TikTok, as the fastest growing social media platform, has over 200 million audiences. Its immensely increasing popularity has made B2B marketers curious to advertise and run TikTok campaigns
TikTok has witnessed phenomenal revenue growth as it is all about moment marketing. Brands are using TikTok to engage with the mass audience on a campaign. TikTok became the most popular app on Apple’s App Store and the fourth most popular app of Google Playstore globally, with 660 million downloads last year. For a couple of months, its popularity has outperformed YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram worldwide. TikTok boasts a massive 26.5 million monthly active users in the U.S. with nearly an average of 52 minutes spent on TikTok per day. Marketers across the globe have realized the potential of this platform as it ranks pretty high among social media platforms.
Top B2B Marketers Focus on Delivering High-performance Digital Experiences
Not everybody seems to be convinced about using TikTok as a platform for B2B marketing. According to some, B2B marketers should safely ignore TikTok as a platform. The reason behind this is the young audience and the clique-like nature and time restrictions on message delivery on TikTok.
The demography at the moment sits in the range of 16-24 years; the older generation is expected to arrive soon, as happened with Facebook. So arguably, now is the right time for businesses to invest in TikTok to establish a following, through compelling and expressive content that explores what makes marketing content fun and interesting. But, are brands ready to take up the risks associated?
Think of it in the way many B2B businesses conduct marketing on Instagram – using the network to share captivating, cultural content. TikTok has a long way to go for B2B marketing, but brands can’t completely ignore it anymore.
To see if their brand is ready to take up TikTok for marketing, they need to ask themselves – do they want to explore a new innovative side to the business, without jeopardizing their authenticity, maturity or integrity? Do they want to shift their tone of voice completely? Are they ready to experiment? If the answer is yes, then brands can try the TikTok experiment and test new ideas thoroughly, knowing that they may fail.
TikTok’s growing popularity among users has probed the real potential of brands advertising on this app. This app certainly caught the marketers’ attention, but the Government scrutiny followed shortly. Post Cambridge Analytica debate, governments across the globe have tightened scrutiny on social media giants to ensure secure data and content publishing. TikTok is the latest one to come under the watchful eyes of the government. With the security concerns increasing, brands lack confidence in freshly investing and experimenting with the TikTok campaigns.
B2B advertisers have broadly adopted a wait and watch strategy at present for TikTok, as they are skeptical about any negative impact on their investment. It is not an easy decision for brands to add a platform to the defined media plans. This involves the risk of diluting the brand equity by associating with it.
Brands like Spotify and PepsiCo advertise heavily on TikTok. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, users on TikTok are using fewer amounts of personal data, so they remain least vulnerable. TikTok is currently in the very primitive stages of allowing brands to market on the platform, so this could be another route in. However, it centers back on to that key factor of who the brands advertising to.
Defining One Customer Journey per Customer is now Business-Critical
It seems that, for the near future at least, TikTok might not be the best platform for B2B brands to be advertising. Building brand awareness on TikTok is the strategy for those already on the platform, but any selling will take longer as compared to other platforms.
Likely, the industry won’t see a flood of B2B activity on the platform until the leading players take the plunge and join the game, to give onlookers the chance to analyze their performance. Till then, TikTok remains to be not the best option for B2B marketers to experiment on.
