The Rise of the Elder Influencer
You may want to start scouting retirement homes for your next influencer marketing campaign, as older TikTok creators are in demand by brands.
Take Jenny Krupa for instance, aka J-Dog, a 91-year-old retirement home TikTok star with more than 2 million followers, who gets paid to promote brands.
https://www.tiktok.com/@its_j_dog/video/7208762389662125317
🔓 Unlocking a New Market
She’s not the only senior influencer making ads on TikTok. Several companies selling clothing, beauty products, and more are discovering other senior content creators to collaborate with.
The New York Times reports that the app is gaining traction with older users. As a result, brands are following them there, according to a spokesperson for an agency that connects companies with content creators. The agency works with Amazon and others to find TikTok influencers over 55.
These senior influencers have found success by sharing life lessons, fashion tips, cooking demonstrations, interacting with their grandchildren, and by being funny, while also promoting products.
📈 Relatively Low Competition
Despite opportunities for older influencers to represent brands, competition is relatively low. According to a spokesperson from Upfluence, a platform that manages millions of social media creators, there are only about 2,700 people aged 60 or older registered on the platform, with just 174 having TikTok accounts.
He added that brands often seek out nano-influencers, who typically have around 5,000 followers, as they can provide a more genuine connection with their audience. Partnering with smaller creators can also be a cost-effective marketing strategy since some of them may feature a product solely because they received a free sample. About half of Upfluence partnerships offer free products as compensation, instead of pay.
He said that TikTok is an easy platform for older people to build audiences because users’ feeds surface content based on what they might be interested in and accounts similar to those they have viewed, rather than just from accounts they follow.
The report noted that with its growth continuing, TikTok is likely to keep adding older users, and attracting the sponsored posts that target them.
This was just one of many marketing stories we covered today — get ALL the day’s digital marketing news by subscribing to our free newsletter and/or our free daily podcast.
