Why Most TikTok Influencer Marketing Campaigns Suck.

To be clear, this article is not intended to criticise any creators, agencies, brands or TikTok as a platform.

TikTok's rise since Jan 2018 has been nothing short of meteoric. It has become the social media app on everyone's mind and a crucial part of every marketing campaign brief. Its user base has increased from 55m in Jan 2018, to over 1 billion users today. Not only has it managed astonishing download numbers - once on the app, TikTok has held our attention. The average user spends 68 min a day on TikTok in the US.

Sounds like an opportunity...

TikTok represents a vast challenge - and opportunity - for creators, agencies and brands. The nature of the app means that creators and agencies need to innovate and integrate brands into TikTok formats and trends that change daily. Despite positive progress with the TikTok Creator Fund, creators are also under pressure to accept brand sponsorship offers, as the platform doesn't split ad revenue and and the bulk of their income comes from sponsorships. Agencies are still learning on TikTok and trying to make money from winning a first-mover advantage. Finally, brands are desperately experimenting to find their place on the platform and aren't sure how to measure success.

TikTok themselves have been very helpful to brands, creators and agencies (including my own) to make sure we maximise the chance of branded content succeeding. Their "Don't make ads. Make TikToks" mantra has pierced the minds of advertisers and informed strategy. They even have a music team that can commission compositions for your brand campaign. TikTok has also been clear that brands will need to boost organic content with paid reach - recommending 60% spend on paid advertising and 40% on sponsoring organic Influencer content.

But why are most Influencer Marketing campaigns so bad?

There are three recurring problems with Influencer Marketing campaigns on TikTok:

1. Content-First Algorithm

TikTok is a content-first - rather than creator-first - platform. This is at the heart of their addictive algorithm and the For You Page (FYP) that keeps users scrolling. A crucial aspect of the content-first algorithm is that creators have approximately 1 min (3 min max) to hold viewers' attention. The first 11 seconds are crucial to any content on TikTok. That short attention window, married with unlimited appealing options for scrolling viewers means that audiences have a very low tolerance for advertising. People hate watching ads. They download ad blockers to avoid them. TikTok's FYP algorithm tends to screen out most sponsored content - unless brands pay for it to appear as an in-feed ad.

One of the most common ways for content to feature on the FYP and boost a TikTok's reach is to use trending sounds. This adds another layer of difficulty for brands. There are different - and far more expensive - legal licensing requirements when using a music track in a product advertisement. This cuts brands off from using trending sounds and formats - a primary way to be discovered on TikTok - and makes designing campaigns far more difficult and expensive.

People watch TikTok to be entertained, educated, amused or connect personally with a creator. Brands need to think about how their sponsored content will add value to a viewer's life or fit into one of those categories to stand any chance of organic success on the FYP. Fundamentally, the sponsored content needs to be good.

2. Brands trying to create and own a trend, with the same content from every creator

When launching a TikTok campaign, brands often aim to build something cohesive and try to create their own format/trend, rather than tailoring content to individual creators. Sadly in practice - largely because of agency's and brands' poor understanding of TikTok trends - this has tended to dance challenges.

The most effective TikTok branded content fits in with what creators are already making. This means brands need to be flexible with their messaging and briefs. One notable way branded content has both organically succeeded and created a cohesive campaign is by harnessing the power of transformation. Essentially producing content that balances showcasing creators' individual style, with a brand-facilitated transformation. For examples, check out e.l.f. cosmetics #eyeslipsface beauty campaign or our campaign for Magnum ice cream in France this summer.

The downside of this desire for cohesion is the number of cringe-worthy dance challenges that have been sponsored on TikTok. Stop trying to make "fetch" happen. This seems to come from agencies and brands having an outdated view of TikTok - dance challenges are very 2020. Recently, the most painful example I've seen is the "ShineWithQatar " challenge, that ran as a paid ad on my FYP last month. As someone who has visited Qatar (to give a talk on Influencer Marketing), runs an agency and specialised in Middle Eastern studies, that awkward campaign - seemingly having nothing to do with Qatar beyond the name - made me want to delete the app.

Even the largest ad agencies in the world don't know what to do with TikTok. WPP recently challenged the brightest minds in their agencies to pitch their TikTok ideas for key brands with their own TikTok videos... The hashtag #mediacombigidea is worth a watch. Shout out to the person who uploaded a landscape video! If only young people knew this is how the advertising industry works...

3. Metric Trouble: How to measure success?

As brands, creators and agencies are all learning together on TikTok, attribution and measuring success can be a challenge.

Performance marketing is particularly difficult, as the TikTok experience is so immersive and addictive that viewers rarely leave the app - often only by accident if they do click on a link! We've spoken to brands with over a 99% bounce rate from their TikTok ads. This represents attribution challenges for conversion goals, as the user journey is normally very fragmented. Customers may first see a product on TikTok, but may not click on a link or search for a product until much later - potentially even on a different device.

Audiences also seem to have a distaste for sponsored content on their feeds. We are at the crucial moment where TikTok pivots from its vast growth phase - where users feel a sense of ownership over a platform they've discovered - to commercialization of the app - where viewers resent that their experience is interrupted with new ad formats and sponsored content. Consideration, engagement and comment sentiment are tricky indicators of success too.

Combined, these problems means campaigns have tended to the most shallow measures of success: looking primarily at views/impressions (often a blend of organic and paid). As the platform matures and brands/agencies gain more experience, measuring success will become more sophisticated - particularly with conversion focused campaigns.

What next?

It isn't all bleak. Hopefully as the platform matures and brands, agencies and creators learn together, we won't have to scroll past blood-curdlingly cringey campaigns. We'll work closely with creators to tailor brand messaging that appeals to their niche audience. We'll develop smarter attribution models. We'll make educational, funny, entertaining or personal content. And, most importantly, we'll stop dancing.

NB; This is not to say that individual products and businesses haven't gone viral, driven sales and owe their growth to TikTok. However, most of those are from organic content and using trends like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt - rather than paid Influencer Marketing campaigns.