TikTok Promotion: The essence of TikTok is revealed in 3,000 words!

In the past two months, readers have been leaving messages saying that they hope I can take some time to analyze the marketing essence behind the most popular APP Tik Tok. After observing for more than two months, I have watched all the popular videos and internet celebrities on Douyin.

Today, we will peel off the mysterious cloak of TikTok layer by layer, and lead marketing enthusiasts to deeply explore the underlying marketing logic behind TikTok.

First, let’s understand Tik Tok’s current status in the Chinese Internet industry.

In 2019, Douyin, a popular app under Toutiao, made great strides and became the exclusive social media communication platform for CCTV's "Spring Festival Gala". According to the official data from the "2018 Annual Data Report" released by Douyin, as of early January 2019, Douyin's daily active users in China exceeded 250 million, and its monthly active users exceeded 500 million.

There is no doubt that Tik Tok has become a phenomenal super app after WeChat. The focus of Douyin is the hot potato in the marketing industry in recent years. Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun often says that the pig should stand on the right outlet - short videos.

TikTok has become a standard for marketing in the tourism sector.

The local government of Xi'an, the most beautiful city, and Alipay jointly gathered many Douyin amateur internet celebrities during the Spring Festival to bring the "Xi'an Digital China New Year" QR code scanning market event, which attracted more than 400,000 people from all over the country in just two days. The popularity of the event was comparable to that of live broadcast on the Internet, successfully creating a young, fashionable and beautiful city business card for Xi'an.

The scene is as crowded as the Spring Festival travel rush

In the past, a city’s tourism marketing mostly relied on local media and CCTV reports, but TikTok has become the hottest marketing tool in the current tourism field.

In September last year, the Cyber ​​Security Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security and Douyin jointly held the "National Internet Police Patrol and Law Enforcement Douyin Account Matrix Entry Ceremony". 170 Internet police units from provincial and municipal public security organs across the country collectively entered Douyin, opened official Douyin accounts, and built a national Internet police short video platform work matrix.

As the guardian of the Internet's virtual space, the national cyber police department is using short video platforms to create a new model of police interaction.

National Internet Police Patrol Law Enforcement Douyin Account Matrix Settlement Ceremony

After a tour in the Internet industry, I found that the current industry analysis of Douyin mostly revolves around several directions: the recommendation mechanism behind Douyin; an inventory and analysis of Douyin celebrity marketing; an introduction to tools for shooting Douyin, etc.

The above analysis is undoubtedly based on a tactical perspective. Fans who are familiar with this account know that Uncle Qi likes to decipher the underlying logic behind marketing phenomena. There must be deep strategic support behind the tactics, and the latter plays a more decisive role.

In almost every lecture, Chaos University President Li Shanyou emphasizes the importance of exploring the underlying logic of things—also known as first principles.

Li Shanyou's Chaos Class

And what is the first principle of Tik Tok?

This article will tear TikTok apart for marketing enthusiasts from two dimensions, and the basis of all conclusions is the operating laws of the human brain.

Dimension 1: Why is short video the carrier of Douyin’s layout?

Dimension 2: What is the secret of Tik Tok short videos that drives viewers to linger?

Without further ado, let’s start tearing it apart!

All human behavior is caused by external stimuli. The carrier of stimulation comes from information. In the process of human development, the carriers of information have developed successively through irregular symbols, text, pictures, and videos.

In the era of mobile Internet, which advocates fragmented reading and takes light, thin, fast and small as content standards, video is the carrier of content with the highest information density that can be read on mobile devices per unit time.

The higher the information density per unit time, the more sufficient content there is to express your demands, and the easier it is to guide consumers' behavior based on their emotions . The commercial use of 4G and 5G technologies has enabled the rapid rise of short videos.

According to the research on the human brain, the more you can mobilize people's vision, hearing, smell and taste, the more you can stimulate people's emotions, and thus make behavioral decisions.

In order to let readers better understand this law, an experimental example is cited:

There are four donation boxes with four different promotional materials each, asking you to donate. Which one would you prefer to donate to?

A. A document listing the statistics of the disaster in Afghanistan;

B. A sad picture of a 9-year-old boy following a Chinese peacekeeper just to drink a sip of water; (pure visual)

C. A sad picture of a 9-year-old boy following a Chinese peacekeeper just to drink water, with tear-jerking music playing (visual + auditory)

D. A sad picture of a 9-year-old boy following a Chinese peacekeeper just to drink water, with tear-jerking music playing, letting you taste the bitter tap water brought from the local area (visual + auditory + taste)

The test results showed that more people chose to donate to Group D. Because the stimulation of human sensory parts from Group A to Group D is superimposed, it is easier to trigger people's emotions, thereby driving humans to make donation decisions.

This also helps us understand why many companies are still simply pulling data or simply posting pictures when promoting their products (although many e-commerce platforms have now launched short video playback functions), and the results are often mediocre.

Douyin has chosen short videos, which is currently the most capable carrier of arousing people's emotions, which undoubtedly caters to the laws of human behavior. This is why Tik Tok chose some music with strong rhythm as background music - the fusion of hearing and visual content.

Tik Tok Playlist

Next, all human behaviors are driven by emotions. Before analyzing the marketing secrets of Tik Tok, we must first understand the brain operating rules behind the entire human behavior.

How the brain works - a graphic guide to behavioral patterns

First of all, consumers are in their current state. External information will stimulate and break the consumer's state, thereby changing the consumer's cognitive state. By stimulating the emotional genes in the human heart, it will change the person's emotional state and ultimately drive consumers to perform behavioral activities naturally.

Just imagine, during the Valentine's Day that just passed, when you were immersed in the atmosphere of couples posting photos together on WeChat Moments, did you have a strong desire to buy a gift for your significant other? This is the most intuitive phenomenon of emotion-driven behavior.

Screenshot of XX Moments

In the marketing industry, after years of exploration, four major emotional patterns have been summarized (romance, self-protection, money, and recognition from others) . Just like human blood type and genes, humans have four fixed emotional patterns.

Throughout their lives, people are pursuing the satisfaction of these four major emotional patterns. As long as these four emotional patterns are triggered, consumer behavior can be easily driven. These patterns are also called human nature.

Tik Tok is good at utilizing these four major emotional patterns, which is enough to make a person stay awake for a whole day watching short videos created by others.

Emotional Mode 1: Romance

Romance includes sexual desire and attraction between the two sexes, and is also the most primitive way for the human race to reproduce. Moreover, romance brings happiness. It is extremely easy for people to indulge in an atmosphere of romance and happiness.

This is also why beautiful women and handsome men can easily get high likes on Tik Tok. Beauty arouses human desire, and people can't help but like it. (The red circles below are the data of various accounts on Douyin as of yesterday, please read the grey words carefully)

Data source: TikTok; account number Daigula K

Data source: Douyin; account: Heart-breaking Master Zheng Shi

Data source: Douyin; Account: Low-key Girl

Data source: Douyin; account: Qiqiqige

Data source: TikTok; account: Clockwork Bear Trivia

Emotional Pattern 2: Self-protection

Self-protection refers to people's protection of their own property, the health and safety of their families, and the ability to permanently keep their belongings.

Among them are the love of parents for their children, the love of children for their parents, the love of owners for their pets, and a related emotion of "protection".

Everyone wants to do things easily and safely, and if there is a threat to health, education, property, etc., there is an emotional pattern of self-protection. You will find that information about self-protection spreads virally on the Internet, such as genetically modified organisms, disputes over civil rights, territorial ownership, and earthquake protection.

Data source: Douyin; account: Golden Retriever Yolk

Emotional Pattern 3: Money

Money is something indispensable for human beings to survive in society, but it is not the only one and it is never the most advantageous, but it is indeed the most convincing. Money is the driving force of human emotions.

Everyone is particularly interested in and pays attention to information about making and saving money. People's deep desire is to be rich and happy. Emotions such as fear, hatred or entanglement are more or less related to money. Emotionally, people are most receptive to those who offer advice on how to make more money.

Data source: Douyin; account: Du Zijian

Data source: Douyin; account Guangdong Zhaohong Traditional Stone-Ground Rice Noodle Rolls

Data source: TikTok; account Director Zhou talks about business, etc.

Emotional Pattern 4: Recognition from Others

In human society, there is an invisible and unclear moral status game between people, in which people think that one person has a higher status and another has a lower status.

People are more willing to find people of the same status as themselves. It makes people feel comfortable to get along with people of the same status. This is what the old saying goes: birds of a feather flock together. Human beings live in communities, and gaining recognition and love from others brings happiness and satisfaction.

Data source: TikTok; account: K-brother, food delivery guy

Data source: Douyin; account: Lijiang Pomegranate Brother, etc.

Data source: Douyin; account: Fangqi Kiki

Conclusion

On the Douyin platform, any video that revolves around one or more of the above emotional modes (romance, self-protection, money, and recognition from others) will definitely receive a high number of likes and reposts. This is the decoding of human nature behind Douyin.

Source: 007 in the marketing world (beastmkt)