Why Tiktok is the best opportunity for mobile apps in 2020
While Instagram, YouTube and Facebook remain the most popular social media platforms, it is important to make room for TikTok at the top. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech company that runs several popular social networking apps.
In November 2017, TikTok bought out Musical.ly, and since then the app has grown in size and technology. With 66% of users being under 30 years old, it is a social media platform for creating, sharing and discovering short videos engaging the Gen Z audience. With 500 million users in less than two years since its launch, it has already become one of the most downloaded apps of the year, surpassing download records set by YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram.
The success of Lil Nas X’s song, “Old Town Road” came in part because the song was used for countless videos and memes throughout TikTok. The nursery song ““Baby Shark,” also gained mainstream popularity becoming a meme on the app.
It’s been some time since we have seen a new social platform emerge and with the rate we have seen TikTok grow in the past two years, it’s important for brands to keep up. One of Instagram’s features, IGTV, seems to be getting inspiration from TikTok’s app setup by having a central feed of videos.
TikTok is almost mimicking what Vine was by producing short, humorous clips. The issue that made Vine disappear was a lack of monetization opportunities for influencers. When Vine closed in October 2016, many of the young influencers who were on the rise turned to what was Musical.ly at the time to continue their work.
Content creators have yet to realize the potential of branding opportunities within TikTok. Influencers on TikTok don’t have the ability to drive a link taking you outside the app, making it a challenge for creators to find brand sponsorships. TikTok is taking initiative to make the platform ad friendly.
TikTok is still in the early stages of testing out advertising. Unlike Instagram and Facebook, companies need to be in touch with a TikTok representative to be able to run ads. Influencer marketing companies such as Stargazer are exploring advertising opportunities on TikTok. For example, Stargazer is testing running ads for brands within the app, and paid sponsorship opportunities within TikTok clips with content creators.
When working on the TikTok ad network, advertisers are able to get a CPM below $5 and CPC ranging from $0.1 to $0.3.
Regarding TikTok influencer marketing, the platform does not yet have the ability to drive a link outside of the app to track installs – therefore these sponsored posts aim to drive people to manually go on the app store and install an app. If you are able to measure the lift in organic installs, you would be able to get a CPI between $0.5 to $3.
This is a great opportunity for a new app launch if you want to drive a lot of organic installs and rank in the top trending apps.
Here are some simple ways to use TikTok to help your brand reach their marketing goals:
- Launch challenges using personalized hashtags. This will generate user-generated content and may eventually lead up to the trending page on TikTok to better promote your product or service. For example, #Euphoric is currently trending, starting a buzz about the new HBO drama series Euphoria.
- Present sponsorship opportunities to TikTok influencers directly to promote your product or service. As mentioned previously, since influencers on TikTok don’t have the ability to drive a link taking you outside the app, create other ways to track the success of your campaign. For example, provide referral, promo codes, app name and logo to use on the captions of their clips.
It is apparent that while there are already opportunities at hand with TikTok, there will be even more as they continue to grow.
