Creator outlook: Marketing Partners share opportunities for the year ahead

Want to level up your 2023 creative plans? To uncover the latest and greatest opportunities for brands, agencies, and creators this year, we looked to TikTok's creative ecosystem and asked where the key areas for innovation lie in the creator economy and how brands like yours can seize it.

These creative experts are all part of The TikTok Marketing Partners Program, which is a community of industry leaders who we've recognized for their proven solutions and services that help brands get started or level up on the platform. These TikTok Creative Partners with a specialty in Creator Marketing have helped hundreds of brands grow on TikTok, have robust creator networks, and have their fingers on the pulse of trends. Based on this experience, we wanted to hear their perspective and advice on how brands can effectively leverage creators in their 2023 TikTok campaigns.

In this creator outlook, leaders from CreatorIQ, Influential and Whalar will outline key growth opportunities in the creator economy, how creator-led marketing activities can drive performance for your brand and how creators can help launch or elevate your TikTok strategy.

Kim Iadevia, Head of Partnerships, Influential

Influential is the largest influencer marketing company in the world by revenue. They provide an end-to-end managed service from creative strategy, creator identification, to vetting and procurement, influencer and content management, paid amplification, and measurement. Kim Ladevia, Head of Partnerships, shared her thoughts on what the year brings for creator marketing.

2023 will continue to see brands leaning into collaboration, with creators serving as the bright spot in many media and marketing plans. As more advertisers understand the value of creators and see true measurable outcomes from creator-led campaigns, the door will open to increased investment and deeper partnership.

As a data-led influencer marketing agency, we are seeing our clients ask the right questions around measurement and return on investment. Our measurement solutions combined with AI influencer identification allow us to answer important questions backed by data, leading to valuable and trusted partnerships with brands. This year we'll continue to see momentum in the measurement space but also in brand ambassadorship, shoppable content, and audience diversification.

Brand ambassadorship: As brands see a true return on their creator investment, they are eager to find ways to continue to monetize the space. Building longer-term relationships with creators secures a brand's place in those creators' feeds, driving a valuable relationship with their audiences.

Shoppable content: #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt accelerated interest in the power of the platform, and brands noticed. Creators are increasingly becoming a key creative tactic to drive sales, with audiences gravitating toward authentic content and the popularity of new products like Shopping Ads. Beauty, retail, and CPG continue to test and learn with shoppable content on the platform, gearing up for more live commerce opportunities in 2023.

Audience diversification: TikTok isn't just for the younger generations—@retirementhouse has quickly risen as a favorite, garnering brand deals and millions of views. Creators continue to diversify their content, which brings in a more diverse audience. With a broader audience, creators can pivot in what they feature, while still remaining true to themselves.

TikTok is in a unique position to support brands of all sizes, from SMB to enterprise. Grounded in creators, TikTok allows for a brand's story to be told authentically by real people. With the continued adoption of TikTok as a vehicle for sales, our clients are using the platform not only to connect with audiences but to get them to take action. In a recent campaign for a beauty brand on TikTok we utilized a first-to-market measurement capability to prove content was directly driving sales of the product.

On TikTok, creators make the platform unique. Brands that are challenging partners to drive and measure conversions from creator marketing are ahead of the curve.

Tim Sovay, Partnerships Officer, CreatorIQ

CreatorIQ is a trusted influencer marketing software platform that unifies and powers some of the world’s most innovative enterprises. Its Intelligence Cloud facilitates data science-enabled creator discovery, streamlines workflow, ensures brand safety, and drives meaningful measurement. Tim Savoy, Partnerships Officer, shared his perspective on the opportunities for brands and creators this year.

The most successful campaigns we've observed on TikTok actively involve creators in the campaign development process, rather than treating them as just brand spokespeople. One great example of this is DiGiorno's "DiGiorno Made Me Do It" campaign: the brand tapped creator @kyleexum to produce the official soundtrack, resulting in unique, dynamic content that resonated with audiences.

We're anticipating that more industries will increase their investment in creator marketing on TikTok. Our 2022 influencer marketing trends report found that fashion and beauty brands currently capture the largest share of voice from TikTok creators, though other categories like gaming and events are also gaining traction. As brands across industries recognize the impact of creator-led campaigns on the platform, we'll see much more variety in the types of brands employing them.

There are various kinds of influencers, from nano-influencers with less than 10,000 followers to mega-influencers with millions of followers. These groups are structured into what is known as community tiers. Creators with smaller but more niche followings will become more central to brands' TikTok strategies. In fact, the above report found that micro-influencers; someone who has between 1,000 to 100,000 followers on TikTok, boast the highest engagement rate among any community tier.

Our 2023 report found that 58% of brands had increased their marketing efforts with nano- or micro-influencers year-over-year. As brands look to connect with their audiences through TikTok's unique subcultures and user communities, creators with smaller followings will become more in-demand thanks to their loyal, highly-engaged fan bases.

The longer a creator has demonstrated a consistent, genuine preference for a brand, the more consumers are likely to trust that creator's endorsement. For this reason, brands that prioritize long-term creator partnerships over one-off paid posts are far more likely to see a lasting impact.

To identify promising candidates for long-term partnerships, brands can use CreatorIQ's platform to evaluate creators' past performance across a range of metrics, including engagement rate and audience demographic data. By selecting partners who have historically created impactful branded content, marketers can maximize the chances that these partners will be strong performers in future campaigns.

Ashley Rudder, Chief Creator Officer, Whalar

Whalar is a global creator commerce company enabling creators, brands, and the world’s leading social platforms to work better together to drive business growth for all. They help brands stay culturally relevant through strategic creator relationships that deliver entertaining and must-see content at scale. They're differentiated by unique capabilities, including comprehensive creator talent management, brand partnership expertise, proprietary technology, a dedicated Web3 innovation practice, and C Talent at Whalar, a Disabled-led talent management and access consultancy. Ashley Rudder, Chief Creator Officer, provides her thoughts on 2023 being the year of the creator.

In 2023 it's time to get creators off the mood board and into the boardroom. The most innovative brands are getting exponential wins up and down the funnel by embedding creators into their creative ideation from the start.

TikTok is an exciting entertainment platform and audiences are flocking to its raw and real creator-led programming.

Creators are professionals that are dialed into the native behaviors the audience craves, and our clients are blown away by their impact and creativity.

Remember that the younger generation has never known a world without the internet, which means they intrinsically know how to sift through oceans of information to find the truth. This kind of elevated consumer knowledge makes creator-brand integration a must for brand narratives to be rooted successfully within these passionate communities. This is especially true if brands want to reach minority and marginalized communities they haven't marketed to in the past.

Audiences are looking for a trusted source that makes them feel seen, and it's no secret that creators make people feel good about themselves. Creators embrace underrepresented groups, body positivity, improved mental outlooks, and the simple fact that being different is okay. And their content is "made for the medium"—entertaining, funny, and uplifting.

Creators are vetted and seasoned marketers that enable brands to source marketing ideas and stories directly from the communities they most want to reach. That's why their insights are invaluable, and brands with a futurist mindset have already begun embedding creators into product development, marketing, and even employee recruiting.

For example, beauty company EOS honored a wildly popular TikTok video by creator @killljoyy to create a limited edition run of their shaving cream. Instead of distancing themselves from Carly's sweary language and candid tutorial, they fully embraced and printed it on their packaging. EOS experienced a doubling of growth in its shaving cream category and a total sell-out in Targets across America.

To work with any of these partners and to learn more about the TikTok Marketing Partners Program, visit our partner directory!