Collaborative marketing

The days of a top-down approach to marketing your goods or services are long gone. The rise of social media put paid to that. 

Nowadays the customer is a key part of the marketing channel, taking advocacy to a new level as the average Joe is a media owner. Almost everyone has a platform – taking word of mouth to a whole new powerful level.

Nowadays the customer is a key part of the marketing channel, taking advocacy to a new level as the average Joe is a media owner. Almost everyone has a platform – taking word of mouth to a whole new powerful level.

Nowhere is there a better example of this than the social media influencer – the ordinary person who holds thousands, and sometimes millions, of people in the palm of their hand – via their iPhone.

As influencer marketing has matured over the pandemic, where more of us turned to social media for connection and online sites for buying stuff – they have become known as creators.

Take a look at Instagram or TikTok and you will find technology that supports Creators to become big business. These taste-makers have become experts at creating content that resonates with their followers.

Whether it’s Mikayla Nogueira talking about the next viral mascara, Francis Bourgeois modelling for Gucci, or Maya the Samoyed enjoying a new dog treat, content creators are fast becoming one of the most effective tools in marketing.

TikTok themselves have stated that ads on their platform have a 27% higher Ad Recall for branded content in collaboration with creators. Ads created for TikTok without a creator partnership achieved 12% higher engagement rates, whereas ads created for TikTok with a creator partnership achieved 83% higher engagement rates and were watched for longer.

TikTok influencer and content marketing executive at O Rebecca Baty says: “The value of TikTok really lies in the communities that its creators build. The creators that thrive on the platform have built their follower counts by being authentically themselves. In a world where consumers know they are being sold to on every corner of the internet, TikTok offers refreshingly original content. Creators are more honest about themselves, embrace their own weirdness or quirks and talk about their passions and interests. This resonates well with others as they see people on their mobile phone screens who really represent them or something about their personality.

“TikTok has become a great place for people to connect to their favourite content creators and feel part of a community of likeminded people. More and more TikTok users are turning to it as a source of entertainment, education and even product reviews. So embracing TikTok as a community led platform is key for success, and this is where most creators will spend the majority of their time, engaging with their followers.”

Brands have cottoned onto this and the ‘brand colab’ is big business. Pepsi recently partnered with TikTok star Khaby Lame for an ad campaign to launch its Nitro Pepsi, a nitrogen-infused cola, in the US and Greggs chose grime artist Stormzy to be the first person to receive its VIP concierge card in the UK. According to Shopify, 61% of online consumers trust influencer recommendations and influencer marketing has an 11x greater ROI than banner ads.

(Source – Brand collaborations with TikTok content creators drive big results | TikTok For Business Blog)