TikTok may be taking over as the social network of choice for digital marketers.
TikTok is a social media app that allows its users to create, share, and watch 15-second videos shot on mobile devices. Best known for quirky little vids set to music and sound effects, its format gives both amateur and professional users plenty of room to be creative.
TikTok‘s popularity has exploded since its 2016 inception. Yet like other social media channels, TikTok has faced challenges, like claims of addictiveness and privacy concerns.
While TikTok’s entertainment value is high, it also presents opportunities for marketers. In particular, TikTok’s popularity with a younger audience than Facebook or Twitter has quickly become fertile ground for marketing campaigns.
Is TikTok a good marketing opportunity for businesses? Here are some thoughts about including TikTok as an effective part of your campaigns.
Is TikTok Emerging as a Powerhouse Social Network?
As with all social networks, like YouTube and Vine, along with TikTok’s popularity have come perception issues.
One issue is TikTok’s addictiveness. All social media networks use recommendation algorithms, which prompt you toward content that they think you will like. TikTok seems to have one of the most persistent recommendation algorithms, which when combined with the type of content it presents, has many users essentially hooked on it.
Another issue is privacy. As seen in recent months, there are concerns about how all social networks use and secure the private information of users. The big difference with TikTok is that a majority of it is Chinese-owned, prompting further suspicion.
Is TikTok a Good Marketing Platform?
Is TikTok still a good platform? While TikTok is still an emerging social media platform, having been launched in only 2016, it is growing at a blistering pace, even in comparison to other social media networks.
This unfolding popularity provides many opportunities for marketers who are willing to adopt a new social medial channel and believe that their target demographic is active on TikTok.
TikTok’s sheer volume of worldwide users and its growth rate means it can provide access to an enormous audience. Also, it seems to be easier for TikTok to do this than other channels because its content is short videos that have the potential to go viral, reaching thousands of people with lightning speed.
Which Industries Do the Best on TikTok When It Comes to Marketing?
Is TikTok a good marketing channel? While TikTok is a rapidly growing marketing platform, some industries can capitalize on this better than others. The hashtag #smallbusiness currently has 25+ billion views on TikTok, so small business owners are using it for brand recognition in new audiences. A common way to do this is by buying TikTok followers.
A study performed by money.co.uk, found the most popular small businesses on TikTok are in the beauty, fashion, and luxury goods industries. The top category on TikTok is beauty, with 61M+ likes.
Reasons To Start Marketing on TikTok
While some industries currently appear to be doing better than others in using TikTok as a social medial marketing platform, below are five reasons why most industries should start marketing on TikTok to reach their customers.
1. TikTok Has a Strong Foothold with Younger Audiences Who Are Growing as Consumers
Industries that target an audience in the age range of teens to mid-twenties are experiencing the best marketing performance on TikTok, and this trend is expected to continue.
Here’s why: Of TikTok’s 1.1 billion active global users as of 2021, 69% are aged 13-24, and users spend an average of 46 minutes on TikTok per day. That’s a huge opportunity to promote brand awareness in a demographic that has a lot of disposable income to spend on products.
2. While User Data Is Not as Available as Facebook or Instagram, Authentic Brands Perform Well
In many ways, consumers are tired of traditional sales and marketing tactics. They don’t want to be “sold to.” Consumers today are much savvier and appreciate authenticity.
Brands that portray openness and authenticity have a big advantage. They rise in popularity more quickly than brands that appear less genuine. Added to this, studies have found that people feel a more positive connection to brands that they see being authentic on TikTok, and this means they are much more likely to become buyers.
3. TikTok Marketing Is Still Inexpensive and Offers Influencer Connectivity
Is TikTok influencer marketing worthwhile? Influencer marketing is one of the hottest trends in digital social media marketing, and for good reason: it works – especially among the Gen Z crowd. While most businesses should continue to market on several social media platforms, they should also be leveraging TikTok influencer marketing.
One of the reasons that influencer marketing can be so influential on TikTok is because of the algorithm that it uses in promoting videos. This algorithm doesn’t weigh the creator’s statistics, like how many followers the creator has or whether previous videos have performed well, which means almost any video can get millions of views. This makes it even easier for the right influencer to have a powerful impact on a company’s brand.
4. TikTok Advertising Offers a Much Easier Interface Than TV or Radio
Are TikTok ads effective? One of the biggest appeals of TikTok is its simplicity for creators. TikTok ads are still inexpensive and much easier to create, manage, and measure than TV or radio ads.
Creating a TikTok ad account only takes a few steps, and creating video ads is very simple: shoot a video on a phone, then apply some background music, some text or stickers, and perhaps a filter, and post it. You can then access your ad account’s analytics that measures how your ads are performing.
TikTok has several ad types, with the main type being in-feed ads that you create and post yourself (including billboard-style, TV commercial style, and ones that boost your content to more viewers). There are also ads for managed brands and Topview ads that play when you first open the app.
5. TikTok Audience Continues to Grow and Shows No Signs of Stopping
By any definition, the TikTok user community is huge and continues to grow daily, bringing more audiences and with them, expanded marketing opportunities.
TikTok is currently available in 150+ countries, has 1.1+ billion active users and 2.5+ billion app installs to date. Compare that to Facebook’s TikTok knockoff, “Lasso,” which has only hundreds of thousands of installs. And TikTok’s monthly active users and downloads continue to rise every month.
TikTok may be worth a try
TikTok represents a tremendous and fast-growing opportunity for digital social media marketing to generate brand awareness and revenue. If your brand’s target audience is between the ages of 13 and 60, you need to be on TikTok now.
What are your thoughts or questions on social media marketing on TikTok in 2022? Post in the comments below and we’ll keep this discussion going!
— Sean