How To Approach TikTok Influencer Marketing

TikTok is taking the social media world by storm. As the app keeps evolving and introducing new options (for example, 3-minute videos), it’s becoming an increasingly popular destination for those with a creative flair. Bearing in mind that TikTok rewards the creativity of its users through the TikTok Creator Fund, it’s no wonder many content creators wish to become full-fledged TikTok influencers. Apart from being rewarded by the platform itself, many TikTokers get approached by various brands that want to include them in their TikTok marketing campaigns. Influencer marketing is one of the best ways for businesses on TikTok to reach target demographics. Partnering with the right TikTok influencers can help you reach the ultimate marketing goal—getting your brand in front of the right people—and send your engagement figures through the roof. Cases of successful collaborations between brands and TikTok influencers abound. Take Chipotle, the most followed food brand of TikTok, as a great example. Chipotle engaged the famous TikToker David Dobrik to start the #ChipotleLidFlip challenge and Loren Gray for the #GuacDance challenge, generating 318 million and 1.1 billion views, respectively. Now, other brands want that success for themselves.

What Is a TikTok Influencer?

TikTok influencers are content creators who have successfully built up their accounts to the point where brands on TikTok pay them to promote their products or services and attract audiences to their businesses. Anyone can become a TikTok influencer and monetize their presence on the platform if they figure out how to use it cleverly. While a dash of luck is a must for becoming a top-tier TikTok influencer, the general formula for success involves knowing your audience, sharing unique and relevant content, posting at the right time, and checking TikTok analytics regularly.

Who Are the Biggest TikTok Influencers?

Source: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy FallonThe most-followed influencers now attract hundreds of millions of people, gaining the status of actual celebrities and branching out into music and movies. These names created some of the world's most viral videos and rose to fame thanks to TikTok:

• Charli D’Amelio—133.3 million followers
• Khaby Lame—127.7 million followers
• Bella Poarch—87.4 million followers
• Addison Rae—86.2 million followers
• Zach King—66.7 million followers

TikTok Influencers and Brand Collaborations

While partnering with the most followed TikTok influencers doesn’t suit every brand and budget, we’ve compiled a list of the most prominent collaborations between popular TikTokers and brands that can serve as a testimony to what businesses can accomplish on this platform:

1. Charli D’Amelio x Takis
2. Khaby Lame x Hugo Boss
3. Bella Poarch x eos
4. Addison Rae Easterling x American Eagle
5. Zach King x Chipotle

Charli D’Amelio x Takis

In August 2021, the famous food brand Takis engaged Charli D’Amelio, the most famous TikTok creator, to promote their brand in her content. The videos, with hashtags #takispartner and #takistransformation, successfully mix Charli’s creativity and brand’s messaging—she even goes so far to match her makeup with Takis packaging giving the brand a human touch and more personality. The campaign attracted a staggering 19.2 million views and 3 million likes.https://www.tiktok.com/@charlidamelio/video/6978628571967409413?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id7056720794054985222Source: Charli D’Amelio

Khaby Lame x Hugo Boss

In January 2022, Khaby Lame, the second-most followed personality on TikTok, signed a deal with the renowned fashion brand Hugo Boss. The company’s goal is to increase their $3.1 billion revenue to $4.5 billion by means of a dramatic rebrand, branching out into separate brands Hugo and Boss, which will be aimed at Gen Z and millennial audiences, respectively. Who better to help them achieve this goal than a popular content creator who became famous on a platform predominantly used by Millennials and Gen Zers!The collaboration with Khaby happened after Forbes released its list of the top-paid TikTok creators, which this time included Lame. The campaign titled #BeYourOwnBOSS is underway, and it’s already getting excellent results—the comedic behind-the-scenes video with Khaby gained almost 6 million views in less than two weeks.https://www.tiktok.com/@boss/video/7060900751203224837?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id7056720794054985222Source: BOSS

Bella Poarch x eos

25-year-old Bella Poarch, who became TikTok famous thanks to her viral lip-syncing videos, has collaborated with multiple brands, such as Moncler, Valentino Voce, and NFT. One of her most prominent collabs was the one with eos cosmetics—her first beauty brand partnership.Relying on the help of paid advertising, Poarch’s eos campaign video features the smooth transition from the bathroom to a skateboard ride on a sunny day, depicting the state of bliss and long-lasting glow that customers are supposed to experience after applying the eos 24-hour body lotion. The video now has 3.7 million likes and almost 30 million views.https://www.tiktok.com/@bellapoarch/video/6900251531615046917?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id7056720794054985222Source: Bella Poarch

Addison Rae Easterling x American Eagle

The brand partnerships of Addison Rae Easterling, one of the biggest TikTok stars, account for ⅔ of her income. During her 2020 collab with American Eagle, the campaign consisting of videos where she’s posing and dancing in American Eagle outfits generated $4.26 million in Media Impact Value (MIV). One post solely, where she’s mimicking Mickey Mouse’s dance using the Duet feature, brought American Eagle $673 in MIV. https://www.tiktok.com/@addisonre/video/6896686185079393541?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id7056720794054985222Source: Addison Rae

Zach King x Chipotle

To extend the viral reach of their Halloween campaign, Chipotle engaged one of the top-five TikTok personalities, Zach King, to promote their Halloween #Boorito challenge. They wanted to promote a special offer for the customers who had to walk into their restaurants in a costume on Halloween to get a burrito, bowl, salad, or tacos for $4. King approached the task with his trademark video editing style that relies on seamless transitions and got more than 4 million likes and almost 88 million views.https://www.tiktok.com/@zachking/video/6751956678851218694?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id7056720794054985222Source: Zach King

Why Are TikTok Influencers Good for Your Marketing Strategy?

Brands started relying on influencer marketing with the rise of social media platforms. The goal of this marketing method is to connect with the target audience by reaching out to users whose content already performs well and constantly gains a lot of attention. Social media users trust the influencers they follow, and that trust easily translates to interest in your brand and conversions. As long as you make the right choice when approaching influencers for your campaign, you can use influencer marketing to:

• Raise your brand awareness
• Strengthen your brand’s reputation
• Boost audience engagement
• Increase conversions from viewers to followers and, ultimately, customers

What You Need To Pay Attention to When Searching for TikTok Influencers

To ensure a loyal and engaged follower base through influencer marketing, you need to focus on the following:

• Understanding your audience—Make sure you’re aware of who you’re targeting, which influencers your target audience follows and engages with, what their common interests and challenges are, and how you can provide value
• Setting clear goals—You need to know why you want to market on TikTok and what your expectations are (for instance, building brand awareness, attracting more followers, or increasing sales). If you want to increase the number of views or get content that will end up on the For You page, you should look into partnerships with bigger names. Stimulating engagement or converting viewers to customers is more likely to come from collaborations with mid-tier and micro-influencers

Planning Your Budget

Your budget will probably be one of the main factors when deciding which TikTok influencer you should collaborate with. Influencers’ rates depend on their reach, engagement stats, niche, primary platform, possible agency fees, and many other factors. Before you start reaching out to content creators, consider these per-post prices that most influencers charge on TikTok:Influencer CategoryNumber of FollowersPrice per PostNano-influencers1,000–10,000$5–$25Micro-influencers10,000–50,000$25–$125Mid-tier influencers50,000–500,000$125–$1,250Macro-influencers500,000–1 million$1,250–$2,500Mega-influencersMore than 1 million More than $2,500

Troubles With Approaching TikTok Influencers? Kubbco Can Help You Make the Right Decisions

Despite TikTok’s short video formats and light-hearted manner, coming up with ideas and creating successful content for this platform are time-consuming processes. Without expert help, you’re at the risk of not seeing any meaningful results and wasting your resources. Picking the right influencer to spice up your content strategy is not a walk in the park either.Kubbco is a social media agency that puts special emphasis on TikTok, which means we fully understand user behavior on this platform and have the knowledge and experience necessary for achieving your goals. By analyzing your brand, your target audience, and their interests, we can create top-performing content for your campaign and identify and reach out to influencers that fit your TikTok strategy perfectly.

Services We Offer

It’s not only influencer marketing we assist our clients with. We’re experts in all segments of social media strategizing, and you can reach out to us for help with all aspects of your brand’s TikTok strategy, including:

• Target audience analysis—By monitoring your target audience, their interest shifts, and their overall social media habits, we obtain insights into what captures their attention, which inspires us to come up with relevant content for your campaign
• Content creation—We have a diverse team of professionals, including writers, editors, photographers, video directors, and graphic designers, whose joint efforts lead to the content that is meant to perform well
• Community management—You can also leave your account growth tactics and daily social media tasks to Kubbco. We'll make sure to build a better online presence for your brand on the socials of your choice and drive important discussions that spread your brand’s message and values
• Paid advertisement—We can help you choose the most suitable type of paid advertising, monitor the performance of paid campaigns, and come up with improvements in real time

Success Stories of Our Clients

We actively listen to our client's goals, let them present their ideas, blend them with ours, and analyze the results all the way through our collaboration. This way, we eliminate any potential discrepancies between our visions from the very beginning and roadmap excellent content strategies that bring amazing results.

Source: MatasOur collaboration with Matas is just one example of what we can accomplish. They reached out to us in the spring of 2021, wishing to boost their TikTok performance stats and grow their business, and here’s what we achieved together in just eight weeks:Total Views5.6 millionTotal Interactions209,000New Followers13,500Number of Videos25Videos With Over 10,000 Views25Viral Videos (Over 300,000 Views)8Our 5-week collaboration with haircare brand OLAPLEX resulted in 28 videos garnering 5.1 million views and a total of 224,000 interactions. Out of 28 videos, two went viral, and six of them attracted over 100,000 views each.If you need help with navigating the challenges of TikTok influencer marketing or any other aspect of your social media strategy, talk to our team of experts and sign up for our newsletter for more actionable tips and useful advice.

Featured image: Ivan Samkov