The rise of TikTok – What is TikTok and can I use TikTok as a marketing tool?
TikTok is a video app launched in 2017 by ByteDance (an app company formed in 2012.) The app allows people to share short video clips of themselves either lip syncing or acting out a short comedy sketch. The app is mainly targeted at children and pre teens however this isn’t the exact market that they have ended up getting. The app is full of older people, this raised some privacy concerns with parents of the younger users.
What is the difference between TikTok and Musical.ly?
Musical.ly was an app incredibly similar to TikTok which was created and released in 2014, sort of a predecessor to TikTok, the premise of the app was the same, you either lip sync to a song or have your own comedy sketch, the app was a hit as it was reported that by May 2016 the app had over 70 million downloads, with 10 million videos being posted daily. The app turned normal people into social media stars or influencers, notable influencers to come out of musical.ly include babyariel who later starred In one of numerous Brat TV shows. Brat tv was later formed as a channel that produces shows aimed at a teen audience, all of the actors on the shows were actors whose careers were started on the video sharing app. Musical.ly was merged with TikTok in 2018.
The power of using TikTok influencers
As TikTok continues to grow, many brands are looking to partner with people off of the app. Video marketers are starting to use TikTok to improve their brands reach. A Lot of people believe that once marketers hit a new platform and push ads on it that it is when the platform starts to decline. As Gary Vee says
“Marketers ruin everything. It’s what we do.”
But many video marketers may not be using TikTok directly to promote products. Instead they are using influencers from the TikTok app and other social platforms. This doesn’t mean Tik Tok has no ads on it however as you will find a string of promoted TikToks.
As TikTok allows people to make such short video it means that many companies are using it to send out constant content for their products or brand. One great example of this would be Gary Vaynerchuck (or Gary Vee.) Gary posts short clips from his videos to TikTok, when these videos trend on TikTok it brings loads more engagement over to his other social channels. Many people follow this example as you will see people plug new items off of their respective channel (Youtube, Instagram Etc,) on their TikTok to bring more views to the main channel. The reason people use TikTok to promote their other ventures is because you cannot get directly paid by TikTok themselves at this current time.
As of august 2019 people were able to purchase products that were promoted in a post straight from the TikTok app, this was never possible before as you would have to use an external link to purchase said product. This means there has been a massive jump in promoted posts since this date as people are easily able to purchase promoted stuff.
So Should You Use TikTok For Your Video Marketing ?
Well… Yes and no, it sort of depends on what you’re marketing. You would need to assess you target audience and see what sort of age range your trying to go after. If your age range is 40-60 its not worth using TikTok but if your target audience is more in the 14-20 age range then go for it. The numbers really speak for themselves when it comes to TikTok the amount of people on it mean thats plenty of potential customers. Before you choose an influencer to promote your product you want to check a few things first, take a look at their engagement rate, most influencers tend to get between 5 – 10% of engagement from their followers. Also don’t always go for numbers, there’s a story that came in the news recently regarding this about an influencer with over two and a half million followers who couldn’t even sell 36 shirts of their own clothing brand. Depending on what you’re promoting it might be better to target a micro influencer in your niche of the product, even though this person might have only 20 thousand followers their engagement rate is bound to much higher meaning that their followers are more likely to interact with your brand and potentially purchase products. When looking at marketing using TikTok also look at the persons other social channels. If someone has great engagement rate on all channel they will be perfect for you, this is because they will have a loyal follower base who look up to them. If this is the case then you’re more likely to get something out of your promotion. If you don’t want to use an influencer you can still get a lot out of TikTok advertising. You can create an advert especially for TikTok that will run when people are scrolling through the app. This provides a great alternative to the usual influencer marketing, depending on your product, this could be a better way to advertise it especially if you’re promoting an app. So yes TikTok is a great place to market your product if you do it right, take a look at other campaigns, see what they’ve done right and wrong to see how you can make your campaign a success
What Famous Companies Use TikTok To Advertise ?
One massive example of a famous company that uses TikTok to advertise is the NBA. They post content ranging from highlight plays to interviews and more. They use TikTok to boost their presence and its working. They currently have over 3 million followers on TikTok and over four million on Douyin (The Japanese Version Of TikTok.) This is an incredible number of people to reach as it opens up your brand to many more potential customers, whether that’s to buy tickets to a game or just to purchase merchandise.
