TikTok: The Fastest Growing Social Network

It has been proven that social networking sites are an effective place to market and grow a business. Besides being able to advertise to a lot of people in a very short period of time, businesses also know that they can interact and engage with their audience, which can only help boost sales figures. While Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are the most popular of social networking sites for marketing, they are certainly not the only ones. Pinterest is getting up there, as is YouTube, which is thriving because of how effective video is in marketing campaigns.

Speaking of video marketing, there is a new kid on the social networking block that businesses are now starting to look at quite seriously. We are talking about an app called TikTok, which is the fastest growing social network site in 2019, with an estimated 500 million users now sharing and watching content within the app. It has been a bit of a meteoric rise to the top for TikTok, a Chinese company, but there are a lot of folks out there who believe that it still has some space to grow in the coming years.

The question now is whether TikTok can be viewed as a good marketing tool for your business, which is what we are going to get into in the next section.

Is TikTok The Right Marketing Tool for Your Business?

There is a tendency to want to jump on board the moment that something becomes hot, but businesses looking to expand their marketing efforts may want to pause for a moment before getting on the TikTok train. Simply having 500 million potential new customers at your disposal is not necessarily a great reason to choose to market on TikTok. Here are some things to consider before you jump in.

• Is video marketing right for your business? — There is no denying that video marketing is incredibly effective, which is why so many businesses are making the move to YouTube to try and capture new consumers. Video ads do not necessarily fit with every business or industry, so don’t simply start spending money on the creation and uploading of marketing videos just for the sake of it. You really need to understand whether or not videos will make any real difference in your overall leads and sales numbers before you get behind the camera and start shooting. Music is big on TikTok, as are duet videos, so keep that in mind before you decide to upload.
• Who is your target audience? — Unlike YouTube, which appeals to people of all ages, TikTok is very much the playground for the younger generation. There are not a lot of demographics figures readily available from TikTok, but what we do know is that the 16–24 age group accounts for 41% of the total users. It’s probably safe to assume that 24–30 is on the higher end of the percentage scale, too, so if your product or service does not appeal to those age groups, you may want to look at other forms of marketing instead of throwing money at TikTok.

• Are you creative? — It goes without saying that you need a certain level of creativity in order to put together an entertaining video that can also get your sales message across. This especially true on TikTok where creative videos get the most attention. You also only have a limited amount of time to get your message out there. If you can’t explain what you are doing quickly and creatively, other video outlets might be the way for you to go.
• Long-Term Viability — While TikTok is hot right now, how long will it remain that way? The age group that uses this app tends to be fickle and move on to the next great thing the moment it arrives. For example, users that once used Snapchat are now moving over to TikTok. Let’s not also forget that Vine was a very similar platform that no longer exists. If you are planning on a long-haul marketing strategy on TikTok, you may want to reconsider.

There are certainly plenty of other things to consider before you decide to start creating videos and marketing on TikTok, but we believe that the 4 items we covered above are the most pressing questions that need to be answered.

The First Steps in Marketing on TikTok

Okay, so you have now decided that your brand-building efforts are a perfect match for what TikTok has to offer. What is the next step? While it would be easy to crank out some fun videos and get them up there ASAP, it may not necessarily be the way that you want to go. There are a couple of different marketing options available to you, which is looking at influencer marketing or building your own brand. Let’s take a moment to consider both options to help you figure out which one is best for the specific needs of your business:

Influencer marketing — This is something that you see a lot on YouTube and Instagram, and it is akin to having a celebrity spokesperson for your brand. Instead of a known celebrity, though, it’s a user who has built up a massive following and who followers tend to listen to when they market a specific product or service. The TikTok application is one that seems to be ideally suited to the influencer model. This may be the best option if you are not entirely familiar with the app and what it is that helps videos gain traction.

You can give the influencer some idea of how you would like your products to be displayed, but they already know what their audience likes, which helps take care of the creative side of things. Furthermore, it is believed that roughly one-third of consumers have complete trust in brands that influencers promote, so you can essentially be generating tens or hundreds of thousands of leads simply by having an influencer use your product in their TikTok videos. That said, they may have lots of different brands and products that they are promoting, so be sure that one of those brands is not a direct competitor.

Do it Yourself — If you don’t want to put your brand in the hands of a TikTok influencer, there is nothing to say that you can’t go it alone. There are some definite pros and cons to going this route. The most obvious problem is that you will be building an audience from scratch as opposed to leaving it in the hands of an influencer who may have millions of followers. That said, the audience you build will be truly organic, and they will follow you simply because they like what you are doing. You may earn a better level of brand trust by going in this direction.

One thing that you need to remember is that TikTok is unlike other social networks when it comes to marketing. With Facebook, Instagram, and others, you can purchase advertising that guarantees that your ad will be seen. The ability to target a specific demographic with those ads also exists. This is not the case on TikTok. You could waste time and money creating ads and trying to build an audience before you realize that TikTok is not for you.

Of the two options, influencer marketing on TikTok is easier in hitting the ground running. It is also likely to be the more expensive of the two options, as you are going to need to pay an influencer to talk about your brand.

In Conclusion

Marketing with TikTok still needs to be viewed as something of a risk right now. While you cannot argue with the number of users uploading and watching content, there is not enough hard data to let marketers know how well marketing campaigns perform on the platform.

Let’s take a moment to break down what we discussed here to help you make a more informed decision. TikTok is a social network with a predominately younger audience, so only consider marketing there if you have a product or service that appeals to the 16–30-year-old crowd. Take some time to explore going it alone or siding it with an influencer as that is the most important decision that you need to make. We do suggest downloading TikTok to get a better feel for how it looks and works as well as seeing which types of videos get attention.