The hype following TikTok is no less than phenomenal. TikTok is a video sharing social media platform that was first released for iOS and Android by ByteDance in 2016. Two years later, in August 2018, TikTok merged with Musical.ly and witnessed a worldwide release, including the United States.
The success following TikTok’s global release is indisputable, holding a number of offices in some of the most important metropolitan cities and trading hubs of the world: Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, Mumbai, Berlin, Paris, Dubai, New York, London, Los Angeles, etc. Furthermore, TikTok has servers in every country where the app is available.
TikTok’s marketing strategy has made it appealing to a vast and comprehensive market. TikTok hosts a monthly record of 500 million active users in China, with another 800 million worldwide, the average user spending 52 minutes daily on the app. TikTok has tapped into an immense market by launching it in 155 countries worldwide and in 75 different languages. While these stats may be overwhelming to a normal TikTok user, brands can understand the value of this immense market on a single platform.
It is only a matter of time until brand leaders identify the potential gains from a sound TikTok marketing strategy and explore the possibilities. With big brands like Chipotle and Calvin Klein on TikTok, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are also digitising their business and attracting followers as a means to widen their customer base.
That TikTok has immense potential can be recognized from the popularity it has gained since it was first launched. TikTok surpassed Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Snapchat, placing itself at the top of the list for daily iOS downloads on the App Store. This was in September of 2018, just one month since its global launch. According to the previous source, in the same month, it also topped the list of App Store and Google Play Store downloads combined.
TikTok as a Brand Building Platform
With TikTok’s demographically, culturally and socially vast user base, brands require a marketing genius to successfully use TikTok as a means of social media marketing. With videos ranging from a few seconds to a minute, business brands need time-efficient and captivating content to engage their users. Successfully engaging your brand’s target demographic could prove to be a huge win that will leverage your brand’s outlook and success.
It is therefore no surprise that the TikTok marketing team has developed its own brand campaigning devices and in-app features that allow brands to host marketing and publicity of their products and services. However, apart from accessing TikTok’s in-app features, as the leader of your brand, one can choose to market their business through various other ways on TikTok. This article serves as a comprehensive guide to brand building on TikTok.
2. TikTok marketing strategy: Integrating TikTok into Your Brand Campaign
Given that the average TikTok user spends 52 minutes on the app daily, building your brand’s profile on TikTok ensures one primary advantage- a huge exposure time for your brand, spent interacting with your followers/customer base. However, the user base, as well as TikTok itself comes with its own set of nuances that need to be addressed, as discussed below. While successfully tapping into this user base can guarantee success, you need to figure out if and how your brand will really benefit from promoting on the TikTok market.
2.1. Considering the Demographic Population of TikTok
According to a Reuters report, 60% of TikTokers in the US are between the age of 16 to 24, making TikTok a young person’s app. If your brand culture resonates with that of the Gen Z culture, you could benefit from implementing a TikTok marketing strategy. The Business of Apps reported that the single largest demographic is occupied by female teenagers. We can then narrow down the efficacy based on this data: if your business caters to teenagers, particularly females, then TikTok marketing could be very advantageous.
According to a report on Business Insider, the shopping habits of Generation Z (from ages 13 to 21) could potentially change the structure of the current market. The survey reports that 60% of Gen Z population is more concerned about the price of items and services. This should act as an indicator to SMEs that they should enhance their market visibility and brand reliability because, undoubtedly, Gen Z prefers small but reliable brands over big brands.
2.2 TikTok as a Social Media and Video Content Platform
That TikTok is primarily a video sharing social media site is an important factor to consider for brands seeking to integrate TikTok marketing as part of their strategy. Social media is not limited to advertisements and sales content, nor does it depend on the content altogether. In fact, it is quite the opposite: social media as a platform differs from other platforms through the behaviour it evokes in its users.
Social media plays many different roles— from interaction to building connections with compatible people. Therefore, creating engaging content that specifically appeals to the cultural and social mindset that you want your company’s values and goals to resonate with, can widen your company’s horizons as well as help your company find a supportive customer base.
TikTok is essentially a video-only platform. This feature gives it a futuristic edge over other apps, and it will do the same for brands that board the TikTok wagon. Business Insider once again reports that video content will amount to 82% of all online content by 2021. Further reports by Hubspot specified that while 90% of users say that product videos are helpful in a decision process, 64% are more likely to buy a product after watching a video.
The possibilities of video content for your brand are therefore limitless. If you believe that transparency, information and interaction is as important for your brand as your customers do, then a video content sharing app like TikTok can be valuable.
2.3 Building a Successful Campaign on TikTok
TikTok is known as the platform that hosts real, relatable and short-length videos that make users keep returning for more, even multiple times a day, with an average user accessing the app about eight times a day. This has turned TikTok into a market in itself. Scores of businesses and brands have already taken to TikTok, seeing it as an opportunity to interact with their potential customers. However, successful brand building on TikTok requires proper insights into this market, we will cover them in this article for the benefit of brands that are seeking entry into the TikTok market.
While brands can use TikTok for generating traffic or sales, this is not an efficient goal. TikTok is a social media platform, and as such, sales marketing and promotion will not be valued among its young-adult population. The Gen Z mainly and also the Millennial population are very particular regarding these points, as they do not like to be sold products, but would rather engage, verify and make informed purchases.
Following the trends among big brands with breakthrough strategies, we can see that using TikTok for brand building/awareness proves to be much most successful at gaining a competitive edge over competitors. Brands are increasingly playing on the nuances of the demographics of TikTok users, as well as the unique features of the app itself. Brands are engaging the population on TikTok by showcasing an undemanding, recreative and humorous side of themselves through funny or heartfelt videos, memes, challenges, hashtags, and other means of embracing pop culture.
Finally, Gen Z also shows a tendency to support and get involved with brands that share the same values they do. Brands that promote youth empowerment, diversity and a morally upright approach are more likely to be favoured by the Gen Z. Therefore, the culture, persona, and values of your brand itself can function as a means to connect with their customers. Sometimes being niche has more value- as it is on TikTok owing to its pockets of very specific but highly influential users- rather than being generic.
TikTok has dense populations of musicians, artists, drag queens, etc., that are highly relevant to the Gen Z population. If Gen Z are your target group, being a niche can be a highly effective strategy for your brand.
3. TikTok marketing strategy -Creating Content on a Budget
It is one of the first things we notice on TikTok- the modest and cost-effective nature of the videos, without using high-end cameras and equipment or a studio setting. TikTok simply requires a smartphone to upload creative content. TikTok videos are user-generated, authentic and relatable. Brand videos that fit into the lives of everyday users are the brands that will see a faithful following.
For example, Aerie, the lifestyle and underwear label under American Eagle, decided to ban any photos with photoshopped retouches on its ads. In 2019, this decision reflected on their sales profits, with a record 18th consecutive double-digit growth for their company.
Stripping back on production costs, and instead relying on a natural settings, sets the tone for gaining a common ground with the user. Cheap, but value-oriented videos are the go-to strategy for brands on TikTok.
3.1. TikTok influencer marketing
While celebrities like Cristiano Ronaldo, Justin Bieber, and Reese Witherspoon have created TikTok accounts, they barely cross the top 25 most popular users on TikTok. Its top 25 users each have a fan following of more than 20 million. The most nuanced characteristic feature of TikTok is however the fact that TikTok personalities outshine mainstream celebrities. Charli d’Amelio, Zach King, Addison Rae, Loren Gray and Riyaz are the top five TikTok influencers with the most followers.
This has a very specific implication for brands. These macro-influencers on TikTok came to fame on TikTok itself, and are therefore cheap per post. Compared to other social media platforms, TikTok offers cheaper means of promotions for brands. Not being limited to brand promotions, businesses can also make use of tiktok influencer marketing and gain insights into building a better brand outlook that is suited for a younger population. The influencer’s knowledge of their user base and their existing connection to their user base will prove beneficial in striking the right note in the brand-customer relationship.
4. Going Viral with Hashtag Challenges
The ‘challenge’ trend on TikTok is an essential feature. Brands and celebrities take up a challenge and upload a video of them performing it. They further recruit or appeal to other users to take up the challenge. These challenges are given a hashtag name, to make it a trend and searchable.
Launching a hashtag challenge can be engaging for a brand’s follower-base. Recently, the United Nation’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) initiated a #danceforchange challenge. IFAD’s goals are to address world hunger by promoting rural agriculture. While most brands rely on entertaining and humorous content, IFAD creates motivational and informative videos while maintaining an engagement strategy. IFAD’s approach could serve as an inspiration for brands that have serious goals and missions and a funny outlook does not serve their purpose.
5. TikTok for Business
In June 2020, TikTok introduced TikTok for Business. TikTok’s managing director, Katie Puris, describes this new marketing solution feature: “TikTok For Business solutions are designed to give brands and marketers the tools to be creative storytellers and meaningfully engage with the TikTok community.” This new addition to their arsenal of already existing tools for brand promotion makes TikTok a perfect tool for brand building.
According to a survey by Global Web Index, 61% of TikTok users responded that they tend to buy brands they see advertised. Apart from TikTok for Business, the app hosts other features like branded hashtag challenges, in-feed ads, brand takeover and top view.
While the branded hashtag challenge has been discussed earlier, in-feed ads are sponsored and appear in the “For You” section. Brand takeovers are costlier and these ads are guaranteed to one brand per day. The brand takeover format guarantees five million views per day, based on the average number of users logging in daily, as it pops up the moment a user opens their account. Lastly, top view advertisements begin as a brand takeover and transition to an in-feed ad.
6. Key takeaways for a successful TikTok marketing strategy
TikTok’s massive popularity has led to its competitors building clones of it. Facebook launched Lasso in 2018, following TikTok’s popularity, which Facebook dumped in 2020, ahead of its Instagram-based Reels launch. Reels is a similar app that is heavily influenced by Tiktok. Youtube also plans on Shorts, yet another TikTok substitute. However, it seems highly improbable that new spin-offs will be able to cause a substantial dent in TikTok’s existing user base.
The leaders at TikTok guarantee their continued popularity in the industry by building trust. In a move to digitise businesses post the COVID-19 crisis, TikTok Indonesia has taken up the challenge to represent as many SMEs based in Indonesia as possible with its new TikTok for Business. These moves make TikTok a business-friendly platform for brands that are seeking an organic approach to growth.