How do you market events with TikTok? Here are 4 great techniques for doing just that.
TikTok has quickly become one of the most popular social media platforms in the world beloved by millions of young people. However, many businesses avoid using it for marketing due to a few mistaken beliefs about it. Many see it as an app purely for teenagers to dance and lip sync to music. They’re unaware of the vast communities that exist on TikTok and the variety of content available. You can be confident that whatever type of event you put on, there’s a community on TikTok that would love to hear about it.
TikTok is an ideal platform to create a marketing campaign. Yet despite being such an ideal medium for marketing, many businesses are slow to make use of it, which makes now the perfect time to gain an edge over your competition.
Get TikTokers to Promote Your Event
The most effective content marketing will always come from the platform’s own experts: TikTokers. Yes, you could grind away hoping to understand an app used primarily by teenagers, and work out its secrets. But if time is of the essence, you’ll fare better by simply employing the platform’s own experts (aka influencers) to do your promotion for you.
Whilst the term influencer has been thrown around so much that it’s lost almost all credibility, you can still reach further into your market by picking the right influencers. Remember, here we are not talking about celebrity influencers primarily. Many of the most effective campaigns are currently being run with micro influencers. If you don’t do your research you could find your brand associated with controversial figures who’ll scare more people away from your event than they attract.
You need to take your brand into consideration when looking for the right influencers to promote your event. Browse the For You page, looking for suitable TikTokers that may complement your brand and compile a shortlist. Then, go to their pages and look through their content to check for consistency. If their videos do consistently well and are always produced with a similar tone and quality, they might be a good fit. Next you should google their name and see what comes up. If a scandal or controversy is revealed, look for another influencer. There are so many influencers on TikTok that you’ll be sure to find someone suitable using this technique.
The next thing to think about should be the profile of the influencer you want to work with. Larger influencers naturally have larger audiences but will cost more. On the other hand, multiple smaller influences may have the same total reach but charge significantly less. Don’t be blinded by the large following of some influencers, the quality of the audience and level of engagement is far more important than the size. An audience of 2,000 people, where 40% of them might be interested, is far more cost effective than an audience of one million where 1% might be interested.
Use Content Marketing on TikTok
Content marketing may feel new, but is a key part of many online marketing strategies, due to its numerous advantages. One is the flexible budget it requires. You can create a content marketing campaign on any sized budget and this is truer for TikTok than many other platforms. You merely need to create a 15 second video using your smartphone. It doesn’t take a lot of time, and much can be done on even a tiny budget. Creativity is the key requirement.
Content on TikTok is short, creative, and to the point. Watch TikToks on the For You page for examples of the dynamic editing and concise narration involved in the most popular TikToks. Try to create videos in a similar style but without simply copying others. Authenticity is extremely important on TikTok, and its users can smell a fake a mile away.
One powerful technique is a content marketing chain. For instance, TikToks can be created to generate interest from an audience, and during the video you promote another form of content like a blog post, instagram post, or YouTube video. This allows you to use content marketing to funnel your audience towards your flagship promotion centre, perhaps a landing page where the majority of your ticket sales are generated.
Take Paid Promotions On TikTok
Once you’ve gone through the hard work of creating your videos you’re going to need to promote them. On the old TikTok you would simply throw said video into the mysterious TikTok algorithm and hope it went well; and for many it didn’t. But fear not, TikTok has introduced a powerful new tool.
TikTok promotions allow you to choose one of your uploaded videos and boost (in a similar way that Facebook does) so more people see it. You can set a goal for the promotion (views, visits, followers, likes) and then choose an audience you would like to reach. TikTok can automatically choose your audience for you, or you can choose a custom audience. Custom is especially powerful as it provides you with myriad filters so you can nail down your target audience in the algorithm. By using promotions you not only give your videos a boost but can also target a high quality audience ensuring a higher conversion rate which can lead to a serious return on investment.
Advertising on Tik Tok
It may not strictly be “marketing” as such but good marketers should know about these four ways to advertise on TikTok.
Infeed Advertising
TikTok has introduced various ways for advertisers to promote on the app. In-feed advertising is the most straightforward example. You create a short video advert and users will see it in between their videos. You can incorporate a link to you landing page in the advert.
Brand Takeovers
Brand takeovers are honestly quite amazing. A brand takeover is a full screen 3-5 second advert that reaches every single user when they open the app. They only last a day but during that day they reach every single person who uses the app. A fun and unique way of advertising.
Hashtag Challenge
Creating a hashtag challenge allows you to create a challenge page. Users can choose to be redirected to your challenge page and follow the instructions there to take part in the challenge themselves. The effect of this is that users who create videos with your specific hashtag will all be displayed under the hashtag’s name. These have the potential to go viral, leading to massive user generated content promoting your brand.
Branded Lenses
AR (augmented reality) lenses are a feature of TikTok (like a filter) that allows users to add 2D and 3D effects to alter their appearance in their videos. These lenses are commonly used in viral TikToks. Creating a fun lens related to your brand can lead to massive if it takes off.
Learn From The Best
In order to succeed on TikTok it’s important to look to those that already have succeeded and apply their tactics. Do anything else, and you’re merely shooting in the dark. Elf Cosmetics is a great example. They created the ‘Eyes Lips Face’ challenge which resulted in four billion views, and three million user generated videos. They created their own hashtag challenge but then went a step further and created an original song to go with it. A number of influencers promoted it and their videos did well. This created a snowball effect where other influencers saw the videos doing well and wanted to make their own version to garner views for themselves.
A successful TikTok marketing strategy will eventually get users advertising your campaign for you, free of charge. Gymshark, FentyBeauty, and Chipotle are further examples of excellent campaigns. Study their campaigns and try applying the elements that could work for your event.
Looking for Great Content?
Planet Planit.biz writes dynamic content for organisations in events and event technology. We specialise in helping you communicate your ideas to your buyers, staff and stakeholders.
When you need a blog post, ebook or a uniquely creative take on business storytelling to really connect with your audience, ask us to write it for you.
Get in touch and let’s start a conversation.
