Advice Book to Eva Pickett

Eva Pickett, 21 years old, is a beauty and fashion TikTok creator with 15,000 followers.

She has been “stuck” at this following count for a month and needs help growing her TikTok and getting more brand collaborations. Before properly giving Eva advice, she must be assessed using the 4Ps of Marketing.

1. Product: Eva Pickett’s “product” is the content she creates on TikTok and other media platforms. The product includes her videos, lives, and photos. She should focus on creating engaging, original, and high-quality content across all platforms. I would advise her to use her personality and connect with her viewers more personally to differentiate herself from other creators. This way, she can retain her viewers for future content and make them followers. When the viewer becomes a follower, they have a higher chance of continuing to come to her page and interacting with her posts through likes, comments, shares, and even purchasing her recommendations. This flow will make brands want to collaborate with her since her followers are engaged in her content.
2. Price: Eva doesn’t sell any of her products, like merchandise, so the “price,” in this case, is the perceived value of engaging with her content. This value can be brought from the quality of entertainment she brings to her followers, alongside expertise on products she is talking about. Furthermore, the value can be used to negotiate brand deals and higher prices for ad content videos.
3. Place: The place is her digital space where she posts her content. That is TikTok, but she could benefit from expanding her Instagram presence so they have two robust platforms in case one fails. In recent news, TikTok has declined in America, with policymakers wanting to ban it. It is safe for her to try driving followers to both platforms to increase visibility and revenue.
4. Promotion: Promotion is crucial for influencers, especially regarding growth. She should consider promoting her channel and content by collaborating with other creators in the beauty and fashion industry, strategically using trending challenges, and sharing her content on all her platforms, regardless of size, to increase visibility.

Since she has been assessed using the 4Ps, several IMC strategies can be applied to this case. The three most important strategies that can help grow Eva Pickett’s TikTok page are cross-platform promotion, participating in event marketing to build a positive PR image, and using data analysis to track progress and asses growth areas. Cross-platform promotion is when one influencer uses multiple platforms to promote their content. This technique is used to grab a wider audience and reinforce the same message across all borders. It is such a popular strategy that now, social media allows you to post your content across multiple platforms. Instagram allows you to post the same content from your account to your Facebook since Meta owns both. However, Eva's case would best suit her needs to post videos from her TikTok to Instagram Reels to attract more people to her content. She should also consider using Snapchat to film behind the scenes of her life since it’s a growing platform that can get her posts on the explore page on the app, where millions can see them, generating both money and growth. Posting on all social media platforms exposes her to brands and helps her get a better chance of working and collaborating with bigger creators and brands. While the social media strategy can be the same throughout all platforms, the execution might be varied since each platform has certain types of content that do well and various points of the day. For example, TikTok appeals to funny and entertainment content, while Instagram appeals to aesthetic and more curated content. Keeping the same message across all platforms is essential, but catering the execution differently for each media.

The second piece of advice is participating in event marketing to build a positive PR image. Eva's target audience is beauty and fashion lovers, brands, and creators with similar goals. Reaching beauty and fashion lovers can be easy since TikTok caters to and delivers your videos to people who would be interested in them. The second and third parts may be harder to achieve, but the best way to ensure success for Eva is by attending brand events in her area. She can do this by contacting companies and figuring out when/where these events occur. At these events, she will meet influencers with the same content as her and collaborate with them on videos, lives, and photoshoots. Collaborating with other creators allows her to meet other people, share ideas, and get exposed to a different audience where she can get more followers.
Most importantly, brands will be willing to work with her since she works well with other creators and has created a positive image for herself. The only downside of associating with other creators is if they end up being in a scandal or tarnishing their image, you may be dragged alongside them by association. So, it is vital to know the whole background of someone and a brand before agreeing to collaborate and do business with them.

The last piece of advice is to use data analysis to track progress and asses growth areas. If it’s the first time learning how to view and manipulate analytics, start with the ones TikTok gives you; then, once you have learned how to read, understand, and apply those, move to more advanced analytics that paid software gives you. When assessing your analytics, the key things to look for are demographics, like age and geography, to know when and how to cater to your audience properly. Next, checking how each video performs can give you insight into what content is successful and what should be modified. Growth looks different for everyone, so don’t base your success purely on numbers. Sometimes creators may have high numbers on platforms like TikTok but low conversion rates to their other platforms and sponsored posts. It is also important to keep in mind TikTok is so random with their algorithm that sometimes your video is shadowbanned or not properly distributed, with no actual reason, which can be upsetting, considering the hard work you have put towards it. This is why it’s important to use your other platforms just as much and engage in cross-platform promotion.

Now, aside from all these technical ways to grow, it is important to be yourself and stay authentic to what you believe in. Originality will always be in, so don’t copy someone else because the original copy is always the best version. And, don’t forget to have fun while creating content because that will radiate towards your audience.