Do you get TikTok?

If you didn’t know, TikTok is the social sharing platform taking the world by storm. You’ve likely seen videos reposted from the platform on Instagram or heard your kids or much younger siblings talking about it.

Remember Vine? It’s sort of like that, except the platform is endless and allows pretty much anyone to become an influencer. With popular content which focuses on lip-syncing and super-short comedy sketches, TikTok is the ultimate platform to get creative.

How does it work?

At its core, TikTok is a video sharing app. Users can create and share videos ranging from 5 to 60 seconds, tagging them to help users find and follow their favourite kind of content. Users can add stickers, filters and implement augmented reality to make their content more engaging.

One of the most popular trends on TikTok is ‘challenges’, which opens up a prime piece of real estate for brands to rapidly spread their message and build awareness. By creating short videos which can be linked together, parodied or align with a specific theme, the trend spreads quickly across the platform, with users creating their own versions.

Can brands use TikTok?

Similarly to other social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, brands have the capability to use TikTok to expand their following and interact with potential customers.

Millions of users are engaged across TikTok with brands including Sony Pictures, Guess, Elf Cosmetics and more. From simple unboxing videos and tutorials to more complex and high budget videos, TikTok content doesn’t require a huge budget to be successful – in fact, home-made content appears to do exceptionally well.

Meme it

The ‘meme-potential’ of TikTok is also great, allowing your brand to truly let its freak flag fly and create stuff which will entertain your audience and have them wanting to interact with you in response.

Take the country rap track, Old Town Road, by Lil Nas X, a prime example of meme content leading to profit as well as killer content. Landing the #1 position in Billboard Hot 100 and sticking there for 27 weeks, the track owes much of its popularity to TikTok. A hashtag search for #yeehaw will present you with thousands of parody videos using the song as a backing track.

Influence it

We all know the power of influencers across platforms such as Instagram, and TikTok is no exception. Working with influencers and even regular folks, with small followings call micro-influencers, your brand can reach the right people and make a real impact.

TikTok is recognised as a ‘real’ platform. What does that mean? Well, it means your content doesn’t need to be heavily edited or filtered, the quality doesn’t need to be comparable to a blockbuster and you don’t have to be a Hollywood actor or a supermodel to be loved. Anyone can ‘go viral’ with even the most simple videos racking up views into the tens of thousands.

Pay for it

It’s not shameful – it’s smart and tactical. If you have a promotion to get out to a youth focussed audience, there’s no better place to put your ad-spend than TikTok.

Brands are quickly undertaking paid performance marketing to determine which types of media helps them best interact with the users on the platform. Whether it’s quirky videos or informative content, brands are pulling out all the stops to rapidly test what resonates best with their audience and converts the most effectively.

There are four types of ad formats available on TikTok:

Brand takeover: Image, GIF or video ads that allow one brand to dominate a specific topic for the day.
In-feed native video: Vertical 9-15 second video ads that show up on the “For You” page.
Hashtag challenge: Create sponsored hashtags to encourage user-generated content, engage users and attract influencers.
Branded lenses: Create 2D or 3D lenses that users can try out for themselves.

Durex on TikTok

At the end of 2019, we were approached by Durex to take their brand onto TikTok. Moving Durex onto a brand new social media platform required a bespoke strategy which entailed a great deal of testing and no previous conversion data to rely on.

How did we take Durex to TikTok?

We researched the target audience and collated content which appealed to the demographics on TikTok. After this, we created a library of assets and a range of variants in terms of messaging and visuals.

We used these assets to test and identify the key winning categories whilst optimising our bidding strategy accordingly. With the approach to copy and creative determined by the user interactions and responses, we were able to define the optimum approach for Durex and successfully launched the brand on TikTok.

And the results?

Overall, we reduced the CPL (cost per lead) by 50%, increased the overall brand visibility on a new platform and increased the CTR (click-through rate) through understanding our core demographic and platform usage.