The world of online marketing is evolving. Thanks to the likes of TikTok and Instagram, people are experimenting with new ways to market their brands. While these platforms offer unique opportunities for marketers, they also bring with them a number of challenges.
The Growing Popularity of Virtual Shopping
In the past, people turned to television, radio, and outdoor banners to reach consumers. Thanks to the rise of the sharing economy, digital marketing has become popular as a means of reaching people. With platforms such as Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay facilitating online transactions, virtual shopping has become commonplace. When someone clicks on a product in your online store, you know exactly how much revenue you’re generating.
Is Marketing on TikTok Worth It?
Now is a good time to ask: is marketing on TikTok worth it? Let’s consider the pros and the cons of marketing on this platform.
On the pro side, you have a captive audience of over 500 million monthly active users. If someone watches a video about your product, you know exactly how many people saw it and how many of those people will actually buy your product. You also have the opportunity to engage with your audience through a vibrant community of users.
Then there’s the cons. First, the demographic is mainly millennials. That means your target audience is growing up digitally and may not yet be receptive to traditional marketing. Second, the number of views on TikTok is increasing, which makes it more difficult to grow your audience. Third, many people use TikTok to avoid engaging with advertising, so your ads may not generate as much engagement as you’d like. Lastly, the algorithms that determine which videos to highlight can be a bit unpredictable, so you may see a surge in views but not always a corresponding increase in sales.
What About Instagram?
Instagram is one of the biggest social media platforms out there. It boasts over a billion active monthly users and continues to grow every month. This makes it the perfect platform for marketing on the basis of reach. If someone is on Instagram, they’re probably already aware of your company and likely to be interested in what you have to say.
The advantage of Instagram is that its demographic is more likely to be receptive to printed or digital advertisements. This is thanks to the platform’s many young users growing up in the era of digital ads and overloaded with marketing material. Therefore, if someone clicks on a product or service in your Instagram post, you know for certain they’ll make a purchase once they’re on the platform.
What’s The Difference?
The key difference between traditional offline marketing and online marketing is that the first involves a face-to-face interaction between a marketer and a customer while the latter relies on digital communication. To put it simply, the more digital the medium, the less face-to-face contact the consumer has with the marketer. Although this may be effective in some cases, many marketers believe that quality interaction leads to better results.
Strategies for Marketers On TikTok
With all of this in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most effective strategies for marketers on TikTok. To start, make sure your profile is complete and that you have a number of high-quality videos to display.
Videos can be a great place for marketers to reach consumers. Not only do they give you the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise but also act as great marketing tools in and of themselves. To make the most of videos, you’ll want to develop a content strategy that builds on a few key pillars. First, identify the purpose of each video. What is your video’s message and how will it benefit the user? What do you want your audience to take away from this particular video? Make sure that your answers to these questions guide the content you create.
From a marketing perspective, a good rule of thumb is to create educational or entertaining videos that users can benefit from or engage with. These are the kinds of videos that will get you the most views and, in turn, help you drive sales. If you can incorporate gaming elements into your strategy, even better!
TikTok isn’t just about product demos. You also need to create content that will keep users coming back for more.
Since people are already inclined to spend a lot of time on this app, make sure that your content is worthwhile. Videos that provide value don’t cost that much to produce and, thus, have a cost-per-view (CPV) value that is lower than most other content types on TikTok. To determine this value, simply divide the reach of your video by the number of views.
For example, if you have a 30-second video with 100,000 views, the CPV is $0.30. Keep in mind that this does not include the value of users’ personal information, which might be worth a lot! For more information on how to determine the CPV value of your content, check out this blog post by HubSpot.
TikTok is A Social Media Platform, Not A Search Engine
Unlike traditional search engines, which rank websites based on predetermined keywords, TikTok considers the context of the message in determining which videos to rank highly in search results. In other words, the algorithm will try to understand what the user is trying to say with the searched query.
Additionally, since many of the videos on this platform are between 15 seconds and one minute, you need to ensure that your content is watchable and memorable in that time frame. Short videos aren’t just limited to 15 seconds, either—that’s just the standard length for the platform’s videos lately. You can use the metrics available in YouTube Analytics to determine the optimal length of your videos. To optimize your videos for search, take a video and cut it into 10-second segments. From there, you can shorten the clips or change their names to make them more user-friendly. Remember, videos with shorter lengths usually generate higher search engine results on TikTok.
Content Calendars Are Your Friend
The content calendar is a tool that virtually all marketers should have in their arsenal. It helps you plan out all of your content (written, filmed, or staged) so that you can properly distribute it across platforms and channels. The concept is to create content schedules that allow you to fit as much marketing as possible into a relatively short amount of time. The benefits of content calendars are numerous. Not only do they help you plan out content but they also serve as accountability tools, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your content marketing.
You might not always have the luxury of putting out content when you want it. With a video marketing strategy, for example, you’ll need to consider the constraints of your production company or agency. Maybe you’ve got a limited amount of money to spend on marketing, or your boss decides that this year’s holiday party will be filmed instead of photographed. In those situations, having a content calendar can help you plan out content releases and, thus, avoid scrambling to create content at the last minute.
Pay Attention To Video Analytics
Video analytics refers to the use of software that helps businesses understand and analyze video content. While video marketing is still in its infancy, video analytics allows marketers to gather and process large amounts of data quickly and easily. This makes it an invaluable tool in the arsenal of any marketer.
The video analytics tool of choice for marketers is usually Vidyard or Hawkeye 360. These are two of the most popular choices among businesses, thanks in large part to their ease of use and high performance. With these tools, you can track the results of your videos by sector, demographic, or location.
Additionally, these tools track your videos’ reach, watch time, and user engagement, making it simpler to measure the success of your content. One important thing to consider about these tools is that they offer an inbound marketing approach—that is, they emphasize attracting rather than engaging with audiences.
In the future, as video becomes even more essential to online marketing, the need for video analytics will only increase.
Use Metrics And Analytics To Your Advantage
The above tips will help you develop successful strategies for marketing on TikTok. From using video as a tool to attract potential customers to using metrics and analytics to gauge the effectiveness of your content, these tips will put you on the right path to becoming a viral video marketer.