Comparison and forms of advertising on short video platforms such as TikTok

As the hashtag challenge of the short video platform TikTok has become popular all over the world, it has gradually become a new large-scale social media marketing platform.

TikTok is popular in major global markets such as India, the United States, and Europe, and its over 1 billion active users make it extremely attractive to marketers. But with Facebook and Google in front and Pinterest and Snapchat behind, marketing on TikTok does not seem as easy as it seems.

“A lot of people think TikTok is the new Instagram,” said Jacob Pace, CEO of media company Flighthouse. “But I think it’s more comparable to YouTube. When people use YouTube and TikTok, they don’t use it to see what their friends are doing, they use it for entertainment.”

TikTok influencer advertising post prices are low compared to YouTube and Instagram

Some TikTok influencers have begun working with record companies to release short music videos for them. Argentine TikTok blogger Alejandro Baigorri is one of them. “Most of the requests from record companies are very specific, they have specific requirements for video content, video elements and release time,” he said.

Baigorri mainly produces short videos for Sony and Universal. Prior to this, Baigorri, who has 2.2 million followers, usually mainly produced and released personal street parkour videos. After collaborating with Sony and Universal, his short video content began to focus on music and comedy skits. His girlfriend Magali is the "starring" of his short videos. Magali is also one of the influencers on the TikTok platform.

Baigorri said in an interview that he earns about US$250 (RMB 1,757) for each video, which is a good side job, but it cannot be compared with the income of US$10,000 (RMB 70,000) per video on Instagram and YouTube platforms.

The low price of a single short video means low costs for advertisers.

“You can achieve great results on TikTok for a fraction of what you spend on Instagram,” said Alessandro Bogliari, CEO of The Influence Marketing Factory, who has worked with Baigorri.

Not only that, the number of advertisers on the TikTok platform is far less than that of Instagram or Snapchat, so the competitive pressure for marketing is much smaller.

Agencies like Influencer Marketing Factory have sparked viral Tiktok hashtag challenges by teaming up with major brands to create Tiktok-friendly content. These Tiktok hashtag challenge videos can be played over and over again in the TikTok community and can spawn thousands of copycat videos.

TikTok officials are asking for a higher price

Of course, in addition to working with influencers on TikTok, brands can also work directly with TikTok.

Starting in November last year, TikTok began allowing businesses to buy traditional advertising in the app. Now, companies can run ads through TikTok's self-service platform at a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of $10 (about RMB 70.28). According to data from market analysis company Ad Stage, this price is much higher than Instagram's average CPM of US$8 (approximately RMB 56.2).

In May, Mexican restaurant Chipotle and TikTok launched a six-day "flip" TikTok tag challenge, which involved flipping a Chipotle burrito bowl directly into its own food container (which looks cooler than it sounds). The short video with the hashtag #ChipotleLidFlip has been viewed more than 230 million times. “The nachos with butter became a viral TikTok hashtag challenge,” Pace said.

Sometimes, brands can achieve good promotion results on TikTok without deliberate marketing. Earlier this year, the quirky and catchy tune "The Home Depot Jingle Bell" went viral on TikTok. The company didn't pay to promote the "Home Depot" tag, but it received 62 million hits.

Foreign media said that on TikTok's "Discover" page, it may cost hundreds of thousands of US dollars to pay for the promotion of a TikTok tag challenge, and the starting price for cooperation with advertising companies is usually around 10,000 US dollars (about 70,200 yuan).

Cooperating with TikTok or promoting through the support it provides is currently costly.

Collaborating with celebrities to create music is highly effective

Music is at the heart of the TikTok app, with many TikTok hashtag challenges featuring remixes of songs in collaboration with artists like Ariana Grande and Austin Brown. For example, Flighthouse creates music specifically for TikTok.

There are many popular songs on TikTok that are widely sung among users, such as the 1996 Halloween song "Spooky Scary Skeletons".

In October of this year, the beauty brand Cosmetics ELF invited Brooklyn-based advertising agency Movers + Shakers and Grammy Award winner iLL Wayno to collaborate on the creation and release of "Eyes Lips Face," a song that generated nearly 18,000 parody videos on TikTok. In this marketing, ELF shines and becomes the biggest beneficiary of this TikTok viral promotion campaign.

Summarize

Instagram requires promoted posts to include a sponsored tag. When promoting on TikTok, it still depends on the brand whether to add tags. “TikTok is still very vague and new. Some brands choose to use the sponsored hashtag (#spon) or ad hashtag (#ad) to tell users that it is a paid video, while others just take advantage of the situation.”

That may change as the TikTok ad market continues to grow. "As more marketing dollars are poured into TikTok and companies outside the music, retail and food industries begin advertising on TikTok, regulation may tighten," Bogliari said.

“Gen Z doesn’t mind marketing as long as they recognize the quality of the content,” Pace said. “It’s all driven by the creators, and they have a lot of energy.”

Advertising agencies like Flighthouse and Influencer Marketing Factory are more focused on original ads, which are closer to regular videos on the TikTok platform and are very helpful for brand awareness.

Bogliari said: "On TikTok, short videos are more about comedy and entertainment. Putting the product in the video completes soft marketing."

2. What should advertisers do when doing TikTok short video marketing?

1. TikTok content marketing

The first type of marketing is free! (Compared to the remaining two, which are free, the promotion cost will be lower, but advertisers need to pay for manpower)

Register a TikTok account for your company and use it to publish videos introducing brand and product-related knowledge.

We must ensure good video quality and high-quality video content. Only when the video presents high-quality content will it be possible for the video to be put on the recommendation page! When the video content is successfully listed on the recommendation page, the video exposure and target audience will follow!

If we do content marketing through TikTok, then our TikTok video ads must have value advantages. When a user comments in the video comment area, we also need to reply. When a user sends a private message to the corporate account through his account, we also need to reply!

2. TikTok Advertising

The second method is to place TikTok ads. After placing the ads, advertisers can see the advertising effects within 1-3 days of the ad placement.

TikTok ads are mainly information flow effect ads. After users open TikTok, there will be video content with the word "advertisement" during video playback, which is the official TikTok advertising space.

The biggest benefit for advertisers to put money on TikTok is that it can help advertisers display video content to more target audiences, allowing more users to see the advertiser's advertising video content, and also be able to deliver ads to users with the greatest purchasing needs, and through the promotion of advertising links, allow users to directly purchase products through advertising links!

When placing TikTok ads, you need to open an advertising account first and deposit a certain amount of advertising fees in the advertising account. Later, the advertising fees will be directly deducted in real time according to CPC (click) and CPM (thousand impressions)!

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is about finding influencers with a large fan base on TikTok. When looking for internet celebrities to cooperate with, we can try to find an agency to cooperate with, or find an MCN agency to cooperate with. When selecting suitable internet celebrity resources, we need to find internet celebrity resources that are more compatible with our products or goals!

Being an internet celebrity can help you get more video exposure, but the target audience coverage is relatively limited and can only show some user groups!

Author: dakai365

Source: dakai365