As partners of Tik Tok ourselves, we at Monumental, have a special place in our hearts for short form content as the wave of the future. So, we thought we’d share the ins and outs of Tik Tok Influencer Marketing on the bullish app that no one saw coming and how marketeers can use Tik Tok Influencer Marketing to their advantage.
While 89% of marketers say Instagram is the most important channel for influencer marketing, newcomer TikTok has quickly become one of the most popular platforms in the world in less than two years…. and a rising platform for influencers.
Social media and Influencers are becoming the bread and butter of marketing, ever since Kylie Jenner launched a billion dollar company using Instagram as her sole advertising and marketing channel. Yes she had the Kardashian brand behind her but the idea clicked. Why pay for billboards in Times Square that get seen by families from Kentucky on their first trip to the big city (y’all!) when you can pay a hot girl to wear your lipstick, that will be seen by 500,000 like minded followers that have a very high conversion rate potential? AND you can get the nitty gritty consumer behaviour data? Sign us up!
Marketers are recognising that influencer marketing is an effective marketing strategy, with brands are set to spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022, based on Mediakix data. However, with the plethora of platforms to choose from it is difficult to know which ones to target.
However, in the words of good old Isaac Newton, “what goes up must come down”; and this is known in the marketing world as “Social Media User Fatigue”. “S.M.U.R” is a recognised tendency of users to feel the need to take a step back from a certain social media platform they feel they over use, as well as stepping back from social media as a whole due to the overwhelming choices of different platforms and the pressures of keeping up followers and likes.
Essentially, people were getting bored and exhausted of the negative aspects of the more established social media platforms, and were searching for something new and exciting. An alternative space where they can share their content more creatively and connect with like minded individuals in a less rigid format…enter TIK TOK.
Table of Contents
The Low Down on Tik Tok and the Influencers who made it:
Originally released in 2016 as the app “Musical.ly” a popular app where users would lip sync to their favourite songs. The app went through a complete rebrand when acquired by the Beijing based company BYTEDANCE in 2017 and became the brand we all know and love today, Tik Tok.
Unlike its predecessor, Tik Tok users aren’t limited to just music, at the crux of it, Tik Tok is all about content creation!! Although it was popularised by dance routines such as the “Savage” Tik Tok dance, it doesn’t stop there. Videos span from comedy and beauty, to food, ASMR and sad boy teens crying into the camera. There are options for augmented reality filters, music clips, dialogue from TV shows and facial filters, allowing the user to quickly edit a dynamite piece of content into digestible 15 second clips. The perfect recipe for the short attention span Gen Zs.
Studies show that Gen Z have an attention span of 8 seconds, compared to Millennials who zone out at 12 seconds. Tik Tok has proven that bite size short form videos seem to be a selling point, with users reportedly spending 46 minutes on the app every day. So as a marketing tool for Gen Z consumers, Tik Tok seems like our ticket to the train of Gen Z marketing town!
Tik Tok VS Instagram:
Lets share some stats with you from our good friends over at Mediakix
- While instagram still has a larger audience of 1.8B, in November 2019, Sensor Tower announced Tik Tok reached a whopping 1.5B downloads in just 2 years!
- 2019 accounted for 27% of Instagrams all time downloads, Tik Tok added 738 million new users in 2019 – growing the app by 49% of its existing users in only one year!
- Tik Tok had over 738M installs in 2019 (49% of its All-Time Downloads) Whereas Instagram has over 500M installs in 2019 (28% of its All-Time Downloads)
- In terms of Gender demographic, Tik Tok show a male to female representation of 55.6% and 44.4% respectively. Whereas Instagram shows a higher percentage of female users, with 65% female and 35% male.
A perfect Example: Addison Rae
Addison Rae is the the 2nd most followed user on Tik Tok, right after former Hype House member Charli D’amelio. With over 45 Million followers and 2.5 billion likes to her name, it is rumoured that Rae can rake in $35,000 per branded post! That’s a pretty big check! Plus, she JUST signed a deal with Morphe on a new GEN Z makeup brand “Morphe 2“. On David Dobriks Views Podcast, Addison said that she has heard of someone getting offered $90,000! However, that is not just for one video, it’s usually a series of posts.
So, How to use Tik Tok for marketing:
The Pros of Tik Tok:
- It is in the sweet spot of Gen Z,
The notoriously ad resistant generation. Studies show that 52% of Gen Z use ad blockers, and 54% say that ads annoy them. Furthermore, 70% of Gen Z skip ads, compared to 66% of Gen Y and 62% of Millenials. Therefore, doing branded content is Gen Z marketing at its finest – and boy does Tik Tok lean into that, targeting the generation who it’s hardest to sell to.
- No Monetisation aspect yet.
Ever since Zuckerberg started his monetisation algorithm, brands were absolutely rocked by the organic engagement nose dive. Things like comments, likes and views were impacted., Boosted content is the only way to really be seen these days on Facebook and Instagram. What’s worse is the algorithm is constantly adapting and improving based on new data. It is no longer chronological, which means Instagram predicts what posts you would want to see, resulting in a rumoured 7% of followers being able to see your feed. For branded content, Instagram is a hard graft.Which is why the organic algorithm for Tik Tok is such a fantastic selling point, so jump on it now before they follow in Zuckerberg’s footsteps!
- Tik Tok Micro Influencers:
There is a non-stop flow of 16 year old Tik Tokers just waiting to get their hands on free merch and beat it to death on their channel! And because Tik Tok is still in its infancy, they would do it for free. a mutually beneficial relationship, you get your brand out there to lots of little micro brand soldiers and the soldiers get free make-up! Happy days!
- You can make your own brand!
At the end of the day, you don’t necessarily need an influencer… make your brand its own influencer! Brands like Chipotle are reaching the Gen Z demographic by creating a hilariously creative account racking up 774,900 followers on Tik Tok, and 3 million likes combined. They utilise music, memes and pop culture to draw interest to their menu and “what’s new/discounts etc”.
What has made them most popular is their lean into pop culture – they started the #lidflipchallenge. In just the first six days of the challenge, 111,000 videos were submitted to the challenge, resulting in 104 million video views. A month later, the views on the challenge hit 268 million. And most importantly the challenge created a record-breaking digital sales day driving app downloads and delivery among Gen Z audiences.
The campaign earned millions of impressions including coverage on CNBC, Fast Company, BuzzFeed News, and The Atlantic. Youth research specialists YPulse even included it in the article “These 5 Brands’ TikTok Campaigns Went Viral With Teens.
- It’s HOT!
Plain and simple – it’s the hot new kid on the block that all the neighbourhood boys are drooling over. It’s new and fresh and that’s what is interesting to people – jump on it!
The Cons of Tik Tok:
We saw the toll snapchat took…
The rise and fall of Snapchat is a cautionary tale. That the fateful day of the snapchat queen herself Kylie Jenner tweet “does anyone even use snapchat anymore?” The tweet slammed shares of Snapchat’s parent company, Snap, knocking them down by 7% the following trading session and wiping out $1.3 billion of market value. Since then, they’ve have lost as much as 72% amid competition from Facebook’s Instagram and a string of executive departures. And now, Instagram sits at the top of the most important app for influencer marketing at 89% and snapchat sits at a sad 3%.
Conclusion:
We’ll still be “classic bougee ratchet-ing” our way to Tik Tok influencers and making some Gen Z hearts swoon with our out of the box marketing. Basically, why not strike with the iron is hot and take advantage of its many ready and willing influencers, organic engagement algorithm and trendy vibe?
If you want to learn about how you can implement Tik Tok in your marketing… get in touch!
