Maximize TTS Affiliate Success with Open and Target Plans

Introduction

TikTok Shop’s Affiliate Center offers two powerful ways to collaborate with creators and drive sales: open plans and target plans inside affiliate center. As a seller, understanding how to utilize both approaches can significantly enhance your affiliate marketing strategy and boost your shop’s performance.

Creating effective affiliate partnerships on TikTok Shop is all about finding the right balance between quantity and quality. With open and target plans, you can tailor your approach depending on your shop’s current needs, whether that’s rapid growth, high-quality content, or sustainable long-term collaborations. Let's break down how these two collaboration methods work and how you can use them to your advantage.

💡 Want more TikTok Shop affiliate strategies like this? Click here to check out more: Sellers Are Wasting Money on Sampling

What Are Open and Target Collaborations?

Open Collaborations: These are broad-based plans that allow any eligible creator to join and promote your products. They’re ideal for attracting a wide range of creators, especially if you’re looking to build volume and attract various content styles. This approach is accessible and easy to set up, making it a go-to option for new sellers looking to attract attention to their TikTok Shop at first. In other words, you’re passively getting interest from creators to request samples from you.

Target Collaborations: On the other hand, target collaborations are curated plans where you reach out to specific creators of your choice. This approach is excellent for securing high-quality content and building lasting relationships with top-performing affiliates. Instead of relying on random creators, you select those who have demonstrated proven results or align well with your brand's image. Via target plans, you are able to send specific invitation messages to creators and ask them to collaborate with your brand/product

Whether the creator comes from open or target collaboration, all product requests will go under “Sample Requests” tab which means you still need to manually approve them including ones you invited via target plan.

How to Utilize Open/Target Collaborations

To make the most of these two collaboration methods, you need to understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Open Collaborations (Open To Every Creator):

• Best suited for new sellers looking to attract a large number of creators quickly.

• Provides mass exposure, especially useful for getting initial sample requests.

• Limited control over the quality of creators, but high-volume potential.

• Quick to set up with minimal effort, allowing you to quickly test affiliate interest —- good way to test products to see which one gets more affiliate interest (this could be a good sign that affiliates think they are able to sell the product).

• Simplest way to start with open collaboration is to use a bot for mass outreach

Target Collaborations:

• Preferred by established sellers aiming for high-quality content.

• Allows personalized outreach to creators who best align with your brand.

• Better control over the quality of content produced and stronger long-term partnerships.

• More effort-intensive but yields better-quality content. Each target plan can only invite 25 creators

• Highly effective for promoting premium products or branded campaigns.

• Bot will not be as effective for target collaboration since you are curating and manually picking creators

Tips to Utilize Both Functions as New and Mature Sellers

For New Sellers:

1. Start with open collaborations: Quickly attract creators and build a foundational network of affiliates.

2. Gather insights: Use mass exposure to gather data about what type of creators perform best for your product.

3. Refine your strategy: Gradually incorporate target plans to focus on high-quality creators you identify from your open plan campaigns. If you’re doing 4 figures and low 5 figures consistently, it’s now time to dial up target collaboration volume.

4. Monitor results closely: Analyze the performance of different creators to better understand what’s working and what’s not.

For Mature Sellers (mid 6 figures/month):

1. Leverage open collaborations for consistent content: Keep a steady influx of fresh content from open collaboration creators (this should only account for <30-40% of your total creator mix)

2. Nurture high-quality relationships: Utilize target plans to strengthen partnerships with high-quality creators by offering exclusive deals, retainers, or special access to new product launches. Your day to day affiliate outreach should now heavily focus on target plan invitation to high quality creators

3. Implement a hybrid strategy: Mix open and target collaborations to maximize results (30/70 split). For example, use open collaborations for product awareness and target collaborations for high-converting campaigns.

4. Optimize and evolve: Continuously analyze performance and refine your affiliate strategy by balancing both approaches effectively. There’s a new collaboration page under Analytics to review your open and target plans’ performance.

How To Find More High Quality Creators

To make the most of your target collaborations, you need to ensure you’re reaching out to the right creators. Here are some effective ways to find high-quality creators:

1. Utilize the 'Find Creators' Tool Inside the Affiliate Center: TikTok Shop’s Affiliate Center provides a search feature to filter creators by metrics like follower count, engagement rate, and niche relevance. Make sure to use these filters to identify creators who align well with your brand.

2. Request L3+ Creators from TikTok Shop: TikTok Shop’s internal system categorizes creators by levels, with L3 and above typically being more experienced and higher-performing affiliates. Reach out to your TikTok Shop Account Manager to get a list of L3+ creators you can target.

3. Leverage Agency Creator Partners: If you’re working with an agency, take advantage of their network of vetted creators. Agencies often have established relationships with high-quality creators who can produce premium content for your campaigns.

4. Build Relationships: Don’t just aim for a one-off collaboration. Cultivate lasting partnerships by offering incentives like exclusivity, higher commissions, or early access to new products.

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Conclusion

Mastering the use of open and target collaborations on TikTok Shop can be a game-changer for your affiliate strategy. By understanding when to use each approach and implementing them effectively, you can maximize both affiliate success and content quality. Now, it’s time to experiment, refine, and elevate your TikTok Shop game.

Ready to get started? Track your performance and optimize your affiliate strategy for even better results.