For decades, social media marketing has contributed meaningful sales to businesses of all sizes across different sectors. However, data shows that online companies benefit more from buying ads on popular social networks. Local companies also enjoy considerable success advertising on social media.
But social media marketing can be complicated, too. As social media marketing trends change, marketers and advertisers must change their approach to better connect with their target audiences. And the most optimal social media marketing channels keep changing, with TikTok an increasingly powerful medium for consumer brands and SAAS products.
This article provides a basic introduction to TikTok marketing for Canadian businesses. When ready to learn more, we dive deep in our TikTok video tutorial. You could also consider our introduction to internet marketing e-book for a broader look.
What Is Tiktok — History And Growth
TikTok is one of the top-rated social media applications developed by the Chinese company ByteDance. TikTok us used for short videos. The social media giant has popularized a new algorithm-heavy personalized feed of quirky short videos built around set music and sound effects.
This approach makes TikTok significantly more reliant on your data, which is notable for fueling its addictive quality and high levels of user engagement across various age groups.
Douyin is the previous version of TikTok, a Chinese social media app first released in September 2016. TikTok launched into various global markets in 2017 with iOS and Android apps. However, it only rose to international prominence following its August 2018 merger with Musical.ly, another Chinese social media service.
TikTok has enjoyed remarkable growth following its post-merger relaunch and is now available in over 150 different markets with offices in six global cities. These cities include Beijing, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Moscow, Seoul, and Mumbai. It also set international usage records by averaging 1 billion daily users in early 2022. Its popularity has only continued growing.
How Does Tiktok Compete Against Other Social Platforms?
TikTok is one of the most popular social media platforms worldwide. To use it for marketing purposes, it is imperative to target a platform capable of providing a desirable return on your ad spend, which is mainly based on performance rather than popularity.
To aid your TikTok marketing campaigns, here is a lowdown of how TikTok compares with other leading social media apps. For this section, we compared the number of active monthly users on each platform, various user demographic statistics, platform reach, and more.
- TikTok commands one billion monthly active users (MAU) worldwide. By comparison, its top competitors have similar figures in the number of active users, not monthly users, with Facebook leading the chasing pack with 2.9 billion users. YouTube is next with 2.2 billion, Instagram has 1.4 billion, while Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter have 500 million, 480 million, and 300 million, respectively.
- TikTok had over 2.6 billion app downloads as of 2021, according to Sensor Tower. By contrast, Instagram had 545M downloads in 2021, Facebook had 416 million, WhatsApp 395 million, while Telegram had 329 million downloads.
- TikTok is Canada’s most popular social media app across various age groups. The app commands 43% of 18 to 29-year-olds, 33% of 30 to 39-year-olds, 13% of 40 to 49-year-olds, and 11% market share among the 50-64 age group. Media In Canada found that this popularity is driven by the app’s messaging and interacting with content rather than creating content, especially for young people.
What Metrics Can I Track And Anticipate?
Like other social media marketing platforms, advertisers on TikTok are keen to evaluate the impact of their campaigns. This involves extracting valuable data from your ad campaigns and preparing detailed advertiser reports that show progress and justify continued advertising expenditure on TikTok.
The most preferred approach is to rely on the various creator marketing success metrics — essentially TikTok-specific marketing performance, that evaluate and report the impact of your creator-led TikTok marketing campaigns using the platform’s key performance metrics.
The most critical metrics vary depending on your campaign. However, Insider Intelligence found that campaign engagement, marketing conversions, and campaign views, among others, were essential metrics to most TikTok ad campaign reporting expectations.
The other key metrics to track and report on include:
- Total views indicate your campaign reach. TikTok’s advertisers seek to unlock new audiences for their brands or products, so how many users you reach is a crucial metric for the advertiser.
- Monitoring engagement helps gauge audience attitudes. Campaign engagement is a critical metric when the primary campaign objective is to spread the word about a brand or product and enhance brand recognition. It focuses on attracting maximum views to your advertisements to drive audience awareness.
- Audience composition insights help to align with your target consumers. TikTok allows brands and marketers to reach new audiences en masse, but campaigns must target the right profile of a user’s audience. To ensure campaigns reach the right audience, target the right consumers using the predetermined demographic makeup of creators’ audiences by using the social media app’s creator marketing platforms such as CreatorIQ.
- Organic momentum relies on the communal feeling of TikTok users, responsible for the success of influencer marketing campaigns. Including voice-based endorsements produces 59% higher sales, according to a 2021 TikTok and Nielsen survey.
Tips For Using Tiktok As Part Of Your Marketing Strategy
With more than 2.5 billion app installs, TikTok is a valuable social media marketing platform that B2C marketers and brands to consider. According to Sprout Social, TikTok is the leading social media platform for influencer marketing, attracting approximately 45% of global influencers.
The share of marketers embracing TikTok as an effective avenue for reaching their business goals jumped from 3% in 2021 to 24% this year, reported Entrepreneur. But how can you use TikTok effectively for marketing?
- Be authentic in building your community. Your audience is more inclined to trust your endorsements if they believe you are genuine.
- Share stories that provide value. Most TikTok users can share anything, but building a platform that supports your marketing strategy demands more valuable content for the audience.
- Be prepared to share user-generated content. This is especially important if such content is related to your brand, such as a customer using your product or a received video product review.
- Include trending hashtags to amplify your content and reach more people. TikTok content that uses trending hashtags is easily discoverable and likely more successful.
- Use trending songs to improve the success of your TikTok content.
- Share original content to avoid “duplicate content suppression,” enhance your brand personality, and position your business as a subject area or section authority.
- Repurpose your existing content to extend its useful shelf-life.
Tiktok Marketing FAQs
1. Is TikTok marketing effective in boosting brand awareness?
TikTok is a great marketing channel for enhancing awareness and brand recognition. TikTok is now considered to be one of the most popular social media channels, allowing brands and marketers to easily access millions of target customers.
2. Should I use spark ads for my TikTok marketing campaign?
TikTok Spark Ads are better suited for brands getting started with TikTok marketing and who need to figure out their available ad budget. This is because spark ads let marketers boost the best-performing organic content into the spotlight.
3. What type of ads work best on TikTok?
The best-performing TikTok ads feel more like a promoter’s organic content, even though they promote a given product. Use in-feed ads, top-view ads, brand takeover ads, and spark ads to deliver this effect. Doing a branded hashtag challenge or influencer marketing will also be effective.
