How Can Traditional Marketers Catch the Wave on Tiktok?

Introduction to Tiktok

Tiktok, the short-form video app, allowed the Beijing-based ByteDance to dethrone Uber from the long-held title of the world’s most valuable start-up last November. Users on TikTok can film, edit, share and play short videos, or as the company claims, “share their passion and creative expression through videos.” The app boasted a global monthly active user of 500 million across 150 countries as of last November. It also surpassed Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and SnapChat in monthly installations for the first-time last September.

User Profile

So, who exactly are the users? According to iResearch, users are split into 52.41% males and 47.59% females. The dominant age group is 25 – 30 y/o with nearly 30% of users, while the second falls into the under 24 y/o group with 26%. We can roughly separate the users into three clusters based on their behaviors and needs – the professional content generators, the general content generators and the browsers. The professional content generators, including brands' official accounts and high-profile distinguished users, release well-made videos for creating traffic to other media, monetizing and marketing purposes etc. The general content generators are self-explanatory. Browsers interact with the former two to kill time or gain social satisfaction. So far, the app sounds very much like a combination of Snapchat, Youtube, and IGTV. Millennials and Gen Z prefer visuals than text. Short-time format is gratifying to teens, who are usually considered with short attention span.

Opportunities for Marketers

Common ways for monetization on Tiktok include ad placement / endorsement with influencers, e-commerce, virtual gifts for online streaming, traffic diversion to external sites etc. One thing worth noticing is that up until now it seems Tiktok has only become a handy monetization platform for small to medium brands. Appealing and creative original content helps previously unknown brands / products to spread and achieve success exponentially. As for traditional well-established brands in retails, beauty, luxury, F&B and more, proper ways to utilize the “short-video” platform entail close examinations and subtlety. Short time span is designed to entertain and resonate with users immediately. Short time span disables long marketing messages and limits expression of tone & manners of a brand by nature. With that being said, I think Tiktok will be better served as an awareness- and engagement- enhancement tool for mature brands to attract eyeballs from the younger generations. Overall, marketing is very much switching from insight-led to tech-led in this case.