Musical.ly was a music-sharing app that allowed users to share short videos of themselves lip-syncing to various music snippets. It was launched in 2014. For two years in a row, the site was among the top 100 most downloaded games, with users uploading about 13 million videos per day. Musical.ly was bought by Chinese firm Bytedance in 2018 and combined with the company’s new app named TikTok. TikTok, similar to Musical.ly, is a video-sharing platform where users post short clips of lip-syncing and dancing to popular music. Since then, it’s grown to include a wider range of content, including brief comedy skits and how-to-home improvement videos. TikTok’s active user base increased by nearly 800% after the merger. With so much consumer engagement, advertisers have found that the app has a lot of advertisement value. TikTok’s developers have recognized this and have recently introduced a new platform named TikTok for business. Businesses can leverage buy TikTok likes services to enhance their visibility at an instant speed.
The platform’s defined aim is to help companies unlock their creativity by teaching them how and when to use apps through their e-learning service and steering them through the ads manager platform’s ad creation process.
Marketing Tactics For Businesses
Video advertisements are the only marketing format available to businesses on TikTok. Marketers can even use the TikTok For business ads manager application to produce these ads, and they can choose from five different formats.
In-Feed Ads
Videos that appear on a user’s discovery page, also known as a For You page, are known as in-feed advertising. This is the first screen that users see when they open the app. The TikTok algorithm assumes that videos on the For You page would be of interest to the user based on their app usage. Since the videos may include a call-to-action, in-feed ads are beneficial for marketers trying to use TikTok to boost sales conversions (CTA). Acorns, a finance company, used the in-feed CTA feature to encourage viewers to download their app. As users click through their feed, these advertisements are the fourth video they see. This form of advertising is comparable to those that appear in an Instagram user’s feed.
Top View Ads
TopView advertisements will last up to 60 seconds, which is significantly longer than TikTok images. As a result, it’s ideal for companies looking to promote goods or services that need more sustained attention, such as TV previews. On TikTok, TopView ads are videos that display once a day, instantly after a user initially opens their app. Here’s an example of a TopView ad made by the candy company M&M to promote a virtual Halloween experience.
Branded Hashtags
Businesses use branded hashtags to encourage TikTokers to build content across a brand-related hashtag of their choosing. Businesses who use this ad format own the exposure to the hashtag, which is not available on other social media platforms. Its exclusivity comes at a high cost; the reported average cost for six days is about $150,000 USD. Assume you’re a sportswear business that has just released the Blue Shirt, a new athletic shirt. You could generate a branded hashtag similar to #InMyBlueShirt to inspire TikTok users who own your shirt to share videos of themselves doing physical activities while wearing it.
Branded Effects
Branded effects advertisements incorporate pictures of your items into TikTok videos in 2D, 3D, or AR. Brands usually create stickers for their products or filters for TikTokers to use while making videos. Because using these filters and stickers usually means playing brand-specific games, they increase interaction and brand awareness. Puma, an apparel manufacturer, advertised their new soccer shoes using the branded effects feature. Users were asked to play a virtual reality game with a soccer ball using their 3D sticker. They used a hashtag challenge to promote their branded effects sticker, which resulted in over 100,000 videos of user-generated content.
Final Thoughts
TikTok for business arrives when it’s clear that companies are finding success with TikTok advertisements. If you decide to include TikTok’s new service in your marketing plan, it can be a powerful growth tool. Although the app does need niche content, brands and companies may broaden their marketing strategies and reach a new audience.