TikTok. Yes! The same mobile phone application that is fueled by teenagers, youngsters, and all creative people from everywhere around the world, dancing and showcasing their artistic moves.
The former Musical.ly app collected an enormous amount of popularity in 3 years. Musical.ly was bought over by a Chinese company known as ByteDance back in the year 2016. The app has now turned into the most downloaded app available in 2019 but is now known by the name of TikTok.
TikTok and its popularity have caught everyone’s eyes. Plus influencers from all around the world have also been keeping their eyes on figuring out several marketing strategies to stay atop the game. Marketing strategies for TikTok is the only talk that is hip amongst the marketers. This is all because of the effectiveness of the application and its features.
With all the byte-sized videos and the content, it is sure that the brands will be able to grow more with sponsoring. And if sponsoring is too soon a step for influencers and marketers, there are all the 500 million active users online who are ready to engage into the 15 seconds dubsmash videos with lip-syncing at its best. It even has other features that make the application a highlight, but we will talk about them later.
For now, let’s talk about TikTok and how marketing can be done on the application?
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a free application which grew in popularity like a flame. It is an amalgamated package of vines, Twitter, and also the features from the app, Instagram with features ranges from all the applications mentioned above.
Once you sign into the app, you get to see small 15 second videos, follow people you are interested in and like the videos you find creative. These 15-second videos can easily be created using filters, effects, and a duration tab that you can use to change the speed of the video. This makes the videos come out as slow- motion or fast forward, etc.
Unlike dubsmash, the application is no longer a karaoke application but an application to express yourself using trending music and dialogues. It is the right place where teenagers have started feeling more secure and creative, showcasing their inventiveness.
TikTok App Downloads:
TikTok, after all these years, has become the most downloaded app breaking the records. You will not be surprised to know that TikTok has been downloaded over 1 billion times, with 41 percent of the users aged between 14 to 24. Even more than Instagram this year.
It has over 500 million monthly users, surpassing the numbers every day. So much that, the application has risen to the charts of the application Store, turning into the fourth most downloaded app in 2018, which is a non- game app.
TikTok and its popularity have caught everyone’s eyes. Plus influencers from all around the world have also been keeping their eyes on figuring out several marketing strategies to stay atop the game. Marketing strategies for TikTok is the only talk that is hip amongst the marketers and influencers.
A lot of artists have started making money already as well. Apart from the ones who are still learning to market themselves and becoming influencers on the application. This is all because of the effectiveness of TikTok and its features.
TikTok Hashtag Challenges:
With all the byte-sized videos and the content, it is sure that the brands will be able to grow more with sponsoring. Not just small brands, biggies like GUESS also utilized the application TikTok for launching their first-ever fashion takeover. They even marked a hashtag on their campaign that got over 37.4 million views.
Google also has a hashtag campaign running on TikTok #HeyGoogleHelp on the home page of the TikTok. The campaign has attracted views over 156.7 million, now. Even TikTok has its campaigns that run continuously to market themselves.
Here users create viral videos, some of them becoming sensations on the application attracting marketers. Marketers love substantial engagement, and hence, sponsorship and more video creation happen, most of the videos that become sponsored, later.
Want to become a TikTok marketer yourself and create a TikTok strategy for yourself? Let’s dive into these ways that can help you market yourself better.
Tiktok Marketing Strategy for Business:
1. Creating a hashtag campaign or TikTok challenges.:
Challenges are enormous on TikTok, and so are the hashtag campaigns. Utilizing them will be an excellent way for the brand for creating awareness about their business and also increase engagement. As more and more users on TikTok shall use the hashtag campaigns, so will the outreach and engagement increase. Right now Guess, and Google did. But some bullet points are to be considered before going ahead with creating hashtag campaigns and challenges.
They are:
- Ensure the challenges you create as a marketer are difficult. The challenges should not be elementary for everyone to do it. This will make people engage more. A simple example of taking here will be Jimmy Fallon’s #tumbleweedchallenge. That challenge was quite tricky. Not many people were able to do it out in the open. That is how a challenge is supposed to be. People love to show around all the problematic things that they do, and a difficult challenge will be the right place for them to showcase it.
- Allow users to bring in their creativity. Users love it when they have the flexibility to experiment. If you as a marketer give them a challenge that lets them the power to bring in innovativeness in and act all experimental, nothing like it! Enabling users the ability to create will bring in more participation. Hence, engagement and that’s precisely what we want? Don’t we?
2. Creating Duets:
A brilliant way to use the feature of a duet is to campaign or create one. The duet feature enables users to create a video using a familiar background sound with someone else. This gives people the impression that you are right beside another TikTok user.
Duets are tremendous, and they can be used efficiently by marketers to use their hashtag campaigns. A duet campaign can bring lots of engagement to the brand.
For example, How many of you remember the duet campaign “catch these blessings” with a hashtag, that was run by DJ Khaled? He is a big name in the pop music industry and playing along with his persona he shot a video of himself in TikTok giving appreciation and praise. He acted as if there is someone else in the frame too who he is appreciating.
The main idea of the hashtag campaign was to increase the engagement and attract users of the application to create duets with DJ Khaled.
3. Involving Influencers:
Just like Instagram and other social media applications, where influencers are utilized efficiently for paid sponsored content, a marketer on TikTok can also practice the same. Influencers are quite active on TikTok. Count in all the big names on Instagram, they all get a flaming response on the app.
TikTok marketing is reasonably easy if you utilize the talents of these influencers efficiently. Influencers can help you bring more engagement to the hashtag campaigns and advertise or promote your brand. However, the key lies in choosing the appropriate influencers for your brand.
Imagine if GUESS would have chosen food influencers instead of fashion for their campaign!
4. Creating scarcity in marketing:
Scarcity is significant. Especially if you are running a campaign or a discounted sale. Most showrooms and shops also give customers a limited time to shop the discounted products. Similarly. As a marketer on TikTok, you need to make sure that you implement scarcity in your campaign game plan.
Drawing a line in marketing campaigns entices more participation and engagement. In case a user has no constraints to finish a task, they might prolong it. And you cannot risk that with your campaign.
5. Stay true to your personality on the application:
Authenticity is the main reason why all users online trust you and also make an attempt to understand you better to like you. However, the application TikTok is about self-expression and being yourself; it may get muddy sometimes.
But brands need to make sure that they don’t turn shady or murky but stay true to their real self. The audience will love you if you remain authentic and genuine.
6. Build your community:
The community here means a recognized presence on the platform. The main motive of the brand should not be just one campaign or utilizing content creators and influencers to promote but help build an appearance on the platform.
Brands to establish themselves should establish an online presence, a family who love, trust, and appreciate the brand. The content should be realistic and relatable. Brands should be able to utilize the platform to draw attention to themselves and grow using the community they create.
Conclusion:
Marketing is huge on TikTok and especially now, with over 500 million global users, every month, brands and marketers have a lot of scope for returns. Not just marketers, influencers have it all at the tips of their fingers too.
Growing like a snowball in the digital space, we don’t think the application will be going anywhere or making a stop anytime soon. Instead, it will be spread like fire and take everyone in its clasp.
So, why don’t you hop in too? The tips we have mentioned will help you market your TikTok brand proficiently.
Trust us, this fire is a blessing in disguise.