Brands, influencers, and all the TikTok addicts out there (I’m looking at you) - yes we're all worried that the TikTok app could eventually get banned in the US. But, until that happens, if it ever happens, TikTok is one of the best places for marketers to reach people between the ages of 18-34. 

TikTok was the most downloaded app in 2024, and it is the most influential app for purchases. 

If I look back on everything I bought last year, I saw the majority of that stuff either being worn or used by influencers on TikTok before I purchased it, and I know I’m not alone. Am I saying they were all great purchases? No, but I was heavily influenced, like we all are, by this app. 

The trick is finding the best TikTok influencer to work with, and the rest is easy, so in this article, we’ll show you how to do that. 

What is TikTok influencer marketing? 

Maybe your brand hasn’t worked with a TikTok influencer yet, so let us first explain what that looks like. 

TikTok influencer marketing is a strategy where brands partner with popular TikTok creators to promote their products or services to new consumer segments. The size of the influencer’s audience can range - from celebrity brand ambassadors with millions of followers to micro and nano influencers with audience sizes in the 4-5 figure range. 

The TikTok influencer creates content that showcases the brand's products or services in a creative and engaging way. They create industry- or niche-specific video content that can include sponsored posts, challenges, or collaborations. Influencers on TikTok often have a unique style that resonates with their followers, and by correctly identifying and partnering with them, brands can leverage that authenticity to promote their products in a more natural and organic way.

What’s most important is that the creator’s followers align with the target market of the brand.

Take Alix Earle for example. She is a huge TikTok influencer in the US, and she can sell anything makeup or clothing related (I would know, she’s influenced me to buy a lot of makeup)- because that’s what her audience loves and connects with. People also trust her advice. For a lot of big makeup brands, Alix Earle is a good brand/influencer fit, and she has made them A LOT of money. But there are other brand synergies too, for example, she’s earned AirBNB a 100 million in media value with one single post. 

Here’s how to find your own “Alix Earle”.

6 Simple ways to find influencers on TikTok

As we go through these different ways of finding influencers, let’s, for example’s sake, pretend we work for the makeup brand NARS and we are trying to find the best fit makeup influencer for our brand. 

1. Use TikTok’s Discover page

The TikTok Discover page is a valuable tool for you to identify the ideal influencer for your brand. The Discover page algorithm showcases popular and trending content on the platform. 

Here are some ways that companies can use the TikTok Discover page to identify the perfect influencer for their brand:

• Topics and hashtags:  Topics and hashtags let you see the most popular content and influencers in that particular area. For example, if a company (like NARS)sells beauty products, they can search for hashtags like #makeuptutorial or #beautyhacks to see the most popular content and influencers in that category.
• Look for popular sounds: TikTok shows you the trending songs and sounds that are used in popular videos. This can be an effective way to identify influencers that resonate with the company's target audience.
• Check out live streams: TikTok  live streams let influencers talk to their audience in real-time, giving you a window into how these influencers create content off-the-cuff and how their audience reacts to it.
• Use TikTok Creator Marketplace: TikTok’s Creator Marketplace connects brands with TikTok influencers, letting you search for creators based on various criteria like location, audience demographics, and engagement rate.

The TikTok Discover page is a great way to generate a shortlist of potential influencers that you can further investigate with audience analysis tools to determine alignment.

2. Use the TikTok User Finder

The TikTok User Finder lets you search for users based on specific criteria- essentially functioning as a search engine for the platform. The different criteria you can filter with include:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Interests
• Followers 

For example, if NARS was interested in finding a makeup influencer, they can use the User Finder to search for those specific creators: 

3. Search for TikTok influencers with Google 

Google can be a powerful tool for finding TikTok influencers that align with your brand or niche. Here's how you can use Google to search for TikTok influencers:

1. Start with a general search: Begin your search by using general keywords related to your niche or industry, such as "beauty influencers". This will give you a broad range of search results to work with.

2. Narrow down your search: Once you have a general list of influencers, you can narrow down your search by using more specific keywords. For example, if you are looking for beauty influencers on TikTok, you can use a search term like "top TikTok beauty creators" or "best beauty influencers on TikTok."

3. Analyze the statistics: Once you have a list of potential influencers, it's essential to take a good look at the available statistics. This includes metrics like follower count, engagement rate, and average views per video. These statistics can give you an idea of the influencer's reach and the level of engagement they generate with their followers.

*a good engagement rate on TikTok for a macro influencer with 100K-1m followers is 5-7%, and for a mega-influencer with 1m+ followers is 4-6% 

4. Analyze the type of content: In addition to analyzing the statistics, it's also important to analyze the type of content shared by the influencers you find this way. Take a close look at their videos to see if the content aligns with your brand values and message.

4. Take a data-backed approach with Audiense Insights

The ways we’ve provided to find influencers thus far are easy in the sense that they will all give you a list of influencers to work with that are related to what your brand is trying to sell but they can’t guarantee that those influencers actually have influence over your own audience. 

That’s why tools like Audiense are so important when there is money on the line (and TikTok influencers are not cheap). To achieve the highest ROI with any TikTok campaign, you need to take a data-backed approach. 

So if NARS was trying to find the best fit influencer, they are going to have an overload of influencer options since this is a popular type of influencer that is out there. But just because someone has a high following and they are good at makeup doesn’t mean they are necessarily a good fit for the NARS brand or that your audience trusts them. 

By running an Audience Insights report on the NARS audience, we can surface all the top micro and macro influencers that our audience follows and trusts. 

Within the report is an “influencers & brands” tab. You can even filter this list down to only show TikTok content creators: 

Check out the full Audiense report here. 

We can see that influencer NikkieTutorials is a very popular influencer for the NARS audience and she really resonates with them (her affinity score is substantially higher than the other influencers listed). So out of thousands of makeup influencers, Audiense has helped us narrow it down to one that is guaranteed to resonate with our NARS target audience. 

This is the easiest and most guaranteed way to find your TikTok influencers, so try it for yourself now! 

5. See what your competitors are doing

Chances are you’re not the only company in your niche looking to leverage the power of TikTok to influence your audience - your competitors are likely developing their own influencer strategy. 

You can apply the same example as we used in the step prior to run an audience analysis, but this time do an analysis on your competitors' audience, to see which influencers are working on their audience. This use of Audiense for  influencer identification shouldn’t be overlooked, as it allows you to:

• Benchmark how your performance compares to others in your industry
• Gather in-depth statistics on your competitor’s audience
• Identify the subsegments of competitor audiences that overlap with your own 
• Surface the top influencers working for your competitors that could be promoting your brand instead

So if the competing brand was Too Faced Cosmetics, by running an Audiense Insights report, you could determine that top influencers like Christen Dominique or Malika might be good to work with on your own audience or for capturing their audience.

Try Audiense and see which influencers are the most relevant to your competitor's audience. 

6. Vetting influencer options with Demand

Audiense narrows down the list of influencers your brand should work with, but if you want to verify even further which influencer you should go with, you can use a tool like Demand. 

How it works is you upload a list of influencers you are considering, like we’ve done below by adding in Nikki Tutorials and a couple other influencer names we were considering. And then Demand will display their social ranking in terms of followers, subscribers, and how many times they’ve been searched online.

It’s helpful that Audiense insights feeds you the influencer list and then you can see how popular each influencer is across the different social channels in the Demand platform: 

Makeup influencer Nikki Tutorials is ranking exceptionally on TikTok, which is most important for this example but if Google search variance was important to us, then we might pick another influencer, as they score low in this category. 

Demand is where you can assess all potential influencers in one place and rank them against each other in terms of platform popularity. 

Sign up to try Demand, and start ranking your TikTok influencer options now. 

How do you get a TikTok influencer to work with you?

Once you’ve identified the ideal TikTok influencer to represent your brand, you need to start a dialogue with them. Here’s how you can reach out in a way that will set you up for a successful long-term relationship:

Be an excellent communicator: Specifically, you should be transparent and clear about the objectives, budget, and expectations of your influencer campaign. Be responsive to the influencer's questions and concerns and provide timely feedback throughout the collaboration.

Provide clear and concise briefing: Clearly including brand values, target audience, desired messaging, creative guidelines, and restrictions in your briefs will help your influencer create content that aligns with the brand's goals while still being authentic and engaging.

An easy way to come up with a successful influencer campaign pitch, is by uploading Audiense insights on your audience and the influencers audience into ChatGPT and asking it to come up with a influencer campaign and mock social posts - that way the campaign is aligned with what resonates most with your audience while still being in the typical style and format used by your influencer. Read more on how to import Audiense insights into ChatGPT here. 

This is an example of what that brief could look like when you input NAR’s audience insights into ChartGPT and ask it to come up with a mock TikTok post for influencer Alix Earle:

Let them be creative: Briefs are important, but TikTok influencers are experts at creating engaging content that resonates with their followers. Companies should allow influencers to be creative and express themselves freely in their own videos while still providing a general framework. This helps to create authentic content that feels natural to the influencer's audience and drives engagement.

If you’re stuck at the part on how to first connect with a creator once you’ve chosen the best fit influencer for your brand, start with a simple email outreach. Here’s our template you can use (feel free to copy and paste, while updating the info in the brackets): 

Subject line: Can’t wait to collaborate! (Insert your brand name) X (insert the influencer’s name)

Hi (influencer’s name), 

We hope you’re having the best day. My name is (insert your name), and I’m reaching out on behalf of (insert brand name). We are huge fans of your TikTok content, especially (mention your favorite posts of theirs). We would love to collaborate with you. 

We believe that your content style and audience base is a perfect fit for our latest brand campaign. Our goal with our campaign is to (mention clear campaign objectives), and we’d love for you to create something with our brand that feels authentic to your style and audience while promoting our brand in the most natural way.  

If you are interested, we’d love to share more details about the project and how you and (brand name) can collaborate. Let me know if you would be open to a quick call to discuss this opportunity further. 

Looking forward to hearing from you! 

Best, 

(Your name, position, brand's name, and contact info)

Some of the best brand & influencer partnerships on TikTok

The potential brand-influencer combinations for a successful TikTok influencer campaign are plenty, provided you do your due diligence and identify the profiles that overlap with your consumer segments. 

Whether you're in the retail fashion industry or a cutting-edge software company, you can find success by using Audiense insights to surface and partner with the influencers that align with the goals for your brand and the interests of your consumer segments. 

Here are a few examples of TikTok influencer campaigns done right.

Marc Jacobs and Nara Smith

Nara Smith is an influencer who is known for cooking things completely from scratch (she even made gum from scratch once), and she does this all while dressed in fancy dresses and with her hair and makeup done - totally relatable lol. 

Fashion brand Marc Jacobs teamed up with Nara, who made a video of her baking a red Marc Jacobs “Tote Bag”. This video blended her style of content with that element of high fashion - and people loved it. It got 17 million views. 

Marc Jacobs found the right influencer for their audience while keeping the content aligned with what Nara was already posting. The brand Marc Jacobs is also similar to the high fashion brands Nara already wears in her videos, which makes the partnership feel authentic - and in the end, the campaign was a complete success. 

Find the best fit influencer for your brand. 

Poppi and Emily Mariko 

You might remember Emily Mariko from her famous salmon TikTok’s (she would cook a salmon and make a delicious sushi bowl with it… and people were obsessed). She is known for her cooking ASMR and satisfying fridge restocks(if you know you know). 

Poppi saw a synergy between her audience, one that aspires to cook healthy meals with their “healthy pop” alternative. 

Poppi partnered with Emily, who made a video of her restocking her fridge with all the Poppi flavours. It sounds simple, but it got over 24 million views. 

Here’s an example of the product/influencer partnership that worked because Poppi let Emily make the video feel authentic, and the product itself is loved by her “healthy lifestyle” audience. 

B2B TikTok Influencers

Although it might seem like the majority of TikTok is run by influencers who push CPG products, there are still B2B influencers to consider. 

If your target audience is B2B, Audiense can help unearth those thought leaders and influencers on TikTok just as easily. 

Let’s say your audience was “Tech Moms from Chicago”, you can find lifestyle influencers like these:

Or more niche, tech oriented thought leaders like these: 

Both are guaranteed to connect with your target audience. 

Go find your next “Alix Earle”

At the end of the day, finding a TikTok influencer for your brand is easy, there are virtually thousands of influencers out there. But the tricky part is finding the right influencer, the one who is really going to connect with your audience and make an impact. 

And the only way to do that is by taking a data backed approach. Does it matter that an influencer has a high following? Yes, of course, but if your audience isn’t a part of that following, then it won’t make a difference how popular they are. 

By using Audiense insights, you can surface the top influencers for your audience and then you can rank them even further with Demand. Both of these tools ensure that your next TikTok influencer campaign is going to bring you the highest ROI possible, just like the Nara Smith and Marc Jacobs campaign did. 

TikTok’s future might be uncertain, but its impact on marketing right now is undeniable, so if you’re not leveraging it, you’re missing out. 

Sign up for Audiense to find your own “Alix Earle” and start making winning TikTok influencer campaigns now.