Insightful Tips on TikTok Marketing to Reach Generation Z and Millennials

In the last couple of years, TikTok made a great splash. It became one of the most downloaded apps of 2019 and also of the decade. TikTok is now used by over 800 million people worldwide. However, the majority of TikTok users are younger generations that are attracted by the platform’s mission to bring joy and inspiration to the masses.

Today it seems like there’s a place for everyone on TikTok (especially after the launch of TikTok for business). The platform is an opportunity for brands to easily reach new audiences and every brand can stay on top of trends regardless of what it specializes in. Considering the rapidly growing audience of TikTok and unabated hype around it, the app might have a brighter future than we can imagine today.

If your brand is just making its first steps towards TikTok, here are tips and advice on TikTok marketing so you can appeal to younger audiences such as Generation Z and Millennials.

Why TikTok is great to reach younger audiences

According to Global Web Index, 41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24. These people represent Generation Z, the largest consumer population that was born in 1996 and later. Although many of them are still teenagers, their purchase power is estimated at around $44 billion a year.

Also, a significant cohort of TikTok users are Millennials. They constitute over 25% of the overall audience and reach $1.3 trillion a year in consumer spendings.

What this means for brands is that TikTok is the best social media to appeal to younger audiences. 90% of its users visit the app more than once a day and on average spend 52 minutes there, which greatly increases your chances to get noticed by your potential clients.

How to market on TikTok in 2020

There are a couple of ways you can use TikTok for marketing and business purposes. You can create your brand’s account and invest in the production of original content. You can also advertise on TikTok using its tools or partner with influencers to achieve your goals. Which route to take depends on your general marketing strategy, your budget, and other resources that you have for TikTok marketing.

1. Create your own account and start producing original content

In 2020, TikTok is one of the most attractive platforms for internet users, particularly for Generations Y and Z. There’s a simple explanation for this because TikTok is a video sharing app and nowadays video is king. Over the past few years, the number of businesses using video content for marketing purposes increased from 24% to 87%, and the numbers continue to grow.

If video marketing is not a part of your strategy yet, you can kick-start it by creating a TikTok account for your brand. This will be a win-win solution for businesses that would like to be in trend but also to deliver messages to new audiences in the most effective way.

Thanks to TikTok algorithms, chances that your video will go viral on the app are higher than on any other social media platform. If you invest money, time, and effort into producing truly original, creative, and high-quality content, you’ll quickly see results in the form of subscribers who can be converted into leads and customers later.

The most important part of TikTok marketing is to play its rules. Adding music, writing witty captions, coming up with dance moves, and sticking to vertical format will increase your chances to get millions of shares, likes, and views, and reach wider audiences in different regions. In addition to creating content that would fit TikTok, you can also take part in challenges that are already appreciated and loved by the majority of the app users.

Launch your own TikTok challenge (or participate in existing ones)

TikTok Challenges are a really big deal for its users. They are entertaining and engaging but they are also effective tools when it comes to growing your audience. Therefore, TikTokers, both brands and individuals, gladly pick up new challenges with an aim to have fun and become popular.

TikTok challenges work this way – you create a task that users need to perform, choose music, and add a hashtag that describes or names your challenge. The well-known example of a brand that launched their own TikTok challenge is Guess.

With an aim to promote the Fall’18 collection, they created a hashtag labeled “#InMyDenim” and encouraged TikTok users to share their style in denim. In addition to a hashtag, they also chose a song (Bebe Rexh’s “I’m a Mess”) that perfectly fit TikTok’s format and the brand’s style. To give the campaign a boost straightaway, Guess partnered with a couple of influencers who were amongst the first ones to performed the challenge.

The campaign lasted for just six days and during that period Guess managed to get the following results:

• 5,550 user-generated videos
  
• 10.5 million views in total
  
• 4.3% engagement rate
  
• 12,000 additional followers for a brand’s account
  

Source: TikTok

Although they were running a single challenge, Guess managed to spread the word about their new collection, increase brand awareness, and engage with thousands of potential clients in less than a week.

2. Advertise on TikTok

At the beginning of 2019, the app launched its business version that allows users to promote their products and services directly on TikTok. It’s been less than two years since then, but the opportunity was already taken by world-leading brands such as Nike, Universal Pictures, Mercedes-Benz, Converse, Colgate, Amazon, and many others.

Following the example of Facebook and Pinterest, TikTok created the Ads Manager thanks to which you can effectively manage your advertising campaigns by choosing the settings you need. You can also analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns and based on that data, adjust your future ads to the preferences of your audience.

In general, TikTok offers five different ad formats that you can use depending on your marketing goals:

• Top View shows your ad on the best place on TikTok, so you’re sure to gather a lot of attention.
  
• Brand Takeover provides diverse format options, as well as full-screen experience to captivate your audience.
  
• In-Feed Ads is a format that will help you interact with your target audience. This ad gets built in their feed.
  
• Branded Hashtag Challenge allows you to promote the campaign for up to six days.  With it, you can be sure to get an average 8.5% engagement rate.
  
• Branded Effects is a format thanks to which you can use special effects to express your creativity and engage with TikTok users even more.
  

You can find out more about TikTok Ads Manager here.

A campaign run by the beauty brand Too Faced is a great example of how businesses can successfully advertise on TikTok. As their goals were to increase brand awareness and boost sales of a particular product, Too Faced opted for Brand Takeover ad. When a user opened TikTok, first they saw the Too Faced full-screen ad. A user could immerse into it and explore the product for five seconds (which is enough time for people to decide whether to further interact with a brand or not).

Source: TikTok

As a result, in one day of advertising, Too Faced got:

• 7.6 million impressions
  
• 1.3 million clicks to the product page
  
• 18.38% click-through rate
  

From what you can see, choosing the right ad format and investing in high-quality video production is worth it. Moreover, Too Faced managed to exceed the benchmark of the UK market gaining an 18.38% click-through rate.

3. Collaborate with TikTok influencers to create content without having a production team

While many brands are familiar with Instagram influence marketing and the power of it, TikTok influencer marketing is only gaining momentum and is worth exploring. It also allows you to achieve many goals, from quickly reaching your target audience and managing brand reputation to generating leads and improving conversions rates.

However, you should be careful when choosing an influencer you’d like to partner with. In addition to getting acquainted with their bios and analytics, it is important to know their demographics and understand if their audience fits your goals.

Once you decided on that, your effort should better be directed at coming up with a unique and creative solution for your campaign. Take your time to develop a strategy that would make the content you created in collaboration with an influencer stand out from thousands of videos posted on TikTok daily.

Let’s take a look at Ralph Lauren’s strategy. They asked famous TikTokers to stylize their clothes and thus, promoted particular products and collections. For instance, they partnered with Dixie D’Amelio who has over 30 million followers, Lani Baker with 4.1 million followers, and Andre Swilley with almost 8 million followers. This partnership strategy helped Ralph Lauren get over 270 thousand followers on TikTok who could become the brand’s clients and ambassadors on the platform. Moreover, by asking TikTok influencers to stylize Ralph Lauren’s looks, every video got a personal touch and a unique vision of an influencer that made the content on their account look authentic.

Source: TikTok

Wrap up

The strategy you will choose depend on many factors. If you need immediate results, you should advertise your products or services on TikTok. Those teams that have time and an entire production team could create their own content and launch TikTok challenges from scratch. However, if you can’t decide which route to take, you can test different formats and see what works for your brand the best. It might even turn out that you can achieve great results by building a solid TikTok presence and combining all three strategies together.