TikTok’s meteoric rise to prominence as one of the world’s most downloaded applications came as something of a surprise. For its debut, it was a video-sharing app, known as Douyin in China and TikTok elsewhere. In 2018, however, it acquired Musical.ly, the more popular app, and began integrating all of Musical.ly’s non-Chinese users into the TikTok platform. In its own country, the business continues to run Douyin as a standalone app. It’s no wonder that marketers have started to see the platform’s potential. Here you’ll find some recommendations on how businesses should best appeal to the youthful users of the video-sharing platform TikTok.
TikTok is…
Short videos are highly encouraged on the video sharing app TikTok. The vast majority of the content published to Musical.ly consisted of individuals lip-syncing to popular songs. The platform’s influencers are the members who have demonstrated the most skill, enthusiasm, and technical proficiency through uploading videos of original material.
How Popular Is TikTok Among Users?
Musciall.ly mostly aimed towards women of the Z generation. It’s too soon to tell if TikTok will actually bring about any positive change. However, the majority of its users (66%) are still under the age of 30. On TikTok, females make up a sizable majority.
Countless people throughout the world use it, but it’s most popular in the United States and India (and, in the shape of Douyin, China). A total of 400,000,000 unique users access Douyin every month.
Since 2017, Douyin has been serving the Chinese market. Around fifty percent of its early users were under the age of twenty-four. The average age of Douyin users has increased with time, perhaps because the earliest adopters of the platform are still using it now. Only 31.8% of Douyin users in February 2018 were younger than 24 years old, with another 23.4% in the 25-30 age range and another 23.4% in the 31-35 age range. In the future, it will be fascinating to observe whether or if the popularity of TikTok follows a similar trajectory in countries outside of China.
Instagram’s Hashtag Challenges
TikTok’s community lives and dies by its challenges. TikTok members frequently respond to challenges with new videos. To make these competitions more distinctive and searchable, they are sometimes given a #-tag designation.
U.S. television host Jimmy Fallon’s #tumbleweedchallenge became maybe the most viral version of the game. He issued a dare for people to film themselves falling to the ground and rolling about like tumbleweed to the tune of western music. As a result, we received over 8,000 entries and 10,4 million total clicks. Since then, Jimmy Fallon has kept giving back TikTok challenges.
TikTok hashtag challenges may also be promoted by brands. To get your #hashtag challenge off the ground, you should definitely collaborate with influencers unless your company already has a successful TikTok channel. TikTok makes it easy for users to join #hashtag challenges with only a few taps.
Created by the Users, For the Users
Again, companies may do this form of marketing from their own TikTok channel, or they can collaborate with influencers to get their followers to make UGC promoting the brand.
Younger people nowadays (those born after 1995) value immersive experiences. This is because they find passively consuming TV on their couch unappealing. The members of Generation Z would much rather be actively involved.
Customers are more inclined to support your business if they are able to easily and publicly demonstrate their enjoyment of your items through video.
Old-Fashioned Methods of Influencer Promotion
Naturally, much as on other video-based platforms like YouTube, influence marketing strategies that have proven successful there may also be implemented successfully on TikTok. Your TikTok influencer campaign will be successful if your product is a good fit for the influencer’s followers. Leave content creation to the influencers, since they have a better idea of what will resonate with their audience.
In many cases, all a company needs to do is ask an influencer to film a short clip of themselves using or displaying the sponsored product. Again, this strategy will only be effective if the influencer is similar to the target audience. Trying to persuade an influencer to endorse a bad product is a waste of time. You won’t be able to make a profit selling hearing aids or retirement homes on TikTok.
Promoted Videos on TikTok
While TikTok has dabbled in marketing over the last year, no official revenue-sharing structure has been put in place as of yet. However, they are nearly to the stage where more individuals will be allowed to advertise on the website. In January of 2019, they initiated the use of shorter advertisements.