TIKTOK: A contemporary Marketing method for your business digital strategy

Tiktok was created in 2018, but thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic and quarantine, 2020 was the year that the number of subscribers exploded, something we can observe from the graph below, where the monthly active users grew by 38% from 2019-2021, the biggest growth number among the rest of the social media platforms. Currently, more than 20 million European people use the platform. But probably, what will surprise you more is that more than half of them are older than 25 years old.

worldwide Growth of monthly users of social media

From 2019 to 2021, Facebook and Instagram saw an increase in their active users by 19% and 16%. While LinkedIn only 13%, followed by Twitter with a rise of 8%.

Growth of monthly active users (MAU) of selected social media platforms worldwide from 2019 to 2021

Source: https://www.statista.com

According to recent findings, an average Instagram user spends 30 minutes each day scrolling in the app. Surprisingly enough, Tiktok users’ time on the platform is 3 times longer!

in Hungary …

Frequency of using Tiktok in Hungary in 2020

TikTok ranks as the second-biggest app in consumer spending Data collected by AppAnnie from iOS and Google Play stores reveals TikTok is more successful in the ranking than YouTube, Disney+, Tencent Video, and Netflix, which is the reason why businesses need to consider including TikTok in their digital social media strategies.

Most popular Hungarians on TikTok as of May 2020

Is TikTok the future of digital marketing?

Google trends show the increasing trend of TikTok searching frequency over time. We can see that in only 3 years after its creation, the search term “TikTok” has already surpassed the “TWICH” application.

On a worldwide level…

case study: How to use TikTok to transform your small restaurant in a billion-dollar chain

Chef Burak Özdemir‘s small business has become a billion-dollar chain, mainly with the help of TikTok, where he currently has 48.8 million followers, “Hatay Civilizations Table” already offers delicacies from Turkey to Dubai.

How to promote your brand via TikTok

Another way to promote your business on TikTok is by launching:

• Hashtag usage (find the most relevant phrases to your content, the most used by your audience, and create a hashtag challenge)
• Brand takeover
• In-feed native video (up to 15” long)
• AR or additional reality are used in the publication
• Order advertising from bloggers.swipeable product cards

More specifically, regarding how to use hashtags in TikTok:

1. The lower limiting number of characters is 100 without an upper limit, so the user is free to use as many hashtags as he wants.
2. Mixing popular and specialized hashtags to capture audiences’ attention with various interests.
3. Otherwise, creating a new hashtag linking it to the product to be promoted may open the road to something big, especially by starting a hashtag challenge and encouraging the audience to use it by asking them to do a challenge.

How to empower your brand – creator cooperation

If you are a brand manager, you have to pick the right creator to support your brand. In Tik Tok, there is a TikTok Creator Marketplace, where you can find creators of each brand’s interest. With the TikTok Creator Marketplace API it’s possible to Access first-party marketplace data for creator marketing experts, including Captiv8, Influential, and Whalar, to provide brands with white-glove services to help manage the entire end-to-end process of creator marketing on TikTok.

Differently than in FB, where Business Manager creates and manages the campaigns, TikTok Open Application Campaigns enables brands to list their campaigns for interested creators to self-apply. Branded Content Toggle is a tool that allows creators to switch on or off when they make posts with paid promotions by marking videos and disclosing commercial content without disrupting their creative flow.

Another innovation of TikTok is the Customized Instant Page, where Brands can create easily built-up landing pages that load in seconds, and users do not have to leave the app to get more familiarized with each brand (11x faster than standard mobile pages).

Since the audience of the platform is the same, likes, comments, hashtags, and conversions are the main metrics to focus for a marketing campaign.

How to measure the impact of TikTok

There are several indicators to monitor your campaigns.

Like in all other social media, a campaign’s success can be measured effectively by Reach & Frequency. Moreover, a survey-based measure, TikTok Brand Lift Study, informs brands how users feel about the ads they see on TikTok. At the same time, brands can rest assured that it matches industry standards for effectiveness and reliability. DoubleVerify and MOAT provide insight into invalid traffic and viewability on TikTok. To reassure that a brand’s advertisements are published in a suitable place and ensure its reputation, Integral Ad Science (IAS), OpenSlate, and Zefr, ensure that brands’ campaigns run adjacent to content that is suitable for the brand. TikTok Inventory Filter enables advertisers to gain more control over where they would like their ads to appear adjacent to and feel more confident in the content of the platform, a technique based on the GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media) Brand Safety and Suitability Framework to meet global, industry-wide standards and protect advertisers from harmful content.

How to connect, engage and commerce with the community

The most simple way is direct Integration by uploading products and managing everything from shipping to fulfillment and point of purchase. However, by partner Integration, there is the possibility to work with a third-party commerce partner, Shopify, Square, Ecwid, PrestaShop that are already available on the platform, while Wix, SHOPLINE, OpenCart, and BASE will be available soon. Moreover, brands can highlight one or multiple products directly from an organic TikTok video, leading users to instantly-loaded product detail pages, they can either connect directly with their community in real-time and share dynamic links to products and services at the same time, they can include custom,  in their In-Feed video ads, or even serve users personalized, targeted ads based on the users’ interests.

However, initiating the advertisement for the first time via Tiktok must be directly negotiated with the administration of the page, which is possible only for large brands.

How to use Tiktok

If you do not know how to start your account, you can read this useful article on Hootsuite.