It seems everyone is talking about the TikTok app. While you might not know much about it, you do know that young folks find it all the rage and that it's had more than 1 billion downloads, especially in the "under 30" crowd. So maybe you need to look into advertising on this hot social media platform.
First of all...while TikTok is extremely popular among the under-30 crowd, it also has a pretty large following in the Millennial (21.7 percent) and Gen-X (20.3 percent) crowds. If you do the math, that's 217,000,000 Millennials alone, not to mention all the other users.
TikTok isn't just a platform where teenagers record themselves dancing to music...(yes, we thought that at first, too). It's a short-form video-only platform that allows users to self-publish 1-minute, 3-minute, or 10-minute videos (select creators) about whatever they want (as long as it doesn't violate community guidelines).
Content ranges from people showing funny pet videos to complaining about a bad day at the office to...yes, dancing to music. But mainstream news organizations now have business pages and make news posts, and even host live streams (the Johnny Depp court proceedings were all over TikTok from the mainstream news agencies).
TikTok has become a legitimate platform to be on if you're a business...and one you should be on. Step one is to create a profile on the platform and then switch it to a pro account complete with the Business Suite. Then you will have access to the different types of advertising functionality.
What's most important about TikTok advertising is that it is extremely NON-competitive right now. The platform is still young. It isn't yet oversaturated with advertisers and paid social media ads. This gives anyone who does choose to get in early on the advertising side a distinct advantage. And the platform boasts an average 17.99 percent engagement rate in 2022, according to EasyViral and Grin.
TikTok offers a few different types of ads:
TikTok advertising doesn't have to break the bank. You can use already-existing video templates on the platform that have music, input your own images, add your own URL and discount codes, and promote the video. The minimum TikTok ad campaign budget is $50. The average cost per 1,000 views on TikTok is $10, and the average cost per click is $1. This author has reached more than 5,000 people using less than half of that budget...so you could promote a couple of videos for $50. This is for in-feed video ads. Small businesses can be TikTok advertisers.
Now, if you want to get into the sponsored hashtag challenges, those are a flat rate of $150,000 per week.
A good rule of thumb is to budget a minimum of $500 per ad campaign to start, then take a look at your analytics, re-evaluate, and go from there.
Yes, you may have heard about this quite a bit. TikTok was a little slow in the beginning as far as setting up official paid advertising on its platform. During this time, users were building large followings, even in the millions. This especially happened at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brands began reaching out to these TikTok users with large followers, asking them to partner with and promote their products to their followers. TikTok Influencers were born, and it became a whole new source of income for some on the platform. Additionally, influencer partnerships gave brands an entirely new way to promote their products.
While some only charge $5 per post, it can range up to $2,500+ for an influencer with a large following. Using influencers to market your product or brand could be more effective than utilizing typical TikTok ads. Sources say 49 percent of TikTok users have purchased a product after seeing it promoted by an influencer on the platform. Just be sure that the influencer you choose is a good match for the type of product you are trying to sell.
This brings us to another key point. TikTok's best-performing advertisers are business-to-consumer and mostly focused on the sales of products. In addition to the previous advertising options mentioned, TikTok has partnerships with Shopify and Square, making it possible for consumers to shop directly on the app. This is done through a link on a merchant’s TikTok profile. Additionally, TikTok has a partnership with TalkShopLive, allowing some businesses to sell via live streaming on the platform.
With your TikTok video ads, you will want to track the following metrics: