Tik Tok is so popular, but you haven’t started Tik Tok marketing yet?

The first two parts are an analysis of the Douyin ecosystem, and the last part is an analysis of Douyin’s marketing . If you are already very familiar with Douyin products, you can jump directly to the third part: How do we seize Douyin’s “short-term” bonus period? (There is an Easter egg at the end of the article, please be sure to read to the end)

1. How did Tik Tok make you addicted?

I used to be dismissive of Douyin, until I found that there were more and more "Douyin friends" around me, and finally I couldn't help but open Douyin to find out what it was all about.

In fact, what really draws you into the trap may not be Tik Tok, but "your anxiety": no one wants to be abandoned by the times.

In this rapidly changing era, as teacher Zhang Quanling said, " When the times abandon you, they won't even say goodbye ." You never know what will be all over your circle of friends when you wake up tomorrow. Onmyoji , Honor of Kings , PUBG, Traveling Frog , Love and Producer ... Almost every " Internet celebrity hit" becomes popular overnight and is quickly updated and iterated. Yesterday people were still asking for "ssr", and tomorrow "King" will come rushing in. Although you don’t know how they became popular , when they become popular, you must respond to prove that you are also a “trendsetter” of the times and have not been abandoned.

So, you opened TikTok.

After you got into it, what kept you there?

1. The content is not about quality, but about being “heart-touching”

There must be many people like me who were disdainful of TikTok at first because of the rough texture of its content. But after getting into it, they have to admit: these "rough" short videos are so addictive.

Good content does not depend on how exquisite it is, but on whether it can touch your heart and arouse your hidden emotions. This is also why in the post- traffic era, whoever has the content will rule the world. Those slightly "rough" short videos on Douyin easily capture your curiosity, novelty, resonance and other G-spots.

(▲The picture comes from " My Grandma's Stories ")

2. Douyin topic challenges have extremely high development and continuity

A large amount of content on Douyin comes from various topic challenges, such as "finger dance" and " Haidilao eating methods". The dramatic "Douyin friends" can interpret the same topic or challenge in countless possibilities. This interpretation of the same topic is itself highly progressive and coherent , and coupled with netizens' strong desire to express themselves and create, it creates all kinds of possibilities.

▲Various challenging topics are updated on Douyin every day

For example, the earliest "Little brother, I have something for you", "Me, do you want it?", to "I'll give you a big slap, do you want it?", to spitting on the palm of the hand, putting waste paper towels, putting enoki mushroom heads, and even chasing pigeons and shouting "Little pigeon, little pigeon"... The coherence between these contents has the attribute of "chasing drama" and makes people can't help but watch it.

3. Toutiao ’s intelligent recommendations

Douyin, which originated from Toutiao, has integrated Toutiao's signature technology: recommendation algorithm, which is simply personalized recommendation based on the customer's identity tags and behavioral preferences. "We will push more of what you want to see. We will not push any of what you don't want to see." This algorithm is like an invisible hand that controls the "traffic pool" of Douyin. It puts the content into the black box system of "personalized push" and "intelligent matching", and reintegrates and processes it into highly homogenized but nutritionally single short video "fast food" for the "guinea pigs" nestling on lazy sofas and silicone mattresses. So once you open TikTok, you don’t want to close it, and by the time you want to close it, a long time has passed.

【Foodie’s TikTok】

【Cat slaves’ TikTok】

【TikTok for dog lovers】

4. Tik Tok’s magical brainwashing music

The reason why Tik Tok is different is that it has the attribute of “music” short video. Different from the background function of music in regular videos, Douyin videos select music first and then shoot the video based on the music. The music is dominant and the video serves the music.

“ For short videos, music is more like a filter, which helps short videos to have a stronger expressive effect. In fact, music itself has many strong expressive factors in it. Many pictures with suitable music will naturally give people a sense of "beauty".

This is how Douyin General Manager Zhang Nan explained the importance of music in short videos.

So does music really play such an important role in short videos?

Now you can try it:

Turn off the music, watch Tik Tok for 30 minutes and feel it!

I won’t go into details about how music affects your emotions, but the repeated “C哩C哩” and “Sayunalala” in your mind are the best proof of this.

5. Tik Tok content has a low threshold and is easy to imitate

All the content on Douyin is easy to imitate and copy. Douyin shrimp, blocking the door with tape, holding up the face...all these stories that happen to ordinary people, you can pick up your phone and shoot one yourself. Every ordinary person like you can make our voices heard and express ourselves on TikTok. TikTok has become a vehicle for communication through video. In other words, it already has obvious social attributes. The exquisiteness of PGC content has raised the threshold for content production and the distance between it and users is relatively far. However, low-threshold, highly interactive UGC will undoubtedly be the trend of short videos in the future.

Let’s look back at how the social platforms we use to express ourselves have developed: from the earliest letters, to long blog articles, to today’s most commonly used social networking sites such as Weibo, Moments , Instagram, Facebook, etc., where we can express ourselves with just a picture or a few words. Therefore, we have reason to believe that short videos will become an important vehicle for us to communicate and express ourselves in the future.

2. Once you enter Douyin, it is like entering a deep sea. From then on, reservedness is a passerby

As mentioned earlier, Douyin has demonstrated strong interactivity and social attributes, and has even formed its own unique "Douyin culture".

1. Several mysterious organizations on Douyin: Roller Coaster Brigade, Chichi Brigade, Hu Family Army, Li Yunlong Organization

Feel the power of organization ☟

2. Comment culture: Sooner or later you will die of laughter in the comments

Just to see how deeply rooted Douyin’s comment culture is, let’s look at the reactions of Douyin users when the comments were turned off:

·Ever since TikTok closed comments, I feel like a mentally retarded person every time I use TikTok.

·TikTok has closed comments. I feel like I forgot to bring toilet paper when going to the toilet!

·The TikTok app with comments turned off has made me lose the desire to open it.

▲The helping man and the hair dryer attracted more attention from Douyin users than the "female protagonist"

▲Pure Erha Series

3. Content culture: Young people who use TikTok dare to express themselves. The video content of Tik Tok is just one of the materials for everyone’s social interaction. Anything can be played, and video is just a carrier.

Looking back now, have the community and social attributes of Douyin begun to take shape? This is Douyin’s ambition and the essence of short videos - social.

4. Identity Recognition: When Douyin friends go out to fight, no grass will be left. Douyin's "entry-level" "code words" such as " Ding Di Di " (already banned for disturbing others and violating traffic regulations), "The king covers the earth, the tiger, the chicken stewed with mushrooms" have given Douyin's users a high sense of identity. The identity recognition that Douyin users gain from strangers has brought them a sense of social satisfaction.

By now, Tik Tok’s social ambitions have become clear.

By abandoning PGC and turning to UGC with low threshold and high interaction, Douyin wants to reap the big forest of "social". From adding the “short video” sharing function to Moments to launching “Weibo Stories” on Weibo, it is not difficult to see that social platforms attach importance to video content. Douyin has chosen to continuously lower the threshold for content and strengthen the interactive and communicative attributes of content, while weakening the viewing attributes of content. Its intention is to gradually evolve into a community or even a social platform that uses video as a content carrier.

3. How do we seize the “short-lived” bonus period of TikTok?

Today, when the overall traffic dividend is gradually disappearing, it is particularly important to seize the fleeting traffic dividend. The emerging TikTok has an average daily video playback volume of 1 billion. The traffic dividend it brings is undoubtedly a good choice for brands . Whoever can seize this bonus period quickly and accurately will be able to take the initiative in the competition.

Method 1: Cooperate with Douyin and advertise

There are currently four types of advertising formats available on Douyin:

1. Advertisement placements within the Douyin app : opening screen, information flow , and discovery page banner

There are already a large number of professional marketing experts who have created successful Douyin marketing cases .

▲Case study on how to handle the information flow of experts

In addition, Douyin can also customize creative stickers for brands☟

2. KOL collaboration: KOLs collaborate with brands to create creative videos and spread them

▲

MICHAEL KORS launched a challenge on TikTok to promote its new products and invited Wu Jiayu to shoot a creative video.

3. TikTok Challenge: Cooperate with TikTok officials to customize the challenge theme.

▲ Samsung ’s customized theme event #我都焦点# on Douyin

4. Douyin Carnival: Douyin Carnival will be the biggest event of the year for Douyin. It will be held grandly every year. All of Douyin’s resources will be preheated online and the brand will be fully implanted. It is a good opportunity for brand cooperation.

▲

Last year's Tik Tok Carnival

As mentioned above, there are many forms of cooperation with Douyin, and many brands have already tried Douyin marketing.

but,

Before you start advertising, please ask yourself three questions:

What are your marketing goals?

Do your product attributes match those of TikTok?

Is your product topical enough?

Before answering these three questions, I think it is necessary to remind everyone again that the platform attributes of Douyin ☟

1. For many small and medium-sized brands, they hope that every marketing expense will be spent wisely. Large exposure does not mean good sales results. Ineffective advertising fraud and media companies will eventually be eliminated in an increasingly transparent and sober market environment. If your goal is conversions , the risk is considerable for a new brand.

▲Some ads that performed quite badly only received two or three hundred likes.

2. The product itself needs to be highly malleable and have the basis for being versatile. Products with a single form, low frequency, and high value are not suitable for marketing on Douyin. Through the brands/products that are currently popular on Douyin, it is not difficult to see that most of these products are fast-moving consumer goods with strong demand.

3. Currently, those testing the waters are all well-known brands, which themselves have the attributes of being a topic . For some products that are just starting out and not yet topical, if they want to achieve the same level of dissemination, the human, material and financial resources required are exponential.

If you think you have thought through the above three questions, then here is some advice for you on the content you want to publish:

Those who want to place hard advertisements on Douyin and simply make the advertising videos into vertical videos are not only lazy but also dangerous. Things that can’t be played on WeChat Moments will definitely not work on TikTok, where so many drama queens gather. If the label of "rich users" on video live streaming platforms is "rich and stupid", then the label of "rich customers" on Douyin is "rich and smart" .

For example, after the cute little sister finished the C哩C哩 dance, Douyin pushed a game advertisement with the slogan “Endless levels, double-click 666”, and then after a video of a Corgi going down the stairs, it put a slideshow video advertisement with the slogan “Easy one-on-one tutoring”. This type of advertisement not only fails to attract attention and traffic , but also attracts hatred. This kind of practice is like putting a patch on the "Cannes Lions Festival Grand Prix Advertising Collection" or competing with Lin Chi-ling in aura by wearing the same clothes. Without comparison, there is no harm.

☝A little reminder:

Never try to make "illegal and illegal" or "fake" products without product certificates. For more specific divisions of Douyin banned and whitelisted industries, please see the following figure

Method 2: Create your own Douyin account, and use Weibo and Weibo. Do you really want to "start shaking"?

The call for "two Weibo and one Douyin" is gradually heating up. Before creating a Douyin account, we must first clarify two issues:

1. What kind of industry is suitable for you?

Basically, there is no industry that cannot have a Douyin account. Everyone can give the new platform a try. Judging from the current situation, e-commerce , O2O and products with novel technologies have relatively good results.

At present, the official accounts of Douyin have relatively good operating results:

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds : 5.543 million likes, 1.847 million followers, the highest number of likes for a single video is 3.865 million

Adidas neo: 276.0W likes, 123.6W followers, highest number of likes for a single video: 141.0W

Xiaomi mobile phone: 158.0W likes, 114.8W likes, the highest number of likes for a single video is 25.7W

Among the influencers who have succeeded, there are also very mature Douyin marketing teams.

They have mastered mature and complete Douyin IP operation experience , have a large number of high-quality Douyin celebrity resources and are Douyin's official in-depth cooperation partners. For example, the following two Douyin celebrity accounts operated by them have opened the add to cart function, while Douyin has currently only opened 100 of them.

In addition to creating Douyin celebrities such as "Husky takes you flying" and "Salad days", they can also provide a series of Douyin services such as brand operation and advertising according to customer needs, which is professional and efficient.

Husky takes you flying: 224.1W likes, 525,000 followers, the highest number of likes for a single video is 518,000

Salad days: 125.1W likes, 372K followers, the highest number of likes for a single video is 438K

Professional sets, studios and other equipment create a good environment for outputting high-quality resources.

▲Professional studio

▲Kitchen setting

2. How to make it easier to succeed?

There are still relatively few successful cases on Douyin, but there are some patterns to follow.

● Content: The content should be creative and in line with TikTok’s preferences, such as plot reversal, camera movement, sense of rhythm, high appearance, large scenes, flash text and other TikTok-specific video features. This requires the brand to invest relatively more time, energy and cost.

One point needs to be emphasized here: in this era of consumption upgrading, experience is often more important. Unlike traditional TVCs, in order to capture the hearts of users within 15 seconds, brands must weaken the storytelling aspect, replace story thinking with experience thinking, and use fresh and exciting experiences to attract users rather than a complete story.

In this regard, we can look further and learn about the "granular" content marketing of brands from Snapchat and Instagram on the other side of the ocean, and even from short video platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. For example, the "Four Heavenly Kings" of Instagram are Oreo, Burger King, Airbnb and Starbucks , and the "Five Golden Flowers" of Snapchat are Taco Bell, Mondelez, Burberry, Gatorade and Mountain Dew. Some of these accounts play the "this moment is eternity" game, freezing your senses with a moment of beauty and shock, such as Airbnb and Starbucks; some use their imagination and ingenuity to let products star in short videos, such as Oreo and Taco Bell; and some provide life skills packages, such as IKEA and Lowe's.

▲IKEA’s simple recipe series on Instagram

● Recommendation mechanism: If you meet the following conditions, you are more likely to be recommended as a popular topic

Format: Shoot directly with TikTok, the picture should be clear for more than 7 seconds, vertical version

Songs: Use the most popular and highly recommended music on TikTok

Symbol: Participate in Douyin official activities, such as challenges, etc.

Good-looking: high-value appearance, beautiful women, handsome men, little dogs, kittens, puppies and children

Hot spots: unique value and innovative technology.

Time node: 12-13 noon, 20-24 pm;

Contacts: (a not recommended method, constantly importing new contacts)

Conclusion

1. The bonus is short-lived and will eventually turn into calm. Although TikTok is very popular at present, while everyone is focusing on the benefits of TikTok , they should also understand that the benefit harvesting period of any product is short. If you refer to the past of Weibo and WeChat, you will understand: the popularity is temporary, and the benefits will eventually return to normal levels.

2. Marketing requires caution and careful consideration. As mentioned earlier, whether it is Douyin's advertising or content operations , the requirements for content creativity are higher. It is not as simple as changing from horizontal to vertical screen. This means that the investment will be higher, but the output ratio is difficult to guarantee. Therefore, all brands, especially small and medium-sized brands with relatively tight budgets, must consider carefully when entering Douyin marketing.

Source: 91Get