TikTok Influencer Marketing: A Complete Guide to Get You Started

There is no doubt that TikTok is the king of social media right now. Since launching in 2018, it has grown into an incredible platform for consumers, creators, and brands. On TikTok, you have the opportunity to generate viral campaigns, tap into an entirely new audience, and connect with niche communities.

With over a billion monthly active users, TikTok is a marketer’s dream. For brands whose target audience contain Gen Z or Millennials, TikTok is an essential marketing tool. But how to do that? By partnering with TikTok influencers, of course!

So if you’re interested in utilizing TikTok influencer marketing as a marketer or an online business owner, read this article and use it as your guide to success in 2023. 

What is TikTok Influencer Marketing?

TikTok influencer marketing refers to the practice of collaborating with popular and influential users on the TikTok platform to promote products, services, or brands. These promotions can have any form, including product reviews, unboxing experiences, personal opinion sharing, and more.

TikTok influencers are content creators who have gained a strong presence on the platform. They’re recognizable names and faces, platform experts, and trustworthy voices when it comes to recommending products and brands. Therefore, brands can leverage this influence to reach and engage with their target market.

What Types of Content Can TikTok Influencers Offer?

TikTok influencers can offer a wide variety of content types to engage their audience. Here are some examples of content types that TikTok influencers can create.

• Unboxing and Product Reviews: Influencers can showcase the unboxing experience of a brand’s product, providing a firsthand look at the packaging, contents, and initial impressions. They can share their honest reviews, highlighting the features and benefits of the product. This type of content helps build anticipation and provides valuable insights for potential customers.

• Hashtag Challenges: Influencers can initiate hashtag challenges where they create a specific task or theme and encourage their followers to participate. They set the guidelines and invite users to create their own videos using the designated hashtag. Hashtag challenges can go viral and help brands generate user-generated content and increase brand visibility.

• Tutorials and Educational Content: Influencers can share knowledge, step-by-step tutorials, and educational content related to their areas of expertise. This can include topics such as personal development, life hacks, career advice, educational tips, and more. Educational content helps position influencers as valuable resources and thought leaders within their niche.

• Storytelling and Vlogs: Influencers can use TikTok to share personal stories, experiences, or vlogs, allowing their audience to get to know them better. They can share insights about their daily lives, travel adventures, behind-the-scenes moments, or share inspiring stories. This type of content helps create a deeper connection between influencers and their followers.

• Comedy and Skits: TikTok is known for its entertaining and humorous content. Influencers can create funny skits, sketches, or comedic routines to entertain their followers. These light-hearted and engaging videos can go viral, generating high levels of engagement and shares.

Why Brands Should Utilize Influencer Marketing on TikTok?

TikTok influencer marketing has proven to be an effective strategy for brands to connect with the TikTok community, build brand awareness, and drive engagement. By leveraging the influence and creativity of TikTok influencers, brands can tap into the platform’s unique culture and reach a young and highly engaged audience.

For online businesses of all sizes, influencer marketing has emerged as a crucial part of contemporary marketing tactics. Some of the main reasons are as follows:

Reach a Highly Engaged Audience

TikTok has a massive user base, with millions of active users worldwide, particularly among Gen Z and millennial demographics. Partnering with TikTok influencers allows brands to tap into their followers’ large and dedicated audience, gaining access to a highly engaged and receptive user base.

Authenticity and Trust

TikTok influencers have built credibility and trust with their followers through their authentic and relatable content. When influencers promote a brand or product, it is often seen as a genuine recommendation rather than a traditional advertisement. This authenticity helps foster trust and credibility, increasing the chances of audience engagement and brand affinity.

Increase Brand Awareness

Collaborating with TikTok influencers exposes brands to a wider audience and helps increase brand awareness. Influencers have the ability to create content that captures attention, goes viral, and reaches a broader user base within a short period. This increased exposure can significantly boost brand visibility and reach.

Enhance Engagement and Interaction

TikTok influencers have a knack for creating engaging and interactive content that resonates with their followers. By partnering with influencers, brands can leverage their creativity and expertise in capturing and retaining audience attention. This heightened engagement leads to increased interaction with the brand, such as likes, comments, and shares, further amplifying brand messaging and building a community around the brand.

Targeted and Niche Marketing

TikTok influencers cater to specific niches and demographics, allowing brands to reach their target audience more effectively. By collaborating with influencers whose content aligns with the brand’s values and target market, brands can ensure that their message reaches the right people. This targeted approach increases the likelihood of connecting with users who are genuinely interested in the brand’s offerings.

Capitalize on Viral Trends

TikTok is known for its viral trends and challenges that capture the attention of millions of users. Influencers are often at the forefront of these trends and have the ability to create content that aligns with these cultural phenomena. By partnering with influencers, brands can tap into the latest trends and leverage their creativity to generate buzz around the brand.

How to Run a Successful TikTok Influencer Marketing Campaign?

Running a successful TikTok influencer campaign requires thorough research, planning, and creativity. Here’s how to strategize, plan, and execute it in four steps:

Step 1: Define Your Target Audience and Niche

Defining your target audience and niche is a crucial step in developing a successful TikTok influencer marketing campaign. Before starting with anything, you need to make sure that you are confident in your knowledge of your target audience’s needs, interests, demographics, and geography.

First, it makes sense to consider whether your audience is using the platform and if your brand is suited for TikTok. If your audience is on TikTok, then it’s time to think about their interests and potential niches. A TikTok niche is a group of people with similar interests. Finding your niche allows you to narrow down potential influencers with a segmented audience likely to enjoy and engage with your brand.

Find out which TikTok influencers they follow, and which ones might become your regular customers. Also, you can understand your audience by answering these questions：

• What are their goals and objectives in general?
• What problems do they choose to follow Influencers for solving?
• How can your product solve this problem?

Step 2: Set Your Campaign Goals

You already know who you want to target. Now you need to identify your online business needs and set goals accordingly. Before you start drafting contracts with TikTok influencers, it’s important to ask yourself, what am I trying to achieve with this campaign? Whether your influencer marketing goals are brand awareness, reach, or sales, setting them helps direct you to the right TikTok influencers.

At this stage, it is helpful to list campaign details. Ask yourself the following:

• What is your budget?
• How long do you want to run this campaign?
• How many influencers do you want to work with?
• Do you have enough resources to see this through?

It’s okay to have multiple goals, but your campaign can be more effective if you pick 2-3 objectives, prioritize them, and define each clearly.

Next, work backward from your goals and create a set of benchmarks. These can serve as your key performance indicators (KPIs). For best results, consider attaching specific and measurable metrics (such as the number of followers gained, engagement rate, click-through rates, conversions, or hashtag usage) to each KPI.

Step 3: Search for Niche-relevant Influencers

Once you’ve set your campaign goals and expectations, it’s time to find influencers. Finding niche-relevant influencers is essential to ensure that your campaign reaches the right audience and resonates with them.

Here are some effective ways to find TikTok influencers:

• Google Search: You can start by entering some topics related to your brand into Google. For example, typing “TikTok influencers who talk about beauty tips” can get you started looking for some popular content creators.
• Research Popular Hashtags and Trends: Use TikTok’s search function to explore popular hashtags and trends within your niche. Pay attention to the content that resonates with your target audience and note the influencers who are creating engaging content in those areas. You can also follow relevant hashtags, so videos with those hashtags show up on your ‘For You’ page, making it easier to find trending videos from other influencers in the future.
• TikTok Creator Marketplace: One of the unique features of TikTok is its creator marketplace. Brands have to sign up for an account and once approved, you can search creators by a wide variety of criteria. These include the size of their reach, location, topic, video views, and level of commercialization. From here, you can check out their profile to identify the best fit and contact them directly.
• Other Social Media Platforms: Many influencers are on multiple social media platforms. If you like the content someone is creating on Instagram, for example, try searching for them on TikTok.
• Influencer Discovery Platforms: Several online platforms provide databases of influencers on various social media platforms, including TikTok, making it easy to find influencers across all platforms. You can filter by keyword, location, engagement metrics, audience demographics, industry, and more to find the perfect TikTok creator for your brand. Some popular influencer discovery platforms include Upfluence, Grin, and Klear.

Step 4: Reach Out to Influencers

Once you’ve compiled a shortlist of potential influencer partners, it’s time for outreach. So, how do you reach out to influencers? There are four ways: email, direct message (DM) on TikTok, commenting on their videos, or secondary platforms. We recommend using a combination of the former three methods.

The next step is to prepare your pitch. Four tips to improve your response rate:

• Personalize your message: Influencers receive numerous partnership inquiries, so it’s crucial to stand out with a personalized message. Start by addressing the influencer by name and express your admiration for their content and work. Be genuine and specific about why you believe they would be a great fit for your campaign, taking into account their style, audience, and values.
• Explain the partnership opportunity: Clearly explain the details of your influencer marketing campaign and the specific partnership opportunity you’re offering. Outline the campaign goals, what you expect from the influencer (e.g. number of videos, content format, or specific talking points), and the benefits they can expect from collaborating with your brand (e.g. exposure, compensation, product samples, exclusive offers).
• Be transparent about compensation: If you plan to compensate influencers, be transparent from the start. Clearly state your offer of compensation, whether it’s a flat fee, commission, free product, or any other form of remuneration. Including this information upfront can help influencers make informed decisions about partnerships.
• Follow up when necessary: Send a polite follow-up message if you don’t hear back after a reasonable amount of time. However, avoid being overly persistent or pushy. Influencers are often busy and receive a lot of inquiries, so they may not be able to respond to every message.

Conclusion

TikTok is a powerful social media platform that offers brands and online businesses unique opportunities to reach new audiences. By understanding how the app works and using the right influencers, you can create successful marketing campaigns on TikTok.

Hopefully, you found this article helpful and now feel more confident to enter the world of influencer marketing on TikTok.

Are you ready to give TikTok influencer marketing a try?