You’ve seen the videos, 10, 20, 30 seconds long. They make you cringe a little bit, but at the same time, you can’t help but feel like you’re being drawn in. TikTok has taken the short form video trend by storm and is currently owning the space.
You’re running a more traditional business. Maybe it’s something bricks and mortar. Maybe you have an ecommerce shop front, but aren’t selling anything particularly crazy. You’ve been walking right past TikTok for ages, thinking that it’s not really going to work with you. But you hear that engagement is through the roof. It’s getting harder and harder to ignore. Why is Tiktok good for marketing, I hear you say? Let’s dive a bit deeper into this question today.
Why is TikTok Good For Marketing – Reason 1: It’s Got Highly Engaged Users
One of the key rules of marketing is that you have to be where your audience is. You may or may not be marketing to Gen Z (or younger) but if you plan to be in business for a long time, guess what? These currently young people are going to get older. They might be in a place to buy from you if you’ve been there from the beginning and you’ve had a chance to build a following with them.
There are a myriad of ways to get users: SEO, PPC, Facebook, traditional media, etc. But what would you rather: 100,000 users who visit your site who don’t go there for a specific reason and are just passing by, or 1,000 highly targeted, passionate users who will scream from the rooftops and try to get their family and friends to buy everything you create? I know what I’d prefer.
Why is TikTok Good For Marketing – Reason 2: It Builds Trust Fast
It’s true that marketing online lets you gain access to millions of people, but like I mentioned in point 1, there’s no point having that many users if they don’t care about you or your product. I’ve heard of stories of marketers who have painstakingly built up blogs that get hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors only to shut it down because they couldn’t monetize it. Why couldn’t they do that? They fundamentally built a blog around something that people didn’t care deeply about.
Tiktok lets people share and talk about things that interest them. The engineers at TikTok make sure that the most interesting, engaging stuff floats to the top and finds the people that most want to read that stuff. In the past, it was about people searching for answers, now the answers search for you, thanks to the power of machine learning. As long as you create good content, it will find your people.
Why is TikTok Good For Marketing – Reason 3: It’s Human
It might be a bit confusing what I mean by this. Put it this way: people are becoming more and more distrusting of things online. There’s so much noise out there. TikTok cuts through the noise better than anyone else, why? Because they’re created by people for the primary purpose of entertaining, educating and NOT selling. People are tired of being sold to.
But hold on, I hear you say. Doesn’t that mean I can’t use this platform to sell? Well no. It just means that you have to have people’s interests in mind first before trying to sell to them. Show them the face behind the brand. Show them the imperfections. Show them that you’re real. People engage with that.
TikTok is great for marketing. All you have to do is start an account and get posting. Sounds simple, but it’s not easy. Especially if you’re not comfortable putting yourself out there. But if you can get there, there’s a world of possibility for you, your brand and your business.