Capturing and maintaining the interest of the youth for a few minutes is as difficult as asking a toddler to sit in a particular place for some time.

Mission Impossible, we know.

Well, TikTok, a recently popularised app has succeeded in doing the impossible. Don’t wrinkle your nose, there is so much more to TikTok other than the cringe-worthy videos.

It not only entertains the users but also aids your brand’s necessity to advertise. It helps your brand gain more traffic onto your site and increase brand awareness.

TikTok, the up and coming social platform that has many useful tricks up its sleeve. In order to understand how exactly it helps the marketers, let us dig deeper into the ever-expanding world of TikTok.

Presenting to you, a bag full of surprises: TikTok

TikTok, a social media platform owned by ’Bytedance’, was first launched in 2016 in China under the name of ‘Douyin’. It was developed in 200 days and reached 1 million users within a year. Later it entered the international market in 2018 and is available across 150 markets in 75 languages.

Bytedance later acquired ‘musical.ly’ for 1 billion dollars, allowing TikTok users to create short lip-sync and comic videos.

But how exactly does it work?

Video creators on TikTok can share 15 or 60 seconds videos with feature music in the background that can be further enhanced to the desired effect. The video can be edited using an array of filters and effects present in the app.

TikTok has captured the interest of millions of people across the world with a penchant for going on a video watching spree.

Moreover, TikTok recently added Artificial Intelligence to analyze its user’s interests and preferences. Considering their interactions with the videos, a personalized content feed for each user is displayed. 

Again how does this help the marketers build your brand?

Before marketing a brand, knowing the statistics of a social media platform makes for effective promotion. Below are the few numbers that define the stats of TikTok.

• Over 1.5 billion people use TikTok, spending an average time of 52 minutes every day.
• It has surpassed Twitter, Snapchat in terms of popularity.
• As of early 2019, TikTok is the third most downloaded app globally.
• 66% of worldwide users fall under the age of 24-30.
• It is available in 155 countries and 75 languages.
• It has 120 million monthly users in India.
• 56% of females and 43% of males use TikTok.

With over 500 million active users, TikTok is a dream come true for the marketers. It offers a unique platform where every business is given absolute creative freedom to promote their content in their own terms of expression.

TikTok provides a wide array of opportunities for promoting a brand but if keenly observed, not every business is benefited from this platform. To understand this divide, there are two important aspects that should be taken into consideration: Affordability & Audiences.

Affordability:

The premium rate for a TikTok campaign is $500, which might not be an issue for large scale businesses but might raise problems for startups or low budget businesses.

Audiences:

As stated above, 66% of the TikTok users fall under the age of 24-30, making it advantageous for brands targeting younger audiences. Marketing a brand for the older audience might not be very productive in this media.

If you deem that your brand fulfills the above aspects, let’s learn how this whole process works.

Types of TikTok Ads:

There are many types of TikTok Ads to choose from depending upon the business requirements,

• Infeed Native Video: It is a directly paid option, where the brand pays to get its content promoted outside its own media platform. It is more information based promotion rather than a product-based promotion. When the user clicks on the video ad, they are taken to the required website or app.
• Brand Takeovers: These ads show up as soon as the user opens the app and takes the interested user to the website or app when they click on it. Only a single brand gets an opportunity to promote their brand in this way, so posting a captivating ad is important.
• Influencer Marketing: This is an indirect way of marketing a brand, where a notable or famous person promotes the required message in their account. This is one of the best ways to approach a specific market crowd.
• Hashtag Ads: It is the simplest way of getting users or fans to interact with a particular brand. The user posts their own picture with the hashtag the brand has chosen to promote its product. Catcher hashtags gain the most popular in this kind of marketing strategy.
• Branded Filters: These TikTok Ads convey the brand’s message in a unique and innovative technique, which increases the user or consumer desire to know more about the brand’s product.

Apart from these varieties of options for promoting a brand, recently an additional misuse and harassment check was added, making it effective to the marketers.

The final step of the process is posting the campaign, easy-peasy!

Step 1: Create a TikTok Ad account

Step 2: Click on ‘Create Ad’ campaign

Step 3: Customize your requirements like ad placements, details, targeting and ad spend.

Step 4: Select the start date and end date

Step 5: Upload your content or product and payment

The client gets notified within 24 hours when the campaign is live and later receives an excel report on campaign statistics.

Hustle and Bustle of TikTok in the Indian Market:

Despite the recent ban on TikTok in India, it is still the fastest growing social media app. It has seen phenomenal growth in the Indian market, giving marketers an opening to reach the users living in smaller cities.

Furthermore, TikTok supports 15 Indian languages, removing any language barrier and making it more popular in tier 2 and tier 3 cities of the country.

From a marketing perspective, Indian brands can use this opportunity to fuel up the company’s growth. As TikTok gained immense popularity and users in the Indian market, the parent company Bytedance has announced setting up a new data center in India.

Many Indian companies are also turning to ‘Influencers’ to market their product and this option is widely popular in TikTok, making it a key tool in marketing.

It is safe to say that, TikTok with its warp-speed development in the advertising sector, may prove to be one of the best ways to market your brand.

We at The Go-To Guy!, through our avid know-how of this app and other social media platforms get into the field for you. This not only helps your brand reach millions of users but also generates the curiosity to explore your offerings.