TikTok Marketing

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Call it funny, cringey, or addictive, but there’s no disputing the fact that TikTok is getting huge and increasingly attractive for marketing. With over 800 million users around the world, TikTok is currently the 9th largest platform in the world, beating out popular sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat.

TikTok further excels as a Gen Z playground, where millions of adults and children ranging from their early twenties to their early teens consume seemingly unimaginable amounts of short TikTok videos.

As one of the highest concentrations of Gen Z users in the world, TikTok is an incredible opportunity for many future-minded brands to reach a demographic early on in their purchasing decisions– 41 percent of TikTok users are between 16 and 24!

Dozens of brands such as Chipotle, Nike, Skittles, Fenty Beauty, TMobile, Pepsi, and Universal Pictures are exploring the new platform with the goal of earning a significant leg-up on their competition.

TikTok has been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times since its global launch in 2017 and presents a wide array of opportunities for entrepreneurs and influencers alike.

As one of the first agencies on TikTok’s beta program, we’re excited to learn more about the fine inner workings of the platform and how businesses can leverage it for massive growth. Here’s what we know so far.

The TikTok Advertising Scoop:
How TikTok Marketing Works

While TikTok is a very new platform that is still relatively untracked by marketers, it still has some similarities brands can expect.

Conceptually, TikTok has a lot in common with Facebook. For example, Facebook users are usually shown ads based on their interests, demographics, and behavior, compared to Google Ads, which are shown to searchers based on their search intent.

How to Make TikTok Content:

TikTok is known for its short 15-second video cap, a brilliant strategic move to capture on the trends of decreasing attention spans and increasing demands to consume more content in less time.

For any brand looking to take advantage of TikTok, brevity and excitement are a must. Users will skip through your video way faster than it took them to find it. Not only will they ignore your advertisement, but they may also end up even harboring a little bit of resentment for the ruining of their user experience.

Create short, enjoyable, to-the-point content that showcases your value proposition quickly. No lengthy pre-ludes, no monotone speeches.

However, this comes with a caveat. When exploring any new platform, get to know your demographic. Follow the types of accounts and users you’d like to attract and try to understand their preferences and lingo based on what you see and use the data to augment your research.

Since TikTok has only recently opened up its platform to advertisers, it’s likely that the advertising tools won’t be as refined as Facebook’s Ad Platform, which has taken billions of dollars and years to fine-tune to where it is today– and it’s still not perfect!

TikTok is New and Growing Quickly

The fact that TikTok is new and growing quickly gives you an immense advantage over your less creative slow-moving competition. The approach is simple, but worth hammering home: Find what content your audience likes, make it, inform your hypothesis, launch new tests, and iterate as necessary.

While the app may be very popular among teens today, that may not always be the case, and your content should be prepared to evolve. For example, in Q4 2017, there were only 2.6 million US adult users. In September 2018, US adult TikTok usage hit 14.3 million–a 550% jump!

TikTok content should be very natural to the platform, blending enough with the current content but also distinguishing enough to stand out.

TikTok Influencer Marketing: A Green Landscape.

You should be building your own brand’s presence on TikTok similar to how you would on any social platform, but working with already popular influencers to help you create content can help you get mass appeal in your marketing efforts.

Influencers that are already producing the funny skits, dance moves, and singalongs that have helped them grow are an excellent starting point to get your brand in the conversation at an incredible scale. For example, 15-year-old Charli D’Amelio has grown a following of 41.4 million and holds the crown as the most popular TikTok account– and she’s already been in a Super Bowl commercial sponsored by Sabra Hummus.

 

Final Thoughts

As TikTok finally opens up its platform to advertisers, we naturally can expect the dynamic of the platform to change slightly. Likely, this means more brands, more advertisements, and more influencers advertising products. As we’ve seen with the early days of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the excitement of the platform quickly fades as the push and pull of an advertising ecosystem starts to develop.

However, brands that are able to build long-standing relationships with their customers on multiple platforms early on will be poised to get the most of the advantage of the early days. The savviest brands have learned that social media algorithms frequently change, highlighting the importance to own your audience either via diversification over multiple platforms or directly through email.

TikTok represents an opportunity for brands to diversify their marketing profiles away from the mainstream platforms, while simultaneously tapping into a new generation of customer.