TikTok (formerly known as musically) has seemingly exploded to become one of the most downloaded apps in the world. It began life as a moderately successful video-sharing app – tagged Douyin in its native China and TikTok in the rest of the world. It should be no surprise that marketers have begun to see the potential of the platform. Just, like Facebook, once was a platform mainly used by children that evolved, “Tik Tok has become the next contender.”

TIK TOK CHARACTER & AUDIENCE

TikTok is available in over 150 countries, has over 1 billion users, and the average time spent per user – 52 minutes per day!. If your brand’s target audience includes anyone between the age of 13 and 30, you should have a TikTok strategy. But, as all social media platforms do, TikTok will start to age up soon. So we recommend building a presence now. Place it on Instagram Stories, place it on Snapchat, and place it on TikTok! TikTok actually just added the ability to include links and commerce URLs in your profile and videos. So not only is the organic reach on the platform huge, but you can also drive meaningful traffic to your website. There could not be a better time to invest in vertical video content for your brand than now.

How Can Brands Use TikTok?

There are three main ways that brands can market on TikTok.

  • They can create their own channel and upload relevant videos through their channel
  • They can work with influencers, to spread content to a broader audience using your product/service
  • They can pay to advertise on TikTok – it is very early days for TikTok advertising – there certainly isn’t a market yet like there is for YouTube. However, TikTok may become more popular and established over time.

Many brands do a combination of running their own channels and working with influencers to spread content to a broader audience. You might try some of the ideas listed below on your own channels, or you may suggest that your influencers create and share these kinds of content.

See these brands use Tik Tok to there advantage:

Hashtag Challenges

Challenges are an essential feature of TikTok’s community. TikTok’s users love taking up a challenge and making and uploading videos accordingly. These challenges are usually given a #-tag name, to make them both memorable and easy-to-find.

Brands can also encourage hashtags challenges on TikTok. Unless your brand has managed to build up a popular TikTok channel of its own, you will probably do best to work with influencers to kickstart your #hashtag challenge. Once a #hashtag challenge is launched on TikTok, people can participate with just a few clicks.

User-Generated Content

Again, this is a type of marketing that brands can either base from their own TikTok channel. Or alternatively, work with influencers to encourage their follows to create user-generated content (UGC) supporting the brand in some way.

Generation Z loves the full immersive experience. That’s why they don’t sit at home watching traditional broadcast TV – it’s too much of a passive experience. Generation Z far prefers to be involved.

If you can encourage your customers to share videos of themselves interacting with your products ins some way, you’re likely to get more sales.

Traditional Influencer Marketing

As always, the key to influencer marketing success is setting appropriate goals, targeting a specific part of the purchase funnel. The young broadcasters of TikTok need to remain authentic to their followers for influencer marketing to succeed. You need to trust your influencers enough to produce their videos their way – even if they look amateurish to a marketer’s eye. TikTokers are interested in originality and fun, rather than the quality of your videos.

To Conclude

TikTok is the new social media that is beating Instagram and YouTube and businesses shouldn’t waste a great opportunity (especially now that the market is not yet saturated) to try this app as a marketing channel to increase awareness and speak to younger generations that tend to be more susceptible to online banners and traditional ads.

Download their application and create your business account: https://www.tiktok.com/en/