Tik Tok, a platform that showcases short and often silly videos has gone viral as one of the most talked-about and used social media platforms particularly during the era of COVID-19.
As of 2019, Tik Tok was the 4th most downloaded app worldwide, with an estimated 800 million users offering 75 available languages across 150 countries. During this era of COVID-19, this platform has not only grown in the number of individual users but with business brands as well. While many brands are benefiting from the opportunity of being on the app, some other brands consider it as a platform of unseriousness and silliness hence, unwise to be on the platform. Tik Tok social media platform has the potential to help grow your business brand.
Taking a look at the back story of the other trending social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, they began by attracting younger audiences where mostly unserious chats, silly videos and text sharing took place. Now, these platforms are being used by business brands across the world to target their market audience or niche. These social media platforms have significantly eroded the traditional forms of marketing.
Tik Tok is therefore no different and therefore provides business brands with the opportunity to grow their businesses.
What Tik Tok can do for your business
Currently, Tik Tok had developed a marketing program for businesses irrespective of scale. Large, medium, and small scale businesses can take advantage of this business marketing program to grow their business. The platform offers 5 solutions.
- In-feed ads
These are 5-60 second advertisements that are optimized for conversion and are integrated into users’ “For You” feeds. It allows you to monitor traffic and conversion analytics.
- Branded hashtag challenge
This involves setting up a challenge by creating a video demonstration of the challenge. And through your sponsored hashtag, your challenge will be displayed on the Discover Page of millions of users.
Once users click on your customized banner to see the video demonstrations of the challenge they can then recreate your video using your hashtag, subsequently promoting your brand through user-generated content (UGC)
- Branded hashtag challenge plus
The Plus option allows businesses to make sales from the campaign through the Explore tab linked to your hashtag landing page.
- TopView & TopView Lite
This marketing design allows the business ad to take-over the full screen of users with no other distractions. When users open the app, Your ad will be the first thing they see. Internal and external links are also supported to facilitate landing page conversion.
- Branded effects
The platform allows businesses to create 2D, 3D, and AR branded effects that can be triggered by gestures. Once your branded effects are activated, your filter will be added in the top 10 trending list. Once users apply these effects and filters to their videos, they create brand awareness through UGC.
Planning the effective approach
Just like with the other social media platforms, before engaging users with your brands, you need thorough research to find out if your demographic is already on TikTok and if not, you need further research into how you would want to expand your demographics and introduce them to your brand.
Once that is done it’s time to jump onboard the Tik Tok train. However, unlike the other social media platforms where your seriousness can be displayed, Tik Tok is a platform for fun, so, your brand must showcase its fun and creative side to engage the audience.
Case studies
Huge brands such as Nike, the Washigton Posts and Netflix have taken to Tik Tok showcasing their fun side.
The Washington Post known for its world news reporting takes a more humorous approach on Tik Tok by sharing funny down to earth videos relating to current news and other trends.
Nike generates a lot of free advertisement on the platform through user-generated content. Branded hashtag challenges such as #TheReplay have been used by athletes and users alike which has generated a lot of buzz for the brand.
In conclusion, If your business has a much younger audience, then Tik Tok can be the perfect platform to grow your business.
