TikTok – The Latest Social Media Craze. How can it help your Business?

By now, you must have heard about TikTok. If you're interested to learn even more about this latest social media craze, beyond it being an app that kids use to create and watch videos. For those among us who need to be brought up to speed, let’s take a quick delve into the world of TikTok - and how it can help your business. 

TikTok Explained

Let’s start with the basics - TikTok is an extremely popular social media app. Its users create short-form, usually (but not exclusively) music-focused videos and edit them with lenses, filters, sound bites and augmented reality features. User videos can be a maximum of 15 seconds long, or longer if these clips are grouped together.

Frequently described as an amalgamation of Vine, Twitter and Instagram, collaborations with other users is a major factor in the TikTok experience. Users can “split-screen duet” with fellow users by replying to their video, which culminates in long and spectacular collaborative threads of videos from thousands of different users.

All of the above (and much more) come together to make TikTok a whole lot of fun to use, and go a long way to explaining its explosion in popularity. It has completely captivated its users. As a platform it thrives on being addictive and having that all-important “binge-watching” factor.

Originally known as Musical.ly, TikTok has slipped seamlessly into the considerable void left by the untimely demise of Vine in January 2017. September 2018 saw TikTok surpass Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat for monthly installs in the App Store. Since then, it has been downloaded billions of times, with users across the globe. It has over 800 million monthly users (considerably ahead of Twitter and Snapchat) and that number continues to grow rapidly. Thanks to the runaway success of TikTok, its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is now valued a whopping $75 billion. These are some serious numbers we’re talking about here.

TikTok Marketing Opportunities

With 66% of TikTok’s users being younger than 30-years-old, the platform represents a unique opportunity for businesses to target the attention of the notoriously hard-to-reach Generation Z. Who are Generation Z you may ask? Well, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines Generation Z as “the generation of people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s”.

So, what types of advertisements are available for businesses to utilise on TikTok? The platform supports four types:

In-feed Native Advertising – Think along the lines of Snapchat or Instagram story ads. These will be 9-15 seconds long, will play full screen, appear in a user’s feed, and are skippable. This is the most affordable choice for most brands  looking to advertise on TikTok. 

Brand Takeover – This is highly competitive, as it allows one brand to take over the app’s launch screen for a day. These ads will be full screen, up to 5 seconds long, and will consist of static, animated or video images that display when the user opens the app. Based on its exclusivity, the budget needed to secure such an ad is costly. 

Hashtag Challenges – Thus far, these interactive challenges are proving to be the most popular and successful of the TikTok advertisement categories. Basically, a business can create a hashtag which entices users to create posts around the theme, usually with a prizes awarded for the best and most creative entries. Dubai’s own Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DDTCM) utilised this method in July 2019 with the phenomenally successful #ThisisDubai campaign. DDTCM created stickers with Dubai-themed music and invited users to capture videos all over the city. 9,800 videos were created by TikTok users and those videos were viewed over 30 million times. Jaw-dropping statistics. It is a fantastic opportunity to encourage people to interact with your campaign, rather than to simply engage with it.

Branded lenses – These are much like Snapchat's 2D and 3D lenses for photos and facial recognition filters. TikTok’s version follows similar principals.

The Rising Role of TikTok Influencers

Following in the footsteps of Instagram influencers, certain members on TikTok have established themselves are popular people to follow, to the point of gaining followings outside of the app and building careers based on their collaborative earnings with brands. 

While TikTok already has notable influencers, this is still growing. Securing the services of a TikTok influencer can come at an absolute fraction of the whopping cost that Instagram influencers do, with a higher potential of generating viral content. There’s bang to be had for your buck here. Take the  example of a music label (via an agency) using just 5 TikTok influencers to promote one of their artist’s new songs. The campaign reached 20 million users, produced over 1000 videos and garnered 1.3 million views using the hashtag #MoneyDanceChallenge. In total, the artist’s song reached 8 million views. These are mind-blowing figures achieved at impressively low costs.

TikTok – The Future

All the signs point to TikTok continuing its rapid and immense growth. Businesses are waking up to the power of advertising on a platform that will secure them the holy grail that is the attention of Gen Z, and beyond as the app begins to attract users of older generations too.

UAE-based brands such as Dubai Mall, Skydive Dubai, and the Palazzo Versace Dubai have already embraced and utilised TikTok to their considerable benefit. Other businesses in the MENA region could and should do the same.

TikTok represents a rare opportunity to market directly to a generation on the cusp of becoming tomorrow’s mass consumers. It’s an opportunity not to be missed.

We at Nexa can help you develop your social media strategy and TikTok Marketing Strategy to help you get the most out of TikTok for your business.

Chat with us to get started.