it’s likely that their followers are engaged or interested in content that relates to that specific hashtag, therefore indicating that they match your target audience. You should aim to collaborate with influencers who have an insight into the audience that you are trying to reach, to ensure that their content will engage their followers in a way that benefits your company.
Topic-based search
If you are looking for influencers who are passionate about a specific topic such as makeup, running or cooking, you can try searching for the specific topic by using hashtags as well. But, be aware that some influencers might only have used the specific hashtag for one post, meaning that this is not an indicator of the general topics this influencer posts content about. In the influencer’s bio, they are likely to have written about their main topic, so this could also be a way of identifying an influencer according to their interests. As a company, it is not to your benefit to work with an influencer whose main audience is interested in another topic, so making sure your influencer is aligned on the interests within your niche is key to delivering a successful campaign.
Location-based search
If your product or service is only sold in certain countries, you need to make sure that the influencer’s audience matches those countries. Doing a collaboration with an influencer whose target group is based in another country than you are focusing on, will result in limited value. If you would like to drive traffic to a physical store, you can try finding an influencer whose followers are geographically located near the store. For example, if you are a jewellery company with a store in Copenhagen, you could collaborate with a Copenhagen-based influencer who has an interest in jewellery and fashion and ask them to do a video inside your store. Be aware that an influencer’s location in a specific country or city does not necessarily mean that their followers are located in the same place, as they may still have followers from many other countries. A way to target a more specific country would be to collaborate with influencers who only create content in their native language.
Follower size
Paying an influencer according to the number of followers they have can be a costly affair. If the majority of the influencer’s followers do not match your target group, the collaboration can have a limited value.
Working with micro-influencers that are operating within a very focused niche can create a lot of value. Despite having fewer followers, they are more likely to be masters of creating content around a specific topic. For instance, if you sell bagels, you can even find influencers who make videos preparing bagels in different ways.
Engagements, views – the efficiency rate
An influencer with a lot of followers but a low engagement or view rate could indicate that either something is not quite right, i.e. that the influencer is not posting frequently, no longer is active or that the content is of bad quality. Perhaps they perhaps grew their following due to one 1 viral video) or maybe they changed the subject they are posting about. Sometimes a low engagement rate can also be caused by other factors such as the age of the influencer’s followers. Either way engagements and views are two metrics that you need to take into consideration.
All in all, you need to assess the quality of the content and evaluate the influencer’s audience before starting a collaboration.
Cross-channel presence
Check if the influencer is active across other social media platforms. If they already have a substantial following on other media such as Instagram and YouTube, they might also be growing their TikTok fanbase.
How to work with influencers on TikTok
Affiliate links
There are different ways of working with TikTok influencers. One thing is for sure – you want to encourage influencers to keep promoting your brand in the long-term, so you might consider paying them via commission or combined with a one-time fee. So how do you do that? Influencers have the possibility to add an affiliate link in their bio so that their followers can click on your website. The influencer can make money on the sales that he or she creates through this link.
For example, you can ask the influencer to make a video where they refer to the promotion offer you have agreed to. This helps to generate traffic to their profile from which their followers can enter your website. Another advantage of the influencer making a video is that it can go viral and reach a much larger audience than their number of followers alone – if that’s the case you can end up getting a huge number of sales if quality content is created. So, there are both sales opportunities in it for you, but also the opportunity to achieve greater brand awareness. If the video is exposed to a lot of irrelevant people, there will be no need for you to pay, as you only pay for the sales conversions the influencer makes.
You can easily track influencer sales in our campaign management feature, click here for a free demo.
Let the influencers do their thing
TikTok values creativity and you want the collaboration to be trustworthy. Therefore, it’s important that you give the influencer license to help execute your campaign. Make sure to have a playbook, so that you can guide their message and give some inspiration. Try not to be too restrictive, otherwise, the influencer may come off as unbelievable or in the worst-case scenario, they will refuse to work with you.
What are the rules for TikTok marketing?
Every time you get an influencer to talk about your brand/company – no matter which platform you are using, the influencer should always highlight that it’s a partnership (a form of paid advertising) or such other term as is legally required from case to case, and country to country. For example, when using social media, all posts and content must be clearly marked as advertisements. Make sure the influencer complies with the FTC guidelines to avoid legal issues and in some countries even a fine.
Use Woomio to see data
Data is the key to success – or at least a step closer to success. It will help you to evaluate whether an influencer is the right match for your campaign. Without knowing about the influencer’s engaged audience, you might spend a lot of money on a campaign without getting anything out of it. Woomio’s feature, ‘Quantify’, gives you access to see the most important information when visiting a specific profile on TikTok. Data such as engagement rate, country demographics and age groups of the engaging audience will help you to find the right influencer for your next campaign. To learn more Book a demo or get Woomio for free.
Summarising the steps you will have to look at for launching a TikTok influencer campaign:
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Understand the platform
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Set goals for your campaign
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Research influencers for your campaign
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Give the influencer creative space
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Measure the campaign result
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Make sure that your collaboration is FTC compliant
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Use other TikTok add formats
