Four Ways Brands Can Leverage TikTok to Connect With Consumers
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With 100 million active monthly users, TikTok has emerged as a force in the social media landscape and, thus, a place for effective marketing campaigns. Here’s what companies can do right away on the platform to enhance their messaging reach.
What perhaps for a time may have been seen as another social media fad, TikTok continues to prove it’s anything but. The platform’s growth across the first three quarters of 2020 topped an astonishing 75 percent, with active monthly users numbering 100 million in the U.S. alone.
But because TikTok is still the relatively new kid on the social media block, many brand leaders have yet to tap into its full potential as a marketing tool. If they have any desire to do so — and at this point why wouldn’t they? — marketers must first understand the essence of TikTok and what separates it from the rest of the platform pack.
“People feel like they can be their authentic selves here,” said Sofia Hernandez, Head of Business Marketing for North America at TikTok, during a recent Suzy webinar, State of the Consumer: The TikTok Effect. “It’s not about likes, it’s not about shares, it’s not about connecting with family, it’s about connecting the world with each other.”
Keeping that ethos in mind, Hernandez, along with cookbook author and TikTok creator Jake Cohen and Adweek’s Chief Innovation Officer Toby Daniels, revealed to Suzy CEO Matt Britton precisely how brands can best leverage TikTok, boosting follower numbers and turning views into sales.
Here are four key action items from the conversation:
1. Partner with a creator
If you’re just getting your feet wet on the platform and looking to build a following, forge a partnership with someone who’s already done a few laps around the pool: an experienced TikTok content creator.
Hernandez instructed leaders to think daringly and “co-create with the community, let them take control of your brand.” This helps generate content with a much more authentic feel — the most crucial characteristic of successful TikTok videos.
“In today’s world, we see a lot more power in the creator,” said Cohen. “You have to be yourself. Anyone who is on TikTok can smell inauthenticity.”
2. Enable the stories of ordinary people
The best partners on TikTok might not be people thought of as “celebrities” — in a traditional sense of the word. Among the most championed creators on the platform are individuals with little or no marketing background, people who have a quick wit and a knack for generating tasteful, compelling videos. They don’t rely on the crutch of marketing “experience,” which can hinder creativity.
Case in point: The first TikTok user to reach 100 million followers was a 16-year-old Connecticut high school student named Charli D’Amelio who, as described by CNET, is “a humble, pretty, silly, sensitive, deeply normal teen girl whose oeuvre (largely consisting of dancing, pulling faces and drinking iced coffee) was uncontrived and unpolished.”
But just because someone like D’Amelio has tons of followers doesn’t mean she’d be the first user a brand should approach for a partnership.
“There are really organic partnerships and some square-peg-and-round-hole partnerships, where you can tell it just wasn’t a good fit,” said Cohen. “Don’t try to look for the largest following in an influencer. Ask: ‘Who is the person that matches your brand?’”
3. Launch a hashtag challenge
One of the simplest ways a brand can capitalize on content created by “ordinary people” is to launch a TikTok hashtag challenge. Similar to Twitter, searching hashtags is a primary way for TikTok users to uncover content. However, ingrained in the platform’s culture is its users’ propensity to offer their own version of hashtagged videos.
Hernandez cited DSW’s #TooManyShoes campaign as an outstanding example of a brand leveraging its TikTok followers, getting them to create content for them through a hashtag challenge. The initiative called for users to post videos of themselves trying on pairs of footwear they own for different occasions, with a chance to win gift cards and free shoes.
To date, the hashtagged videos have collectively garnered 4.3 billion views.
“The level of co-creation from consumers with brands has never, ever been seen like this,” Hernandez said. “This is what brands and marketers have always wanted, to authentically connect with consumers.”
4. Be receptive to user outreach
Sticking with the authenticity theme, marketers and social media managers should also connect to TikTok users who mention the brands they represent on the platform. Cheerios did just that this past holiday season and wound up producing what would become a viral sensation.
On November 20, TikTok user Cori Spruiell posted a video pleading with Cheerios to update a 1999 commercial. The original ad featured a grandmother outlining how far she had to travel to experience her granddaughter’s first Christmas. The grandmother did so by moving some Cheerios the baby was feeding on around the tabletop of her high chair.
Within a month Cheerios had cast the original actors in a new spot revolving around the brand and keeping family traditions alive. Not only did the ad garner robust views on TikTok and YouTube, but it was also covered by marketing trade publications and mainstream media outlets alike.
“This is the new marketing,” Hernandez said. “Brands need to be much more agile; they need to have their ear to the ground.”
“I think TikTok saved social media,” echoed Daniels.
Right now, TikTok is where the buzz is coming from.