How to use Tik Tok more efficiently? Master these five vertical screen thinking!

Why is it that when Chengdu sweet girl says “I think it would be nice if you could just take me out for dinner”, so many men would take time off to go to Chengdu to find her? Even because of her, the airfare to Chengdu has increased.

And you, even if you shoot a Tik Tok video 100 times, the number of views is always only around 200?

Ahem, because you haven’t mastered the five rules of vertical screen thinking!

Row! Heavy! point! ——Vertical videos represented by TikTok are not just about turning the horizontal screen vertically, but require embracing "vertical thinking" in every aspect of creativity.

Today, the first domestic "Vertical Screen Advertising Creative Guidance Manual" produced by Douyin Short Video and jointly researched by the National Advertising Research Institute and Zhimeng Consulting Agency was officially released.

Bangmei studied this freshly-released manual as soon as possible and will be the first to break down the secrets behind the tens of millions of views for you. These five vertical screen rules not only allow brands to use Tik Tok more efficiently, but are also applicable to individuals who want to debut as the center.

In order to make vertical screen ads resonate with more users, it is necessary to find the hot content that current users are paying attention to. Let’s first take a look at a short video that was selected for the Tik Tok V-UP vertical screen advertising creative competition:

This Oreo advertisement uses the plot of "slowly getting closer to you" to capture the little beauty of life. It is simple and easy to imitate , but the ending has an unexpected twist. It turns out that "getting closer to you" is fake, and grabbing Oreo cookies is real!

Therefore, studying some popular content on the platform and extending it creatively can more effectively display advertising content. Secondly, choose popular challenges and tag them when uploading to increase the number of video exposure. Specifically, there are two key points:

1. Interesting content in equal dialogue is more in line with the user context

The context of short videos, different from the context of previous TV commercials (TVCs), has changed from the context of "authoritative education" to the context of "equal dialogue". As Liu Su, founder of Zanyi Interactive, said: "In a vertical screen media environment, advertising and brand marketing must first conform to consumers' minds and usage habits. This is an established premise."

Therefore, vertical screen ads must adapt to the content attributes of the short video platform. On Tik Tok, this requires you to create video content that is fast-paced, lifelike, and entertaining.

Data shows that content themes such as music, Douyin-specific twists and turns, creativity, and food have higher interaction rates. Compared with pure advertising, the effective playback rate of advertising implantation methods such as music, dance, and skits increased by 53.7%; the average single playback time increased by 45.6%; the completion rate increased by 139.2%; the forwarding rate increased by 10.7 times; and the comment rate increased by 23.9 times.

2. Create imitable content to inspire users to spread

On TikTok, the truly popular advertisements actually involve a large number of TikTok users imitating and participating. For example, the Douyin recipe of CoCo milk tea that became popular on Douyin entered a larger recommendation pool through a large number of UGC videos.

Therefore, the creativity of vertical screen advertising should focus on the "imitability" of the content, allowing users to become your co-creators and disseminators. If we observe the content that has become popular on Douyin, most of them have folk attributes, such as beauty and love, coolness and showmanship, practicality and life tips, etc. These easy-to-imitate elements can easily make the video content break through the dissemination barriers.

MetrixLab research in Asia Pacific found that when a product demonstrates real-world applications, it is more likely to spark consumer interest in the brand and increase purchase intent.

Based on the vertical screen advertising data of Douyin, the click-through rate of advertising content that displays product life scenes is 1.34 times higher than that of promotional ads, and the click-through rate of advertising ideas that use characters as life scenes is 71.4% higher than that of advertising ideas without characters.

Therefore, brands should adhere to the "scene-native rule" and cleverly implant brand information into life-like scenes that showcase products. There are two key points here:

1. Vertical ads are not ads, but native content that is relevant to daily life

As Lai Ling, head of Meituan’s platform marketing center, said: “Due to fragmented time, users have no time to watch ads. Vertical screen ads can only survive if they become content. Brands and content must be cleverly combined and cannot be self-contained.”

Vertical screen ads should neither be shot like TVCs nor be lengthy and tedious. They should consider the clever combination of brand and content and have deep interaction with users’ life scenes. Specifically, vertical screen ads have three deep native directions: form native, intent native, and emotion native:

2. Produce high-quality content and lead a better life

Today, consumers’ ability to identify and filter advertisements continues to increase, and traditional advertising forms are finding it increasingly difficult to capture audience attention. Therefore, vertical screen advertising creativity must emphasize refinement and quality, and present meaningful content within a limited time.

Skyworth’s advertisement “You are done with your work, and your children have grown up” is a video with a unique style and full of stories. The advertisement is based on the theme of public welfare, and is told from the perspective of children. It uses original forms and stories to call on parents to accompany their children as they grow up. It received 14,000 likes on Douyin.

According to Douyin's research data, the outstanding performance abilities of celebrities and influencers will bring deeper advertising reach. Advertising creatives featuring celebrities and influencers have seen an average increase of 60% in effective play rates. At the same time, whether it is a celebrity or an amateur, using first-person expressions increases the click-through rate by an average of 35% compared to other expressions.

1. Popular celebrities and experts must use it first

In the vertical screen ads of Douyin, good-looking boys and girls, especially celebrities or influencers, can get higher attention and better advertising effects. Data from the Admaster platform shows that in 2017, 63% of brands focused on brand promotion through influencers and K0Ls.

Therefore, if conditions permit, you should choose celebrities or influencers who are compatible with your brand and have them appear in short videos quickly to attract fan traffic .

2. Create a personalized and authentic brand image

In the era of vertical screens, the vertical screen content that users often watch is those with characters and a sense of presence. Therefore, the production of vertical screen advertisements must follow the "first-person rule" and start from the consumer's perspective and use first-person expressions to explain the characteristics, performance, advantages of the product or service, as well as the benefits consumers gain from purchasing the product and receiving the service.

For example, the advertisement "Me, Do You Want It?" created by China Toothpaste uses the popular star Liu Haoran as the spokesperson. He uses the first-person perspective to face you in front of the screen, and uses the killer moves that are essential for a warm man, such as feeding you snacks and patting your head, and then naturally brings out the marketing point. Obviously, the emotional experience and positive emotions that users gain through the screen will be subtly transferred to the brand in the advertisement.

Douyin research data shows that there is a significant relationship between the length of advertisements and the completion rate of consumers' single-view video advertisements . Compared with advertisements of more than 15 seconds, the completion rate of advertisements within 15 seconds is increased by 96.3%. A higher completion rate can help advertisers spread information more completely. Compared with ads longer than 15 seconds, the forwarding rate and comment rate increased by 3.03 times and 5.45 times respectively.

"The shortening of advertising duration is an irreversible trend, and creativity will become lighter and lighter. However, since users are in an active viewing situation, brand owners need to organically combine creativity and interaction to effectively promote their products ," said Chen Duye, general manager of ByteDance Marketing Center.

1. An eye-catching opening that grabs attention in 5 seconds

The elevator principle in the advertising industry emphasizes that a truly good advertisement should be able to catch the audience's attention within 5 to 7 seconds, attract the audience to spend more than ten seconds watching it, and help sell the product.

An analysis of the advertising effects on the TikTok platform found that ads with outstanding performance are often shorter and deliver brand information as early as possible; one of the reasons why many advertising works are not effective is that key information is displayed too late and the scenes are too lengthy; for ads that contain multiple scenes, those that perform well are often those with more compact scenes.

Zhang Rui, CEO of Shiqu Interactive, also said: "The first five seconds of a vertical screen ad on Douyin may be like the title of an article on a public account , so the first five to seven seconds are the most critical moments."

2. The advertising selling point should be single and capture attention in a short time

Due to time constraints, vertical screen ads cannot display all the selling points of a product. Instead, they should focus on amplifying the core selling points of the product. The more single the selling point is, the easier it is for consumers to remember it.

Just like Zhou Hei Ya’s advertisement “How to Eat Elegantly”, the Zhou Hei Ya brand image is quickly implanted into the scene of preparing meals in the kitchen. The strong color contrast and picture composition quickly catch the user’s attention.

Grasping the intelligent technology of short video platforms and optimizing display effects are also important rules of vertical screen thinking. Through intelligent personalized recommendations, Tik Tok breaks the limitations of time and space, allowing the right content to meet the right people.

Therefore, on the one hand, brands transform themselves into content creators and become part of the relationship chain; on the other hand, brands can use intelligent technology to accurately reach users and communicate with them over the long term.

Cleverly set labels and titles to increase clicks and exposure

In the Internet environment, users always instinctively seek "labels" and identity recognition. Behind the words "Buddhist youth", "greasy middle-aged man", "middle-aged girl" and so on that once became popular labels, there is a large number of people seeking psychological belonging.

At the same time, a good title is becoming more and more important. For example, the classic theory of modern advertising master Ogilvy is, "The number of people who read the title is five times that of those who read the text." A good title is half of the success of advertising creativity.

Therefore, the creativity of vertical screen advertising must not only conform to the "labeling" trend in the mobile Internet era, but also follow the "title rule" of traditional advertising creativity . When setting Douyin titles and tags, brands need to have two clear goals: first, to stimulate users to click; second, to make users remember them deeply.

For example, the title of this Pepsi advertisement is "True love makes you feel numb after an electric shock", which tells users what "true love" is in advance; at the same time, "true love makes you feel numb after an electric shock" also contrasts with the original understanding of most users, thus serving as a label.

With the rise of vertical video platforms such as TikTok, vertical advertising will likely bring about innovation in the standards for evaluating advertising effectiveness. As AdChina CEO Lau Bo said, "Traditional exposure or conversion is one thing, but more importantly, we need to pay attention to data such as likes, comments, and interactive sharing. This is what the platform really needs to consider comprehensively."

From the current perspective, vertical screen advertising is still a new thing, there are few real professionals, and many vertical screen advertising works are not well produced. Now is the bonus period for vertical screen advertising, and it is time for professional advertising and marketers to enter the market. Relying on more professional teams to create stronger cases is bound to be a trend in vertical screen videos.

I believe that in the future, vertical screen ads will not only become a new content portal, but will also create more marketing imagination.