As marketers start to outline their 2024 plans, using the TikTok Creator Marketplace to team up with influencers can be a smart decision.
Many businesses see TikTok as a platform for younger audiences, so they don’t think it is right for them.
Yet, things have changed.
As of July 2023, data showed that 20% of TikTok users were women aged 18-24, with men of the same age making up 18%.
Even more interestingly, the app had many users aged 25-34: 16.3% women and 16.6% men. The app now even has a share of 35-44 year olds: men and women made up 8% of TikTok users, respectively.
This means TikTok has a mix of users, not just young ones (Statista, 2023a).
What Is The TikTok Creator Marketplace?
TikTok introduced the TikTok Creator Marketplace (TCM) in late 2019 to help facilitate collaboration between content creators and brands by making the Creator Marketplace API available to external developers.
Marketers can integrate TikTok creator content and inputs directly into brand platforms.
TikTok has provided brands and marketers with a platform to search for registered content creators for collaborative inputs into digital marketing campaigns.
This move benefits TikTok, the content creators, and brands with constructing TikTok influencer marketing campaigns.
The TikTok Creator Marketplace provides a stage that showcases creators’ profiles with relevant data like the number of comments, likes, and shares (TikTok, 2023). Marketers can use this data to collaborate with innovative video and audio creators for paid digital marketing campaigns.
Before, most influencer marketing platforms were not reliable with influencer data.
This data would have to be confirmed, collated, and sent to brands by the influencers (which would not always be 100% accurate or real-time), and revenue would be bypassed outside the social media app.
The influencer platforms would charge a commission or a fee for each influencer marketing campaign.
With this in-house marketplace, TikTok can profit substantially (they are currently not charging a percentage or a commission).
They also provide marketers with data, analytics, direct access, essential campaign tools, and communication tools without marketers having to reach out to external and third-party platforms.
Benefits of TikTok Creator Marketplace
From enhancing brand strategy to empowering influencers with unparalleled learning opportunities, the TikTok Creator Marketplace has revolutionized the way brands and creators collaborate on TikTok.
Let’s explore the myriad benefits that both marketers and influencers can harness:
For Marketers
- Efficient Influencer Discovery: Engage with the Creator Marketplace to quickly find the ideal influencer.
- Budget-Friendly Options: Connect with creators matching your budget, eliminating unexpected cost surprises.
- Authentic Content Creation: Increase TikTok visibility by crafting content with creators. The Marketplace ensures rapid campaign turnarounds and genuine brand alignment.
- Reach Target Audiences: Ensure your content resonates with the right audience by collaborating with relevant creators.
- Optimized Engagement: The Marketplace provides insights into engagement rates from chosen creators, aiding in KPI setting and maximizing conversions.
- User-Friendly Interface: A straightforward UI/UX lets brands easily identify influencers without extensive training.
- Access Authentic Data: Tap into TikTok’s first-party data via the Marketplace’s API, enhancing your influencer strategy.
For Influencers
- Direct Brand Connections: Engage with the Creator Marketplace for immediate links to potential brand sponsorships, enhancing collaboration opportunities.
- Official TikTok Support: Benefit from TikTok’s direct support for brand campaigns, ensuring smooth and successful promotions.
- Collaborative Tools at Your Fingertips: Access specialized online tools like Open Applications and TikTok Creator Marketplace Pay to streamline your campaigns.
- Tailored Content Insights: Harness specialized guidance on crafting content that aligns with brand values, ensuring maximum impact.
- Exclusive Learning Opportunities: Dive into the Marketplace Academy for Creators, a unique learning platform for those serious about mastering TikTok.
- Learn from the Best: Gain firsthand insights from successful creators and industry specialists, elevating your content strategy.
- Comprehensive Tool Familiarization: Kickstart with the “Intro to Level Up” series, guiding you through essential platform tools, from campaign responses to payment navigation.
It’s worth noting that the Marketplace Academy for Creators is available to creators from the US and the UK.
How to Find The Right Creators Through TikTok Creator Marketplace Filters
- Country or Region: This is the location where the creator publishes content and/or resides.
- Topic: This is used to be able to see what kind of topics they cover, such as food, fashion, sports, or politics.
- Reach: View the creator’s follower count and see the extent of their reach. Marketers can filter through three customizable brackets – 10k to 100k, 100k to 1 million, and 1 million to 10 million.
- Average Views: This is a useful measure for brands to see how a creator’s past content has performed. As more marketers move away from relying on follower count to gauge an influencer’s reach, this data can assist in predicting how well future content might perform.
- Ecommerce Anchor Feature: These creators are able to insert a link in their content that directs viewers directly to a brand’s product or external landing page.
Is TikTok Creator Marketplace A Paid Feature For Marketers?
The TikTok Creator Marketplace is completely free for all advertisers.
TikTok is still sorting and testing different monetization avenues. However, some of the existing ad packages and offerings have a paid feature with their promotion packages.
Monetizing the TCM feature could get dicey for TikTok and could add obstacles to seamless integration between brands and influencers.
Brands looking for additional support with their TikTok influencer campaigns can work with leading TikTok agencies, such as HireInfluence.
Why Does First-Party Data Matter, And How Does It Benefit Marketers on TikTok?
Marketers need to collect first-party data to get practical, valuable, and relevant information and insight about audiences and users. First-party data is gathered directly from their own sources like landing pages, websites, and apps.
Other methods of first-party data collection are CRM, surveys, and social media.
For marketers, getting direct first-party data is critical for analysis and reporting. It also helps with accurately tracking users to adjust marketing strategies.
The TCM feature from TikTok is a prime example of the usability and relevance of first-party data since marketers can get the data directly from TikTok instead of relying on secondary and tertiary sources for data on ad campaigns and influencers’ video progress and analytics.
First-party data on TikTok can be collected for free and used by marketers based wholly on the video content created to analyze and track progress, reach, and conversion rates.
Collecting the first-party data, having ready access to it, and using it helps marketers deliver personalized experiences to users, display relevant content, and create targeted content on TikTok.
Not having access to first-party data directly from TikTok adversely affects the ad campaign.
Marketers must rely on third-party data and secondary sources to track active promotional campaigns and video success. Getting first-party data from TCM also helps advertisers save money on purchasing data and then segmenting and analyzing it.
The TikTok Creator Marketplace allows marketers direct analysis and access to all first-party data related to their promotional video campaigns with content creators.
The in-depth insight that is available is beneficial in the long term.
Benefits of First-Party Data for Marketers on TikTok
1. Create Personalized Experiences
One of the most critical aspects of marketing is ensuring all users have personalized experiences with the brand and its products and services.
With first-party data, it becomes easy for marketers on TikTok to segregate users according to target audiences and personas looking to purchase specific products or services.
Understanding the need of target users and audiences help marketers ensure that these groups get topic-relevant advertisements and video content to aid in buyer behavior or journey.
This process is also called audience targeting and is hugely successful for higher conversion rates and enhancing user journeys.
2. Audience Insight
Getting data directly from TikTok Creator Marketplace helps marketers understand buyer behavior and audience personalities.
Understanding user personalities is critical for successful market penetration and cost-effectiveness.
User personalities and audience insight help better understand the likes and dislikes of target audiences, demographics, and preferences. It also helps marketers understand users’ buying and purchasing preferences and patterns.
First-party data from TCM helps marketers gain valuable insight into audience preferences, shopping patterns, conversion rates, and buying behaviors.
3. Monetizing Segments
Since TikTok offers valuable data through the TCM, marketers can explore newer revenue streams on the app.
The platform provides direct insight and analysis of :
- audience behavior;
- preferences;
- likes;
- dislikes;
- comments;
- shares;
- views.
Using this data, marketers can collaborate with content creators to produce highly targeted videos personalized to audiences and connect with the segmented groups.
Understanding that each audience segment has different needs helps marketers promote highly relevant content across TikTok.
Monetizing segments effectively helps increase ROI, decrease non-critical audiences, and works towards positive brand associations in the long term.
4. Improve Retargeting Strategy
Since the TCM is pretty new on TikTok, marketers can use the first-party data and analysis for retargeting the influencer marketing strategy.
First-party data is used to nurture new leads and audiences and retarget the strategy to gain higher conversion rates, follow-throughs, and clicks (Forbes, 2020).
Marketers on TikTok can easily reach out to newer audiences with insights gained through different channels on the TCM.
The popularity and reach of the content help marketers understand the necessity for retargeting strategies to improve overall brand building.
TikTok Statistics for Marketers
When considering the benefits for marketers and brands, the TikTok Creator Marketplace is an extremely useful tool.
Since TikTok is available in more than 150 countries and has been downloaded more than 200 million times in the United States alone, marketers need to up their game with their TikTok strategies for larger market shares.
- Active Users: TikTok reached 1.7 billion users in 2023, a 17% increase on the previous year (Business of Apps, 2023).
- Monthly Hours: TikTok was the social media app users spent the most time on in 2022 – Android users spent an average of almost 23.5 hours per month (Data Reportal, 2023).
- Engagement Rate: In 2022, TikTok had the highest user engagement rate with the least frequent posting rate among popular social media. Although the average posting frequency was 1.75 videos per week, the engagement rate was 5.69% for each video (RivalIQ, 2023).
- Revenue: In 2022, TikTok revenue generated $9.4 billion in annual revenue (Business of Apps, 2023).
- Popularity: In Q2 2023, TikTok was downloaded more than 260 million times (Statista, 2023b). As of July 2023, the largest TikTok audiences were recorded in the U.S. (122 million), Indonesia (100 million), and Brazil (83 million) (Statista, 2023c).
- TikTok’s Valuation: TikTok was valued at $65.7 billion as of 2023 (Statista, 2023d).
- Languages: TikTok is available in more than 75 languages worldwide, increasing the user reach exponentially. Marketers needing global expansion, brand recognition, higher conversion rates, and viewership need to factor language assimilation into their digital marketing strategies.
This rising dominance underlines the significance of partnering with content creators in 2023’s digital marketing strategies.
More brands are tapping into the potential of influencers to connect their products and services with a specific audience.
The rapid growth of TikTok spans various age groups, demographics, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds. Therefore, using the TikTok Creator Marketplace allows brands to find creators to promote their products or services.
Potential Security Concerns with TikTok
While TikTok’s influence on digital marketing is undeniable, it hasn’t been without its controversies.
One significant area of concern has been the app’s potential as a “threat vector” to the United States (Defense, 2023). John F. Plumb, the assistant secretary of defense for space policy and principal cyber advisor to the secretary of defense, has voiced these concerns.
The concern regarding TikTok is its widespread use among Americans, combined with the potential for China to disseminate misleading information and gather data from it, stated Plumb.
The platform’s vast reach and magnitude make it a cause for worry.
TikTok, a social media and video-hosting service, is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. Its ties to China have led to heightened scrutiny from various U.S. security agencies.
The House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on cyber, information technologies and innovation has sought insights from experts on this matter, including from Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, commander of U.S. Cyber Command, director of the National Security Agency, and chief of the Central Security Service.
This security aspect has implications for marketers and brands considering partnerships with TikTok.
While the app offers unparalleled reach and engagement, brands should be aware of the broader geopolitical implications and potential security concerns.
It is always essential to be informed and balance the advantages with potential risks.
That’s a Wrap!
The TikTok Creator Marketplace isn’t just a tool; it represents a significant shift in the digital marketing landscape.
As the world becomes increasingly digital and as younger audiences demand authenticity and real engagement, platforms like TikTok are rising to meet the challenge.
The age-old saying, “adapt or die,” holds true now more than ever for businesses.
It’s no longer about just being present on social media platforms; it’s about leveraging them to their fullest potential.
Through the TikTok Creator Marketplace, brands can harness the power of influencer marketing with greater accuracy and efficiency.
The insights provided, combined with the vast user base and engagement levels of TikTok, offer a potential goldmine for advertisers.
On the flip side, influencers have a streamlined path to brand collaborations, ensuring they can focus on what they do best – creating engaging content.
As we move forward, it’s clear that brands that utilize such platforms effectively will be better positioned to connect with their target audiences in meaningful ways.
The future of digital marketing lies in authenticity, engagement, and leveraging data intelligently.
TikTok’s offering is a step in that direction. So, whether you’re a brand looking to expand your digital footprint or an influencer aiming to collaborate with top brands, the TikTok Creator Marketplace is an avenue worth exploring.
Don’t be left behind; dive into the world of TikTok and discover the endless possibilities it holds.
Sources
Statista, 2023a
TikTok, 2023
Business of Apps, 2023
Data Reportal, 2023
RivalIQ, 2023
Statista, 2023b
Statista, 2023c
Statista, 2023d
Forbes, 2020
Defense, 2023