Is TikTok the Holy Grail for Brands?

Many social media platforms offer unique solutions, whether it is Facebook, Instagram and its Reels, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, Twitch, Discord, YouTube, WhatsApp, WeChat,?Sina Weibo, QQ and others; they all try to offer unique solutions to retain and attract more users to their platforms. Today we will look deeper into what TikTok can offer brands, reasons why and tips on making the best of it. ?

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If you were building a social media strategy in 2023, it would be easier to consider using TikTok. With more than one billion active users and over 173 million first-time installations across Google Play Store, Apple App Store, and other app stores in just the last quarter of 2021, it is as impressive as any other central platform.?

Unique content reigns supreme in the world of TikTok. More than on other social media platforms, users favour engaging and raw TikTok videos over curated and edited posts – the type brands usually create for platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.?

This stylistic difference is what allows TikTok creators to connect with their audience. While TikTok is a noisy platform, it indeed is a goldmine for creators who can strike the right balance between marketing and authenticity.?

How are Brands Using the Platform?

Brands are using TikTok more than ever to make advertisements that look just like another video. The social media platform is dubbed as the digital equivalent of home shopping channels, and it lets users engage with ads rather than scrolling past them quickly. More than 7 billion people have viewed the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.?

Today, brands have moved from experimenting with TikTok to developing entire campaigns specifically for it. According to?Gizmodo, TikTok is the most popular online platform internationally, exceeding Amazon and Google and rising from the Number 7 rank in 2020.?

Advertisers are slipping their videos between makeup tutorials, trending dances, and before-and-after snippets. They are increasingly using TikTok influencers to sell their products for them. In addition, live shopping events have gained popularity, where viewers interact with the hosts and shop in real-time.

These factors make it quite clear that TikTok is the Holy Grail for brands. But why is that so? Let’s find out!

Why is It Relevant to Brands?

TikTok is swiftly becoming the marketer’s choice, especially regarding influencer marketing. It is estimated that by 2025,?54.9 per cent?of marketers will work with the influencers on TikTok.?

This section will explore why TikTok has become the Holy Grail for brands.?

1.?????TikTok is Different from Other Platforms?

What differentiates TikTok from other platforms is its massive number of unduplicated users.?

The fact that an increasing number of people all over the world are opting to watch videos on TikTok exclusively is a brilliant opportunity for brands to connect with new audiences.?

The benefits of TikTok’s unique and diverse user base are twofold for marketers. Firstly, it is appropriately positioned to create vital extra reach in major multichannel advertising campaigns. Secondly, in many cases, TikTok can convey a brand message further thanks to its increasing number of unique users.?

For instance, Vodafone used TikTok to maximise its reach and connect with a large youth audience when launching its new Vodafone X student learning and experiential platform. It used TikTok’s premium ad format, TopView, to convey its message to a tightly targeted audience.?

The Vodafone ad resulted in over 1.7 million impressions in just a single day and drove thousands of young individuals to the Level Up landing page. With over 350,000 clicks recorded during the one-day awareness campaign, it easily exceeded all industry and TikTok benchmarks for engagement.?

The campaign indicates TikTok’s power to deliver immersive campaigns to a specific and unique audience while ensuring high engagement.?

2.?????TikTok Ads Don’t Seem Like Ads

TikTok makes advertisements appear like organic content. For instance, an aesthetic video that you see of a woman putting on bed sheets is an ad.?

Since the platform is known for organic virality, it doesn’t surprise that branded ads feel just as native. TikTok presently has four major advertising formats; you can use all four if you have TikTok for Business. These include:

a) In-Feed Video?

In-feed video is the most common video advertisement format that TikTok users use. It is somewhere on the?For You Page?and plays a huge role in improving brand perception. People can simply scroll past them, but they generally don’t because they appear naturally. The only sign of an in-feed advertisement is the marked call-to-action button.?

b) TopView

TopView allows you to place your ads at a premium position. This type of ad works as the billboard of the social media platform; you generally see them as soon as you open the app.

c) Branded Effects?

This format of advertisement is another unique feature of the social media platform. TikTok added Artificial Realty to its ad offers. Scrolling through a branded effect advertisement makes you feel as if you are playing a Wii game, increasing engagement and minimising boredom.

For example, Chipotle used the branded effects tool to recreate and customise a replica of one of their stores into Artificial Reality. It gave their audience an immersive experience of virtually visiting their store.?

d) Hashtag?

The hashtag challenge is generally used to boost engagement. However, it’s done a bit differently than Facebook and Instagram. A branded hashtag allows original creators to invite others to participate in the challenge they posted. This helps to drive user-generated content for brands.?

3.?????TikTok Ranks #1 for Social Selling?

Thanks to its organic approach, TikTok’s growth has doubled across almost all metrics. If you think about social selling is the top method brands use to establish rapport with their target market. It allows brands to capture the attention of prospects without bombarding them with advertisements.?

And it’s clear how TikTok is excelling in this area. The platform also claimed that it is not a social media platform. Instead, it’s an entertainment and networking platform for potential sales packed into one.?Moreover, it is actively working on and improving its in-app purchase process. E-commerce businesses need to capitalise on this. As per an international study, TikTok is swiftly becoming the?primary platform for users to carry out product research. In addition, users are even 1.5 times more likely to step out and purchase the newly-found product rather than sitting it out.??

TikTok’s live selling has also proven quite effective, particularly for small-time sellers. Seventy-six per cent of users said that it had encouraged them to shop. And keep in mind that the conversion rates of live selling are ten times higher than other online shopping forms.?

4.?????TikTok Offers Long Session Times and High Engagement?

TikTok’s algorithm is created for discovery, offering a constant stream of new entertainment to millions of individual feeds, and users only get to see content they like. By providing such a consistently captivating experience, TikTok has long session times and engagement rates. For instance, the average engagement rate in the UK is at an astonishing 14.7 per cent. Users don’t only view short videos; they also create and share them.?

On TikTok, there is an audience for every brand and every voice. The key to keeping audiences engaged is to remember that they are not here to watch; they are here to get involved as well. User-generated content inspired by a new product or service becomes a brand’s advertisement on the platform. Advertising campaigns that might have only had four executions can now have millions – bringing massive added value for brands.?

An excellent example of this is #EyesLipsFace by e.l.f. Cosmetics. The brand wished to raise awareness about the fact that ‘e.l.f.’ is an abbreviation for ‘eyes lips face.’ It started a Hashtag Challenge asking users to show their moves to an original soundtrack – ‘eyes.lips.face’ by iLL Wayno and get a chance to win cosmetic products. #EyesLipsFace swiftly became the most viral brand campaign on TikTok. It’s the fastest campaign to hit 1 billion views and the first campaign to hold the number one trend spot.?

Moreover, the content created spread organically across YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. Celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon and Ellen DeGeneres also took part, unpaid and unprompted, while the campaign even featured in Bustle, Rolling Stone, BuzzFeed, Vogue, Forbes, Vox, and Adweek. #EyesLipsFace was an authentic pop culture moment owing to the massive awareness and engagement the platform can generate.?

5.?????TikTok Has Massive Potential for Influencer Marketing?

As per?Statista, the international influencer marketing space has more than doubled since 2019 to $13.8 billion in 2021. An increasing number of brands are learning of the value of collaborating with creators to promote products and services.?

Creators on TikTok can garner millions of followers. And the best thing is niches work quite well on the social media platform. Thus, when a niche becomes popular on the app, it gets known as its own TikTok space, such as NYC TikTok, Goth TikTok, etc.?

Like influencer marketing on other social media platforms, the key is finding the best influencer for your brand. However, you can easily find influencers in your industry through these niches.

Interestingly, CEOs are even becoming creators to enhance their brand marketing efforts. For instance, Nadya Okamoto, co-founder of the period-care brand August, has created her account in addition to her brand account. She says that becoming an influencer has been a better strategy for the brand, and she primarily uses her personal account to respond to FAQs about her products and test different content.?Separating creator and brand has become essential for awareness as business accounts can use only a few trending audios that can make it go viral.?

Tips for an Effective Strategy Using TikTok?

We have discussed why TikTok is the Holy Grail for brands and marketers. Let’s look at how you can create an effective TikTok strategy.?

1.?????Define Your Audience on TikTok?

To be successful on TikTok, you'll need to know whom you'd like to target with your content, if you don't mind. Otherwise, you might get great engagement, but it will translate into something other than subscriptions or sales.?

While TikTok is indeed for younger audiences, you still have to dig a little deeper than that. Pay attention to the demographics you wish to target. Conduct social media market research and create a customer persona that showcases your business’s target audience.?

2.?????Understand the Landscape?

There are two kinds of competition on TikTok. The first is your business competition, and the second is your content competition.?

Start by looking at your business competitors and checking whether they are present on TikTok. If they are, observe the type of content they post and the posts that get high engagement. This will give you clues about what the audience likes.?

Also, look at the TikTok content to check what’s already created in your space. Join groups, check trending posts, look for relevant topics, and search hashtags. Keep an eye out for any overlaps with your business competition from these posts.?

3.?????Keep Your Content Simple?

Stick to 15-second videos sharing detailed information and add in 60-second deep dives to explain a topic further. If a subject is essential, you can break it down into multiple videos of 15 seconds to sustain viewership.

Please make each content piece a unique story you share with your audience. If you post too little content, your audience might not be satisfied. On the other hand, if you post less, your audience might lose interest.??

In Summary

For brands, joining TikTok offers a fantastic opportunity to connect with younger audiences and boost brand awareness in an authentic environment. However, becoming successful on the platform depends on creating fun and exciting content, so put on your creative hat and experiment with various formats.?

In the following weeks, we will deep-dive into what other social media platforms can offer and how to make the best out of it, grow the business, and acquire more prospects and customers across the sales funnel.

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