15 min read
| July 12, 2020
Nowadays, digital world is changing faster and faster every day and an example of this growth can be noticed precisely in video posts, which has quickly become all ages favorite way of posting on social media. This is shown precisely on a certain social network, in which teens express their creativity to the fullest creating and consuming new video formats. We are talking about TikTok, formerly know as Musical.ly, an app that enhances video format.
You can post videos in all social networks, but out of all of them only Tiktok has being able to positionate itself not only as the top social network video-wise, but also as the teenager’s favorite.
What is TikTok?
TikTok started in 2016 as a video platform in which people could share and edit videos. Ever since then, there has been an outstanding growth and it is now present in over 150 countries.
This social network could be defined as a combination between Vine and Snapchat because it is possible to discover, create and share short videos, that go from 15 seconds up to 1 minute. These short videos are edited by the users using the app’s tools, which leads to very creative and dynamic publications.
TikTok has been creating expectations recently, specially during the last few months, and keeps growing every day.
TikTok’s beginnings and its great success among Generation Z
In order to understand TikTok’s history better, we need to go back 4 years, to 2016, when ByteDance was created, the Chinese technology company that launched the app. The key moment was the following year, in 2017, when the company that created Tiktok bought Musical.ly, a social network specialized in videos and streamings that allowed users to create and share short videos using effects, filters and music. This purchase worth 1.000 million dollars, made the influencers known as musers (Musical.ly influencers) end up disappearing.
Little by little, this app kept growing and in that year it became one of the most downloaded apps in the United States. Among other things, this success was possible because American celebrities started using it, like Jimmy Fallon who mentioned the app in one of his programs.
TikTok progressively grew until 2018, at this time it had over 80 million downloads in the United States and over 800 million in the rest of the world, it was available in 75 languages and had presence in over 150 countries worldwide.
In comparison with other social networks, Tiktok began to have more registered users than, for instance, Twitter or Snapchat. And it wasn’t just that, Tiktok users were considered pretty active, they used the app an average of 52 minutes per day, which corresponds to 1.000 million videos watches a day. Currently we could say that TikTok is the second most downloaded app after Instagram.
One of the key elements for any social network is its search and recommendation algorithm, in other words, the determination of which content will become relevant and which will not. This algorithm is the one in charge of choosing the most powerful publications so that most users get to see them; taking not only relevance, interests and preferences into consideration, but also profiles, contacts, etc. This formula allows users to connect with others and also the discovery of new content, a key element to achieve a fulfilling experience using the social network and also for brands to reach their desired target.
Tiktok’s success resides on it unique, authentic and fun content that rejects fake, perfect and calculated videos, and that is, in fact, what the audience likes: the fun and naturalness. We can’t deny this social network popularity is increasing day by day, and these kind of numbers can give us a slight idea of its huge impact:
- At the start of 2020, Tiktok already had 800 million users becoming the most popular Chinese app in the occidental market.
- Up until the end of 2019, the app had been downloaded 1.500 million times across the globe through App Store and Google Play, according to SensorTower.
- BusinessofApps states that Tiktokers spend an average of 52 minutes using the app a day.
- There are 2.7 million TikTok users in Spain who spend an average of 31 minutes a day on the app.
- This social networks has pretty good engagement and permanence, so everything indicates that this is only the beginning.
- Tiktok has conquered a big part of the youth worldwide, 41% of the users are between 16 and 24 years old, according to Globalwebindex in 2019.
And this last point is indeed very important, how well do we know TikTok’s audience? In order to get a bigger picture of the reason why a lot of influencers are now taking over Tiktok, it is important to understand that the biggest group of users in social media are the youngest generations (Gen Z and Millennials)
We identify the largest group of Tiktok users to be between 16 and 24 years old. The app has over 500 million users and a big percentage of those users are youngsters. According to Marketing News, 20% of the users are between 13 and 18 years old, being considered as “heavy users”.
Fernanda González, working for Merca2.0 magazine, talks about the studies which confirm that Tiktok overcame Instagram conquering Generation Z. Qustodio worked on a study in which they analyzed online habits of 4 to 15 year old audience. That report stated that by February 2020, the top 3 chart was:
- Instagram with a 48% participation rate.
- TikTok with a 38% participation rate.
- Snapchat with a 24% participation rate.
However, during quarantine, Tiktok defeated Instagram participation wise. Youngsters, during this time of social distancing, spent an average of 75 minutes a day on Youtube and 71 on TikTok.
Regardless, this doesn’t mean that Tiktok is just trendy for Generation Z; little by little other groups of ages are getting in it, even during the latest months celebrities worldwide have joined TikTok and it has become their favorite way of killing time.
A clear example of this is one of the most important influencers at the moment, Kylie Jenner. Jenner has always found the ways of blending in with the appropriate channel to reach her audience: in the beginning she took advantage of Snapchat, then Instagram y nowadays she’s showing her products via TikTok.
Since Tiktok was born in 2018, it has evolved from a video creation app whose only goal was for users to express their creativity, to now, in 2020, a marketing and advertising paradise. Many more updates are coming for Tiktok this year, because video format has dragged a lot of brands to it due to the high intention of purchase.
What are its advertising solutions? What advertising formats does Tiktok offer?
During the last year, brands have realized that Tiktok was the correct medium to reach their target, and this doesn’t happen because they have the brightest ad or because they have a popular face working on the campaign, but because its ability to connect with users through feelings, actions and sounds.
“With Tiktok For Business, our goal is to give marketing professionals the tools to be discovered and the ability to connect with big communities surrounding them” says Katie Puris, TikTok’s Global Business Marketing.
TikTok advertising has different ad formats available:
Biddable Ads
Biddable Ads on TikTok will allow you to bid on advertising space within the social network. At the moment, bids are made manually, this means, it is not an advertising solution you can schedule.
There are three different price plans:
- CPC (cost per clic)
- CPM (cost per mille)
- CPV (cost per view)
You can segment your ads by age, gender and location, and it is expected that very soon there will also be the opportunity to segment the audience by behaviours and interests among others.
Formats that require a representative
In order to use these formats, you will need to have a bigger budget and hire a person through Tiktok advertising. This kind of advertising can be:
- Brand Takeover: This is a big format ad that appears to the users every time they get in the app. It is limited to one advertiser per day.
- Hashtag Challenge: This kind of campaigns allows brands to launch a challenge on a video and encourage their audience to try it on their own profiles using an specific hashtag. This format is very interesting because it takes advantage of virality and the content created by the users.
- Branded Lenses: Using this format, brands can create their own personalized augmented reality filters so that users can introduce it in their contents, very much like Snapchat and Instagram Stories.
Influencer Marketing on TikTok
Brand collaborations with influencers are a powerful way of taking advantage of the creators’ creativity and community they’ve built. In order to encourage these collaborations between brands and creators, TikTok is now testing a new platform called “Creator Marketplace” in some regions of the world. It is a beta version for now that is only available in certain countries, so it is not working 100% at the moment. In this “Creator Marketplace” on Tiktok, brands can discover and partner with content creators in order to work on paid campaigns and by so grow their brand awareness and gain new clients.
For instance, a successful Tiktok campaign was the one done by Donettes. Bimbo’s brand launched a limited edition in which all Donettes seemed the same, however two of them stained the eater’s tongue. In order for this new product to be known, the brand went for Tiktok and the hashtag #donettesmatchchallenge, launching a challenge so that the younger generations would interact with the brand.
How can I find the best tiktokers to reach my target?
When investing in Influencer Marketing optimizing your budget is key, and in order to do this you have to work with the appropriate influencers that will reach your desired target. Because of this, finding the right influencers is fundamental to achieve your goals.
Using Influencity search engine, you’ll be able to find these influencers in a matter of seconds when running global searches among more than 130 million TikTok profiles, basing your searches on your audience’s interests, age, gender and location between others.
There is no doubt that influencer marketing is going to focus on Tiktok sooner than later because it is already having very good results. The key point is brands defining their target audience and finding it in the suitable platform.
Tiktok stands out for not having the difficulty to reach young audience, and also for having the ability to reach the users in a different and interactive way. Tiktok has proven to be an essential influencer marketing tool for most brands.
Due to Tiktok being an open platform in which anybody can be discovered, we can see that the culture, tendencies and content that is created ends up being shared worldwide with the possibility of becoming viral. That is the reason why this social network has become the perfect opportunity for brands to create a great work and become part of the community and their experience.
Tiktok is here to stay, so we should familiarize ourselves with the app in order to get the most out of this authentic format.