How to Collaborate With TikTok Influencers to Grow Your Business
Being able to reach a greater number of audiences is every brand’s dream. Along with multiplying their revenue, it benefits them in several other ways such as improving brand awareness, experience, image, customer retention, and trust.
Through the constant evolution of social media leading to how we experience it today, it has offered yet another stage for brands, big and small, where they can market themselves. Since it does not work like traditional media, it requires brands to think and advertise out of the box.
TikTok is one such platform that has gained immense popularity among users all over the world in very little time. This implies that brands have a fair chance of becoming all the rage among their target audiences on TikTok through influencer marketing.
The Power of TikTok Influencer Marketing
TikTok has the highest number of users out of all other social media networking sites which makes it the most popular app for marketers as well. You could only imagine how powerful influencer marketing on TikTok would prove to be. We can find numerous examples of how brands who were once a no name took by storm through influencer collaborations on TikTok.
Yes, it’s true that the said app is more popular among the younger generation but it does offer a great deal of diverse audiences with similar interests. People belonging to various age groups enjoy watching TikTok videos and the number is only getting higher with each passing day.
TikTok influencers are trusted more by their followers than celebrities or influencers at any other site. This is because the content created on TikTok seems more natural and less forced even if it’s sponsored. This authenticity generates a higher trust factor among the audience.
The algorithm of the app encourages more creativity since it prioritizes the quality of content rather than the number of likes or followers on an account. So it gets easier to be able to reach a greater number of audience that will value and appreciate your content.
TikTok challenges and trends spread rapidly through the app leading to more people jumping on the bandwagon and in turn, creating user-generated content. All of these aspects mentioned and more make TikTok influencer marketing an extremely powerful tool for brands to advertise themselves and that too, in a non-traditional manner.
Partnering With Tik Tok Influencers
Collaborating with influencers on TikTok can really be a game changer for your business. The potential of the app especially in terms of marketing is undeniable. We have seen businesses experiencing skyrocketing success through TikTok marketing. So let’s dive straight into how you can grow your business by partnering with influencers effectively.
Be Clear About Your Goals
Putting first things first, you have to be clear about your goals and objectives before you jump to any collaborations. What is it that you want to achieve by running an influencer marketing campaign on Tik Tok? Do you want to work on brand awareness, build consumer trust, improve your reputation, or boost your sales?
Set your KPIs, decide on a budget, and establish a strategy to work on. That is when you are ready to execute a successful marketing campaign on TikTok.
Identify Your Target Audience
This step comes prior to choosing any influencers because it will help you in doing so. When you are done setting your goals and objectives for the campaign, it’s time to decide who is your message being addressed to?
The best way to do so is to create a buyer persona that transcends beyond their demographics. It should enlist various traits of their personality. This could include their interests, hobbies, problems, frustrations, people they interact with, the content they engage with, things they buy, and what leads them to buy those?
Being able to clearly visualize your target audience can significantly improve the other aspects of your marketing campaign.
Choose Your Influencers
When you are choosing influencers to collaborate with them, you are actually choosing people who will represent your brand. So it’s all about choosing the right influencers who will not only promote your product or service but also help you achieve your goals.
Here are two key points that will assist you in how to choose the right ones.
What to look for in an influencer?
While you are on the lookout for influencers, you must consider the following things before shortlisting them.
- Their niche and type of content
- Does it align with your brand ethos?
- How often do they post and is there any pattern that exists?
- What is their average engagement rate?
- What kind of people follow them or engage with their content the most?
- Do they engage with their followers often?
- Do they post content on other mediums?
- Have they previously created sponsored content, especially in your niche?
- Did they buy TikTok followers or have authentic ones?
How do you search for influencers?
There are several ways you can search for influencers which are as follows:
- Conducting a google search
- Searching on TikTok through relevant hashtags and keywords
- Filtering your search by topic location, follower count, engagement rates
- Contacting an agency to connect you with relevant influencers
Reaching Out to Influencers
No matter how small or big an influencer is, always reach out to them in a professional and formal way. Most influencers have already mentioned their preferred mode of communication be it email, phone, their PR person, or an agency.
Direct messages are not preferable since they can get lost in other messages if the incoming is high. However, if you can’t find any other way of reaching out to them, you can always drop them a message.
Signing Agreements
Discuss all the campaign details beforehand and ask questions if you need to. Clearly communicate the deliverables, deadlines, payment methods, and any other requirements for the campaign. It is highly essential for both parties to mutually agree upon all points in the contract before signing it and getting the work started to avoid any problems later on.
Having all these things written is a more professional way to collaborate with influencers. It allows both the brand and influencer to be transparent with each other and helps foster a sustainable relationship between them.
Content Creation
After you are done choosing the influencers and signing agreements with them, it is time for content creation. Do not restrict the creative liberty of influencers and let them do their thing. The TikTok algorithm also comes into the equation over here since it pushes content that has a more natural feel to it.
For best results, allow the influencers to be as creative as they can get. It is also important to note that TikTok is more popular among the younger generation who don’t like to be told what they need to do.
If you do not take these things into consideration, you might not be able to execute the campaign effectively and achieve your desired results.
Evaluate and Approve
Before publishing the sponsored content, the creators have to submit it to the brand. This is the time when you evaluate their work and let them know if there is anything that doesn’t go with your brand values or needs to be changed.
You can also let them know that you do not need them to buy TikTok views for the content to perform better.
Publishing the Content
The content is now ready to be published once it has undergone the reviewing process. Be prepared to receive a lot of orders and queries about your product or service.
After the content is out on TikTok, the other departments should be active in order to engage with customers online, respond to their concerns, receive and ship their orders on time, and handle any complaints well.
If there is a lack at your end in dealing with any of these processes, all of it would fall back on you and you would have to deal with the negative consequences. So it is really important to be prepared for the challenges that come with growth.
Campaign Tracking
Your job does not end with getting the content published. You are supposed to track how well the content of all influencers on board is doing through performance metrics. Is it being liked by the people? Are they engaging with it enough? Is the engagement converting into purchase decisions or whatever your objective for the campaign is? Are there any adjustments needed?
Through answering all these questions, you can track the performance of your content and analyze it.
Campaign Analysis
Conducting an analysis of your campaign is a really pertinent step to quantify the success of your plan. The campaign analysis helps you with comparing your investments and results as well as in designing strategies for the future.
You get a chance to find out and learn from your mistakes. Did you meet your objective? If not, how close were you to making it? What strategies went well and they can be applied again? What was the ROI? How can things go better the next time? The answers to all of these questions can be derived from a transparent analysis.
Final Notes
TikTok influencer marketing can be a game changer for your brand. The number of followers or likes do not matter on TikTok. What matters the most is the quality of the content and how well people perceive it. So this is what you should focus on the most when choosing influencers for your campaign.
Know your brand well. Understand how TikTok works. And no one can stop your brand from soaring high.