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TikTok has revolutionized the social media landscape for brands and creators alike. The shift to exclusively short-form video content forces a rapid evolution for brands hoping to keep up, but has also produced a fresh batch of innovative creators ripe for a new era of influencer marketing.
TikTok invested in its creators early and facilitated mutually beneficial brand-influencer partnerships through its Creator Marketplace. Now, with the release of TikTok’s Creator Marketplace API, partnerships with creators, brands, and other third-party entities will be streamlined even further so that all parties can capitalize on TikTok’s influencer data.
TikTok’s Creator Marketplace API is now available to outside developers, making it even easier for brands and agencies to work with influencers on the app.
TikTok Creator Marketplace (TCM) was launched in 2019 and serves as the official platform for brand and creator collaborations on TikTok. The goal of TCM is to nurture brand-influencer relationships by partnering brands with high-quality content creators.
Brands can discover more than 10,000 creators residing in the marketplace whom they can then invite into partnerships and paid campaigns. Tracking and managing those partnerships can be done easily from within the platform.
Creators must apply or be invited to join TCM before they can be discovered on the platform. Eligibility requirements are based on factors like age, follower count, video content, and engagement. Once they are officially in TCM, they can research brand proposals within the platform and choose the partnerships that work best for them.
Now that TikTok allows Creator Marketplace API to outside developers, partnered marketing companies can access data about audience demographics, growth trends, best performing videos, and real-time campaign reporting. That data can then be used to bolster the analytics they already provide to their customers.
TikTok creators can help brands deliver quality content using short-form video, which has exploded in popularity since the platform was first released in 2018.
Creators help brands achieve a level of authenticity that was difficult to reach before the age of social media. TikTok in particular elevates marketing campaigns in the following ways:
Reporting Tool – Campaign results are tracked and analyzed to see how each creator performed and determine which partnerships are most valuable. You can also see the overall number of videos each creator made, including total engagements they generated.
TikTok has made significant investments in its content creators since launching the Creator Marketplace in 2019. Some of the most substantial changes include:
Discover your next viral collaboration with GRIN’s innovative TikTok creator search function. Try it and watch your brand soar on TikTok. Book a demo today!
The Creator Marketplace is proven to benefit brands looking to connect with agencies for campaigns, or marketers looking to discover and manage TikTok personalities for various campaigns. Now, with the launch of Creator Marketplace API, marketers can connect directly with TikTok influencers and tap into data like audience demographics, growth trends, best-performing videos, and real-time campaign responses.
The ultimate goal of the Creator Marketplace API is to provide tools to boost branded content and monitor campaign performance, as well as provide an increase for brands in key metrics including familiarity, affinity, purchase intent, and recommendation intent.
The most glaring limitation for the Creator Marketplace API is an obvious one: The tool can only be used to collect influencer data from TikTok.
While the amount of marketers using the platform for influencer marketing has increased faster than any other platform recently, Instagram and Facebook still top the list for marketers. Time will tell if TikTok is able to expand its reach to older demographics and challenge the older platforms. But for now, TikTok is still nipping at the heels of top-tier platforms for influencer marketing.
To maximize the success of your influencer marketing campaigns, it’s important to have creators across multiple social media networks. And while the popularity of TikTok will increase, the limitations of only viewing TikTok metrics may not give you the whole picture of the creator’s success.
Because Instagram is a larger platform with millions of users with a high follower count, creators have to work harder to grow their audiences. It is more common to see IG influencers with professional photography and videography skills. TikTok requires significantly less professional experience but more originality from its creators. TikTok creators are consistently rawer and publish primarily homemade videos, which nurtures a more genuine connection with audiences that crave authenticity.
Although Instagram is still the clear frontrunner in influencer marketing, TikTok is the fastest growing and has the most engagement options of any social media channel. The platform offers more than standard likes, comments, and shares. Creators can also promote a number of sharing options including, but not limited to:
These engagement features make it easier for influencers and brands to get UGC on their sponsored posts, and that potential makes TikTok a perfect option for increasing brand awareness and nurturing audiences.
Pernod Ricard, the world’s second-largest wine and spirits seller, was one brand to capitalize on a massive TikTok trend that took off early in the pandemic.
When the brand first noticed the Dalgona whipped coffee trend on TikTok, it used social listening to discover that although the chatter wasn’t specifically about its Kahlua brand, many users were making boozy versions of the beverage that included the liqueur. The company then created a branded campaign around the trend and adopted the moniker “TikTok’s fave coffee.”
A @tiktok_us fave never tasted this good! Reply with a 💛 to get the recipe for our #Kahlua Dalgona Coffee.
— Kahlúa (@Kahlua) April 10, 2020
Consumers see themselves as creators, more and more. It’s a shift for us marketers because we aren’t the only ones creating amazing content anymore. We have to accept that in some way and inspire it however we can.
–Simon De Beauregard, global director for Pernod Ricard
Ultimately, there’s a reason that every other major social media channel (Instagram Reels, Snapchat Spotlight, YouTube Shorts) now offers the vertical-view, short-form video option – and that reason is TikTok. Users are consuming and creating content rapidly, and creative brands are successfully leveraging the channel to inspire consumer shopping.
An effective creator management platform offers all the same features that come with TikTok’s Creator Marketplace API. It should also have TikTok support, including functionality, to help with all aspects of influencer marketing like recruitment, communication, management, agreements, payments, content management, and analytics.
But a high-level creator management platform simply cannot exist without access to all major social media channels. This access makes it easier for marketers to take content to where their audience lives and execute comprehensive influencer marketing campaigns across multiple platforms. Analytics from TikTok can be viewed and measured side-by-side with other social media channels to decide which approaches work best for your brand. Creator management platforms can also help to organize creators across each channel and help brands better communicate with influencers and iterate campaigns that have proven to be most effective.
GRIN was the first influencer marketing software to integrate TikTok into its platform in April 2020. Visit our site to see if GRIN’s Creator Management Platform is right for your brand.
TikTok’s API gives influencer marketers an easier way to connect with influencers and creators, but it still doesn’t do everything the GRIN influencer marketing platform offers.
While TikTok has become one of the most important channels for brands to establish a presence, an influencer marketing strategy that encompasses multiple channels, and can reach into multiple demographics and more diverse audiences ultimately gives brands the best ROI on their influencer marketing campaigns.
Learn more about influencer marketing: Influencer Marketing 101
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