It’s very important to understand with what type of creator you want to work, and what are you trying to achieve on a platform like Tiktok or Douyin, for example.
So if you’re a brand, make sure that you have very clear guidelines and a brief
for the creator before you actually start reaching out to creators. From there, you have to look very specific at, what type of creator am I looking for? Who can create the content I’m looking for, but also the ROI, the return on investment I’m looking for?
And that can mean that you work with a KOL, with an influencer, or with a KOC, for example.
So you do very targeted search, and then you start actually interacting with the creator. And then you actually look at, “Okay, what can I do to help this creator?” So of course, very often that’s with a financial compensation, but you can look at, “Okay, can I do something else as a brand?”
As a brand, you have a lot of different resources available which a creator might not have. A creator is very good at the content creation, but usually that’s about it. The business is not the very strong part, for most creators.
So see how you can help them as a brand, how you can help the creator as well, to provide certain resources to support them in the content creation so that you get a high ROI as well, instead of just giving the brief to the creator, and it’s like, “Okay, good luck with it,” and then at the end of the day, not being satisfied with the results or with the content you got from the creator.
So really see, as a brand,”What resources can I give? How can I come up with creative solutions, besides that financial compensation, to help this creator boost their account?”
For example, what you see in China happening is, what we do with brands is, we do a branded
content on a creators platform, for example. So of course they get a free product, they do the
promotion for you as well for some financial compensation, and then we boost a little bit with paid advertising, which is called DOU+. We, for example, boost that piece of content. So at the
end of the day, you as a brand get a higher reach because the content is boosted, but at the same time, you’re boosting the creator’s content, so the creator’s increasing their likes and their following and their views, et cetera.
This is how you create a win-win situation in a creative way which doesn’t cost you much more
money as a brand, but you can get a higher return, and the creator is happy. So really look, be creative, look at different ways you can collaborate with a creator and really look at their personal situation and how to help them.