TikTok is a global phenomenon in the world of social media. The app started from three different apps; the first was Musical.ly, which had a massive US audience and business. Then in 2016, a Chinese tech giant, ByteDance, created a similar app solely for China and Thai named Douyin.
Then in 2018, the tech giant wanted to expand the app into a more extensive and commercial brand by buying Musical.ly and rebranding their app to what we know today as – TikTok. Today, TikTok has spread its wings to more than 154 countries worldwide. And with more than 1.39 billion accounts registered, TikTok can enter the world’s top three most populated countries.
With their success in gaining audiences over the years, it’s no surprise that TikTok is currently the face of marketing today.
The Opportunity Of TikTok
Nowadays, you can find everything being marketed or sold on TikTok, from beauty products and foods to luxury property. It’s no wonder many people devote their lives solely to growing TikTok followers. Having many followers on TikTok means that brands will surely swarm around you and pay you to promote their products.
Isn’t it marvelous that a particularly young platform can reign supreme in the digital marketing world because of the wonder of the internet?
How TikTok Become The Face Of Marketing
If you know TikTok, you must have known how big it has become in the past few years. Here’s how TikTok did it.
1. TikTok’s Large Diversified Audience
There are more than one billion active users on TikTok worldwide daily. While you might think that the users on TikTok are mostly Gen Z and Millenials, it’s actually untrue; the users are diverse.
According to a statistic from the Social Sheperd, 25% of TikTok users are 10-19 y.o, 22.4% are 20-29 y.o, 21.7% are 30-39 y.o, 20.3% are 40-49 y.o, and there are around 11% users who are more than 50 years old. It means that if you can use TikTok properly, there is a market for every product type.
2. High Chance of Going Viral
TikTok distributes content in a new and unique way. Unlike other social media platforms that emphasize users that consider your existing followers as a metric to get viral, TikTok has even confirmed that the number of follower counts doesn’t directly influence the content that will appear in your feed.
Instead, they focus more on the quality of the specific content. We’re not talking about the quality of the video production here. We’re talking about how attractive the video is according to the users who watched it.
The longer someone watches a video, the more people give likes and share, and the more people who comment on the video contribute the most to the virality of the content. That means by doing your marketing on TikTok, your first-ever campaign has the chance to go viral. Who doesn’t want that?
3. Cheap Ads Prices
Due to the rapid growth of its users, advertising on TikTok is still considerably cheap compared to the other platform. This is because the advertising market in TikTok is still not as saturated. And even though TikTok is currently pushing the opportunity to advertise on their platform, some brands still prefer to use other options, such as influencer marketing.
4. Better Format For Brand Awareness
When you want to look for new information or places, what’s your go-to app? Most people will answer Google, but most Gen Z and Millenials today choose TikTok. It is fascinating that because of how the algorithm works, TikTok has also been the preferred search engine for most of its users.
In addition to an effective content format, TikTok is the perfect place when you want to build your brand awareness. It’s because when your video goes viral, thousands of people who are interested in your type of content put their attention into your brand for 15 to 60 seconds.
Although on the flip side, when you fail to understand the type of content your audience is looking for, they will most likely skip your video in under three seconds.
5. A Diverse Type Of Content
In TikTok, you can find just about every type of video possible: from a very high production value to a homemade low budget, from scripted to spontaneous, from entertainment to news to education. So, what does this means for the brands and marketers who want to join TikTok?
It means that if they could make an engaging and intriguing video, the users most likely cannot differentiate whether it’s an advertisement or a pure entertainment video. Unlike other platforms, you can spot an advertisement immediately (and probably skip it). In TikTok, when your ad is attractive, the users will probably watch it without even knowing it’s an ad.
6. It’s A Community
According to a statistic from the search engine journal, 59% of users feel a sense of community when they are on TikTok, and 70% of users say TikTok is a platform they would recommend to others.
Over the years, TikTok has become more than just a source of entertainment. It has become a community that people can trust and rely on when looking for specific information. This also means that when you have gained trust from a user, in no time, you will gain more and more potential customers through the community.
Conclusion
For the past couple of years, TikTok has grown and overcome the stigma that it used to have before. It’s no longer a platform exclusively for kids to sing and dance to express themselves. It has grown into a marketing giant comparable to Facebook and Instagram. And if you’re not using TikTok to expand your business, it’s only a matter of time before it’s too late.