In 2021 alone, 49% of users reported they bought something they saw on TikTok – and you can thank creators for that. Content creators are the main driver of the entertainment platform, creating video content that grabs attention and converts into sales. That’s right, TikTok considers itself an entertainment platform. It’s a unique blend of entertainment, community, connection, and visual discovery.
With the rise of UGC across all social advertising channels, content creators keep these components in mind as their approach to social selling includes authentic storytelling, specific delivery styles, video editing, and the ability to genuinely engage and connect with users.
Ads served with UGC have a 29% increase in web conversions. These are the strategies brands are implementing to increase their revenue with TikTok UGC.
As TikTok continues to expand its paid advertising offerings in addition to the rise of social shopping on the platform, TikTok Creator Marketplace (TTCM) is the perfect place to discover and partner with content creators, execute campaigns, and monitor performance all through TikTok’s proprietary platform.
From Influencer to Content Creator
As social selling has evolved, so has the role of the social media influencer. Influencers may begin as users with celebrity status, aspirational lifestyles, or charismatic personalities, and can become crucial salespeople on behalf of your brand. An influencer’s audience is equally as important as the influencer due to their loyalty, engagement, and eagerness for product recommendations. It’s no surprise that brands would want to tap into this influence.
On TikTok, influencers have a slightly different role, as content creation is much more involved than posting a photo on Instagram. This is why many TikTok influencers prefer the term “Content Creator.” We’ve made a list of some of the most influential TikTok creators here.
Partner with top creators in your industry who have driven over a 350% increase in revenue for the World’s most influential brands.
What TikTok’s algorithm has done is, it has democratized the path towards becoming a content creator, effectively marking the rise of the nano- and micro-influencers. TikTok completely stripped away the need for an influencer to have a polished online presence, produce content that’s extremely strategic and oftentimes far from the truth. Instead, TikTok normalized creators who build authentic relationships with their followers through sharing their truth — and doing so with as little as a smartphone and a ring light.
Oftentimes, TikTok Creators come to the platform from other social media platforms including Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts. When they join TikTok, they not only bring their entourage of current followers but are put in front of millions of more eyes as the algorithm favors engaging content allowing anyone the ability to go viral.
How else does a TikTok Creator differ from a traditional influencer? Unlike the more passive content of Instagram, TikTok’s model encourages community interaction through hashtag challenges, filters, and special effects — with the comments section often being more entertaining than the video itself. TikTok naturally lends itself to growth loops that are driven by community engagement — and the most successful creators are the ones who are quick to identify what their viewership desires to see and turn user feedback into their content strategy.
This is what builds the authentic recognition that TikTok creators specifically bring to the table — and specifically with nano- and micro-influencers, the engagement rates and connections with their respective communities are stronger and thus a more popular choice for brands to invest in.
Because of the increased ability to go viral and be seen by thousands, if not millions of viewers, brand ROI is taken to new heights. No other platform has seen the virality that is created by TikTok’s algorithm.
The above chart is how the TikTok algorithm determines which content gets pushed to which viewers based on completion history, content type, demographic, and more. Now when brands use TikTok as an advertising tool, the reach is significantly more targeted to not only get in front of more eyes — but the right eyes. When this ad strategy is paired with assets delivered by an appropriate content creator, the ability to go viral and lead audiences down the marketing funnel is enhanced even more.
So how do brands find the right creators to create winning content that will assist in reaching their campaign and sales goals? The answer is TikTok Creator Marketplace. By joining TikTok Creator Marketplace, brands have access to hundreds of thousands of TikTok creators in over 100 regions who can produce video content for their products or services. Keep reading to see how you can benefit from finding creators on TikTok Creator Marketplace.
What is TikTok Creator Marketplace?
TikTok Creator Marketplace (TTCM) is TikTok’s premier platform that gives brands the ability to collaborate with content creators by assessing their analytics based on reach, engagement, views, demographics, and more. The benefit of TTCM is total end-to-end project management from discovery and negotiation to management and analytics reporting. Though there are other influencer agencies and platforms that do this, TTCM gives brands transparent creator data not available to other platforms while remaining entirely in-app.
TTCM also makes it easy to search for creators who match your campaign criteria. Shortlisting also makes it easy to organize creators for current and even future campaigns. There are plenty of filters to help narrow your search that we’ll get into later.
Payment is secure and flexible as creators have the ability to charge a flat fee of their choosing, negotiate the terms, or receive a gifted product (which also may be necessary for their video). Based on creators’ following, engagement, and conversion rates, some are charging upwards of $100,000 while many are open to negotiation.
Upon finding the creator you want to work with, T assists in adding a creator to your brand’s specific campaign, determines proper fees, tracks conversions, and delivers detailed performance analytics. TTCM encourages in-app project management versus going off-app for communication and accountability which makes for a seamless and secure experience for both the brand and Creator.
Why Join TikTok Creator Marketplace?
Working with creators to produce UGC is a big part of advertising on TikTok and TTCM makes it easy to find creators that will best fit your brand. The app offers an end-to-end experience that is seamless for both the brand and the creator. With its easy-to-use workflow and simple interface, TTCM keeps brands and creators accountable for content delivery, secure payment, clear communication, and in-depth analytics reporting for every account. Instead of risking a shot in the dark with creators that you “think” might work for your brand, TTCM is supported by the data of each creator’s TikTok account – and if you know NoGood, we’re all about data-driven strategies.
Finding creators with TTCM is a much smoother experience when compared to finding creators on Facebook and Instagram, which can be a clunky and unproductive process. Brands traditionally would have to track relevant hashtags, short-list accounts, manually calculate the account engagement, determine their region/audience based on follower research, DM the user or find their email in their link in bio, hope they respond (and not end up in the DM requests black hole), negotiate the terms, wait for the follow-through of the creator (all while the creator just hopes they get paid), and then finally praying the ad converts and is not just a big waste of resources.
With access to creators’ first-party data through the TTCM/TikTok API, TTCM takes out most of the guesswork, creating an accountable and reliable flow for both the creator and the brand.
And the best part? TikTok Creator Marketplace is free for any TikTok business account.
How to join TikTok Creator Marketplace
If you’re a brand looking to work with a creator, here’s how to get started.
Though it isn’t necessary to have an organic TikTok account to work with creators and run ads, at NoGood, we believe in both organic and paid strategies that work together.
On TikTok Ads Manager, brands have the option to run “dark ads” or “spark ads.” Dark ads are ads that go out to a targeted audience but do not live on an organic account page whereas spark ads are assets that have been posted organically and then authorized to be used in a campaign. When working with a creator on TTCM, brands have both of these options as well as the option to run an authorized spark ad through the creator’s account (best for traffic campaigns).
To begin working with creators on TTCM, any account that is verified through Ads Manager can login to TTCM using their TikTok Ads Manager credentials. For brands not set up on TikTok Business Center, registration is easily done by creating an account and uploading business verification documentation. Official TikTok partner accounts are also automatically eligible to join TTCM.
Once logged in through your Ads Manager account, verified users must provide their business name, industry, account name, and user ID — all of which can be found in Ads Manager. Contact info will also auto-populate.
Next, you will have to verify your business and input tax information. Brands have the option (though not required) to handle all payments through TCM, making it simple and painless for the creator and the brand. Currently, you can only utilize in-app payments with creators that are in your same country.
Once you’re all set up, it’s time to start finding content creators.
How to Find Creators
The comprehensive search is unparalleled due to the analytics TikTok provides from each creator through their API. Following your initial search (outlined below), TTCM provides even more first-party data within the creator’s profile that is unrivaled to any other creator platform.
But before diving into your creator quest, do your research on what exactly you want out of a creator. Think about the campaign objective and goal, topic or niche the creator may operate in, target audience, budget, and also what style you want from your creator (lip-sync, scripted comedy, product testimonial, etc.). These considerations are also search filters that can help narrow your search on the TTCM platform.
Searching for creators is easy to define and refine. The comprehensive search parameters include country/region, topics and interests, reach, average views, audience location, audience gender, audience age, and audience device. These parameters help brands find appropriate creator candidates by displaying profile cards with a detailed overview of each creator’s statistics.
The search parameters also let you toggle between Brand Experience (Expert or Emerging) and Fast Growing Creators (creators with high follower growth in the last 14 days). These filters help to narrow down the creator pool to help find the right creator for your brand – and at the right price.
Let’s take a look at a creator profile after performing a search. This is @corporatenatalie – a millennial favorite on TikTok.
We can see her core metrics including average views, engagement rate, user interactions, and follower growth rate. The audience demographics are also important here as you want your brand’s target audience to align with the creator you choose. We can see here that @corporatenatalie’s audience is 77% based in the US, 76% female, and 50% in the 25-34 age group.
Further down, you can see brands @corporatenatalie has partnered with in the past as well as an archive of the videos she has created for brands using TTCM. Engagement and performance reporting for each branded video, in direct comparison to the data on her organic videos, are also provided to better guide brands in finding the right creative partner. This key feature allows brand to get a better understanding of how well a creator’s branded content has previously performed, and how they are able to marry their authentic style with a brand’s message to avoid alienating the audience with overly promotional content.
These search features and clear reporting make the creator selection thorough and streamlined as brands can view creators’ work within the platform instead of going on a journey to find sample content and metrics.
Once you find the creators you want to work with, brands can save them to a shortlist to be revisited and applied to campaigns later.
Setting Up Your TTCM Campaign
You’ve joined the platform and shortlisted creators… now what? It’s time to build your campaign. If you’ve used TikTok Ads Manager before, the process and interface are quite similar. Here you can read our step-by-step guide to setting up TikTok advertising campaigns.
To begin, navigate to “Create campaign” or click “Add to campaign” on the creator’s profile. Once in the campaign builder, brands can also add a creator from their pre-saved shortlist.
Similar to Ads Manager campaigns, brands can choose from the following campaign objectives:
- Increase brand awareness
- Increase followers
- Increase website traffic
- Increase product sales
- Encourage downloads
Next is the creative brief. Here, you can provide detailed direction and guidelines for your campaign to ensure the creator understands the assignment and intention. The brief also includes campaign dates, product description, campaign description, and your payment options which include negotiating a price, agreeing to the creator’s set price, and/or the option to gift the creator with free product. These are all the details your creator will see before they agree to do the campaign, so it’s important to be thorough and provide all the links and info they’ll need to make their decision.
Don’t forget to provide your value prop and important messaging, as well as the ideal format for your campaign. Additionally, a PDF can be uploaded to provide a more custom creator brief if your process is already standardized.
Finally, the customized flow. This feature makes it easy to understand where you and the creator are in the process of the campaign.
- Creator accepts invite
- Discuss payment and collaboration details
- Creator uploads video for review
- TikTok reviews uploaded video
- Brand reviews uploaded video
- Creator posts video
- Optional step for brand to promote using Spark Ads (one of our favorite ways to promote content on TikTok)
The flow provides a clear path to campaign completion and keeps both the creator and brand on track.
New TTCM Features to Consider
TTCM also continues to expand the boundaries of its offerings to brands consistently. There are two new additions to the suite of features that TikTok has introduced recently that allow brands to incorporate creator-led growth in their strategies.
Open Application Campaigns (OAC)
TikTok recently introduced Open Application Campaigns, which essentially simplifies the creator search process by turning the tables and allowing creators to pitch their ideas in their applications for a brand’s campaign. Not only does this solve for “unsearchable” attributes such as delivery style or creativity, for example, it also allows brands to exercise full control over the filtering process with the help of preferencce filters and screening questions.
Open Applications are very easy to navigate and can be selected at the point of campaign creation.
The preferred qualifications allow brands to filter applications based on criteria such as demographics, audience and region (for the creator or their audience), creator keywords, specific creators you have in mind, and even benchmark metrics such as engagement rate or follower count.
The screening questions are customizable and mandatory for creators to answer, making sure that brands come as close to the candidates they desire as possible. Questions can be selected and adjusted from categories such as, for example, previous product/service experience or partnership history.
From the publication date of the campaign, advertisers have 7 days to respond to a creator application. After browsing through the submissions of individual creators to view their application and their answers, brands can accept or decline the application, and creators will receive an in-app notification once their application is accepted, declined or modified.
If you have specific creators in mind for your campaign, you are able to invite them to partake in the open applications through the same process.
Invite Links
Last but not least, the common drawback of TTCM has always been the risk that the creator a brand feels strongly about would not be in the platform database. TTCM has solved this issue by introducing Invite Links, effectively making it possible to invite non-TTCM creators to partake in brand campaigns regardless of their presence on the platform.
In this process, the brand typically follows similar steps in creating a new campaign but specifically selecting the invite link option.
After selecting the “Invite Link” option, the process remains quite simple — including filling out brand information, campaign details, deliverables and desired payment. However, note as the feature is still in beta and there are some limitations to consider:
- Payment default will be set to “No” as it’s not supported for the feature yet;
- Asset approval is also not available at the time due to beta limitations.
Launching with TikTok Ads Manager
Once assets are provided from the creator, it’s time to upload to Ads Manager, Spark as an authorized post from the creator’s account, run as a Spark or dark ad from your brand account, or upload to your organic profile. There are some limitations to using TCM when receiving assets as only one asset can be uploaded per creator request. Currently, if multiple assets are required, multiple creator campaigns must be requested.
When Sparking from the creator’s profile, authorization must be granted. Authorization can be requested for 7, 30, 60, or 365 days. This is the amount of time you have permission to run a particular asset as an ad under the creator’s account (same as Sparking on your own account).
If running the asset organically or under your business account, the asset can be downloaded directly from TCM or synchronized to Ads Manager where you can then attach it to your specific campaign and ad group.
Track, Measure, & Analyze Campaign
Like all campaigns post-launch, marketers should track and analyze the performance of the ad. Ask yourself the following questions: Can any additional optimizations made? Is the landing page converting or does it need to be switched out? Is the copy resonating with the audience? Is the video engaging? What is the CAC, CPA, CPM, impressions, reach, and ad frequency?
TCM provides detailed analytics on campaign performance including engagement and audience reporting as seen below. If running your campaign via Ads Manager, the reporting is even more detailed for further insights.
Examining the ad metrics will help inform your next move whether that’s pulling the ad, sparking it on your branded account, or working with the creator again on a follow-up campaign. Track your creator’s analytics as you would any in-house created ad and analyze those results to better inform creator decisions in the future. Did the content convert? What did users respond to? Was the creative strong enough? What about the target audience – does it need to be narrowed or broadened? Was the copy clear and reflected in the content? Asking yourself these questions while reviewing the TCM analytics will help optimize your ad spend and increase your ROAS.
Competitors
If you don’t have access to TikTok Creator Marketplace and want to get started working with content creators, there are other platforms that can help you source the perfect creators for your campaign.
Grin prides itself on being the world’s first creator management platform. Similar to TikTok Creator Marketplace, Grin’s platform provides a seamless end-to-end flow from recruiting content creators to reporting performance analytics and nurturing relationships. A major benefit of Grin’s platform is its integration with eCommerce platforms such as Salesforce, Shopify, and WooCommerce which makes gifting your content creators easier than ever to get your product into their hands and into their videos.
Aspire is an influencer platform that makes it easy to find content creators based on specific keywords, industry, demographics, and more. In addition, Aspire doesn’t take any commission which increases your ROI. Aspire also offers social listening tools that allow you to tap into your brand community and utilize the content from creators that are already fans of your brand.
With our newly launched Creator Studio, we have an internal roster of carefully selected content creators who specialize in delivering high-quality content across a wide variety of verticals including B2B, SaaS, Healthcare, and DTC. Through our experiment-learn-scale strategy, we’ve unlocked the key to growth on TikTok through authentic, relatable, and high-quality content standards. Not only do we source the best creators for your brand, but we lead and execute the content strategy and utilize real-time analytics reporting through our proprietary custom-built dashboards bringing you real-time data insights allowing us to optimize and scale.
Instagram’s Creator Marketplace
In line with Instagram’s feature-chasing strategy, Meta launched the Instagram Creator Marketplace as a response to TikTok Creator Marketplace. Though it is still in beta testing on an invite-only basis, the platform looks eerily similar to its competitor’s platform offering filters for sourcing creators based on age, demographic, interest, and location. Brands will be able to communicate directly with creators via the Partnership Messages inbox and coordinate Instagram campaigns via the Meta Business Suite.
If you’re considering working with creators to promote your brand on TikTok or utilizing creators to produce short-form videos in general, TikTok Creator Marketplace is the way to go. The powerful tool not only provides vetted and experienced content creators, but an end-to-end experience for both the creator and brand to collaborate and benefit from. Don’t believe us? Check out these 10 TikTok stats to further convince you that TikTok is a powerful marketing tool and by partnering with content creators it is made all the more powerful in creativity, reach, and conversion.
If you are a UGC content creator and want to work with some of the world’s most iconic brands, join our creator community by filling out our creator application.
For brands wanting to unlock their growth potential on the internet’s fastest-growing platform, reach out to our TikTok studio today.
