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If you’re looking to take your marketing strategy to the next level, TikTok is the platform your brand needs to consider.
Social media is an integral part of most marketing strategies today. That said, it can be challenging for marketers to keep up with which social media platforms are the most relevant.
One social media platform that has gained loads of popularity these past two years is TikTok.
Hate it or love it…
There’s no denying that TikTok is a cultural icon.
This isn’t a post to debate whether TikTok is good or bad. It’s not a post to debate whether TikTok has poor privacy policies or not. It’s not a post to debate ethics. It’s just a post meant to articulate the opportunity for marketers.
Does it come with some scandal?
No doubt.
But this article isn’t meant to cover that.
Here are some facts:
TikTok generated $4.6 billion in revenue in 2021 alone, a 142% increase from 2020, with most of its revenue coming from brands purchasing ads to reach a worldwide audience. That’s huge!
Given its growth alone, you might not want to skip out on this marketing opportunity.
What Is TikTok?
TikTok is a short-form video-sharing platform where you can create 15-second to 10-minute videos from your phone. All video recording and editing functions are available within the TikTok app. You can also save, like, comment, share, and stitch videos created by other content creators.
The importance of TikTok in marketing might surprise you. Firstly, TikTok’s algorithm is unique. On TikTok, every video has an equal chance of going viral, regardless of how popular the creator is. This allows for the rapid scaling of a social media presence, fast growth, and virtually unlimited marketing experimentation.
TikTok represents a key trend in social media that encourages creativity and collaboration among an array of audiences. Its fast-paced nature keeps users engaged for relatively long periods, spending an average of 52 minutes daily on the app.
In this post, I’ll be touching on what TikTok is, how TikTok is generating results for marketers today, and how to convert TikTok followers into leads.
Let’s dive in!
Why TikTok Is Generating Results For Marketers
Marketing is a universal struggle for many companies. Even though marketing can be broad and complex, at its core, it’s actually pretty simple. Strive to deliver value to your customers.
If you understand this philosophy around marketing, it makes it easier for you to succeed on TikTok. The key to success on TikTok is your ability as a marketer to create available content that your audience will likely share, engage with and talk about for weeks to come.
We like to talk often about what we call the 4Es of marketing and believe that these ideas can guide the direction of your strategy and content efforts to drive success.
Here’s a snapshot of what these items are and what they represent:
EMPOWERED: Content that elevates other people and celebrates them.
EDUCATE: Content that informs people about something for the first time.
ENGAGE: Content that stirs up a dialogue between people and/or customers.
ENTERTAIN: Content that leaves people feeling emotionally connected to you.
If you get these things right… You can win on almost any channel.
TikTok included.
But here’s why TikTok current is performing so well:
1.TikTok Taps Into Modern Consumer Preferences
We can collectively agree that it can be difficult to keep up with the times in the digital age. New trends, technologies, and platforms are continually rising, causing brands to struggle to keep up with their target audience.
It is going to be essential to keep up with the new and emerging marketing trends to address this pain point—social media in particular.
TikTok is the newest and most relevant social media platform and isn’t going away any time soon. Many businesses have already seen lots of success while using it for marketing short-form video content.
In fact, TikTok announced it reached 1 billion active users in just 4.9 years, which is huge.
Out of this 1 billion, 142.2 million people are based in North America.
To put this into perspective, Facebook (known as the king of social media) took 8.7 years to reach 1 billion. The numbers speak for themselves when it comes to TikTok’s growth.
2 .TikTok Is More Cost-Efficient For Driving Engagement
Multiple channels and avenues mean greater marketing expenses. Many small companies and startups lack the resources to keep up with the marketing efforts they need to succeed. Budget imbalances can occur due to difficulty in choosing what areas to prioritize and where to allocate money within a company.
A solution to this would be to advertise on more affordable marketing platforms. Fortunately enough, TikTok is completely free. As you can see from the previous statistic, there are a lot of people on TikTok. Aside from its large user base, TikTok also boasts incredible engagement rates.
Believe it or not, you don’t necessarily need to have a massive following to receive the highest engagement. Here is a breakdown of TikTok’s engagement rate based on follower count:
- 1,000 – 5,000 followers – 21.10%.
- 5,000 – 20,000 followers – 18.40%.
- 20,000 – 100,000 followers – 15.64%.
- 100,000 – 500,000 followers – 15.53%.
- 500,000 – 1,000,000 followers – 17.02%.
- 1,000,000 – 1,000,000+ followers – 17.28%.
There is not much of a difference in engagement between someone with 1000 TikTok followers and someone with 1 million TikTok followers. A user with fewer followers actually tends to get better engagement rates than a user with millions of followers. This is one of the reasons why TikTok is so powerful.
Every user and brand has an equal chance to succeed, so it’s not as intimidating as you might think.
3.TikTok Delivers Fast & Engaging Content
Every day, consumers are bombarded with thousands of subliminal messages. Your company’s message can easily get lost and unnoticed among thousands of other messages. This is why crafting the clearest and most concise message possible is so important.
TikTok is an amazing platform for getting messages across because it’s 100% video based. Communication is mainly based on text and photos on other platforms such as LinkedIn, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook. This means messages may be interpreted differently than intended or give the wrong impression. Creating videos on TikTok will enable your audience to hear your voice’s emotion and tone, helping them better understand your message.
According to TikTok’s latest data, 56 percent of users on TikTok feel more connected to brands that use TikTok because the content is much more ‘human’ and unfiltered than other platforms.
You even see brands like The Washington Post or Wendy’s commenting on other creators’ videos and interacting with their audience. TikTok is a great tool for attracting and connecting more people to your brand.
4.TikTok Influences Buyers To Swipe Their Credit Card
Generating traffic to a website is a major challenge for many businesses. Lead generation and tracking website leads are two of the best ways to grow your existing clients and gain new ones.
The lack of traffic to your website could be due to many things, such as an outdated website or targeting the wrong audience. But let’s focus on one major culprit: the lack of distribution on social media.
Keeping up with social media leads is one of the keys to staying competitive. Social media engagement can be achieved by providing your followers with a variety of educational, interesting, and interactive content, and TikTok is an excellent tool for achieving this.
According to Insider Intelligence, 20.6 percent of people who purchase products on social media do so through TikTok. On top of that, around 67 percent of users admitted that they feel more inspired to shop when they scroll through TikTok, even if they didn’t originally intend to. These statistics prove that users are likely to visit your website and make purchase decisions while on the app. If you’re looking to expand your reach, consider leveraging the app to proactively search people on TikTok who align with your brand for influencer collaborations, user generated content, or market research.
Turning TikTok Followers Into Customers
Every marketing strategy’s social media goal is to turn followers into paying customers.
So how can we achieve this on TikTok?
A key way to turn a follower into a customer is to engage with them.
Ensure you’re engaging back if you receive comments on your videos or direct messages. Whenever you respond to a customer on social media, you show them you care about their feedback. Engaging with your target audience encourages them to learn about your brand or product, or service, which is a sure way to get more customers.
Your video captions and account bio should include a link or call to action, while your bio should also include your brand logo as your profile image to maximize the visibility of your brand.
Using a CTA will increase your chances of getting users to take action on your TikTok videos, and getting your followers to your website is the goal.
Lastly, ensure that you remain active and stay consistent. They say consistency is key for a reason! If you want to convert your followers into customers, posting once a week won’t cut it. Engaging with your followers daily is key to creating a more authentic experience. In fact, TikTok recommends posting 1-4 times per day to receive the best engagement.
Wrap Up
TikTok serves a purpose in the social media industry that no other platform can:
- It gives content creators the chance to showcase themselves in a more raw and human way,
- It gives brands the chance to develop true connections with their audience,
- And it gives every content creator and business account an even chance to grow or go viral.
If you’ve experienced the app, I’m sure you can attest to the fact that it’s much more personable and ‘unfiltered’ than any other social media platform out there.
With all of the information provided in this post, you’ll be able to create a TikTok marketing strategy that engages your audience, grows your brand, and ultimately turns your followers into customers.
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