It’s Time to Pay Attention to TikTok … for Business
We are living in the era of COVID-19, but quarantine aside, mobile use continues to climb and people of all ages continue to look for ways to pass the time, connect with friends, and increasingly build their personal “brand” and identity through online networks via their mobile devices.
According to AppAnnie, TikTok was the most downloaded app in Q1 2020 and had the 6th most monthly active users. In just March 2020 alone, TikTok had 65M Android and 18M iOS downloads. Last week TikTok Android passed 1.5B users globally! In the most recent data I could find, there are 26.5M MAUs in the US, almost 10% of the US. And on average, TikTok users spend 52 min per day in the app. (Stats courtesy of Omnicore)
So the flywheel of users creating and consuming content is really spinning now, and the TikTok platform is maturing into a place where businesses can consider participating IF they’re willing to create genuinely entertaining and/or useful content to connect with current fans and potential new fans.
So what is TikTok exactly?
TikTok is best known as a platform for young people to post short form videos of themselves doing trending dance routines, gags, tricks and lip syncing popular songs. But the forum is flexible and you are starting to see more use cases like DIY how-to videos, for things such as COVID advice, personal hygiene/makeup/hair, fashion, cooking, art, or how to use products. As long as snappy and entertaining, we’re likely to see more and more content incorporating how to best apply products for everyday things.
Like other social networks before it, demographically, more and more content is of the over 30 set (such as users’ parents) or by 30- and 40-somethings, some seeking to build their influencer brand, increasingly by celebrities participating in the same trending songs, dances, humor, and social issues.
Perfect is the Enemy of Good
The magic of TikTok is its ease to share content. TikTok has harnessed the insight that social trends are a fun and easy way for lots to participate, by letting people be themselves and have fun with music, dances, word overlays, filters and hash tags. With hot fads, having fun without being perfect is welcomed. It appears that 15–30 seconds of doing something pretty well, even if imperfectly, can still be impressive and entertaining. And the algo itself helps determine what content seems to meet the threshold for entertainment, to expose fun content to more people.
Because it is also so fast and easy to consume videos, there are lots and lots of content views, which means many users surprisingly have their video go very viral very fast, and gain 10,000s or 100,000s views or even followers overnight. This is truly an amazing opportunity which is very attractive to a lot of people, in any town or backyard, with a little talent in some area, to see if maybe their talent has an audience, and can grow into mini-celebrity.
This has led to the network getting more demographically diverse. We’ll see what the threshold for diversity really is, as “facebook is now for old people”. The same could happen to TikTok.
TikTok Demographics
So, who’s using TikTok? Roughly half of TikTok’s audience is under 34, thus half is over 34, which may come as a surprise. The user base is international but the content any user sees in their feed is generally from their own country and language, based on the content they watch. As stated earlier, nearly 10% of the US uses the app monthly, and 90% of users use it more than once daily.
Note: since I posted this, Charli D’Amelio, a 15-year old dancer, has zoomed past 50M followers to 50.5M. She likely benefitted by dating TikTok star (Chase Hudson, 18.7M). Charli also has 15.3M Insta and 3.3M YouTube subscribers!
TikTok is Easier thus More Viral
It is so easy to create and upload a video, and so easy for users to consume lots of videos, that taken together the return on effort is as high as it can get. Take a short video, pick music from the app, add graphics or text overlays, a few popular hashtags, and launch (after some time practicing in some cases). At minimum your social circle will see it, or perhaps you go viral and get your 15 minutes of fame. Or a possible career. Case in point, the show ‘Too Hot to Handle’ on Netflix is a cadre of social media stars. Charli D’Amelio (and her siblings) have been signed to a talent agency with a reality show in the works.
Because you can link your TikTok profile to your Instagram and Youtube, one can build a following and easily transfer videos and followers there. With advertising, users can get direct income from all these platforms. Today, YouTube videos can easily earn $2k-$5k for every 1M views. There is similar potential for TikTok, or even just as a place to create content then transfer it to the other platforms. While Instagram stories expire after 24 hours, TikTok content lives longer so it’s more like YouTube. Good content can keep showing or go viral later. Some TikTok profiles even link directly to their Shopify store.
What are the Opportunities for Businesses?
So the platform has millions of active users, and it’s as simple as it gets to participate in a trending topic. Should businesses participate? TikTok is arguably less of a personalized discovery platform than Facebook, and more of an “art” platform like Instagram (+ music, which is a key differentiator). You might call it a “self-expression” platform. Whether or not businesses should participate, there is an opportunity for brands to participate in the “self-expression” and community.
Create a Page
The first step to get involved in TikTok marketing is by creating a profile, uploading some posts, and building an audience (sound familiar?). However, there’s a fine art to making videos that not only promote your brand but also attract viewers. Users don’t use the app to watch ads, so any business looking to succeed should embrace the type of content that’s engaging to its audience.
What is the personality of your brand? What is the voice that represents your brand, and who will be the face of the brand? Employees of the company? A fun mascot? On TikTok, influencer-customers may be your best bet since celebrity influencers or a hoard of “nano-influencers” are real people, ideally who know how to authentically use your products, show their own following of potential users, and can at least participate in a meme you help start.
Spread your Brand
- Create content and build an audience of followers
- Create shareable gimmicks to spread your brand. Examples include Starbucks unicorn frappuccino or Reese’s Puffs by celebrity Travis Scott
- Seed the platform with re-usable hashtags that spread the brand and create viral trends. For example, #clorox, #cloroxclean, #cloroxjunkie
- Link to a webpage or promo from your TikTok page
- Sell merch infused with your brand for people to self-identify with
- Consider linking your profile to ‘trending merch’, even a shopify store
- Message your followers with links to content they’ll find cool
Influencer Marketing
Working with a proven TikTok influencer to promote your product is the happy middle ground between producing your own content and spending thousands of dollars on TikTok ads. Many companies have already started capitalizing on this, Bang Energy drinks being a ubiquitous example on Instagram and TikTok (since it’s easy to post the same video to both).
However, you can’t include clickable URLs in TikTok video captions (yet), so it’s not easy to direct traffic to websites from organic videos. You can try to work around this by having influencers link to your store in their bio or the video comment section, but adding this extra step reduces follow through.
There are so many nano-influencers now with so many daily posts, it should be fairly affordable to get impression reach. You might consider this a method to raise brand awareness, with other forms of marketing to drive actions.
One interesting way to use Influencers is to do live streams with your product or to launch new products. You might even consider testing new products by ‘soft-launching’ them on a platform like TikTok and learning from virality of the product’s popularity, target segments, keywords or even songs and trends people associate with it. One popular technique on TikTok is a teaser video with a link to see what happens next. I could envision a way to support signing up for followups, whether they be followup videos or messages.
Hashtag Challenges
A hashtag challenge is when a specific task is set by one user and other TikTok users are encouraged to try it and post the result using the associated hashtag to gain virality. Any user can try to create a hashtag challenge, though whether or not others join in is not guaranteed.
When brands pay for hashtag challenges, their hashtags are promoted to the top for a few days and are usually accompanied by a microsite where users can purchase the brand’s products within TikTok. This is what grocery chain Kroger did when they ran the #TransformUrDorm hashtag challenge during the back to school shopping season.
If there is a popular hashtag challenge that fits your brand or product, this could be a great opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and try to get some views. You can also consider:
- Dance Challenges
- Utilizing TikTok’s Duet Feature, where you perform alongside another video (I could definitely see this feature being further enhanced)
- (Potentially) sponsored filters, overlays etc.
TikTok Ads
TikTok Ads is currently available in select countries and has a high price tag. You have to apply and be supported by TikTok at the moment. Paid TikTik ads come in several forms:
- Pre-roll ads: Videos that starts as soon as users open the app
- In-feed ads: Videos that appear as users scroll
- Promoted hashtag challenges: Videos encouraging user submissions using a custom hashtag
- Branded effects: A custom effect filter for creators to use in videos — similar to those on Snapchat and Instagram but featuring brand-specific information
As mentioned, TikTok ads are expensive — if you’ve got $50k to $100k to spend on ads or $150k for a promoted hashtag challenge then this is an option, but currently, TikTok app ads seem the domain of big budget brands and high margin items like cosmetics and games.
Shoppable Videos
This is a probable future feature that is currently being tested on TikTok. Akin to the “swipe up” feature and shoppable posts on Instagram, shoppable videos allow users to attach a URL to their TikTok advertising videos so that users can be taken to a mini store and checkout from within the app.
Take TikTok Offline
I mentioned earlier the concept of using TikTok to see how people choose to interact with your brand or product. You can even take popular videos, songs, dances and hashtags into other forums. They are vetted as likable and viral, and TikTok users will very likely recognize TikTok themes, and if done well, will respect what you did there. Trust me when I say that a few songs are so ubiquitous on TikTok that taking the song or dance off TikTok will be recognized and probably produce smiles from TikTok users.
Creator Monetization
On the creator side, TikTok has an in-app currency called TikTok Coins which are paid for with real money, and can be given to creators. This is comparable to tipping in Twitch. The more you tip, the more prominent your name in the comment stream and the more likely you are to get a shout out back. Creators can turn coins into diamonds and redeem diamonds for cash. Coins vary in value and depend on exchange rates. The last I’ve seen, 100 Coins cost $1.29, but it’s like a currency market. There is a fixed number of coins. Last year, 100 Coins cost $0.99 and two years ago, you could get 300 coins for $0.99.
One can only imagine where in-app currency and paying for content can go. At minimum, there’s a clear path here for 100% in-app shoppable content.
On TikTok, authenticity and contextual fit are crucial for success. Whether owned content, earned virality, sponsored content, or paid ads, marketers must make the content authentic, entertaining, and on-brand. You will get a lot more benefit and reduce very possible negative brand impact.
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