TikTok, a godsend for business

Brands are seeking new and eye-catching ways to stay relevant with their ads amid the continuing surge of shopping online. As marketers look for every possible scenario to feed the consumer frenzy for digital deals, social media — TikTok included — could offer marketers one of their best options.

Social media outlet TikTok may be the key to advertisers’ prayers, suggests Dariya Smailova, senior digital media buyer manager at Vendo, a company that helps Fortune 500 and emerging consumer brands succeed on Amazon.

The platform boasts a reported 689 million global active users as of January 2021. The TikTok app is opened an average of eight times daily.

For e-commerce businesses that are seriously considering a new source for brand awareness and customer acquisition, TikTok can be an unbeatable advertising investment, noted Smailova. The platform allows e-commerce brands to remain visible and present within the always-watching customer lifestyle.

Unique compared to other social media options, TikTok is very important for e-commerce businesses now. It is the largest platform, and it is the trendiest platform that covers buying power.

Big brands like Amazon and Walmart are seeing a great sales surge from TikTok. Users are constantly sharing with each other what they see.

The nature of the TikTok platform is very interesting because, not only are people sharing creative constants in different musical content or dance challenges, but it is also a microlearning platform.

People also share very short videos on how to do certain things like do-it-yourself projects or how to do makeup. So, e-commerce brands can use and actually benefit from the format.

The sharing aspect of uploaded content is a key contributor to the widespread use of Tiktok’s popularity.

Why Advertise on TikTok?

The uniqueness of TikTok powers much of its potential as an advertising platform. Three factors make TikTok so popular and enable it to draw in massive amounts viewers to see ads, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

First and foremost are its users. Over half of them are reportedly teens to 29 years of age. That is a prime audience for advertisers because many people in that age range are sensitive to current/emerging trends.

Second, TikTok videos live or die on visual and verbal cleverness. Innovative agencies and voices will be able to exploit it to their and their clients’ advantage.

Finally, TikTok is an effective mechanism for developing new influencers and celebrities. People and agencies can use it to target often highly specific demographic and geographic audiences.

Ad Targeting Advantage

The primary viewers on TikTok are millennials, or potential shoppers aged 25 to 40, according to Smailova.

That target audience is rapidly expanding to include Gen Zers, who are becoming the primary video creators, she said.

So TikTok has all the eyes and the ears of one of the biggest buying groups.

TikTok enables targeting ads to views by three categories: age, geographic location, and sex.

Smailova recommends creating unique videos to convey the product message. Unlike other social media outlets like Instagram and Facebook, TikTok only permits short video sequences.

She would recommend for the ad content to use videos that first of all do not look like entertainment videos. For instance, videos where the founder is talking about the product, so it feels more natural, more native, and also feels like it is advertising.

TikTok is also unique because it encourages users to spend more time on the platform. That puts more eyes on more ads for a longer duration. Plus it is a video-only platform. It only supports very short videos up to 10 seconds. Instagram and Facebook are also outlets for photos.

Similar to when Instagram started, TikTok uses hashtags to label content so users are already familiar with that approach. The upload system allows other users to reuse video content. This makes it easier for videos to go viral much faster.

TikTok maintains a large video library and offers advanced editing and production tools such as filters. This gives advertisers a leg up in producing eye-catching content.

Intended for users to enhance their videos, these features also let smaller businesses create appealing video content without having to hire a professional production company.

We say thank you to Jack M. Germain, E-commerce Times