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There isn’t a doubt that TikTok has advanced past the newcomer software that manufacturers initially dismissed. TikTok has come a great distance since its early 2020, deep-in-a-pandemic-lockdown days. Certainly, the platform began as an app for dancing youngsters, lipsyncs and pure leisure — and that is the primary purpose many manufacturers initially approached it with a wholesome dose of skepticism.
However occasions have modified, the platform has advanced, and manufacturers are studying to have a look at the platform in a brand new mild.
The TikTok you see at this time is, in some ways, the identical but very totally different. The platform has change into a channel of enterprise alternative for manufacturers and a private model progress lever for a lot of creators.
You have in all probability seen the identical stats about TikTok’s explosive progress and accelerated trajectory in comparison with its counterpart social platforms. Whereas the one billion-plus month-to-month energetic customers on TikTok alone are sufficient purpose to contemplate this platform, a couple of distinctive components will make your funding in TikTok much more worthwhile.
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1. TikTok has change into a significant cultural — and equalizing — drive.
What units TikTok other than different platforms is that it has change into the speedy hometown for numerous cultural moments, actions and conversations. From the corn music to Harry Types to “quiet quitting,” cultural conversations and traits are born on TikTok, are adopted by area of interest communities and unfold by means of a ripple impact throughout different platforms and even conventional information and media.
For manufacturers, this implies protecting an in depth eye (and ear, in fact) on what’s high of thoughts for his or her communities. Past being a social listening instrument, TikTok additionally permits manufacturers to affix the dialog and hop on the traits and moments that unfold on the platform, growing their relevance and timeliness.
Constructing on the concept of cultural actions, TikTok’s equalizing drive exhibits how a few of the most profitable manufacturers on TikTok might seamlessly be part of conversations with different customers as equal contributors. One other manner of describing TikTok’s impact on manufacturers is “humanizing,” — that means that manufacturers succeed by showcasing a human, imperfect, sincere character on this platform. Whether or not that is by means of a mascot, talking merchandise, or the group behind the digital camera — a participant’s mindset is a completely new strategy that manufacturers must embrace to succeed on TikTok.
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2. TikTok has emerged as a robust competitor to Google in search.
Though TikTok is inherently an leisure platform, it has grown to change into a go-to search engine for customers in search of community-verified solutions. That is very true for the youthful demographic, who place worth in search outcomes based mostly on genuine content material validated by area of interest communities as useful slightly than engineered with advert spend to rank.
Over 40% of Gen Z customers desire TikTok and Instagram over Google search. That is very a lot according to the foremost shifts we mentioned about at this time’s customers emphasizing authenticity within the content material they eat in addition to the platforms they eat the content material on.
Associated: How Manufacturers Are Capitalizing TikTok to Win New Audiences
3. TikTok favors robust storytelling, authentic content material, and longer-form movies.
The content material taking on the app now leverages robust storytelling, genuine conversations, worth sharing and a wholesome dose of enthusiasm and keenness for the mentioned area of interest subject. The brand new age of manufacturers and creators has constructed communities round sincere conversations, on their enthusiasm for the area of interest matters they talk about of their movies, and serialized content material that makes them instantly recognizable.
If initially, 15-second clips and purely trending content material made up the majority of TikTok’s content material, the platform has pushed in the direction of providing longer movies of as much as 3 and now even ten minutes. This modification has occurred in mild of the rise in time customers spend on the app consuming content material (at the moment at 95 minutes a day — that is over 1 hour!). This marks a change in how creators and types use TikTok for his or her content material, which has change into more and more extra conversational, storytelling-focused, instructional, and entertaining.
4. TikTok is rising as a robust various paid media channel post-iOS 14.
Everyone knows concerning the hit the standard promoting panorama took after the iOS 14+ updates had been carried out. The promoting platforms as soon as referred to as the go-to paid channels — Fb and Instagram — suffered from the privateness coverage adjustments, resulting in a drop in information accuracy and monitoring.
Whereas all advert channels are impacted by the iOS 14 updates, manufacturers are transferring in the direction of diversifying their channel combine so as to not put all eggs in a single (two) basket(s) (learn: Google or Fb). On this local weather, TikTok has emerged as one of many strongest contenders for a lot of manufacturers’ budgets, particularly as a top-of-funnel consciousness and visitors driver.
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As I’ve mentioned above, the artistic on TikTok is not like some other platform — it is pushed by authenticity, a uncooked aesthetic, and an entire negation of the promotional really feel that different advert codecs throughout different channels share. In different phrases, adverts usually are not like adverts on TikTok — they mirror natural, user-generated content material to cease the scroll and get the viewers to concentrate. And subsequent? They go to your web site, so that you seize, retarget and convert them into loyal prospects.
5. TikTok can change into a flywheel of content material you may repurpose throughout a number of different channels.
Final however actually not least, short-form video is short-form video — and it is the main content material format on TikTok and past. When contemplating Instagram’s (and now additionally Fb’s) Reels, YouTube’s Shorts, Pinterest’s push into movies, Snapchat’s Highlight and extra, there’s greater than sufficient proof that unpolished, natural, UGC-style movies are the highest-performing format proper now.
Mixed with the truth that most trendy cultural conversations are beginning on TikTok, it permits manufacturers to create a vault of movies which are on pattern, in tune with tradition, and that may be repurposed throughout different platforms (paid and natural) for testing functions.
