by Want to find TikTok influencers to promote your brand? Considering TikTok’s popularity – it’s the most-downloaded app – I think that’s probably a good idea. And if you’re looking to connect with younger people, TikTok is a great place to reach your target audience.
But how do you go about launching an influencer campaign on TikTok? Let’s walk through the main steps so you have no doubts.
Step 1: Define your campaign and create a strategy
First, map out your campaign. Start by setting a goal. Think about what you want to gain from collaborating with influencers.
Some common goals of influencer marketing campaigns are:
- Brand awareness
- Increased sales
- Content creation
- New followers
- More engagement
In addition to your goal, define your target audience. If you haven’t already done market research into this, now’s the time. If you already know, great! Then double check that TikTok connects you with your target. If not, you might want to think about a different network.
Next, outline the practical aspects of your campaign, like the timeline and budget. How much money can you spend on influencer incentive? This will directly affect what type of influencer you can afford to collaborate with
Step 2: Choose the content type you want to use
TikTok is a platform focused on video content. But within videos, you can do a lot with influencers. These are some of the different types of collaborations that are common between influencers and brands:
- Giveaways – partner with an influencer to raffle off some free products to participating followers
- Takeovers – let influencers post directly from your brand’s channel for a specified period of time
- Unboxing – send influencers your products and have them film their reaction while opening it
- Tutorials – ask influencers to demo how to use your product (remember TikTok videos max out at 3 minutes)
- Educational content – get influencers to speak about sensitive or historical topics that you’d like to touch on as a brand
- Lives – influencers can take questions from the audience about your products, or perhaps take them behind the scenes at an event
Next, come up with a few ideas of what type of content you’d like to use. Later, once you find influencers, ask them for their input, too. They might have an idea you hadn’t considered.
The success of your campaign content depends in great part on how the influencer reacts to your product. For example, during an unboxing, you want influencers to be excited about opening your product. Or in a live stream, you want an influencer’s natural reaction to your brand to be enthusiastic.
Therefore, it’s critical to find the right influencer for your brand, which brings us to step 3.
Step 3: Find TikTok influencers who are right for your brand
To find influencers, you need to know where to look. There are various ways to find influencers, but we recommend using an influencer marketing platform. This type of software is much cheaper than hiring an agency, but also much more efficient than searching on TikTok directly.
The influencer tiers
Your budget directly impacts your influencer discovery. Influencer prices increase with the number of followers, although they can also be affected by engagement rate, country, and other factors.
Understand the different tiers of influencers:
- Nano influencers, 1-5K followers
- Micro influencers, 5-50K followers
- Medium influencers, 50-100K followers
- Macro influencers, 100K-1M followers
- Mega influencers, 1M+ followers
- Key opinion leaders, no specific follower threshold
The last tier is a bit different. A KOL is a bit like a super influencer. While they often have a presence on social media, they also have other platforms (like television or newspapers) where they can voice their opinions. Therefore, they’re not limited to any social media follower range.
KOLs are more common in industries that require some type of specific credentials, like healthcare, business, or finance. They can make huge impacts on your brand, but it can be difficult getting in touch and collaborating with them. If you have a restricted budget, go for nano or micro influencers. They are the cheapest options, and they usually have the highest engagement rates among all influencers. This means their followers are intensely interested in their content and trust their opinions.
How to analyze performance-driven metrics
Influencer fraud continues to be a concern for marketers, so do your best to avoid it. In order to do this, analyze all the profiles of your potential collaborators.
You should look out for the following, which could be signs of influencer fraud:
- Uneven, spiky audience growth – could show bought followers
- Very low engagement – at best shows the audience is not interested, at worst shows fake followers
- Very high engagement – could be showing you the influencer bought fake engagements
- The obvious presence of bots – do a majority of the influencer’s followers appear to be real accounts?
How to decide if an influencer aligns with your brand
In addition to analyzing an influencer’s performance, you want to make sure that their personality and content align with your brand. Followers shouldn’t be guessing as to the link between your brand and the influencer; you want the collaboration to feel authentic.
Think about questions like:
- Does their content fit with what my brand does?
- Does their content meet your standards of quality?
- Does their style complement your brand’s aesthetics?
- Does the influencer uphold the values that your brand promotes?
- Do you see their voice as capable of spreading your brand’s message?
The key to successful influencer collaborations is authenticity. There are millions of influencers on TikTok. So find the ones that really fit with your brand.
Step 4: Reach out and negotiate
When you find some influencers who align with your brand and have good performance, reach out to them to see if they’re interested in collaborating. You can email influencers when you have their email address. If you don’t have that info, you can message them directly on TikTok.
If the influencer is interested in working with you, negotiate the collaboration until everyone agrees. Review how much you can pay the influencer and what type and quantity of content they’ll provide in return.
Also, go over any publication guidelines you have for the campaign. Do you want the influencer to include any specific hashtags in their content? Or maybe you’d like them to emphasize certain aspects of your product. Also, don’t forget about publication deadlines.
Finally, decide if you need a contract or not. The general rule here is if you’re paying influencers in free products only, a contract isn’t necessary (unless the product is very valuable). When paying influencers money, you’ll probably want a contract. You can use an influencer contract template and modify it for your collaboration.
Conclusion
Setting up an influencer marketing campaign on TikTok requires a lot of thorough planning before you even start searching for influencers. And then, the influencer discovery process requires some hard work. But when you know what to look out for in influencers and what to do after you find them, you’re on your way to a successful collaboration.
