TikTok Brand Collaboration 101: How to Pursue Win-win Situation

TikTok brand collaboration 101

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The rise of TikTok brand collaboration has entirely surprised all marketers with the power that they have never expected before. A short video that’s posted by the right TikTok influencer can take your business to the next level.

But you still don’t know who the right creator for promoting your brand is? Don’t be so nervous, we are here to help you. Keep reading our article to unlock the TikTok world!  

What is TikTok brand collaboration?

As the name suggests, TikTok brand collaboration refers to a brand promoting its unique products or services by collaborating with specific influencers. It’s truly different from other traditional partner marketing campaigns. 

With TikTok, it’s all about e-commerce companies and creators supporting each other to open up entirely new opportunities. This shoppertainment platform shows great potential by giving an air of exclusivity to all and leveraging both customer bases to drive more traffic and sales. 

Do you know one special thing about TikTok brand collaboration? You don’t have to collaborate with famous creators, small influencers who align with your TikTok marketing strategy can drive bigger results than you expected. 

Why is TikTok brand collaboration a must for brands?

Minimize marketing budget

One of the outstanding benefits of using micro-influencers for both big and small businesses is that they are very cost-effective compared to mega and macro-influencers. What can be more amazing than achieving your end goal with a low-budget but high-effective solution?  

marketing budget
Minimize marketing budget

Specifically, the fee for advertising your products by micro-influencers is approximately $1,500, but mid-tier influencers are twice as much as micro-influencers. In addition, macro-influencers charged around $5000 while mega-influencers charged nearly $7000 per post.

Increase brand awareness

As a digital form of traditional word-of-mouth, it’s no surprise that brand collaboration on TikTok is a great way to raise massive brand awareness. 

By partnering with influencers who have a large number of followers on TikTok, you have a winning chance to expand your audience and find your potential customers. Such a powerful strategy in a highly competitive community like TikTok, especially for a startup brand!

And have you ever intended to partner with creators in TikTok Ads? In fact, collaborating with creators in ads increases view rates, notably for In-Feed Ads

increase view rates with creators
Increase view rates with creators – Source: TikTok

One secret insight is that TikTok-specific branded content in partnership with creators is a great way to promote brand recognition when showing the product in use. Try to prioritize ads that highlight product features while working with creators, it’s really helpful, especially in the beauty category. 

influencers in beauty industry
Brand collaboration in beauty industry – Source: TikTok

If you work in a cosmetic brand, congratulations you have almost succeeded! Compared to other sectors, the beauty category received the strongest aided and unaided brand recall from the TikTok brand collaboration.

Different industries in TikTok brand collaboration
Different industries in TikTok brand collaboration – Source: TikTok

If you aim to master TikTok Ads while working with creators, feel free to try our new product NestAds – TikTok Advertising Manager Software. 

Drive a higher engagement rate

TikTok brand collaboration can make your video viral in a simple and easy way. By relying on your partner, you can keep your audiences watching until the end and deeply connecting with them. 

Higher engagement rate
Higher engagement rate with TikTok brand collaboration – Source: TikTok

Otherwise, ads made in collaboration with creators also drive higher engagement rates for most TikTok Ads formats, but ads created for TikTok alone (without creators) are not powerful enough to get more interaction.

Compared to ads created for TikTok without a creator partnership with 12% higher engagement rates, the one with a creator partnership achieved 83% higher engagement rates.

TikTok ads with influencers
TikTok ads with influencers – Source: TikTok

Build brand trust

Thanks to collaborating with other influencers on TikTok, you can quickly build your brand credibility. It’s really important in the e-commerce context because shoppers need to take a closer look before purchasing your items. They expect an authentic brand experience and trustworthiness.

Build brand trust
Build brand trust

That’s the main reason why you need TikTok influencers who have succeeded in building relationships, trust, and credibility with their audience. Therefore, people have more possibility to believe and respect their content and recommendations. 

For example, a product or service review created by an influencer shows a better influence on your audience than most traditional marketing techniques. Otherwise, relying on item reviews before making a high-value purchase has become a part of the customer buying journey. 

How to find the right TikTok influencers for your brands?

Between millions of creators on TikTok, you might feel a little bit confused while discovering the one that matches your TikTok marketing strategy. Don’t be so stressed, all you need to do is follow our tips below to find your best partner!

Search relevant hashtags 

TikTok hashtags are a powerful tool to discover the types of influencer content that work well on TikTok. This is an excellent way to identify new TikTok influencers based on their existing posts, but it can still be time-consuming due to the limited option to filter your results. 

For example, let’s add #ad in your search to find TikTok influencers who are already publishing paid content. 

In addition, you can narrow your search by using specific hashtags that highly align with your niche. For instance, if your company sells cleansers for acne skin, you may start your search with #skincare. However, if you want to find out more relevant creators, you can search with #acnetips. Thus, there is more acne content from different influencers appearing in front of you. 

TikTok hashtags
TikTok hashtags

Check engagement rates

The engagement rate of a Creator on TikTok is far more crucial than their following count, even more so than on Instagram. You’ll want to collaborate with people who can truly inspire their audience, not just those with a high number of followers. 

Although it is simple to attract followers, only the best creators can create engaged and committed audiences. Here is how to determine the engagement rate of a creator:

[(Number of likes + number of comments + number of shares) / number of views] X 100%

Leverage TikTok Creator Marketplace

TikTok always tries its best to build new creator tools to strengthen brand and creator collaborations. Have you ever heard about TikTok Creator Marketplace? It’s a place that offers creators partnership opportunities for different businesses of all shapes and sizes. 

TikTok Creator Marketplace
TikTok Creator Marketplace

With the support of TikTok’s official platform for brand collaborations, this platform definitely makes the process of influencer marketing easier and quicker. Here’s a wide range of benefits from TikTok Creator Marketplace:

  • Access a huge number of TikTok creators on one platform 

Once you have a business account, you can reach more than 500,000 creators across 24 countries and regions worldwide. 

Use the search bar and you will find all influencers in your industry. For example, typing a specific topic such as skin care, there are thousands of creators working in this area. Additionally, you can make use of filter features to sort out which country you want to target. 

creators from TikTok Creator Marketplace
TikTok creators from TikTok Creator Marketplace
  • Understand the creator’s performance and profile

TikTok Creator Marketplace gives you access to check basic details about the creators and their followers to make sure that you’re targeting the right audiences through some key factors including the average number of views for their videos, number of followers and rate of growth, rate of engagement, etc. 

Creator's performance and profile
Creator’s performance and profile
  • Check metrics on your creator campaign’s data

On TikTok Creator Marketplace, a campaign reporting dashboard allows you to measure your campaign’s performance with specific creators. You can verify a set of metrics such as the number of views, reach, engagement rate, and cost per view.

Campaign report
Campaign report

Discover influencer marketing platform 

Using influencer marketing platforms is another method to find the most matching partner with your brand identity. To make campaigns operate more smoothly, many influencer platforms add extra features such as campaign management, marketplaces, analytics, and relationship management tools.

Check out the following platforms:

  • Grin: A top influencer marketing program for eCommerce brands with 37 million influencers on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and Twitch.
  • Upfluence: A self-service platform for finding influencers that companies such as PayPal and Microsoft utilize. You can select your own fees and search for influencers who meet your requirements. 
  • Creator. co: A Marketplace for influencers with over 500 million influencers. It provides both a self-service version to manually locate influencers and a “hands-free” option to specify your campaign and desired influencer while an automated system identifies the greatest fit.

Each platform has its own set of benefits and focuses. However, the three choices listed above will assist you in finding new influencers, running campaigns, and offering analytics to optimize your marketing efforts.

Top 3 TikTok brand collaboration examples to get inspired 

If you want to get the whole picture of TikTok brand collaboration with both famous and small influencers, keep reading this section for more creative ideas to steal!

Saint Lucia Tourism & Naomi Leanage

Saint Lucia Tourism Authority aims to create a strong demand for Saint Lucia as the most beautiful and inspiring destination by promoting her beauty, natural resources, culture, and also gastronomy. 

@naomileanage

✨Win 3 nights at @Harbor Club Saint Lucia with @travelsaintlucia! ✨ entry details in video! Send this to a friend who DESERVES a vacay! *partner

♬ original sound – Naomi Melanie Leanage

Knowing the potential of TikTok, Saint Lucia Tourism Authority decided to collaborate with Naomi Leanage – a vlogger from Toronto, who has a passion for traveling and shopping. She totally aligned with  Saint Lucia Tourism Authority’s strategy and also target audiences. 

They have worked together to create six vlog-style videos with one video that announced the contest. All the videos created an amazing effect on TikTok and completely succeeded to maintain customer loyalty and attract new audiences. The contest announcement video received 15K likes and 900 comments.

Our Place & Nguyen Yeats-Brown

Our Place is a cookware brand that offers products that make buyers feel joyful while cooking and sharing a meal. All the products are designed to highlight the way we live and celebrate making traditions with family: given, chosen, and found.

Aiming to tap into new customers on TikTok and encourage them to take the desired action, Our Place chose to show exactly its products in action. 

@ourplace

spring rolls for Easter! @GNOCHGNOCH put a Vietnamese-Chinese spin on the classic fried snack 😋 #easter #spring #springrolls #recipe #yummy #cookwithme #cooking #kitchen #dinnertime #CatOnALeash #HPSustainableSounds

♬ original sound – Our Place

This brand collaborated with UK-based food-lover Nguyen Yeats-Brown and her podcast co-host, Verna Gao to create a video about how to make spring rolls and chocolate bao using Our Place products.

These two girls truly expressed Our Place’s spirit: always smiling and spreading happiness while cooking. This cooking tutorial video showed a different side of this brand and captured viewers’ attention in a friendly and unique way. 

Supergoop & Abena Kusi

The last TikTok brand collaboration example comes from Supergroop & Abena Kusi. Supergoop is a brand that provides top-quality sun protection. This brand aims to create reef-friendly, cruelty-free products that are made with clean ingredients. 

@supergoop

@Abena is out for a day of PLAY! ☀️ PLAY Everyday Lotion SPF 50 is the perfect, easy companion to keep you protected all day long 💛 #supergoop #ootd #picnic #sunscreen #spf #vlog #grwm

♬ original sound – Supergoop

To spread its own story, this suncare company chose TikTok and especially the TikTok brand collection as the main marketing channel. They partnered with Abena Kusi – a macro influencer who has 200.4K followers on TikTok. It was all about a funny video showing the power of the Supergoop product. 

To encourage people to try new products, they highlighted what their product does and how it makes users feel in this customer testimonial video. This kind of video is a powerful tip for success, don’t hesitate to create this content for your brand! In fact, nearly 90% of online shoppers read at least three reviews before buying a new product.

Master TikTok brand collection to drive outstanding business results

TikTok brand collection is an excellent method to show an image totally different and spread the story of your brand. Let’s partner with the TikTok influencer that perfectly matches your brand identity. Creating the blooming effect or going viral on TikTok in one night is no longer an impossible thing!

We hope our article has covered all things you need about TikTok brand collaboration and gives you a huge inspiration about how to partner with TikTok influencers. If you have any questions, feel free to contact our experts, we are here to give you a hand!

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