Diversify or die – clichéd but in our field of content marketing, it holds true. As marketers, we must adapt our strategies and mindset to keep pace with our rapidly evolving audiences; audiences who are changing as swiftly as the platforms they engage with.
But you have to diversify with intelligence and with strategy. While many blindly hop on the current content bandwagon, we at Sunday keep an open mind and a broad perspective, learning from how our content unfolds across a variety of digital channels. This data- and experience-led approach informs our strategies when new channels emerge, ensuring what we create remains relevant, timeless, and, most importantly, trusted by both consumers and our clients.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) presented us with a challenge: develop an influencer campaign for TikTok targeting UK school leavers age 18 and above. The objective? Generate interest in surveying careers, dispel a few myths, and engage a diverse socio-economic audience, particularly leaning towards a female demographic. TikTok and RICS is an unconventional alliance, but, to drop another cliché, opposites do attract…
First and foremost, we had to define the message. Our client’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) data tells an engaging story – this young, aspirational audience want a clear career progression with sustainability and opportunities to travel as part of the package. These aspirations plus a £24k starting salary create a compelling narrative to play out across social channels. Leveraging our understanding of how this audience consumes content on other channels and who they follow, we enlisted a diverse group of TikTok career influencers; we’re talking about nano-influencers (those with a small but dedicated following) to rising TikTok stars with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Understanding the importance of delivering the core message with authenticity and credibility within the first few seconds of broadcast, RICS relaxed its brand guidelines to ensure we engaged as broad an audience as possible. So, while each influencer conveyed the same message, they did so in in their unique style, tone of voice and format. Self-shot videos took centre stage, with each influencer creating content for their own channel and a bespoke version for our paid campaign.
The results speak for themselves. Our nano-influencer’s account garnered the highest average watch time (11.6 seconds) expected when catering to a smaller but highly focused audience. Organic streams achieved an impressive engagement rate of 4.39%, underscoring the significance of trust on TikTok. The influence of personality was clear – our rising star’s channel attracted a remarkable 30% of all traffic from her personal profile, demonstrating the trust her audience places in her content.