Sharing Social London // Feb 2020

This was my first public speaking appearance in person, which took place in February 2020 in central London.

In this talk, I introduce the Sharing Social London community to TikTok, at the time, an up-and-coming social media platform centred around short-form video. I discuss how the interface works, the current trends on the platform, which ads are available to brands and how they can be used.

Most people, when they hear the word TikTok, do this. And that is how I was when I first got it. I'm not going to lie. Especially when I told my friends, like, "Guys, have you heard about TikTok?" They're like, "Becca, no." It's very easy to dismiss the app straight away and think that it's just for kids. It's just another fad. It's just another trend. Like, why do we need to pay attention to it? How is it valuable for us? And I'm going to tell you.

So, I think about May last year at Social Day, my curiosity started to get the better of me when I started to hear a lot more chit-chat about the app and how advertisers were using it. Then this happened. After downloading the app, when you first get it, it's very weird. You will be freaked out and then slowly it gets you and you become obsessed.

All the videos on TikTok are 15 to 60 seconds long. It's a very visual platform. They claim to make your day, and TikTok sells itself as showing real people and real videos. So, this could be compared to Instagram where everything's kind of polished to perfection and kind of this weird warped view of reality. Everything's too perfect, kind of feels a bit like "Black Mirror". TikTok is kind of showing you the real side of things, and it's people just in their back garden, eating, and doing funny things. And it does throw back to the Vine era a few years ago.

In the app, there are two main kinds of avenues of how you might use it. If you're just passively viewing TikToks, two things to note are that every second counts on the app. If something doesn't hook your attention within the first second, you will swipe off. It's also worth noting that there is a personalised feed. So, as I said when you first download it, the feed that you will have will be a bit strange. But I encourage you to like things, interact with people, follow some people, and then you'll have a following feed made up of content that you'll like, and the algorithm will begin to learn who you are.

Who is using TikTok? The primary audience for TikTok is 13 to 24-year-olds. There are currently 500 million global active users on the platform, and 5.4 million of those are active every month in the UK. This is a huge audience available to you. Out of the UK audience, people using TikTok are spending 53 minutes on the app every day. When you consider how busy we are as people, and how many other social media apps there are, Instagram used to suck all my time, people are spending a huge amount of time on TikTok, and it's something that you need to pay attention to.

The different kinds of types of content you can expect to find on TikTok covers everything. If you can think of a niche, it will be on TikTok. The most popular ones are lip-syncing, dancing, story time videos, comedy sketches, cooking videos, cute pets, which is one of my favourites, travel vlogs, and literally, anything you can think of will be on TikTok. So, no matter what your niche is, whether that's personally or if you've got a product that you think might be advertised to the younger audiences, there will be people on TikTok ready to watch.

So, what do you need to know before you just throw all your money at the app? TikTok says that they are connecting brands today with the consumers of tomorrow. Thinking about the audience so far, it's worth noting that 66% of them are under 30 years old. TikTok is a really good gateway to target young millennials and Generation Z.

If you are familiar with paid social, so if you've run Facebook ads before, then the TikTok campaign structure will be as you expect. There's a campaign level, and then within that, you can set up ad groups and different ads. The ad targeting is also very similar to Facebook, so you can set up audiences, you can save them, you can target by location, language, gender, age, and interest. So any of those different things like cooking, or travel, you'll be able to target them.

What are your objectives? There are two main objectives of TikTok: consideration, so this can be used to drive traffic and increase your app installs, and the other main one is conversions. If you're using TikTok ads to drive people to make a purchase on your site, then conversions are what you should aim for.

How much should you be expecting to spend on TikTok? If you're going to advertise, there's currently a minimum budget of £500 at campaign level and a minimum spend of £50 at ad group level. I think this is pretty standard, and I wouldn't run a Facebook campaign, for example, for a client for any less than this. But it's just something to bear in mind if you do take this to clients and they're like, "Well, how much should I spend?" Then it's got to be at least this.

What kind of creative should you think about when producing TikTok ads? As you know and you've seen, TikTok is primarily a visual platform. So, it's really important your videos are high resolution, and high contrast, and use as many bright colours as you can. You need to catch people's attention within the first couple of seconds. But it's worth noting that you need to stay in the safe zone. So here we've got three very similar variations, the only difference is the length of copy, which will affect what your safe zone is.

But the interface for TikTok, I feel, is a little bit cluttered, so you need to make sure whatever the focus of your content is, is right in the centre of the screen because you need to avoid the "For You" and the "Following" tabs and the profile, the like, the comment, the share button at the side as well. The copy really takes a back seat on TikTok; less is more. It's best to just use a hashtag or if you have a short slogan for your brand, you can use that. You've only got 1,200 characters to play with, and honestly, I don't think many people really look. You need to be drawing people in with your video instead.

On TikTok, there are four main ad types currently. They include native in-feed ads, brand takeovers, hashtag challenges, and branded lenses.

The first one I'm going to talk about is native in-feed ads. These ads will appear as you're scrolling through. You'll see these sandwiched in between. This is an example of Maybelline. So they've just made a video, and they've actually used an influencer as well to promote their latest mascara. These ads are great at increasing brand awareness. It's worth noting that this ad type actually has, at the moment, an average of 5% engagement rate. They also have a 1% to 3% average click-through rate.

The next advert I want to talk about is brand takeovers. These are really powerful ads. When you open the TikTok app, you'll sometimes be met by a splash screen, and one of these adverts will run immediately. So you actually have an opportunity of a couple of seconds before the rest of the interface will appear. That is your prime time when you want your main message to be there. This is an example of lastminute.com. I felt very targeted because I've just booked a holiday, and this is all I got for, like, too long. It's also worth noting that brand takeovers are called takeovers for a reason. Think about the content categories I told you about. Lastminute.com, they're in the travel category. If you decide to run a brand takeover, there will only be one ad shown in that category for the entire day. So lastminute.com competitor would not show. They would have to pick a different day to advertise. So this is a really powerful tool within TikTok that could be used for so many things. That's why I think you need to start using it for clients. These ads also have a great return. They've got a 7% to 10% average click-through rate.

The next one is hashtag challenge. These are really unique to TikTok. What you've got here is when you're in the app, you can go on the discovery page, and you can see at the top, Converse have bought that banner space that will be there for six days. And what you've got to think about is how a user will use the app. They're going on TikTok. They've got something. They want to make a TikTok. What can I make one hour about? They'll go to the discovery page. "Oh, okay. Converse are there. They've got a hashtag I can use. I'm going to make a video." What the user can then do is click through on the banner. They can be taken to a landing page, and they can see all of the videos using the hashtag at the moment, and they're ranked in terms of views. So this is a great way to guarantee going viral, which I think is very unique to the platform. You could have an account, let's say Prep made a TikTok account and they made a video about a sandwich every day. Because people know who they are, they would organically grow followers over time. But not everyone's going to jump on the hashtag. This means you've got like a six-day window to encourage loads and loads of people, influencers, everyone, to make a video and promote your brand.

The final main ad type is branded lenses. You'll be familiar with other apps like Snapchat filters or Instagram stories when you can put things on there. This is a great way to show off products. If you've got, say, Converse would be another good example, you could have an AR effect where when users use the app, they can try their shoes on before they buy. But this is very similar to what's already available on other apps like Snapchat and Instagram.

Another way to advertise on TikTok is to encourage your users and influencers to promote their own channels. This is some user-generated content. This should remind you, hopefully, of when you see Instagram posts with hashtag ads. This is the exact same thing. So here on the left, we've got this guy. A kind of trend on TikTok is to pour a drink into a cup and then tip the cup up at the end, and there's no liquid in it. Where's it gone? Somebody will be trying to drink it under the table. They're usually pretty funny. So Red Bull has paid this influencer to do that, but just use a can of Red Bull instead. And then the other TikTok here is from a gaming influencer. Really, really simple. All they've had to do is record their screen, and they've been paid to do that. That's a way that you can just get your brand out there without having to have your own profile as well.

On a serious note, I think most people, when they hear TikTok, start to feel a bit worried. There have definitely been some mixed opinions on the app so far. These are some of the headlines that are currently associated with the app. Now, they're quite scary. They're all about data privacy and security concerns. Has TikTok got its PR strategy in place? Are they coping with the increase in users? And I think this comes down to how you feel. Personally, I think if you're already using Facebook or WhatsApp or Instagram, considering they're all basically the same thing, then data concerns, like, are you really that bothered? They've done plenty of things that they said they wouldn't with your data. So it's about how you're going to use the app. You need to make a decision, and weigh up your options. Do you want to download TikTok for yourself, just try it out, and see how you get on.

You will become addicted, just saying.

I'm obsessed. I recommend that you try it, and I would really, really encourage brands to use it as well. I think it's so powerful, and it's such an easy way to target the younger generation. Now, it's your turn. Hopefully, after this, you will be feeling a little bit happier about TikTok.