Do TikTok’s recent updates cement its place in your strategy?
Do TikTok’s recent updates cement its place in your strategy?
March 3, 2023
Many marketers are still cautious about whether or not TikTok has a place in their overall marketing mix. Concerns about relevant demographics, privacy, brand safety and more mean some remain hesitant to even experiment with the platform.
With 1 billion users and growing, however, brands taking this approach could be missing out…
TikTok’s raft of new updates has presented marketers with a range of new advertising opportunities. As TikTok strives to become the biggest e-commerce platform, here is an overview of some of the new features.
Promoting Organic Content
TikTok launched Promote in 2021 as a feature which turns organically posted TikToks into Ads to reach a targeted audience. TikTok has recently introduced new features to further help to promote organic content, including capabilities for creators to easily target their local communities and gives advertisers more control over how their ads are interacted with. It’s known that displaying organic content before paid content improves the performance of paid ads. According to a study by Neurons, showing organic content before paid ads increased viewers brand recall by 27%.
To further promote organic content, users can set goals to achieve different capabilities using Promote. This allows advertisers of all sizes to effectively meet their marketing goals from increasing their audiences to reaching potential customers.
The “more profile views” goal increases traffic to the creators TikTok page to promote their products and services. The “more messages” goal increases traffic to their inbox for businesses who rely on direct selling. The update also allows for audience customisation as in addition to age and gender, small businesses can use location features to target their local community.
Further updates to benefit creators
The launch of a Beta version of TikTok’s new Creativity Program recently contains a new monetisation tool to support creators. According to TikTok Newsroom the new feature was designed based on feedback from creators using the TikTok Creator Fund, furthering expanding on TikTok’s mission to be the best social platform for creators.
According to Social Media Today, creators must post videos longer than one minute to be eligible for monetization. The feature will be rolled out by invite only then will be distributed to all US creators in the upcoming months. TikTok Newsroom explains users gain access to a dashboard where they can view their estimated revenue and video performance metrics and analytics from their videos.
Better TikTok Insights
According to Social Media Today, TikTok has introduced 70,000 new insights to its TikTok Insights site, which marketers can use to view shifts in usage trends and audience behaviour including brand interaction tendencies. The tool can be filtered by audience, industry, holidays and events and by year, making it useful for key dates in a marketing calendar. This information can then be used to guide promotions in relation to the specific needs of their target audience.
By using the tools, marketers can find out what is working or not working for their target audience allowing them to identify the right time to launch their ad and how to launch it. Other platforms offer significantly more data than TikTok at present, so it remains important for the platform to catch up in terms of the data it provides back to marketers.
In-stream Shopping
TikTok has also introduced a direct purchase flow within the app so that users are no longer directed to the retailer’s website. The tool is similar to Instagram’s own options, which due to poor adoption the platform recently discontinued. TikTok has pushed hard into ecommerce, with its #ISawItOnTikTok campaign, and the addition of in-stream shopping gives retailers another reason to experiment with the platforms shopping capabilities.
In a recent blog post TikTok stated they are “committed to expanding their suite of features to empower advertisers of all sizes to grow and meet their goals, whether it’s to build an audience on TikTok or engage with potential customers.” Therefore we can expect to see future capabilities expanding on these existing advertising opportunities for TikTok creators.
If you’re still unsure about whether TikTok is suitable for your brand,
Marisa Bailey is a Digital Marketing MSc student with an interest in reporting on the latest digital media trends.
Find her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marisa-bailey/
Sources
- — https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/tiktok-adds-new-targeting-and-boosting-features-to-its-promote-advertising-tool/
- — https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/introducing-more-ways-to-boost-your-organic-content-with-promote
- — https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/unlocking-even-more-opportunities-for-creators-with-the-creativity-program-beta
- — https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/TikTok-Launches-New-Creator-Funding-Program/643133/
- — https://www.tiktok.com/business/en-GB/insights
- — https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/TikTok-Tests-In-Stream-Shopping-Options/642979/