An Agency’s Guide to TikTok Creator Marketplace for Brands

This is TikTok’s best kept secret! Did you know there’s a free* way to partner with creators on TikTok?

*Well, nothing’s ever free in marketing! We’re certainly not asking creators to work for nothing, but this handy tool on TikTok cuts out the expensive middleman so brands can work directly with creators on the native platform. The only fee you have to pay is the one directly to the creators, so it’s a win-win situation for both parties – the entire fee goes directly to the person creating the content with no middleman where details can get lost. 

While there’s a lot of advice out there for creators using TikTok Creator marketplace such as how to join, how to set their rates and how to set up TTCM pay, the advice for brands and agencies using TikTok Creator Marketplace to connect with influencers is more limited. So we wanted to use our experience on the platform to share how to use TikTok Creator Marketplace as a brand, how to get the best out of it, and answer a few questions you might have.

First up, let’s answer a few FAQs about TikTok Creator Marketplace for brands:

What is TikTok Creator Marketplace?

TikTok Creator Marketplace is a hub to connect brands with creators on TikTok. Within the TikTok Creator Marketplace, brands set up a campaign and invite creators to join it. The brand pays the creator a fee to use their valuable skills in content creation and promotion, plus their existing reach and influence.

This is a quick and easy way to use influencer marketing to increase brand awareness, grow your following, and ultimately increase sales.

Why should brands use TikTok Creator Marketplace?

TikTok Creator Marketplace allows brands to discover and partner with influencers all on one single platform. This is truly the best way to partner with influencers on TikTok (and beyond if you do it right!) as you keep everything within the platform. No need to pay another for another tool or service to source creators – everything from the campaign invites, management, messaging and reporting is within the TikTok Creator Marketplace hub. 

When you use a separate tool, there is normally either a monthly or annual fee to sign up to the service meaning that you need to factor in that cost on top of the fee that you’re paying to the creator. In addition to this, the creators sometimes miss out as they may only receive a percentage of the amount paid by the brand. As a result of this, not every creator is on every platform, whereas on TikTok Creator Marketplace, you have a broader choice of creators and good tools to filter them.

The creators on TikTok Creator Marketplace are selected through a rigorous process by TikTok, and you also get fantastic insights into their performance on the platform in general plus other paid campaigns they’ve worked on.

How do brands join TikTok Creator Marketplace?

The first thing you need to join TikTok Creator Marketplace is a TikTok Ad Manager account. If you’re already running advertising on TikTok, this will be set up already. If not, it’s a simple process that we can guide you through – just get in touch!

You’ll need to verify your business in order to be able to use TikTok Creator Marketplace, so simply follow the instructions to do so.

How to use TikTok Creator Marketplace

When you’ve got onto TikTok Creator Marketplace and are ready to start your first campaign, it’s all pretty straightforward! Simply set up a new campaign, you can choose from:

• Invitation Lite: Quick campaign set up where you can invite creators to join your campaign.
• Invitation: A full suite of features to invite creators to join your campaign.
• Open Application: This allows creators to come to you.

Fill in all the details that a creator will need to know such as your brand’s history, story, goals, tone of voice and more. Make sure that you include the key messaging for your campaign’s goals such as if you’re promoting a sale or certain feature of a product. You also have the option to attach a document, which is something we recommend so that creators can get even more information if needed.

You can then set the deliverables for the campaign which is how much content you require from each creator.

Now simply set the campaign live and begin exploring creators! You can choose creators to invite through the “Explore” tab. You can look in detail at:

• Following
• Average views
• Engagement rate
• Sample videos
• Follower demographics
• Engagement on branded content videos
• Similar creators

Make sure you bear in mind your ideal audience when selecting creators as well as just looking at those with high follower numbers. Engagement is important, but finding an audience of people who are more likely to purchase from you may be even more so. 

When you invite a creator to join your campaign, you can offer them a rate – TikTok will suggest a range of pricing based on similar creators to you, and many will have already set a minimum rate. You can tick a box to allow the creator to negotiate too if required. Then set the delivery dates and send the invitation.

Once a creator has accepted your invitation to collaborate, you will be able to view their contact information including options to email, message or call them. This is where you can make arrangements for delivery of products required for the content creation and confirm other details.

Creators will then upload their content for approval, and once you’re happy with it, they are able to publish. At this point, you’ll probably want to engage with their video and share it to increase the reach. Once the campaign is complete, you can view the overall report and metrics.

How do I pay a creator on TikTok Creator Marketplace?

We’ll admit that this was a stumbling block for us at first! While in some countries TTCM Pay is available, it isn’t currently available in the US or UK which means that you need to arrange payment with the creator away from the app via your preferred payment method. We ask creators to send an invoice to the brand and to CC us in so that we can approve the amount.

Is TikTok Creator Marketplace worth it for brands?

Absolutely – we consider it to be TikTok’s best kept secret! Some unique features include:

• Filters: You can sift through creators depending on your requirements including location, following, video performance, category and more. You can then shortlist and favourite creators to come back to.
• Budget: TikTok Creator Marketplace has a pretty transparent attitude towards fees for creators. On each creator’s listing, they can choose to display a starting rate so that you know whether they’re likely to come within your budget before spending too much time going back and forth. When you invite a creator to a campaign, you must set a proposed payment and you can tick a box to say whether this rate is negotiable.
• Reminders: When you’ve invited a creator to your campaign, if they haven’t accepted or declined within a number of days, you’re able to send them a reminder. 
• Deliverables: There is a very simple set up with full transparency on deliverables for brands and creators too. When inviting a creator to a campaign, brands must not only set a budget, but also choose how many videos, when they should be delivered by and when they should be posted.
• Creator submissions: Before a video is published on your campaign, a creator must submit it for review. This gives you as a brand the opportunity to ask for any changes required and to approve the content before it goes live.

But is it really worth it? Do you get good results from TikTok Creator Marketplace?

Here’s where it gets juicy! In our experience, yes – we have had fantastic results for our clients from TikTok Creator Marketplace.

The key that we have found is to provide the right creators with exactly what they need so that they can give you exactly what you need – simple!

Taking your time to select creators who really speak to your brand is so important. We look for those who have featured similar products previously, have a similar tone of voice, and have an engaged audience who fits our ideal audience.

This has meant putting together a document with a set of guidelines that explains more about the brand’s story, the key points about the product or campaign, the tone of voice for the brand, the types of content they could create, what to do and what not to do, plus some examples.

And how about those results?

Our recent campaign for Jacobs & Dalton, a luxury sheepskin brand based in Yorkshire, was to promote the restock of their Super Short Boots. 

Here’s how it went:

• The boots TOTALLY sold out in the most popular sizes within 2 days of being restocked.
• Their monthly revenue increased by 42%.
• The campaign had over 95,000 views across 4 creators on TikTok.

But that’s not all! Because we chose to partner with creators who were an excellent fit for the brand, one of these went on to promote the boots on her other social channels of her own volition. As a result of that, we had a few more exciting results during the course of the campaign:

• Their following on Instagram increased by 31%. 
• The campaign had over 800,000 views on Instagram.

4 Ways to Level Up Your TikTok Creator Marketplace Campaign

TikTok Shop: If you’re running a campaign with the goal of getting sales, get your products onto TikTok shop. This will allow people to shop directly on the platform, thus increasing the likelihood of a conversion as they don’t even need to leave the app!

Tracking: Give creators an exclusive discount code that their followers can use to purchase the product. Not only does this increase the likelihood of conversion again, but it also means that you can more easily attribute sales to a campaign or even a specific influencer.

UGC: Make it a part of your campaign that the brand will be able to use the content created by influencers in their own marketing. If you make this requirement at the outset, the overall fee will cover this. You can then use this for future promotions, campaigns, ads, on your website, wherever user generated content might be beneficial to you.

Sync to Ads Manager: Once a creator has completed the campaign and published your content, you are able to sync this video to your TikTok Ads Manager. This gives you the valuable opportunity to promote their content even further to increase traffic and engagement.

If this has convinced you to give TikTok Creator Marketplace a try for influencer marketing but you want someone to take the work off your hands, give us a shout and we’ll be happy to help! We can guide you through the process or can run the entire campaign for you.