Influencers are the new celebrities of the digital world, and their fame is tied to the media through which they broadcast. TikTok is one such channel where creators have amassed large and dedicated followings. 

These creators wield tremendous influence over their audiences and have the ability to shape trends, drive conversations, and even impact purchasing decisions. 

If you have checked our blog on TikTok as an Influencer Marketing Channel, you already know why it's an obvious choice for brands lately looking to boost consumer visibility and engagement. 

In this blog, we will delve into the rise of the influencer ecosystem on TikTok, exploring the reasons behind its success and the opportunities it presents for brands looking to leverage this powerful platform.

To begin with, let’s first clarify -

Massive User Base:

TikTok boasts a massive global user base, with millions of active users daily. Leveraging this extensive reach allows brands to tap into diverse demographics and engage with potential customers on a large scale.

Authenticity and Relatability:

TikTok's content thrives on authenticity and relatability, making it an ideal platform for influencer marketing. Influencers on TikTok often create genuine, unfiltered content that resonates with their followers, facilitating more authentic brand collaborations and fostering genuine connections.

As per the Insight into Culture Drivers for TikTok report, ‘73% of people feel a deeper connection to brands they interact with on TikTok compared to others, with 67% saying that TikTok inspired them to shop even when they weren't looking to do so’.

Higher Engagement Rates:

According to Social Insider’s study, TikTok’s engagement rate currently stands at an impressive 4.25% (2023/2024), making it the most engaging social media platform.

TikTok typically boasts higher engagement rates, with users spending significant amounts of time-consuming content. Collaborating with influencers can help brands tap into this high-engaging environment and capture the attention of users more effectively.

This also leads to trend creation, which results from hyper-engagement caused by more buy-in and participation from users in the form of comments, likes, and shares.

Virality and Trendsetting Potential:

TikTok is known for making videos go viral. This could be because of its engaging format or because of an algorithm designed to make people consume content continuously. It’s likely a bit of both. 

Additionally, with over 1.5 billion monthly active TikTok users who spent 4.43 billion minutes watching TikTok videos daily, it automatically increases the opportunities for content to go viral and start trends.

Cost-Effectiveness:

Compared to traditional forms of advertising, influencer marketing on TikTok can be a cost-effective short-term strategy for brands, especially those with limited marketing budgets. By partnering with influencers who offer authentic and engaging content, brands can achieve significant reach, establish social proof, and build brand awareness and impact without breaking the bank.

As per Hubspot’s State of Marketing and Trends report - Influencer Marketing is the most popular and effective trend with the highest ROI. 

The same report suggests that investments in short-video first apps, especially TikTok, have skyrocketed compared to other platforms, as short-form video offers the highest content ROI. 

Boost Sales:

‘TikTok is the search engine of choice for more than half of Gen Z and influences their purchase decisions more than any other platform’. That’s according to a new survey from Her Campus Media, a Gen Z media and college marketing company. As per the same survey, TikTok also influences purchase decisions for 62% of Gen Z, more than any other platform. 

Additionally, for many TikTok users, the primary reason they come to our platform is to discover new things. As per Flamingo Research -

Source: TikTok

This is a clear sign of increased sales. 

So, it's high time brands and businesses start to invest in TikTok influencer marketing because, with relatively low competition, it is easy to scale and grow fast with this platform. 

TikTok Influencer Marketing is a relatively low-risk strategy. However, it is important to remember that the format of short videos makes it easy to point, shoot and post and then the video is live for the world to watch. 

So, brands are always at risk of any actions that could potentially damage their company, mainly from User Generated Content - UGC, which is also a form of indirect influencer marketing.

This makes it crucial for brands to constantly monitor what users post and say about them because it helps to quickly identify and respond to potential crises or PR issues, minimizing the impact on their brand reputation. 

Exolyt’s TikTok Social Listening feature helps monitor all organic content across TikTok for such needs as tracking brand share of voice, sentiment analysis, performance analysis, and more.

Steps to get started with TikTok Influencer Marketing -

1. Set goals
2. Determine budget
3. Find the right influencers for your brand
4. Approach potential partner
5. Plan your Influencer Marketing campaign
6. Establish contract 
7. Measure results

1. Set influencer marketing goals 

Reflect on your business and marketing goals and devise TikTok-specific targets complementing your larger objectives. These goals could be:

• Generating more sales
• Building brand awareness or engagement
• Creating for UGC (user-generated content)

As per Statista 2022 survey in the US, 38% of marketers generating sales was their top goal for influencer marketing, followed by 29% citing brand awareness and 24% for brand engagement. 

For instance, if your marketing goal is to boost website traffic by 20% or conversion rate by 10%, you might set a TikTok influencer marketing goal of attaining 1,000 click-throughs to your site within a three-week timeframe or attribute 2% of your conversions from the influencer campaign during the campaign period, respectively.

2. Determine Budget

Goal setting is also tied to budget allocations. So, one needs to revisit their quarterly or annual budgets to determine the budget for this paid channel campaign. Influencer pricing varies widely, with costs ranging from a few hundred dollars to over $10,000 per video, depending on the size of the influencer's following and their level of influence. A commonly asked question in this matter is - 

What is the cost of TikTok Influencer Marketing?

As per a marketing research report by Statista, the average price per post of TikTok influencers worldwide was 1034$ US dollars in 2021 for mega influencers with more than 1 million followers. The average minimum price per post of macro influencers with 100,000 to 1 million followers was 151$ US dollars, while the average max price was 793$ US dollars.

In 2023, the average cost of a sponsored TikTok post is 3514$ US dollars per IZEA. The costs also depend on the influencer category and their reach. For example:

• Nano influencers (1,000 – 10,000 followers): $800 per post.
• Micro-influencers (10,000 – 50,000 followers): $1,500 per post.
• Medium influencers (50,000 – 500,000 followers): $3,000 per post.
• Macro influencers (500,000 – 1,000,000 followers): $5,000 per post.
• Mega influencers (1,000,000+ followers): $7,000+ per post.

Nonetheless, TikTok is a new platform, and these prices can vary depending on factors like content format and type. However, what remains obvious is TikTok's reach and growth potential. 

3. Find the right influencers for your brand

One of the first steps to get started with Influencer Marketing is to discover relevant influencers in your niche. By selecting influencers whose audience matches your target customers, you can ensure a more effective collaboration that drives interaction and shares. You can do this manually by monitoring content creators within your industry or using TikTok Analytics and Influencer Finder tools.

Tips to find the right influencers for your brand:

1. Determine the influencer’s audience, basic demographics, and niches
2. Analyze whether their content resonates with your brand’s target demographic
3. Check the influencer’s credibility and expertise in your industry
4. Check if their engagement is well distributed even across #ad content 

Exolyt can help you resolve these needs easily with its extensive TikTok Influencer Database and tracking tools (more on these features towards the end of the guide).

You can also check who your competitors are collaborating with to get an idea of the type of influencer who would also work well for your brand.

Source: Exolyt lets you track all accounts mentioned by your competitor for a quick overview of the categories of influencers you could also follow and target.

4. Approach potential partner 

After compiling a list of potential partners for your influencer marketing campaign, the next step is to initiate contact and establish a formal agreement. This can be done through various means, such as sending a cold email, a direct message, or utilizing an influencer management platform. 

When reaching out, it's crucial to emphasize how your brand aligns with theirs, clearly articulate your campaign goals, specify content requests, and propose compensation terms.

5. Plan your Influencer Marketing Campaign

• Keep an eye on trends - It is important to keep an eye on ongoing trends to understand what captures the platform's attention. Whether it's a trending song, hashtag, or challenge, identifying these popular trends will help you make the right suggestions or brief the creator to tailor your campaign to resonate with the TikTok community. 

You can monitor these trends using Exolyt’s Industry Insights, Trend Monitoring, or Hashtag Analysis features.

• Aim for a balance between advertising and entertainment - When crafting your campaign content, instead of relying on traditional sales-focused advertisements, focus on creating informative yet entertaining videos that seamlessly integrate your brand into the TikTok user's life. This organic approach fosters a deeper connection with the audience and effectively communicates your brand's message. 

Warner Brothers

For example, Warner Bros is very strategic in this regard. It partners with multiple influencers but maintains a cohesive campaign that resonates with entertainment fans from all walks of life. The influencer strategies are hyper-personalized for each of their audience segments, which allows them to tailor the message across a range of interests and fandoms. 

The creative briefs focus on the strengths and sensibilities of each segment, and the story is crafted to blend into the viewer’s native feed, drawing a large amount of organic engagement from the influencer’s followers. 

Let’s take a look at the #WBPartner, which is commonly used by major influencers collaborating with the brand to check the content for different influencers and audiences.

• Leverage the influencer's creativity - As showcased above, brands must also leave room for the creator to express their opinions and ideas for the campaign, as they understand their audiences best. While it's important to provide input and communicate your brand requirements, allowing influencers creative freedom enables them to connect authentically with their audience while promoting your brand's mission.

Protip: Most commonly, successful TikTok content does one of the three - it entertains, educates, or inspires. 

6. Establish Contract

Once collaboration is established, you can begin negotiating the terms of your partnership and draft a formal contract or review your influencer’s contract, if any. 

In the contract, make sure to outline the specifics of the agreement, including the number of videos, their length, timing, subject matter, and compensation details. Additionally, the contract will be used to define the content creation process, including whether there will be an editorial review of videos prior to publication. 

By formalizing expectations in writing, both parties can ensure clarity and alignment throughout the collaboration while maintaining a balance between creative freedom for the influencer and meeting business requirements.

Last but not least, the final step is to measure results.

7. Measure TikTok Influencer Campaign Results

To gauge the effectiveness of your TikTok influencer marketing campaign, you can measure results in two steps - Track your KPIs and measure ROI.

Track KPIs

To measure the results, identify the key metrics that align with your influencer campaign objectives. These could include metrics such as:

• Brand awareness: Total Video Views, Reach of Campaign Hashtags or Audio, Audience Reach
• Engagement: Number of likes or hearts, comments, shares, video saves, or average video watch time
• Conversion: Number of sales from TikTok traffic, number of TikTok referral links, Conversion Rates
• Virality: Number of user-generated videos using your branded hashtag, Number of user-generated videos using brand song

You can utilize TikTok's native analytics to gain insights into the performance of influencer campaigns and user-generated content. TikTok provides metrics such as views, likes, shares, comments, and follower growth.

In the overview tab where video views are displayed, you can see how many views you got in total or the past 7 (or 28) days, and below video views, you can also see your total amount of followers in the past 7 or 28 days. Monitor these metrics to evaluate the reach and engagement generated by your campaigns.

For detailed analytics, consider using third-party TikTok analytics tools like Exolyt, which offer more advanced tracking and analysis capabilities. These tools can provide deeper insights into audience, engagement patterns, sentiment analysis, and competitor benchmarking.

With Exolyt, companies can also easily monitor comments across influencer campaigns.

This lets businesses stay informed about user reactions, address any questions or comments directed at the business, and gather insights on the campaign's general performance and feedback.

Calculate ROI

Calculating the return on investment (ROI) of your influencer marketing campaign is crucial to understanding its impact on your brand's bottom line. 

To calculate the ROI, you can create unique tracking mechanisms to attribute campaign results to the influencer. This can include customized referral links, promo codes, specific hashtags, or dedicated landing pages. These mechanisms allow you to track and analyze the engagement and conversions generated from the influencer's content. 

You must compare the generated results with the associated costs, such as influencer fees or campaign expenses. By comparing the campaign's costs to the generated revenue or other key performance indicators, you can evaluate its success and make informed decisions for future investments.

One common metric for ROI is CPM. CPM shows you the average cost per thousand views for the video.

With Exolyt’s Influencer Campaign Tracking features, you can easily track CPM (Cost per mile = Cost per thousand impressions) for individual campaign videos or add all influencer videos you are collaborating with to compare the ROI for each influencer quickly.

Source: Exolyt Influencer Campaign Tracker

So, although TikTok is a channel that is built for organic growth, there are several ways in which brands can and must utilize this fast-growing, dynamic ecosystem for marketing.

Working with the right influencers is definitely one of the best ways to go. You can leverage the potential of influencers using some of the strategies listed below:

Collaborate with Micro-Influencers

One strategy to keep in mind is collaboration with micro-influencers. While it's logical to think that a higher following means higher reach and engagement, it's not true for this category of influencers. 

Nano and micro-influencers tend to have smaller but highly engaged follower bases. Collaborating with them allows brands to tap into niche audiences, deliver targeted messages effectively, and benefit from authentic, personalized recommendations. So, if you have a tight budget, start small but make it impactful.

As per an industry report, micro-influencers not only had the highest post-engagement rates among all influencer types, but they were even higher on TikTok than other channels.

Co-Create Content

Collaborating with influencers to co-create content that aligns with both the influencer's style and the brand's messaging can be highly effective. This approach ensures authenticity and resonates well with the influencer's audience while promoting the brand's products or services organically.

This strategy can be utilized in the form of:

• Product collaborations - that offer direct promotion opportunities
• Launching a series of educational content or interviews - that demonstrates credibility powered by the creator’s expertise
• Showcase behind the scenes - utilizing an influencer for this humanizes the brand and helps to build meaningful connections

Each strategy presents unique opportunities for brands to leverage TikTok influencer marketing effectively. By understanding the strengths and nuances of each approach, brands can tailor their influencer campaigns to align with their goals and engage with their target audience authentically.

Influencer Takeovers

Hosting influencer takeovers on your brand's TikTok account allows influencers to temporarily take control and create content on behalf of your brand. This strategy provides a fresh perspective to your audience, increases engagement, and exposes your brand to the influencer's followers.

One such strategy of influencer takeovers is hosted by the Sephora brand, which regularly posts influencer content on its official TikTok channel. This content allowed Sephora to tap into the influencer’s large and dedicated fan base, increasing brand visibility and engagement.

Take a look at Sephora’s GRWM playlist, which features all of Sephora's influencers showcasing content on the brand account.

Hashtag Challenges

Hashtag challenges encourage user-generated content around a specific theme or idea. By collaborating with influencers to kick-start and promote these challenges, brands can generate buzz, increase brand awareness, and engage with their target audience in a fun and interactive way.

Chipotle is a forerunner in this strategy, having launched two popular hashtag challenges - #lidflipchallenge and #guacdance. 

The former encouraged people to flip the lid of their Chipotle burrito bowl in the air and catch it. It was Chipotle partnered with a number of TikTok influencers to promote the challenge. It was simple, fun, easy to participate in, and engaging, generating a lot of UGC, and was a massive hit. 

The challenge garnered over 300M views (Source Exolyt) and resulted in record-breaking digital sales and app downloads. 

The #GuacDance campaign, in partnership with influencers Brent Rivera and Loren Gray, celebrated National Avocado Day. Users joined by filming themselves dancing to Dr. Jean's "guacamole song" and sharing it with the hashtag #GuacDance.

Affiliate Marketing

Implementing affiliate marketing programs with influencers allows them to earn commissions for driving sales or referrals to your brand. This incentivizes influencers to create compelling content and promote your products to their audience while generating a performance-based ROI for your brand.

One of the best examples of this type of marketing is Amazon, which has allowed influencers to create storefronts to curate and showcase their favorite Amazon products to their followers.

Source Exolyt

Rachel Meaders is a creator who leverages this opportunity and monetizes her traffic with the Amazon Associates program. Her videos are usually showcasing amazon purchases with #amazonmusthaves.

Getting started with TikTok influencer marketing using Exolyt is a straightforward process that can yield impactful results. Here's a step-by-step guide:

1. Register on Exolyt

Begin by signing up for Exolyt's platform. Take some time to explore the features and functionalities it offers, including the influencer database, analytics dashboard, and influencer campaign tracking features.

Case Story

Read the IntiMD customer story to get an insight into how Exolyt customers are utilizing the platform for Influencer Marketing.

2. Identify Relevant Influencers

After you have set up your campaign goals, you can utilize Exolyt's influencer database to identify relevant influencers within your niche. Filter influencers based on criteria such as follower count, industry category, account type, and demographics. 

You can further analyze the influencers by their performance index and content style or, more critically, by analyzing their Exo Score (an engagement overview metric by Exolyt). Look for influencers whose audience aligns with your target market and has a record of producing high-quality content.

3. Engage and Negotiate with Influencers

It is important to note that Exolyt is not an exclusive Influencer Management Tool, so this step cannot be done through Exolyt.

4. Track Performance

The best feature of Exolyt’s Influencer Campaign is the ease with which it lets you track your influencer videos without going back and forth with the contact. 

Once the campaign is launched, build a campaign tracker on the platform and directly monitor the ROI and key campaign performance metrics - not just for one but multiple influencer collaborations all at once. This helps you judge which influencer brings in better results compared to others.

Monitoring the effectiveness of your influencer partnerships in real-time can help you make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy. Adjust your approach as needed to maximize results and achieve your campaign goals.

By following these steps and leveraging Exolyt's platform, you can effectively kickstart your TikTok influencer marketing efforts and drive success for your brand.