Branded Mission: How to Leverage TikTok's New Ad Solution to Boost Brand Awareness

TikTok has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool for businesses. In fact, the platform generated an estimated 1.9 billion in revenue in 2020 alone.

And the popularity of the app is due to its creators. Which makes TikTok's new advertising solution — which is solely focused on crowdsourcing the best content from its creators — an incredible opportunity for brands.

Here, let's dive into what Branded Mission is, and how you can use it to boost your brand awareness and sales.

What is Branded Mission?

Branded Mission is TikTok's new advertising solution, and the idea is pretty simple: Branded Mission enables brands to select their advertising requirements, and then creators can submit original videos that meet those requirements. The brand then accepts their favorite video, and amplifies it through boosted ad traffic.

It's a win-win: Creators have the opportunity to reach new audiences with boosted content, and brands can leverage high-quality content that aligns with their goals straight from the TikTok community.

As TikTok's Newsroom states: "This new form of two-way engagement between brands and creators enables the TikTok community to have a creative hand in the ads that are a part of a brand campaign and helps brands discover emerging creators broadly across TikTok."

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Essentially, Branded Mission creates easier opportunities for brands to work with TikTok influencers. Rather than sourcing and conducting the influencer outreach themselves, marketers can simply post their requests and wait for creators to pitch their suggestions.

Among other things, major benefits of Branded Mission include:

• The chance for brands to discover new and influential creators on TikTok — and the ones most aligned with their brand messaging.
• An opportunity for brands to receive authentic, relevant content related to their campaigns from creators who have a proven track record of success on TikTok.
• Increased brand exposure to new communities by crowdsourcing from the TikTok ecosystem.

As ASOS' team puts it, "We were blown away by the the creators' incredible transformations for the #ASOSAlterEgo challenge. The Branded Mission allowed us to recognize this talent and reward creators with eyes on their content in a way that hasn't been possible in this space before. A win-win which clearly impacted the campaign's results."

How to Use TikTok's Branded Mission Tool

It's important to note: Branded Mission is in beta testing and available to select brands and marketers across more than a dozen markets around the world, but will become available in additional markets starting in late 2022.

1. Advertisers select requirements for a Branded Mission.

For starters, advertisers will need to check off the requirements for their Branded Mission. This includes pairing the Branded Mission with a Branded Hashtag Challenge or Branded Effect, as well as other more specific requests like "lip sync with music" or "change your outfit".

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2. Creators can accept by submitting videos.

A creator must be over 18-years-old and have a minimum of 1,000 followers to be eligible. Each eligible creator can submit up to three videos.

3. The top-performing videos will be included in a shortlist for advertisers to select their favorite.

TikTok's algorithm will highlight the videos with the highest engagement potential — that are also deemed brand-safe — and those videos will be added to a shortlist for advertisers to select from.

4. The winning video becomes a media campaign.

Once the advertisers have chosen their favorite video, the video becomes a media campaign and is featured as an in-feed advertisement. The creator(s) whose video is selected receives a cash payout and boosted traffic. The rest of the creators will see their submissions as organic TikTok videos in the For You page.

Ultimately, Branded Mission is an exciting opportunity for brands to discover top-talent on TikTok and leverage creators' expertise to reach new audiences. But time will tell how brands leverage the tool.

If you're unsure whether TikTok advertising is for you, take a look at TikTok Ads Guide: How They Work + Cost and Review Process [+ Examples].