4 Reasons and 4 Steps to Start Marketing on Tiktok

It is unarguable that Tiktok is getting more and more popular for entertainment and marketing purposes. Everytime we scroll our social media, whether it is Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, at least one Tiktok video is slipped in our timeline. Some businesses and brands see this as an opportunity to connect with their current customers or potential customers. However, many are still hesitant to get into the Tiktok platform due to various rationales such as unclear algorithms, uncertainty about targeting consumers, and doubting the conversion rates from making Tiktok videos.

In this blog post, I will provide answers to reduce hesitancy and uncertainties regarding TikTok, by giving you 4 reasons you should start using the Tiktok platform and the 4 initial steps that you should take to start building your TikTok marketing strategy!

Reasons to start marketing on TikTok

Many of you may be asking, why Tiktok? What benefits can my brand get? Will my brand be able to fit Tiktok users? Pay attention to these reasons!

1. TikTok has a highly growing active users

Now, let’s talk a bit of statistics.

Firstly, TikTok has a significantly growing user base, reaching 198.85 million users by May 2020, available in 154 countries

TikTok users are very active, logging in up to 8 times a day with an average daily time spent up to 45 minutes. Imagine how you can be exposed to such active users!

If you think TikTok only has young audiences, then you are wrong. Users of age group 30-49 accounted for 30% for the total US TikTok users, showing that there is a further potential growth in older populations to be active in TikTok.

Yes, TikTok is dominated by younger users and that is what you should target as for now. However, Instagram and Youtube also started with niche young audiences, and now are widely used among any age groups as creative contents are roaring.

2. TikTok is great for your brand’s awareness

Tiktok is known for their tricky and random algorithm. However, you can think of this as an opportunity. Despite the ‘randomness’ of TikTok algorithm, follower count or previous videos performances are not direct factors in the recommendation system.

For the extreme case, you can gain 2 million views with 0 followers within 24 hours when you do the right thing.

This is why TikTok is known as the tiptop of the social media funnel!

3. High level of Engagement Rates per post

As a digital marketer, having a high engagement rate is desirable to connect with more customers and reach more potential customers.

It is found that TikTok engagement rate in terms of influencer marketing is the highest compared to Instagram and Twitter, ranging between 5.3% to 9.38%, depending on the number of followers. According to the general rule of thumb, an engagement rate of 3.5%-6% is high for instagram, and rate of 0.5%-1 is high for Twitter and Facebook. Therefore, TikTok is a social media platform that has a high engagement rate in general, which is favorable for your marketing strategy.

4. TikTok Benefits compared to Instagram and Facebook

The first benefit of TikTok compared to other social media platforms is, you don’t need to be a professional videographer, photographer, or marketer to succeed. Instagram influencers usually represent their best versions by using Photoshop or Premiere Pro, but TikTok influencers are just being themselves.  You just need to have fun with your contents and understand the TikTok culture which I will explain in the next section.

Secondly, TikTok’s creator toolbox is their technical advantage. Users are able to record and edit videos, have access to hundreds of filters and effects, and a music bank. Moreover, the system is considered user-friendly.

Thirdly, TikTok encourages co-creation rather than a ‘look at me’ factor that Instagram and Facebook have. It is well known that customer co-creation is one of the key objectives for digital marketers in order to increase connection with customers and gain more engagement. Well, TikTok is definitely the place! As an example, Guess did the #InMyDenim challenge that resulted in 5,550 user-generated videos, 10.5 million video views, 14.3% engagement rate and over 12,000 additional followers for Guess’ TikTok Account.

Steps to start marketing on TikTok

Now, once you’re convinced, the next questions will be ‘How do I start Tiktok Marketing?’, ‘How does Tiktok algorithm work?’, ‘How to make appealing Tiktok videos?’. Here are our suggestions.

1. Know the Tiktok culture and your target market

If you’re a newbie on Tiktok, then you should definitely understand the Tiktok culture. This means, you should spend a lot of time on the ‘for you page’ and watch the videos, memes, jokes, trends, and most importantly, the popular songs. You might as well pay attention to Tiktok videos that get uploaded in other social medias and acknowledge why they are shared cross-platforms.

Here is an example from Spikeball that created a TikTok video of  #DadsOfTikTok trend

2. Know your goals

Before making your videos, you should know what your objective is for making them. Ask yourselves these questions: ‘Do I want brand awareness?’ or ‘do I need conversions? Or traffic?’. This is important as a starting point to guide your content creating process.

TikTok Business Help Center classifies objectives into 5, namely reach, traffic, video views, app-install, and conversions. The table below gives you an overview of these objectives, then try to think of the organic way to achieve these goals.

3. Make your videos

Now, this is the part that you have been anticipating for.

Making TikTok videos does not require you to be a professional videographer. “If you have a phone, you can make TikTok videos”.

Here are few rule-of-thumbs in Tiktok video-making:

• Stick with the vertical video orientation. There is no point in making landscape videos unless you are being creative and are trying to differentiate yourself with the different orientation, although I have never watched any landscape videos. (Please let me know in the comments if you know interesting landscape videos on Tiktok!)
• “Make TikToks, not ads”. This means you should conform to the TikTok culture where hard-selling is ‘prohibited’, and using popular songs are prescribed.
• Use texts and/or voiceovers. This helps people to be more engaged with your video. Uniquely, I sometimes spend more time in videos that use texts as explanation, because the text duration is too fast and I will need to repeat the video over and over again. This is an anomaly in Tiktok videos, but you have to be extra careful by putting in texts that stimulate curiosity, or it can perform the opposite.
• Your first 3 seconds determines your video performance. Since humans have limited attention span, initial impression is crucial in making people stay for the rest of your video.
• Be consistent and keep experimenting! TikTok algorithm is known to be tricky and quite random. That’s why, you will have to keep experimenting to find the suitable video type for your business and do not stop experimenting. However, some say that if you make videos daily, TikTok algorithm will boost your video performances.

Remember that these are only rules of thumb. You should explore and experiment more in order for your videos to succeed!

4. Use Tiktok Influencers

This step is optional, but I can assure you that TikTok influencers are very prominent in this platform.

Some benefits from collaborating with TikTok influencers are:

• They have their own TikTok ‘tribe’ and you can leverage their reach
• Unlike instagram influencers, we can assess the analytics such as number of views, comments, shares, and engagement rates.
• Good soft selling strategy. Most TikTok influencers are experienced in making creative videos, so your product can be

In selecting the influencers, you must pay attention to their location base, their content topics, reach, and the target audience. It is important to deep dive and investigate if they could be a good fit by watching their contents and assessing their analytics through the Creator Marketplace or shoutcart.

So, you have known some reasons why TikTok is a must try for your digital marketing strategy and how you can start approaching it. Now, download the app and start having fun experimenting with it!

Other useful TikTok references:

• TikTok – https://www.statista.com/
• 50 TikTok Stats That Will Blow Your Mind – https://influencermarketinghub.com/
• TikTok Revenue and Usage Statistics – https://www.businessofapps.com/
• TikTok Marketing Guide – https://calebdueck.co/tiktok-marketing-guide/
• The TikTok Marketing Podcast (Caleb Dueck) – https://open.spotify.com/
• TikTok Marketing Podcast (Sam Kaufman & Joel Lowinger) – https://open.spotify.com/
• TikTok Business Help Center – https://ads.tiktok.com/