One Small Step For TikTok, One Big Opportunity For Marketers!
You are a TikTok user and you are watching videos on this popular app. You are attracted by an interesting start of a video so you decide to watch it to the end. Suddenly, you realize that this is an advertising video for their product or service but you do not hate it because you really like the wonderful content of this video. You even think about trying this product or service after you watch it. This is what their marketers want to see by making this video. This is content marketing on social media.
Can you imagine that this kind of video becomes the only content in TikTok one day? It truly happened this week.
Surprising Innovation: TikTok for Business
TikTok has launched TikTok for Business on June 25th, which is a new global marketing platform. TikTok for Business is an integrated platform of a variety of apps like TikTok, TopBuzz, BuzzVideo, and so on, which are owned by TikTok’s parent company — ByteDance. It announced to provide marketers with ad formats and service (Williams, June 25th) and to allow marketers to use new marketing technologies like Brand Scan and AR ads to promote their brands (Marvin, June 26th).
For TikTok: Smart Move or Not?
Launching TikTok for Business indicates that the next step of TikTok is to enlarge its advertising business with brands. Due to the rapid increase of users, TikTok is now holding a big advantage in its big user base. According to research from Oberlo (May 2020), TikTok has 800 million active users across the world. Another research (InfluencerMarketingHub, Jan 2nd) said that the CPM of Tiktok ads is $10 at least. To do a simple calculation, a single ad may bring $8 million for TikTok. This number may be not correct but it still shows the high profitability of TikTok’s ads business. Therefore, it is reasonable that ByteDance wants to generate more profit by integrating its apps for ads business.
However, it is shared that the young generation is the main user group of TikTok who hold small buying power, which may reduce its attraction to some high-end brands. On the other side, there is a problem that how TikTok can convert its users into the users of TikTok for Business. Will you be interested in the version of TikTok with only business ads though they may be funny?
For Marketers: Opportunity but also Challenge
What can TikTok for Business bring for marketers? An integrated platform with advanced marketing tools embedded. A big global platform with millions of active users but relatively low cost. Short-video apps provide marketers with a new approach to promote their brands and interact with audiences. Brands can build up a firmer relationship with their followers or subscribers by utilizing this marketing platform.
On the website, TikTok for Business stated that every brand is worth being discovered, however, there is one more sentence behind this: “This is where you unleash your creativity”. This is to say that creativity matters and content matters. On today’s social media, content marketing shows a great importance in promoting brands. People only pay their attention to those ads with attractive hooks and interesting content among millions of posts on social media. Brands not only fight against competitors from their own field but also fight with brands from other fields on social media. Therefore, good content marketing is the key to success on the social media platform. If you and your brand want to choose TikTok for business, try to be creative at first. This will also be one of the biggest challenges for all marketers.
