Tiktok 2 How

How forward-thinking marketers are utilising the power of TikTok

TikTok really is a platform like no other. No video app is on more mobile devices worldwide - it is the leading destination for short-form mobile video. TikTok can deliver a big audience for sure, but it delivers even bigger engagement. Users are engaging with content more than virtually anywhere else online. Take one of the most popular trends on the platform right now – #ratethings, where users post videos rating anything and everything with a score out of 10. That hashtag has had over 1.3 billion views from the hundreds of thousands of videos users have created. Or the #FlipTheSwitch trend. Even though it is over a year old, people are still creating videos with their friends and family where they swap clothes at the flip of a switch, and video views have rocketed past the 6.1 billion mark. So, where do brands fit in? Well, many are already embracing the communities, platform codes and the suite of advertising products offered by TikTok, and reaping the rewards. Brands as diverse as Pretty Little Thing, Converse, Balenciaga and Mercedes-Benz are posting on the platform in a variety of ways. Some are interacting with communities through Branded Hashtag Challenges; others are using impressive organic strategies managed by in-house teams; while some stage ambitious through-the-line campaigns, mixing TikTok, Creators, competitions and events to produce significant spikes in brand awareness and affinity. As with any emergent platform, the way brands use it is still developing – fast. Here’s how marketers should be thinking about moving onto TikTok, and where resource and media spend should be allocated.

Step 1: Get to know your TikTok community and their codes

TikTok exists to create value for both users and brands. This all starts with getting to know your TikTok community and their codes — by that, we mean their way of doing things, expressing themselves and speaking to each other. TikTok is a platform with permission to be yourself; honest and unpolished, users and brands can quickly build a community of like-minded people. You may see Hollywood A-listers and world-famous recording artists on TikTok, but there are also many, many more inspiring, enriching videos from everyday folk, such as firefighters, nurses, schoolteachers, construction workers, pilots, and hairdressers. Communities coalesce around their passions and interests, which influence the videos they are served in the personalised ‘For You’ feed. You see, TikTok's intelligent content discovery process allows users to find fresh videos based on their viewing preferences and habits, thanks to an algorithm that uses an interest-based graph rather than a social graph like Instagram. This means brands who tap into audience interests can easily get discovered without having to amass large numbers of followers. From a strategic point of view getting to know your community and their codes is hugely valuable, because it lets you understand the passions and interests of your target consumers and create content that taps into these. If you and your content are obviously relevant to those interests, you’ll have a head-start when it comes to engagement.

Step 2: Start with an organic content strategy

A key attraction of TikTok is its simplicity. Setting up a Business Profile and posting organic content is where most brands get started, and it’s really easy to do. Better still, engagement rates are super high on TikTok, so posting simple but high-quality videos provides a great opportunity to get discovered and grow your following quickly – especially when tapping into the latest platform trends. On your Business Profile you can add brand messaging and links to an external landing page in the bio, as well as monitor and review what content works with a built-in profile analytics tool. Over time, you can branch out and become more sophisticated. You might, say, achieve Business Privilege status, like Apple has; or develop relationships with Creators on the platform, who can help you both latch onto relevant content trends, originate your own and benefit from their organic reach and clout. You could, like Pretty Little Thing, build an in-house team to ramp up the volume of videos you post, and make sure you never miss an opportunity to get your brand into the right conversations at the right time. Being on TikTok is ultimately an opportunity for a brand to be discovered by millions of potential customers, have direct conversations and interactions with them, and build passionate communities around shared values and points of view. Case study: Pretty Little Thing Pretty Little Thing doesn’t just look great; it has also done a great job when it comes to engaging with its community and trusting TikTok Creators to tell its brand story. Pretty Little Thing operates at a faster speed than most brands; they have a full in-house studio set-up, which enables them to produce content in line with the latest in-app trends and specifically for TikTok. The brand’s creative team constantly monitors the platform for trends where they can offer their viewpoint, and they are able to turn things around incredibly fast, acting more like a content publisher than a fashion brand. All this has paid off; Pretty Little Thing currently has nearly 700,000 followers on TikTok. Building on their organic success, Pretty Little Thing ran a Hashtag Challenge to great success in 2019. To celebrate the launch of a branded track and clothing collection with will.i.am, Pretty Little Thing encouraged users to create a video showing off the looks that make them feel most confident. Six thousand users created over 7,000 videos with total views on the Challenge page reaching over 8.3 million with 1.2 million interactions.

A perfect launch moment: Balenciaga’s TopView Ad If you’ve got a launch moment you need to elevate, you can drive awareness and click-through rates (CTRs) from TikTok’s TopView Ad format. TopView is not just thumb-stopping, it’s show-stopping. Taking over the whole screen upon opening the app, it auto-plays with the sound on and grabs attention immediately. In December last year Balenciaga joined TikTok with the mission to raise awareness with a new audience, using the TopView format and achieving a CTR of 18% across the campaign in France and Italy. Balenciaga used material that clearly showcased its brand and products, but in a unique and interesting way, to pull users into learning more and clicking through.

Follow your audiences. Get to know what they’re into, how they like to be spoken to by brands, which ones they endorse, and how and why they do so. You’ll soon learn the codes. Tap into them – humanity is at the core of it all, so show your brand’s human traits and instincts.

Like Pretty Little Thing, once TikTok feels like familiar territory, you can amplify your communications in a few ways. Whereas Business Profiles, organic strategies and In-Feed adverts through the TikTok Ads platform can be set up and implemented without liaison with TikTok, to make use of TikTok’s suite of advertising products you need to get in touch. TikTok has teams in key hubs across Europe who partner with creative and media agencies, and directly with brands, offering platform education, media and creative guidance, and account and campaign management. Brand and creative strategy teams will respond to briefs and work in collaboration with partners to plan the best campaigns for any brand’s marketing goals. They can also oversee audio licensing, and – crucially – TikTok can arrange partnerships with TikTok Creators, its most popular, creative and influential users. TikTok has opportunities across the marketing funnel. Here are some brands who’ve tapped into them. Awareness and interaction: Mercedes-Benz Hashtag Challenge Gen Z and Millennials are motivated more by experience and emotion than things. So how do you engage them when you’re a brand like Mercedes-Benz, that actually sells quite big, and quite expensive, ‘things’? The Mercedes-Benz Star might be one of the world’s most iconic logos, an emblem that speaks for itself. Using the #MBStarChallenge hashtag, Mercedes-Benz invited users and TikTok Creators to re-envision the Star logo in their own unique way, transforming it in creative and inspiring ways, and placing it in whole new visual contexts that transcend the brand’s everyday sphere. TikTok users were told to ‘let their star shine’, the only limit being their own creativity. Mercedes-Benz kickstarted the campaign by inviting TikTok Creators from the UK and Germany to showcase their own versions of the Star (all set to a bespoke soundtrack created for the Challenge) driving 2.24 million video views and launching the campaign with impact. From here, the brand used a two-pronged advertising approach to boost exposure and solidify the campaign. Two premium, glossy TopView Lite (previously Brand Takeover) Ads presented the campaign in the brand’s own vision, while a selection of four In-Feed Ads, created from repurposed Creator videos to fit seamlessly into the For You feed, created a credible window into the brand on users’ native feeds – finished with some light branding touches. Finally, a Brand Banner ad on the TikTok Discover page was implemented to drive users to the main Challenge page, maximising reach and hitting every corner of the app’s ecosystem from advertising to organic engagement. The end result: over 180 million total video views, over 75,000 participants in the #MBStarChallenge, and over 30,000 new followers on Mercedes-Benz’s TikTok brand profile, bringing Mercedes-Benz to a new audience – and vice-versa.

Step 3: Move into TikTok’s innovative ad products

TikTok's view

Trevor Johnson Head of Marketing, GBS, Europe

TikTok rewards good content, whether it’s created by popular tastemakers or first-time users. Every video has the same opportunity to get discovered and go viral. As a marketer, you should identify emerging and popular content trends that align with your brand and jump into them.

Trevor Johnson Head of Marketing, GBS, Europe

TikTok's view

All this creative energy doesn’t die away when projects end. Return on ad spend is maximised on TikTok because user-generated content (UGC) campaigns also trigger earned media opportunities. Videos are shared across social media channels - Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter - meaning your campaign will often earn extra attention beyond TikTok.

Trevor Johnson Head of Marketing, GBS, Europe

TikTok's view

By now, you have all heard of TikTok - the wildly popular short-form video platform that has taken the world by storm. A place for positive, creative expression that is bringing joy to millions of people across the globe. But what opportunity does TikTok bring to the table for marketers? Here we take a look at how businesses can build their brands on the worldwide phenomenon that is TikTok.

Inspire Creativity. Bring Joy. Build Brands.

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