The travel industry is one of the markets hit hardest by COVID-19. Travel bans and potential risks associated with travel have led to a lack in consumer confidence and a paradigm shift away from taking leisure excursions.
With hopes of restoring consumer confidence, travel companies will rely more heavily than ever on influencer marketing when stay-at-home orders are lifted around the globe. Foreseeing this increased need for businesses to efficiently partner with influencers, QuikTok co-founders Tanner Kesel and Alex Boro were prepared to fill that void.
QuikTok is an influencer marketplace where brands make partnerships with content creators in a few clicks of a button. The platform was initially created for musicians and record labels to be able to quickly work with influencers on TikTok to promote songs. Their team noticed that most influencers were not capitalising on their followings and their overall effect on music trends.
When Kesel and Boro discovered the correlation between Billboard Hot 100 charting songs and their popularity on TikTok, QuikTok was created to bridge the gap. Over the course of just two weeks, the purpose of QuikTok evolved in response to the needs of content creators. “Our team builds personal relationships with the influencers who join the platform, so we adapted when we heard the added options our creators needed,” Boro explains.
Kesel and Boro open up about their journey behind developing QuikTok:
1. How did you come up with the name QuikTok?
Alex Boro: When brainstorming names, our primary focus was that everyone knew what platform we were targeting, TikTok. This is where we got the “Tok” from. In addition, we started running through words that were correlated to music, promotions, and growth. We came up with a quite a few, but thought “Quick” stood out the most. This brought us to “QuickTok”. However, we decided to remove the ‘c’ as TikTok did, and ended up with our name today, QuikTok.
2. Why did you choose to tap into the travel lane with influencers?
Tanner Kesel: Initially the QuikTok platform was created solely for music promotion. Just a few days after launch we came together as a team and realised we were leaving out a whole other market that could easily be reached, brands. In particular, travel businesses. The decision was simple, most influencers are into travel and they were requesting that we broaden the platform to accommodate that niche.
3. How do you select who can use your platform? Is it an open call for all or do you invite influencers/ brands?
Alex Boro: We believe all influencers, big or small, have a place on our platform. Influencers submit an application for approval before appearing on our platform. Our criteria is that they have 30,000+ followers, with a median on our platform being 250,000. In certain cases we will approve applicants with less followers if they have incredible engagement.
On the consumer side, anybody can visit our website to start a campaign. All orders and inquiries must be approved by our verification team before the influencer receives them. We do a thorough background check on each consumer and their website. We do this to ensure that all orders are appropriate.
4. What is the difference between you and your competitors?
Tanner Kesel: Given that we are the first public influencer marketplace, I would say the primary difference between us and our competitors is our focus on transparency. We allow the influencers complete control over what they charge, but also what promotions they do or do not do. We are simply giving them the opportunity to capitalise on their following. In addition, when visiting our website and browsing our influencers for a promotion, you know exactly what the influencer’s rates are. We noticed that there is a lot of back and forth on pricing and expectations when working with conventional agencies so this is a remedy for that. We have simplified that process to allow artists and brands to make realistic offers in just one visit to the website.
5. What is the future for QuikTok?
Alex Boro: We are focusing on TikTok influencers for now. We don’t want to spread ourselves too thin, but we have had inquiries from a lot of our creators about expanding to other platforms so we’re considering expanding to these platforms as we continue to grow. We’re also developing a mobile app to help streamline things.
6. Has COVID-19 helped progress your process?
Tanner Kesel: This is a tricky question. I know this has been an incredibly difficult time for many, but this pandemic has also helped us progress exponentially. TikTok has seen tremendous growth in regards to the amount of people joining their platform, but also their daily user activity. I think this has made brands realise the value in TikTok promotions, and ultimately using our platform for these partnerships.
