TikTok Marketing 101: How to plan a TikTok campaign?

Divanshi Gupta from The Marcom Avenue gives an insight into Tiktok marketing 101 - how to plan and create a campaign?

Today, brands are striving to out-do their marketing ideas with every new campaign. They are exploring new avenues to target their TG innovatively, ranging from out-of-home advertisements to public relations, from social media platforms to Cinema Advertisements. One such mass reaches avenue - Social Media, is a world full of opportunities, and with new-age platforms like Snapchat and now TikTok, brands are able to further their marketing agendas and meet their targeted audience where they are most active.

TikTok broke all records within the year of its launch even upon being a hot controversial topic. It has garnered over 1.2 billion downloads becoming one of the most downloaded apps of 2019 in both the App Store and Google Play. Each day we discover that over 50% of the users on this platform are Gen Z, who will form a major portion of the world population by 2030.

Brands like Center Fruit, OLX, Flipkart, Crocs, Chanel, Clean & Clear, Calvin Klein are taking on the world of TikTok by creating Hashtag Challenges to create awareness, engage users and encourage the creation of user-generated content that has garnered billions of views for them.

This brings us to the question, how to plan a TikTok Campaign?

Every user on the platform is a content creator or a consumer. The content that is published on the platform ranges from dance videos to cooking videos or influencers acting on the screen to create short story formats. TikTok has created an ecosystem that immerses the users and influences them to participate in one way or the other.

How to create a campaign?

Before planning a TikTok Campaign, a brand has to understand the necessity of creating a campaign for the platform. If we look at TikTok from the marketing’s perspective we see that it offers:

• Reach to Teens, Tweens, Millennials
• Niche Audience
• Blends Entertainment seamlessly with Information
• Organic Visibility through Hashtags, and has the
• Lowest Saturation in the Advertising World

Also Read: Storytelling will be key to BFSI brands in 2020: Shilpa Desai, Fullerton India

Brands from FMCG, OTT, Music, Entertainment (Cinema, Amusement Parks, etc.) and Tech/Utility category look at opportunities to target Teens/ Tweens/ Millennials, as there is a shift in decision making authority from eldest to youngest in the family, and TikTok enables this intersection conspicuously.

So, plan your steps in a way that answers all your questions and also enables you to plan an effective TikTok Marketing Strategy:

1. Create a Competitor’s Analysis: Gather data by doing a SWOT (Strength-Weakness-Opportunity-Threat) analysis on what has worked and what has not worked for a competitor brand. This will help you eliminate ideas and concepts, and give you an understanding of what your audience may be interested in.
2. Create Content with High Engagement: While you are at this step, strategize ideas that will best entertain the audience and engage them in participating in it. Clean & Clear’s #UnbottleApnaSwag, Flipkart’s #BigBillionStar, and more are some of the most engaging campaigns run on TikTok which were able to garner 15.6 billion and over 8 billion views respectively. This shows the power of creating good content that engages the TG.
3. Boost Visibility with Advertising: TikTok offers 3 types of advertisement options-
   • In-feed Native Ads- Brands’ have to bid for a spot on the TikTok app for their Ad to run; Short videos or static ads as per the preference of the brand.
   • Brand Takeover Ads- Brand’s Ad (Short Video/Static) will play as soon as a targeted TikTok user opens their app.
   • Hashtag Challenges- Official hashtag challenges that are paid for by brands attract direct traffic from the #hashtag page.
4. Partner with an Influencer:
   With paid advertisements run on the platform you must choose to partner with TikTok influencers that have high organic reach. Points to note here are -
   • What is your influencer’s audience like? How do they behave?
   • What kind of content does your influencer create (influencer’s niche)?
5. Provide a Clear Call-to-action:
   Through an Ad or even an Influencer marketing campaign, every brand’s aim is to make the audience visit their brand website/buy the product or generate lead, and thus it is important that you provide a clear call-to-action. TikTok is a user-generating content platform, thus it is essential that the content curated for the platform is quirky, relatable and fun to make it go viral. It is advisable to start a TikTok Campaign with strong influencers as they can create a ripple effect which will further lead to a higher volume of user-generated content. Some suggestions that will help your brand create that effect:
   Tip #1: Use Appropriate Hashtag- Catchy, Quirky and Easy to Say hashtag.
   Tip #2: Content Time- Post Content when the users are available to consume it!
   Tip #3: Relevance is the Key- Make sure that you are sharing information in a relatable way.
   Tip #4: Go Vernacular- Say things in their language for extended reach.
   Tip #5: Acknowledge Participation- Users love being acknowledged by brands.
   Tip #6: Emotional Connect- The language of the heart is the ultimate tie-breaker!

Further, brands can benefit from the mass reach and over 29% organic engagement enabled by TikTok’s worldwide presence.

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