Reaching Gen Z: Marketing on TikTok

Despite what Trump's administration may decide to do with TikTok, with over 800 million monthly active users spending an average of 52 minutes per day on the video-sharing platform, TikTok has become the hottest channel for marketers who want to reach the youth population across the world. Celebrities, influencers, publishers as well as big brands from all sectors are now on TikTok. It is truly amazing to see a brand new channel break the boundaries set by the giants such as Google and Facebook in digital advertising, and creates engaging interactions with commercialization potentials.

TikTok in numbers

To see how powerful the TikTok platform has become, here are some recent statistics:

• For several times, the TikTok app was ranked no.1 in both Apple and Google's app stores. The app has been downloaded more than 2 billion times so far.
• 41% of TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24, the highest among all major social networks. 
• On average, more than 1 million videos are viewed on a daily basis. 90% of users use the app on a daily basis. Users open TikTop on average 8 times a day and spend 52 minutes on the app per day. The level of stickiness and user engagement is beyond impressive.
•  37% of TikTok users in the US report a household income of more than $100,000 according to MarketingCharts, indicating a lot of room for monetizing the traffic and user base.

Undoubtedly, TikTok has been experiencing a period of exponential growth. While the platform is dragged into the political tensions between the US and China and the Oracle deal hasn't been settled yet, TikTok will continue to grow and reach beyond the youth populations.

What does it mean for marketers?

With a large group of audience and millions of content creators, brands now find TikTok a critical component of their marketing strategies. As most users are in the discover mode when using TikTok, it makes TikTok a great way to drive brand awareness and reach specific user groups. As the platform involves, it will soon include e-commerce and live-streaming features, directly driving transactions. 

In reality, there are mainly three ways brands market on TikTok, and many brands use a combination of the following:

• Brands set up their own accounts and post videos, using it as a channel to directly engage with their followers
• Brands work with TikTok influencers and leverage their follower base
• Brands place advertisements on TikTok, using analytics and targeting techniques provided by the platform

No matter which way marketers choose from the above, one critical aspect to really capture the eyes of Gen Z audience, who tend to have very narrow span of attention, is quality content. Authentic, immersive and cretieve content is seen everywhere on TikTok, and as people spend longer on TikTok it becomes challenging to attract their attention and promote the product or the brand. 

A closer look at content for Gen Z - Chipotle

TikTok has become an important part of Chipotle's marketing campaigns this since 2019. Last Halloween, they started its #boorito challenge on TikTok and advertised it via influencers such as Zach King and Brittany Broski, who are extremely popular among TikTok users. Zach King, for example, has the 2nd highest number of followers no the TikTok platform. 

The #boorito campaign, in which customers wearing spooky costumes get discounts at Chipotle stores, was quite a success. Users posted videos of them showcasing their before and after Halloween costume transformations, edited using TikTok's unique visual effects and filters. Chipotle also created a special soundtrack as the background music for those videos. The prize of the campaign, which was given to the top five posts with the most likes, was free burritos for a year. 

Thanks to the reach of the patterning influencers, the #boorito campaign had more than 3 billion views and millions of likes. The key success factors obviously overlap with why people like TikTok: authentic and creative short-term content, cool and novel visual/sound effects, immersive experience, and easy sharing with friends as well as like-minded strangers. 

You may think, given TikTok's nature and its user demographics, only cool and sexy content can gain popularity, but that's not necessarily true. In China, where TikTok is branded as Douyin, young people are interested in almost everything (not just cool visual tricks). Douyin is being used to pick up a new language, to share life hacks, and even to learn how to negotiate a better salary as a fresh graduate. College students even use live streaming on Douyin to virtually study together online. Douyin also increasingly becomes a hub for e-commerce traffic and more and more people start selling on the platform. 

 

TikTok is changing, so is Gen Z's taste for content. So, the challenge for brands to reach and keep in touch with Gen Z on Tiktok, will always remain a key question for marketers.