How Can Businesses Get Started With TikTok?
Why should businesses get started with TikTok?
TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in recent years. It's a smartphone app for sharing creative and entertaining short, music-focused videos. It was originally launched as Douyin in 2016, in China; however, ByteDance (the internet content company who owns TikTok) launched the app to markets outside China the following year. In 2018, it bought the app Musical.ly and combined both platforms, creating what we now know as TikTok. With over 1 billion users as of January of 2020, it's competing with the biggest names in social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Due to this sudden increase of users in the past couple of years, marketers and companies should have their sights set on this platform to attract the new generation of social media users to their business.
According to Medium, over 40% of TikTok’s users are between the ages of 10-19, followed by Millenials with 26% of the user base. However, this might change a bit in the coming months: According to Oberlo, the number of US adults that use TikTok has grown from 2.6M as of October 2017 to 14.3M in March 2019, which means it grew 5.5 times.
Successful stories include the following brands:
- Guess Jeans: 42k followers, 136.5k likes with only 11 videos on their page, thanks to the #InMyDenim campaign
- Crocs: 174k+ and almost 700k likes with only 24 videos, with an absolute success with the #ThousandDollarCrocs that amassed 2.8B views platform-wide
- Chipotle: opened their TikTok account less than a year ago and it already has 273k+ followers and 2.4M likes
- The Washington Post: 368.3K followers and 19M likes, posting comedic, behind-the-scenes videos
- NBC’s Stay Tuned: 516k+ and 15M likes obtained by creating behind-the-scenes videos and quick news bites
- NBA: some of their individual videos have millions of views; 7.9M followers and 129.2M likes
- Fortnite: 1.1M followers with just 5 videos and 2.2M likes
How are marketers using TikTok?
Due to the nature of the social platform, many digital media marketing companies are at a loss on how to use the platform to their advantage.
Since the demographic is exponentially bigger for users under the age of 30, and the content can only be described as a mix of Vine and Musical.ly, it’s safe to assume that the content created has to convey a lighter, entertaining side of the company using it. Some examples are:
- Guess Jeans: created #InMyDenim, which invited users to show off their jeans (40.6M views)
- Walmart: #SavingsShuffle was a challenge for users to dance the official #SavingsShuffle song, creating awareness of the savings that Walmart offers. This challenge amassed 1.7B views
- Chipotle: #ChipotleLidFlip garnered 286M views
- Elf Cosmetics: Sponsored in-feed posts featuring popular TikTokers lip-syncing the song ‘’Eyes Lips Face’’ (ELF) - 4.4B views
9 Tips to succeed with Organic Content on TikTok:
- Find out what your objective for being on TikTok is
- Make sure your target audience is on the platform (Gen Z and Millenials)
- Show a different side of your company. Make sure that the type of content you create is entertaining, lighthearted, funny, relatable
- Capitalize on trends, create platform-specific content
- Avoid blatant/obvious advertising
- Come up with challenges/hashtags/media that has the potential of being recreated
- Music is a prominent part of TikTok, use it well
- Use the various tools the platform gives you: effects, AR filters, text and musical overlays
- Engage with your audience!
4 Paid features that you can use on the platform today:
- Brand Takeover Ads: According to Digiday, “In-feed ads are sold at $10 cost-per-impression with $6,000 minimum campaign spend. Brand takeover ads cost $50,000 per day with a guaranteed 5 million impressions.”
- Branded Lenses: You can purchase a 3D filter associated with your brand to encourage users to engage with your company
- In-feed Video: The three models for in-feed video are:
- CPC (Cost per click)
- CPM (Cost per thousand impressions)
- CPV (Cost per view for 6 seconds)
Which also allows you to target:
- Gender
- Age
- Geo-targeting
- Influencers: You can also partner with TikTok stars to reach their audience. This has already been done by:
- Coca-Cola
- Universal Pictures
- Sony Pictures
In synthesis, companies woke up to the fact that Gen Zers are a demographic that is unreceptive to traditional advertising methods, and one of the most effective ways to reach this untapped audience and boost their relevance is TikTok.
Are you interested in all the tools on TikTok and the access to this untapped demographic that will bring you more customers?
Get in touch with us and we will architect you the strategy, the content and run the ads for you!