TALA is a UK-based activewear brand with a huge focus on sustainability. They aren't afraid to be transparent enough to prove it, but also won’t cost you €100 for a pair of leggings.
Seems pretty crazy and too good to be true, right?
That was the goal of founder Grace Beverley, and she achieved it with her fast-growing, inclusive brand.
At Storyclash, we decided to take a deeper look into the meteoric rise of TALA. In the Storyclash Influencer Marketing De-Constructed webinar series, we break down the influencer marketing strategy of the top and up-and-coming brands to understand what is driving their success.
We used data from the Storyclash platform to analyze TALA, as well as public information such as articles, blogs, and interviews with Grace herself to understand the brand inside and out.
In this blog posting, we will be taking a deeper dive into TALA’s influencer marketing strategy and show you what we found in our latest webinar episode, as well as the takeaways, insights, and what your brand can learn from TALA to incorporate into your next influencer marketing campaign.
You can either read to learn more about their strategy, or tune into our on-demand recording of the Influencer Marketing De-Constructed episode and watch it on your own time.
Additionally, you can get the webinar slides here:
TALA on Social Media - Brand Page Analysis
Let’s take a look at how TALA is doing on their owned media pages, as well as what platforms they are most focused on, and the general trend with regards to what kinds of content they are posting on their social channels.
What are TALA's core social platforms they use?
When it comes to their official and verified brand channels, their core focus is on Instagram and Tiktok, with a majority of their presence and following coming from Instagram, with about 350,000 followers currently and around 3,000 postings since 2019, when TALA was founded.
This is followed by a following of 30,000 on TikTok, where their activity has significantly increased over the past year, even having their first viral postings for April Fools!
When it comes to the engagement that their owned media has, we see a relatively low engagement on Instagram, with a 0,6% engagement rate over the last 12 months, but for TikTok, we see a much higher rate of engagement, with 3.1% over the past year.
This is largely due to the fact that with Tiktok we are seeing higher interactions and video views as opposed to Instagram Reels, and they have had some viral postings with incredibly high engagement that really brought the average up!
You can see the trend of postings on Instagram and Tiktok below.
TALA’s Ad Library - what formats are they preferring?
When looking at the advertising style of TALA, it is a healthy balance between video and image advertising. With the ads that they have running on Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, it comes out to about a 50/50 split between video and images.
The style as well varies from behind the scenes on how and why they’ve styled and designed their new releases in a certain way, but also have images with a variety of different model types, with a focus as well on plus-sized models.
The plus-sized model focus is something that TALA has honed in on due to the fact that they realized early on that this demographic was underrepresented in the activewear industry. The norm we typically see is that activewear clothing was only for those who were slim, and TALA has solved this dilemma.
They have the typical CTA’s that we see in most ads on social media platforms, as well as using the comments from loyal fans who comment on their owned media postings, and use ads to broadcast restocks, new releases/collaborations, and to advertise the size range that they offer. Some examples of these ads can be seen below.
Deep Dive into TALA’s Influencer Marketing Strategy
Now that we have had a look at the owned media strategy from TALA, let’s take a deeper look at the influencer strategy from TALA. Using the Storyclash platform, we have been able to figure out everything that makes TALA’s influencer presence known, including who they are working with, the pillars of their strategy, and how successful it has been up to this point.
What are the foundations of their influencer strategy?
After a lot of research and analysis into the influencer strategy of TALA, we found that there were two main pillars that were the focus of their influencer marketing strategy, affiliate usage and sales from these collaborations and the UGC (User Generated Content) by the founder herself, Grace Beverley.
Affiliate Collaborations and Sales
TALA is working with a lot of affiliates, primarily on IG but also some on TT in order to increase their brand presence in the UK market and are collaborating with them to increase their sales on TALA’s digital store, which is their primary outlet for product sales.
These types of postings are easily identifiable through the use of discount codes in the caption of Instagram posts/reels, as well as seeing the discount codes in the captions of TikTok postings.
The typical format for these codes would be the first name of the creator and the percentage discount second (John15 for example). This format is something that is pretty standard when it comes to affiliate marketing.
In addition to the use of discount codes in captions, we are seeing the custom link that is attached to the creator themselves that will send you directly to the website, and they are using UTM tracking on these links in order to fully track where the sales are coming from. This can be from which creator the sale comes from, which campaign, etc., in order to get a full view and understanding of the data being their influencer campaigns.
Storyclash’s brand collaboration timeline is able to show the amount of collaborations that TALA has been having over the past 12 months on Instagram.
The next question to answer would be, how are they finding these creators to work with? Is this the TALA team reaching out to individual creators, or are influencers themselves signing up to be an affiliate with TALA?
The answer is rather straightforward, TALA is using the affiliate network Awin in order to manage these collaborations and ensure that commission payments are sent out on time.
The commission rate that is advertised according to the Awin page is 10% commission for any new customers that are buying using the codes or custom links of influencers, and 6% commission for returning customers.
Of course the TALA team does evaluate influencers that want to be affiliated with them, with Grace being quoted in interviews that a 5% engagement rate is a must for influencers that she and the brand want to work with.
Here are some examples of the postings that we found from the plethora of influencers that TALA is working with:
In these IG stories that we are seeing from influencers, since there is such a large variety of styles that are being posted, it can be assumed that there is no official briefing that the creators are being given, allowing for them to be creative with the content they are posting.
Tiktok Influencers
When comparing the data from Instagram to TikTok in terms of their collaborations with influencers and affiliates, we found that there is a large distinction between the engagement rates of IG and TT.
Looking at the past 12 months in Storyclash, we can see that the engagement rate on IG is averaged out around 3,7% between posts and reels, but the engagement on Tiktok is only 1,5%.
This is well below the industry average for Tiktok when it comes to influencer collaborations and engagement. This is definitely an interesting note that while they are overperforming on Instagram, they are underperforming on Tiktok, so why is this?
One thing that could be a possible reason after looking through a majority of the content on the two platforms, is that the format and style of postings on the two platforms is almost exactly the same, as if it were copy pasted from one platform to another.
We as influencer marketers and even users of the platforms know that the style is different, with Instagram more focused on this “polished” sort of look, while Tiktok viewers are more focused on authenticity, and not this “filtered” approach.
One thing to note about Tiktok though is that the number postings compared to Instagram is much lower, so they are still very early on in the process of collaborating with influencers on the platform, and have time to recheck their approach and strategy to make changes where necessary.
We can see the KPIs from Instagram and Tiktok in the market report made in Storyclash.
Now while this strategy has helped them increase their presence on social media, it isn’t flawless. One issue that was found in our research was that there is nowhere on the TALA website that references being an affiliate or there being any sort of program. This had to be found by finding the page on Awin, and in this situation this can be a big missed opportunity for TALA to make the program that is driving their brand awareness more visible for those loyal fans and customers.
This lack of visibility affects TALA’s ability to help bring them into the community on a deeper level and also monetize from their affiliate base.
UGC - Grace Beverley
The founder and by far the biggest advocate for the brand is Grace Beverley. She is posting about the brand on a daily basis, with the postings primarily happening on IG, with only a few TikTok videos to date.
Grace is an Oxford graduate, and started her other major brand, Shreddy and TALA as well while in university. In addition to this, she is a fitness influencer, and had done work in the past with Gymshark, so in terms of expert knowledge in the fitness and influencer industries, she is definitely someone who has some pull when it comes to activewear.
It was through her brands and work with Gymshark that she amassed her over 1 million followers on Instagram, and over 100,000 on Tiktok, who now see all her postings about TALA.
With her loyal follower base, she is also having a very high engagement rate from her postings, with just over a 4% engagement on IG and 6,6% on TikTok, which for a creator of her size is very high and commendable. With her behind the scenes postings and transparency with the brand, we can truly get a feeling that one of the brand’s core foundations is in sustainability of their products, while not costing a ridiculous amount of money to buy.
She is also using some links herself in her IG stories with UTM tracking, so that she can also track the impact that her own postings are having on the revenue and growth of her brand.
One last thing to mention regarding Grace Beverley and her UGC for TALA, is that we found that 53% of the followers of TALA’s IG page are also followers of Grace. This then shows us that her and the brand are truly synonymous with one another, she is TALA, and TALA is her, and this is really interesting to see.
We have some postings of her UGC to provide visual context to this:
What can your brand learn from TALA?
1. Give that FOMO feeling from your campaigns
One thing that TALA does incredibly well is to give you that feeling that you need to buy their activewear products the moment they release, with their rising popularity, they are selling out of releases in restocks within a few hours at the most. This is partly due to the two previously mentioned pillars of their influencer strategy. Moreover, the fact that since their products are sustainably made and they are still a smaller company compared to the competition, their supply as of now is lower than maybe a fast fashion brand.
With their constant need to restock and influencers showing the looks on a daily basis of new releases or upcoming ones, this is a great way and opportunity for your brand to bring hype to your products and demand even before they release, and gain great sales numbers quickly.
2. Affiliates are an important part of your IM strategy, but they are also more than that
One thing that we found throughout the analysis of the IG stories from the affiliates is that a lot of the products are being gifted, even with handwritten personal notes inside to their affiliates. TALA is at times even stitching them in their owned media pages as well as in other social media postings.
This sort of nurturing aspect that TALA has with their affiliates is reflected in the number of influencers that they are having long-term collaborations with, which is slightly higher than most of their competitors. This is important to note because TALA is a smaller and younger brand than the competitors we analyzed in their sector.
This shows that affiliates are not simply a revenue stream, but they are also a community within your customer base, and this is a group that should be harbored and nurtured in a fashion that reflects this community that your brand has created, and this can come through personalized gifts and notes, to even community events.
3. Success on one platform does not guarantee success in another
When it comes to collaborating with influencers across a variety of platforms, the understanding that there needs to be a somewhat different approach is absolutely essential for your campaigns as your brand expands from one platform to another.
This falls in line with the logic that we are hearing all the time when it comes to influencer marketing, and that is to understand the audience that you will be marketing to, depending on the platform that you are working with influencers on. The demographic and types of content that is being posted on Instagram vs. Tiktok as an example is very different, the data and studies have clearly shown this to be true.
So this difference must be taken into account when formulating your platform strategy. There is no “one size fits all” approach to this, and will take market research and time to get it right.
4. Get your founders involved, and keep them involved
With the analysis of TALA, we can see just how crucial it is when the founder is posting about the brand, no matter the size. Everyone likes to see a founder and entrepreneur who is passionate about their brand, with this level of authenticity that makes it not seem like it is some sort of facade.
Getting your founders involved, who know more about the brand and are more passionate about it than anyone else, is essentially free marketing for the brand. Additionally, as we have seen with Grace Beverley’s postings, this can be a very positive influence and potential brand awareness catalyst for the organization.
Want to learn more about TALA?
Check out our on-demand webinar on TALA to learn more about everything they’re doing, how they could improve, and get all the reports and insights from our Storyclash platform that we used to research them down below!
About Storyclash - the brand behind the insights
Storyclash is the leading AI-powered Influencer Marketing Platform to discover and analyze brand-fit creators based on their published content. Brands can also use Storyclash to have an in-depth look at their competitors and be able to fully break down their influencer campaign strategy in just a few clicks.
The proprietary technology allows marketing teams to track and measure the content creator’s work across any social media platform, including Instagram and Tiktok. With Storyclash, marketing teams can also manage their creators with a fully customizable CRM, built for them, by them.
Storyclash is used by fast-growing DTC brands such as Wild, KoRo or Athletic Greens along with established large consumer brands like Vodafone, Kaufland and Trendyol.