For a few years now, brands have been using TikTok as a way to reach a new audience and showcase their products and services creatively and engagingly.
TikTok is particularly popular among fashion, beauty, and entertainment businesses. However, any brand can use TikTok to connect with its target audience, whether it’s through sponsored content, influencer partnerships, or creating its own branded content.
The TikTok audience is predominantly made up of younger users, with 43% of TikTok global users between the ages of 18 and 24. This makes TikTok an excellent platform for targeting younger consumers.
TikTok influencer marketing has seen tremendous growth in recent years, with many influencers on the platform gaining large followers and significant engagement on their content. In fact, TikTok influencers have been known to drive significant sales for brands since 30% of Gen Z’ers prefer using TikTok for product research.
30-Second Quiz: Do You Need TikTok Influencer Marketing?
Answer the following questions regarding your business.
- Are you looking to expand awareness of your business/brand to a younger audience? (age 16-30)
- Can you easily showcase your products/services in a video?
- Are you comfortable sharing light-hearted brand content?
- Can you invest your time experimenting with content and the platform?
If 3/4 of your answers are positive, then you definitely should invest your time and resources into TikTok influencer marketing. Otherwise, TikTok might not be the best choice to grow your business.
TikTok Influencer Marketing - A Short, Step-by-Step Guide
From identifying the right influencers to measuring the success of your campaign, this guide covers it all.
Set campaign goals
How to find the right TikTok influencers
There are three ways to find TikTok influencers to partner with for your campaigns:
- Influencer Platforms or Influencer Data Providers
- TikTok Creator Marketplace
- TikTok hashtags
However, which way works best for finding influencers depends on your requirements. Whether you need TikTok stars or influencers with smaller followings, and whether you need few influencers or influencers at scale.
Yet, there is one method that is proven to deliver the best results, and that is leveraging influencer data.
To make an informed decision about whether a certain TikTok influencer is suitable for your business or not, it’s best to find influencer data. That refers to any information about certain social media influencers, such as audience demographics, engagement rate, language, location, niche, monetization insights, and more.
Brands that are leveraging influencer data effectively target their marketing efforts and maximize their ROI from influencer marketing campaigns.
Best ways to find micro-influencers
Few influencers – If you need a few micro-influencers to partner with your brand, then you can spend some time and search them using TikTok hashtags. Micro-influencers often use hashtags to get discovered, and since you need only a few it won’t take long before you find influencers that suit your requirements.
Influencers at scale – If you need influencers at scale it’s best to buy data from Influencer data providers. At Influencers Club we can give you data at scale that will give you very detailed insights about each influencer. That includes location, language, how many platforms they are active, do they monetize, do they have affiliate links, and 30 more data points.
A detailed overview of each influencer like this will help you hire influencers that will bring you the best results.
Just get in touch with us, explaining what is your criteria for influencers and we can give you influencer data with 98% accuracy within a few working days.
Find ideal TikTok influencers to promote your brand
For you, this means having a chance to know the true influencer’s overall influence and reach, finding influencers that will represent your brand in the best possible way, doing more personalized influencer outreach, etc.
Best ways to find macro and celebrity influencers
Few influencers – The biggest challenge with influencers with large followings is that they are hard to reach. You think you can easily find TikTok stars, but to attract big influencers to reply to your email you need to have enough data to personalize the email and steal their attention.
For this, you can use TikTok Creator Marketplace.
- Log in with your TikTok account and start browsing through the profiles of different TikTok influencers
- Use the search filters to find influencers based on their location, category, and audience size
- When you find suitable TikTok influencers, reach out to them through the platform by clicking the “Contact” button on their profile page
- Additionally, you can leave comments on their TikTok videos to stand a better chance for the partnership
Yet, getting replies from influencers with large followings or even getting them to accept collaboration offers is tough. But, we managed to find a way to do outreach to TikTok celebrity influencers with an average 13% reply rate.
We do a focused attention plan that is similar to the well-known ABM approach in B2B marketing. That means, the plan is 100% focused on the influencer and we know how to offer exactly what he or she needs.
Simply put, we find the perfect creators for our clients and we do hyper-personalized influencer outreach for creator economy companies, eCommerce businesses, and marketing agencies that are part of our partnership program.
If you want to get more in detail you can schedule a meeting with someone from our team and discuss how can we help with your specific case.
Influencers at scale – When it comes to finding influencers at scale it’s best to buy a list of TikTok influencers per your requirements from influencer data providers.
You can set criteria based on the influencer’s niche, following size, location, keywords, whether they monetize or not, and influencers who use multiple platforms, languages, and more than 20 different data points.
With that advantage, you can get a list of filtered influencers that are a good fit for your business. That way you will be a few steps ahead of any of your competitors that are reaching out to influencers to create videos to promote their brand.
Influencer outreach
Reaching out to influencers
Contact the influencers you have identified and introduce yourself, your brand, and your product or service. Leverage the data you have to craft a personalized message explaining your brand and the collaboration you are proposing.
Be clear about the value that the influencer will get out of the collaboration, such as exposure to a new audience or a product they can showcase to their followers.
Since they have tons of messages on TikTok from their followers, reaching out to TikTok influencers via email will help you stand a better chance to get a reply. Plus, the collaboration offer sent via email looks more professional. However, make sure to include links from the social media profiles of your brand.
Most brands and marketers struggle to get replies from influencers, but we’ve sent millions of cold emails and we tried every approach to do influencer outreach at scale, so we achieved a 30-40% open rate and 1.2% conversion rate. That’s why we offer influencer outreach as a part of our partnership program.
Additionally, here are a few of our latest best-performing email templates you can use to reach out to influencers in 2024
Hey [insert name],
Everyone at [your brand name] absolutely loved your post about [insert description of post]. We love seeing social media creators engaging & producing this type of content. We’d love to meet up, get to know each other, and further discuss your content.
You can learn more about us here [insert a link to your page].
Let me know if you’d be interested and we can settle on a date to make a call.
Regards, [Insert your name].
2. Brand Ambassador Program
Hey [insert name],
My name is [insert name] and I’m with [insert brand name]. We have been following your profile on [insert social media platform] and love your posts on [insert specific topic].
We would like to invite you to become a brand ambassador for our brand! We think your [insert a reference to a niche topic] really aligns with our vision.
As a brand ambassador, you’d partner with us and:
[insert benefit 1]
[insert benefit 2]
[insert benefit 3]
If you’re interested, I’d love to meet up, discuss the program, and see if there’s anything else you’d like to get as our next brand ambassador.
Best wishes!
Hey!
It’s been a while! I’ve loved everything you’ve worked on since we last collaborated.
I’ve been meaning to DM you about [insert description of a past post] – I really enjoyed it and it seemed as if it resonated with your followers.
I’m sure things are busy, but do you have any free time to catch up and reconnect?
Please let me know.
Take care, [insert your name]
Negotiate collaboration
Negotiating a collaboration with a TikTok influencer involves discussing the terms of the partnership. What type of content will be created, the duration of the collaboration, and will you use sponsored posts?
Be clear about any compensation or incentives that will be provided before you hire TikTok influencers. It’s important to be open and transparent about your expectations and be willing to negotiate to find a mutually beneficial agreement and avoid future misunderstandings.
To simplify this process, you can use project management software. They are useful for managing the details of collaboration, such as tracking deadlines, communicating with the influencer, and keeping track of tasks and deliverables.
Administrative tasks
When collaborating with TikTok creators for influencer marketing campaigns, brands must handle administrative tasks such as drafting and signing contracts and making payments in a timely and organized manner.
This is the only way to be sure that both sides can know the terms of the collaboration and will be held accountable for their commitments. Plus, when partnerships are handled this way, it shows your credibility and you will be more trustworthy so you can attract influencers for serious big collaborations in the future.
Measuring the success of your TikTok influencer marketing campaign
By regularly monitoring and analyzing campaign results you can get a better understanding of what’s working and what’s not. Hence, you can make any necessary adjustments to optimize the campaign’s performance.
The easiest and most precise way you can measure campaign results is by using unique tracking links or promo codes to track website visits, sales, and other desired actions.
You can also analyze the demographics of your audience and compare them to your target audience to see if the campaign is resonating with the right people.
Lastly, don’t forget to track any sales or revenue generated by the campaign to determine its financial impact.
Hire an influencer outreach team to do everything for you
At Influencers Club we offer a creator outreach service for both brands that need influencers with large followings and those that need micro-influencers at scale.
This is our partnership program where we dedicate a creator sales team to work on the whole TikTok influencer outreach process.
First, together we will come up with the initial strategy, segmentation, and messaging. When you approve the plan, we go forward and do the creator outreach.
Since we have a database of 30M TikTok influencers enriched with 40+ unique data points, we can get as detailed or as segmented as you want.
Also, we never settle down for second best, so besides running A/B tests, we also run C, D, and E, so we can make sure we will find the best influencer outreach message that will entice influencers to work with you.
Simply put, we source perfect creators for your brand, crush your outbound cold emails, and do weekly reports to keep you up to date with the results.
TikTok influencer marketing for eCommerce
Some experts predict that TikTok is the future of eCommerce. Although we couldn’t know for sure, the fact that TikTok outstands other social media platforms with its high level of engagement is enough for eCommerce brands to implement TikTok as part of their marketing strategy.
Hence, here are some of the best features, eCommerce brands need to keep in mind when marketing their products on TikTok.
Shopify integration
Businesses that use Shopify can now make sales directly on TikTok and use Shopify to manage orders, payments, and returns. Some brands testify that TikTok has ‘hockey-sticked’ their growth by allowing them to get in front of the world.
It’s known that 1 in 4 viewers have purchased or researched a product they saw on TikTok. That’s because 43% of heavy TikTok users feel that the product advertising on TikTok blends in with the content.
To sell products directly on TikTok, you must be eligible for TikTok’s Creator Fundamentals program and have a verified Creator Account. You can check your eligibility and apply for the Creator Fundamentals program on the TikTok Creator Fundamentals page.
TikTok shop feature
TikTok Shop is a feature that allows businesses to create an online store within the TikTok app, allowing users to browse and purchase products directly from their TikTok feed. eCommerce brands can now showcase and sell products through in-feed videos, Lives, and product showcase tabs.
To set up a TikTok Shop, you’ll need to have a TikTok account and a verified business account. Also, currently, TikTok Shop is available only for businesses in US or UK.
Add product links to ads and videos
Adding product links to your videos or ad makes it easier for people to purchase your product. Hence, you can increase your sales. To do so follow these steps:
- Tap the + icon to add a new video
- Tap Add link before you post the video
- Tap Product
- Select an item from your synced catalog and tap Add
- Verify the product that is linked and tap Post
Before you do anything, ensure you have TikTok shopping set up.
Use a link in bio tool
2 TikTok influencer marketing examples to learn from
Dunkin’
Dunkin’ not only is one of the first brands to employ TikTok influencer marketing but they also achieved a 20% increase in sales with that strategy.
The brand partnered with the famous TikTok creator Charli D’Amelio and they collaborated on several videos to promote the latest launched menu. Besides promoting the new product, Dunkin’ encouraged its followers to download their app. So, besides increased sales of all cold brew coffees, the brand had a 57% increase in app downloads.
This campaign is a perfect example of the power of influencer marketing on TikTok. The brand has built social proof and increased sales and app downloads because it partnered with the right influencer.
Gymshark
Gymshark has the most consistent approach to influencer marketing. Since they are very innovative and adaptable, they managed to remain on top for years now. Their TikTok strategy is to partner with micro-influencers instead of macro or celebrity influencers.
Plus, they often create campaigns that are in line with the brand, such are giveaways and challenges that inspire people to be more active.
When it comes to influencer marketing, Gymshark’s influencer partnerships on TikTok are the vital pillar of Gymshark’s worldwide success.
Moreover, one of the best Gymshark’s challenges #gymshark66 got around 2M likes and 50M views on TikTok. The challenge was in line with the brand and encouraged users to be more active and create new healthy habits.
Participants needed to post their fitness goals, before and after photos of the progress they made for 66 days, and use the hashtag #gymshark66. Influencers that collaborated with Gymshark helped spread the word, and the brand gave away a free year’s supply of Gymshark goods which was an irresistible offer for fitness enthusiasts.
Key Takeaways
By following a short guide and learning how to find and collaborate with influencers, you are ready to create successful TikTok influencer campaigns like those demonstrated by big brands.
If you are an eCommerce brand, utilizing TikTok trends and features specific to eCommerce can also help boost your campaigns and with the right strategy, TikTok influencer marketing can lead to a 20% increase in sales as it happened for Dunkin’.
Yet, keep in mind that brands with the most successful TikTok influencer campaigns, often leverage influencer data to speed up the scalability of their influencer strategy effectively.
For example, we were happy to help Amazon, Linktree, Pearpop, Koji, Willa, ByteDance, and many others to achieve their influencer marketing goals. And we can help you too! Reach out to us today and let’s find a way to skyrocket your online presence, sales, social media awareness, and more.
