Driving full-funnel success for brands with creator collaborations on TikTok Creator Marketplace

26 May 2022

TikTok For Business

Success StoriesInsightsBest Practices

Today's digital-first consumers are increasingly seeking joyful, entertaining, and authentic interaction with their communities, the wider world, and the brands they buy from. With this shift in expectations toward greater authenticity, brands have to seriously consider how to "humanize" their audience engagement.

There’s no better way to inject authenticity and entertainment into your brand marketing campaigns than through creators, who know the platform and its users best. On TikTok, that is amplified with native content championed by a diverse community of creators.

And we have the statistics to prove it. According to aNeuro-Insightstudy, users find content on TikTok to be 44% more likeable and 15% more engaging than content on other platforms. That means that audiences find TikTok's immersive, sound-on video viewing experience hyper-relevant and highly engaging. The study also found that ads on TikTok are up to 40% more memorable than TV ads. We've also seen that creator content outperforms non-native ad creative with 2x more 6s video views and 2x higher engagement rates on TikTok, the home of authentic, joyful interaction.

Below, you'll find three real-life case studies featuring growth brands in Southeast Asia (SEA). Their stories show how they leveraged TikTok's compelling content delivery format to delivery highly relevant ads to connect and engage with their audiences, and how they usedTikTok Creator Marketplaceto find the right TikTok creators for successful collaborations.

Driving awareness and app installs with authentic user interaction

What do fintech companyPlentina,online eyewear retailerPeculiar Eyewear, and fashion brandPomeloall have in common? These three SEA-based startups wanted to cement their presence among their respective target audiences through seamless, authentic interactions. To achieve their campaign goals, these startups leveraged TikTok's highly impactful creator community, as well as Spark Ads. In addition to building brand awareness, Plentina also specifically targeted app installs, while Peculiar Eyewear optimized its campaign for conversions. All three brands ran their campaigns on TikTok Creator Marketplace.

Boosting impressions and conversions with TikTok Creator Marketplace and Spark Ads

First, each of the three brands turned to TikTok Creator Marketplace to collaborate with creators for their campaigns. On our first-party marketplace, brands can search for creators, directly invite them to collaborate and execute on campaigns, and view insights into the creators' audiences and performance analytics. For creators, it's a way to forge new business connections and secure substantial incomes. Both brands and creators use TikTok Creator Marketplace to work on high-quality partnerships and content creation opportunities.

Plentina sought out two local Filipino creators with direct invites on TikTok Creator Marketplace to help explain its value proposition to its target audience in an approachable way. Eyewear brand Peculiar Eyewear found its ideal, passionate creator, and invited him to produce multiple videos for its campaign. Meanwhile, fashion startup Pomelo identified four fashion-focused creators to collaborate on its Chinese New Year campaign, all via TikTok Creator Marketplace in an effortless manner.

Next, the three startups used TikTok's Spark Ads to amplify the videos the creators had produced for their campaigns. Spark Ads are a native in-feed ad format that takes the creators' organic TikTok posts and inserts them in users' For-You feed. This unique format lets brands publish creators' content with their authorization, and creates a seamless experience for the TikTok community. This way, all views, comments, shares, likes, and follows gained from amplifying the campaign are also attributed to the organic post. Sparks Ads are proven to boost video views and engagement rates, helping to drive full-funnel success.

With this winning formula, each of the three brands saw highly successful campaigns. Plentina, the Philippines-based fintech startup attracted more than 20 million video views in less than two weeks, with more than 12,000 app installs as a result. That put the campaign's cost per conversion at only 74 US cents.

For Peculiar Eyewear, the eyewear startup, its campaign achieved more than 6.3 million impressions, with brand awareness skyrocketing. Its creator content led to more than 3,000 conversions, with an even lower cost per conversion of 69 US cents.

And Pomelo, the startup fashion brand, garnered nearly 5.3 million total video views, with more than 4.9 million impressions, across the four videos it had boosted with Spark Ads. Those videos attracted more than 75,000 likes, meeting their marketing objectives.

For each of these brands, the effort was about more than the numbers. The goal was to connect with their respective target audiences in an approachable way and through genuine interactions. TikTok's creators on TikTok Creator Marketplace stepped up to the plate, and with Sparks Ads amplifying their content, the community came along for the journey too.

"The platform has helped us to speak to our users through user generated content. We hope that in partnering with these content creators, we can make the Plentina service easier to understand by the demographic that we want to serve." Plentina 

"It was easy to contact the creator once we picked the right one. Within 24 hours we had received the raw file for edits and comments." Peculiar Eyewear

"The platform was easy to use, without much of an onboarding process needed when I brought in our PR team." Pomelo