It seems that TikTok quickly grew from nothing to become one of the most downloaded apps in the world.It started life as a moderately successful video-sharing app – named Douyin in her native China and TikTok in the rest of the world.However, in 2018 it bought the well-known Musical.ly app in its entirety, moving all non-Chinese users to the new combined platform, TikTok.In its home country the company still operates Douyin as a separate app.It is not a surprise that marketers have started to see the potential of this platform.This is our marketing guide to TikTok, suggesting ways businesses can get the most out of TikTok and its young audience.
Marketing Guide for TikTok:
TikTok Enjoys Over 800 Million Installs
Probably the biggest impediment to successful marketing on TikTok has been that most marketers (and business managers) over the age of 30 have never even heard of the platform.
It has been in the news a number of times lately due to concerns about whether it issafe for the very young. This came to a head when India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ordered TikTok to be removed from app stores in early April, after the Madras High Court ruled that the app was encouraging pornography and content. illicit. The ban was short-lived, however, and on April 22 the courtlifted the banafter TikTok took a closer look at its content, removing more than 6 million videos that violated its terms of use and community guidelines.
Leaving that issue aside, TikTok has grown tremendously over the past year. During the first half of 2018, it was the most downloaded free app on iOS. It also led on Google Play during October 2018. Finally, TikTok ranked 3rd in the world in November 2018.
As of March 2019, TikTok enjoyed more than 1.1 billion installs. In 2018 alone, users downloaded it more than 660 million times, with more than188 million downloadsduring the first quarter of 2019. More than 500 million people around the world use TikTok every month. The short ban time must have been a real concern for TikTok, as 43% of its users come from India (remembering that these figures exclude Chinese Douyin users).
What is TikTok?
TikTok encourages its users to upload short videos. Most of his former Musical.ly users simply uploaded videos of themselves lip-syncing music videos. The most talented, enthusiastic and technically proficient members uploaded videos of original content and it is those people who became the influencers of the platform.
Most videos on TikTok are up to 15 seconds long, but you can also create and share 60-second video stories.
Both the original Musical.ly and TikTok targeted the same audience – tweens and teens. Also, it is not a surprise that TikTok is also targeting 13-24 year olds.
One of the things that has changed with the growth in popularity of the platform is that people are now sharing more varied types of videos.They are no longer just music. Up-and-coming comedians performing stand-up routines, skateboarders showing off their skills, pranksters, dancers, fashionistas, beauticians, and craft freaks all take the opportunity to share videos showing off their talent. And even now we see people sharing videos showing them using their favorite products.
Of course, not all TikTok users have the confidence, rank, or skills to create videos. Just as many YouTube viewers are silent participants and simply looking for interesting content to consume, quite a few TikTokers also take a passive attitude towards using the app.
In fact, TikTokers do not need to follow anyone. They can simply open the app, go to its Trending page, and start playing videos that they find interesting or entertaining. They can even search for videos on their favorite topics using relevant hashtags.
However, over time, most TikTok users will like particular types of videos. They are likely to subscribe to channels that often share “their” types of videos. All TikTokers have a profile page, where the videos they have uploaded are highlighted.
Who uses TikTok?
Muscial.ly was actively targeting Generation Z, with a female preference. It’s too early to see any real change with TikTok. With 66% of its users under 30, it is still widely preferred by young people. A similar percentage of TikTok users are women.
It has international appeal with a large number of users in the US, India and, like Douyin, in China. Douyin has reported 400 million monthly users.
Douyin has been operating in China since 2017. At its inception, more than 50% of its users were under the age of 24. Notably, those early Douyin users stayed on the platform as they grew older, meaning the average age of Douyin users has gradually increased. As of February 2018, only 31.8% of Douyin users were under the age of 24, with 23.4% of users aged 25-30, and another 23.4% of users aged 31-35. It will be interesting to see if, over time, we’ll see a similar trend with TikTok in the rest of the world.
How Can Brands Use TikTok?
Brands can market on TikTok in three ways.
- They can create their own channel and upload relevant videos through it.
- They can work with influencers to spread content to a larger audience.
- You can pay to advertise on TikTok – it’s still too early to advertise on TikTok – there certainly isn’t a market yet like there is for YouTube. However, over time TikTok could become more popular and established.
Many brands combine running their own channels and working with influencers to spread content to a larger audience. You could try some of the ideas listed below on your own channels, or you could suggest your influencers create and share that type of content.
Challenges or challenges are an essential feature of the TikTok community. TikTok users love to take on a challenge, do it, and accordingly upload videos about it. These challenges are usually given a tag name, this way they become more memorable and easier to find.
Perhaps one of the best known challenges was #tumbleweedchallenge from the American presenter, Jimmy Fallon. He challenged users to upload videos lying on the ground and spinning around like a tumbleweed, along with western music playing in the background. This generated more than 8,000 entries and more than 10.4 million engagements. Since then, Jimmy Fallon has continued to do challenges on TikTok.
Brands can also encourage challenge hashtags on TikTok. Unless your brand has managed to build a popular TikTok channel on its own, it’s probably best to work with influencers to boost your challenge’s #hashtag. Once your challenge #hashtag is released on TikTok, people can participate in just a few clicks.
User Generated Content
Again, this is a type of marketing that brands can do from their own channel, or alternatively, work with influencers to encourage followers to create user-generated content (UGC), supporting the brand in some way.
Generation Z loves the fully immersive experience. That’s why don’t sit at home and watch traditional broadcast TV – it’s too passive an experience. Generation Z far prefers to participate.
If you can find a way to encourage your customers to share videos of themselves using or interacting with your products in some way, chances are you’ll get a big thumbs up.
After a few sponsors uploaded their culinary attempts, others flocked to the restaurant to create their meals and videos. Ultimately, more than 15,000 people requested the DIY option; 2,000 uploaded videos of their creations, and 50 million people watched the videos. We have also developed a tool that will serve as a guide tocalculate influencer earnings on TikTok. This should give you a better indication of the influencer price for user generated content campaigns.
Traditional Influencer Marketing
Of course, all the influencer marketing techniques used on other video platforms, like YouTube, work on TikTok as well. If your product caters to an influencer audience, your TikTok influencer campaign should be successful. In most cases, you should let the influencers create the content – they know what their followers like.
As always, the key to success for influencer marketing is setting appropriate goals, targeting a specific part of the purchase funnel. Young TikTokers must remain authentic with their followers for influencer marketing to be successful.
Often all a brand needs is to encourage influencers to make videos showing them wearing or using the sponsor’s product. Again, this will only work if the influencer is the type of person who would commonly use that product. There is little point in trying to encourage an influencer to promote an inappropriate product. On TikTok you are not going to successfully sell nursing homes or hearing aids.
Another side effect of TikTok’s younger clientele is that they are less interested in the use of cameras and the value of producing high-quality video. You need to trust your influencers enough to produce their videos their way – even if they look unprofessional to the marketer. More than the quality of the videos, TikTokers are interested in originality and fun.
Advertising on TikTok
For the past year, TikTok has been testing the use of advertising but has yet to establish a formal revenue-sharing system. However, they are getting closer to the point where more people will be able to advertise on the platform. In January 2019 they started showing short ads.
They created anadvertising pitch deckin late 2018, giving an indication of the types of ads that could eventually be made available to brands on TikTok. Someone leaked the document to Digiday. The possible ad types are:
- brand takeover
- Native videos in the feed
- Hashtags de challenges
- Snapchat-style 2D photo filters
TikTok is currently testing ads in the US and Europe.
