The TikTok social media app is top-rated. In 2019, the platform achieved more than 1.5 billion downloads on Google Play and the App Store, while Android users alone spent a total of around 68 billion hours in the app. For many companies, there will be no way around Tik Tok Marketing by 2021 at the latest. Many large companies and brands, such as GUESS and McDonald’s, discovered the trend early on and used TikTok for advertising purposes. Because the app not only shines with its steadily growing number of users, it also offers many other advantages and a committed target group.
What Are The Target Groups On TikTok?
A few factors are essential for advertisers: On the one hand, the predominantly very young age of most TikTok users. Far more than half are younger than 30 years, and a full 42 percent are in the age group between 18 and 24. Another factor is user behavior. The users spend an average of 45 minutes a day in the app, a large part of which is active. In 2020, the monthly engagement rate was over 70 percent, a clear sign that TikTok is diligently shared and filmed. This is also expressed in the fact that there are already influencers there with several million followers. In addition, the young audience opens up another opportunity for TikTok. Under the German hashtag #LernenmitTikTok, informative videos are published that convey both school material and everyday knowledge and could make the platform more severe in the long term.
What Makes TikTok Attractive For Marketing Campaigns?
In addition to the young target group, the app has other interesting, unique selling points:
- In contrast to most other social media platforms, TikTok is mainly used with sound. The intense focus on integrating music and, thus, current trends is one of the app’s greatest strengths.
- Videos are played vertically. Although this is not a conventional format for social media platforms, it does mean that the mobile phone does not have to be rotated for optimal resolution.
- One of the most significant advantages of brand marketing is that TikTok gives you the user’s undivided attention by only showing one video on full screen at a time. In this way, the view is not distracted from other content, enabling a more precise evaluation of the usage behavior. After all, it is always clear which user is viewing content.
- TikTok has a unique algorithm. This ensures that every video, regardless of the number of followers, has the chance of potentially being viewed millions of times. This makes it possible to achieve a high level of visibility within the platform even with a new account and quickly convince many people as new followers.
- The content density at TikTok is very high. Due to the large number of videos uploaded every day, the app is fast-paced, and trends can often change. This also means that it is more accessible for a company to place a trend consciously.
It quickly becomes apparent that there are attractive opportunities hidden in this app to present your brand and help it to become more well-known. But what are the possibilities that TikTok offers from a marketing perspective?
Three Steps To A Successful TikTok Marketing Strategy
Produce your content: It is best to record videos of products or services in TikTok format yourself.
User-Generated Content (UGC):
If you already have a little more reach, you can encourage other users to upload brand-specific content.
Paid Advertisement:
Of course, TikTok now also offers the option of placing advertising or increasing the reach of your videos through other paid marketing measures.
Generate Attention Through Your Content On TikTok
Videos that you have produced yourself provide a platform for your brand. Relevant functions, services, or new products can be presented and explained here according to your ideas. The videos can, for example, show how products are handled or set up in the form of “how-tos.” They also offer the opportunity to take a look behind the scenes at the brand, introduce employees, or be entertaining. In contrast to Instagram, for example, marketing campaigns on TikTok are more aimed at the upper funnel because they create awareness for the brand and playfully stage new products.
You can quickly jump on the bandwagon by participating in the prevalent TikTok challenges and using hashtag trends. Challenges usually contain easily reproducible content and are marked with hashtags. Popular (i.e., heavily used) hashtags are displayed on the “Discover” page, and all videos that use this hashtag are collected below it. This creates greater discoverability. This allows you to either stage your product or present the brand as trendy and fun.
If you don’t want to take part in challenges or use many hashtags, you can achieve a similar effect with the proper use of music. As well as hashtags, trending songs, and all videos that contain them are displayed on the “Discover” page. The stored music also influences whether a video is potentially seen.
Since the content at TikTok is primarily intended to be fun, the focus is less on the quality than on the entertainment factor of the videos. It is, therefore, more important than professional cuts and effects that the conveyed content captivates the user and does not swipe them straight to the following content. There are several ways to achieve this: originality: In the best-case scenario, the videos stand out from others through a particular feature, such as intricate cuts. It is essential to find your style to create more excellent recognition value. The easiest way, however, is to reproduce existing trends and use the corresponding hashtags.
Speed is required:
If you aim to be found through popular hashtags or music, you can save money. However, it is all the more important to react promptly to current trends in the community, as these are sometimes very short-lived. So there is little time left for a long time.
Editing. The videos must be produced and posted quickly while the trend is still active and the target group is looking for the hashtags. Due to the low-quality requirements, this is indeed possible. However, successful TikTok marketing only with your content still requires keeping an eye on the app’s trends at all times and reacting quickly to new developments. Companies that successfully use organic marketing on TikTok have to be very agile and flexible in their content production. The most significant disadvantage is that it can be very time-consuming. However, TikTok does not have the high-quality standard users demand on YouTube, making it cheaper to create your TikTok videos.
Use UGC As A Company For Your Brand
If an account already has a specific reach, this can encourage other TikTok users to support the brand. This can be done in two different ways:
Influencer Marketing, i.e., a collaboration with popular TikTok users, uses the influencers’ large follower ranges to promote marketing messages and their products. There is no need to spend money on this. For many users, it is enough to be provided with a product package free of charge, which they then present in their videos and with the corresponding hashtag. Influencers often encourage other users to imitate their videos and, ideally, try out the products or services on display for themselves. Experience has shown that this works even more successfully on TikTok than on other social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram.
It is also possible to invent your hashtag challenges and connect them to the company using an expressive hashtag. The aim is to use original ideas to encourage users to react to their content with videos, comments and likes and use the hashtag associated with the challenge. Essentially, the aim is to create a new social media trend on TikTok with your hashtag.
Also Read: Top 13 Digital Marketing Trends For 2021
TikTok Marketing With Paid Advertisement
To pursue targeted marketing and leave nothing to chance, TikTok For Business offers five different paid advertising models tailored to the individual needs of a brand. The campaigns work on the same principle as Facebook or Instagram marketing and direct users directly to the website or landing page of the advertising company via a link.
- A branded hashtag challenge encourages users to create content for the campaign themselves and mark it with the hashtag. The chance of more interactions is increased because the challenge is displayed directly on the “Discover” page. In addition, there is the possibility of cooperation with other accounts that can demonstrate the challenge in their videos. The Branded Hashtag Challenge also offers an overview page that shows all participating UGCs together, optionally three to six days of media placement. It promises an average interaction rate of 8.5 percent.
- Branded effects are also ideal for interactive campaigns. In the form of campaign-specific stickers, filters, and special effects, they offer users more options for interaction. One advantage of branded impacts is that they work without text and are therefore independent of language or culture to be used worldwide.
- A more excellent range can also be achieved through a brand takeover. With this option, a selected video is shown to the user when the app is started, and all buttons are hidden for a moment so that the focus is even more on the marketing video than usual.
- The TopView placement means that advertising videos are displayed at the top of the feed, similar to a brand takeover. The difference is that the videos only appear after a few seconds instead of opening the app.
- In-Feed Ads are marketing videos displayed in the “For You” feed. These are up to 60 seconds long, and users can react to them like a regular video on the platform.
A Few Examples Of Successful TikTok Marketing Strategies
- To promote the release of a new sports shoe, Nike used a branded hashtag challenge, for which users were asked to present their football skills under the hashtag #MagicBoots. The campaign started with a video by the famous player Leah Williamson and is one of the most successful TikTok marketing campaigns from 2020.
- The fashion group Bershka publishes product videos and encourages users to show their outfits in videos using the hashtag #Bershkastyle.
- The American fast-food chain Chipotle asked users to authenticate their Halloween costumes with the hashtag #Boorito and promised discounted burritos for everyone who came to a branch in costumes on Halloween.
- Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon likes to make fun of TikTok trends and invents his bizarre hashtag challenges such as the #tumbleweed challenge.
- Instead of only showing people in their sports outfits, Gymshark posts many videos with other sports-related content, such as workouts, and thus directly addresses the right target group on the platform.
TikTok Marketing Strategy: Involve The Agency Or Do It Yourself?
It quickly becomes apparent that TikTok offers various ways to attract attention to yourself and your brand. However, the fast pace of the application makes it difficult to keep track of current trends at all times and to decide which strategy best suits your own goals. The decisive factors for marketing success on TikTok are time, creativity, know-how, and the ability to produce flexibly and quickly. We at Rheindigital will be happy to help you expand your presence at TikTok according to your requirements and support you in developing an individual marketing strategy!
Also Read: 11 Tips For A Successful Instagram Account
