TikTok managed to dominate social media trends in 2020 and 2021 armed with addictive short videos and various viral challenges. Until now, the accelerated growth of this application has not shown any signs of decreasing at all.
In February 2019, TikTok was successfully downloaded by 1 billion users. As of April 2020, the most popular short video application has been downloaded 2 billion times from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. In other words, TikTok managed to double the number of its users in just one year.
If these numbers are still not convincing enough to express the power of TikTok, check out the next stats. In the first quarter of 2020, TikTok secured 315 million downloads from various parts of the world. With such a large number, TikTok became the application with the most number of downloads in one quarter.
For marketers, the rapid growth of the TikTok application is very tempting. Seeing this trend, good marketers should have started to question how to take advantage of TikTok’s popularity as a means of promoting their products or services.
Utilize TikTok as a Marketing Platform for Your Brand
There are three common ways that brands use to market their products through TikTok, namely:
- Brands can create their own channel accounts and regularly upload video content on the channel.
- Brands can work with influencers to spread the content of their products or services to a wider audience.
- Brands can run TikTok Ads.
What Makes TikTok Different from Other Marketing Platforms?
At first glance, there doesn’t seem to be any difference in terms of using TikTok as a means of promotion when compared to other video-based platforms, YouTube for example. However, the uniqueness of TikTok can be identified by looking further into the available content.
In the TikTok application, trending challenge content and memes usually have popular hashtags. Through these forms of content (challenges and memes), brands have the opportunity to take advantage of current trends to interact with consumers in a more interesting and interactive way.
TikTok is known as a social media platform that is used to find entertainment and share creative ideas. This special character later became one of the reasons why TikTok is getting more and more popular in the midst of a pandemic like this.
As with other platforms, influencers can be the right choice to promote a campaign on social media. The campaign will be helped by influencers who can direct the attention of their fans toward your brand.
However, there are a few things to consider if you plan to use influencers on the TikTok app. Given that 41% of TikTok users are teenagers with a general category of 16 to 24 years, brands need to be more careful in planning strategies, approaches, and selecting influencers.
4 TikTok Marketing Tips You Can Apply Immediately
Hashtag Challenge
Hashtag challenges can be a powerful trick to stimulate consumer engagement with your brand. In an easy and fun way, you can invite consumers to take on the challenges you create while increasing brand awareness of your business.
Behind the Scene Content
There may be some brands that find it difficult to find interesting angles from their business to serve as content. With the help of TikTok, brands can package their personas in more intimate and creative packaging. TikTok’s short video format can be a great way to show interesting behind-the-scenes moments from your business.
Video Tutorials
If your brand has a product that requires steps to use or a service that requires an explanation of the usage process, then TikTok can be the answer. You can show user-friendly instructional videos on your account channel.
Instructional videos are also a great way to build engagement with consumers after or before a transaction.
User-Generated Content
One of the advantages of user-generated content (UGC) is that it offers social proof of your brand. Showing that the product or service you offer is used by many people can increase the credibility of your brand.
Invite your customers to upload their interactions with the products or services you offer. You can also ask influencers for help to get their fans to create user-generated content that supports your brand.
After you know more about tips for using TikTok for social media marketing, it’s time for you to decide whether you should include TikTok in your next marketing strategy?
But remember TikTok has a very specific demographic, so keep your content light and fun if you are interested in using TikTok as a marketing strategy.