TikTok Ads, TikTok Shop, and the TikTok Craze
TikTok has taken the world by storm. Personally, I first downloaded TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic. While on lockdown, TikTok provided me with endless entertainment and a way to pass the time. However, the story of TikTok started way before 2020.
A Brief History of TikTok
TikTok is owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, formed in September of 2016. In 2017, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly, a popular social media platform among U.S. teenagers [1]. This is actually how I heard of TikTok in the first place. My sister was an avid Musical.ly user and she was on TikTok way before it was (seemingly) the only thing to do during the height of the pandemic.
According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, TikTok's growth reached new heights during the first quarter of 2020 with 313.53 million downloads outside of China [2]. This would mark the beginning of TikTok's domination over all other social media platforms. Now, TikTok boasts more than 1.5 billion users worldwide [3]!
TikTok's Appeal and Impact
But what makes TikTok so appealing to so many users worldwide? Well, TikTok filled a niche in the market for short, engaging, and easily consumable content. Its effect has been felt by all industries. If I go to the Billboard website to look at the top 10 songs of the year [4], I immediately recognize 8/10 are TikTok songs.
In fact, there is now a TikTok top 50 section on the Billboard website that ranks the most popular TikTok songs per week! That's just the music industry.
The Projected Boom of TikTok Shop
TikTok has also revolutionized the way we shop online. TikTok Shop has taken the world by storm. Where before users were skeptical of in-app purchases, being able to see user-generated content of different brands and products on the platform and then buying with a click has made it that much easier to shop and discover new items.
TikTok has projected that 27.3% of users will make a purchase through TikTok Shop, and it is estimated to reach 39.9% by 2026 [5]. To get ahead of the curve, nuCaffeine has decided to focus its social media ads budget into TikTok, to promote the brand and set up TikTok Shop.
Setting Up a Business TikTok Account and Shop
Setting up a TikTok business account has not been as easy as with other platforms, in my experience. I had to provide TikTok with nuCaffeine's business license (first time I've ever been asked to provide documentation to prove nuCaffeine is a legit business). The issue is that my request kept getting rejected because the nuCaffeine business license was delivered digitally versus mailed. After about a month of back and forth, nuCaffeine was finally approved as a business (yay!), so I was able to add the official nuCaffeine website to the nuCaffeine TikTok profile.
Another big headache I experienced was understanding there are multiple accounts within TikTok needed to mange a business TikTok account. There is TikTok, TikTok Business Center, TikTok Ads Manager, and TikTok Seller Center. Yes, you do need an account for all of these sites, and yes, you must access them individually (for the most part). I do not understand why TikTok can't have one catch all website like Amazon's seller central, but I digress.
For creating and publishing ads, you must go to TikTok Ads, select "Create" to start your new campaign. TikTok has two options for you: simplified mode and custom mode. Like all previous social media platforms we've covered these past 7 weeks, you should choose the simplified model if you're new to marketing or just want to test out the platform. If you have more specific goals in mind or a specific niche target, opt for customizable settings.
The purpose for these ads will be to attract potential new customers and push the nuCaffeine TikTok Shop products, so we will choose "Product sales" as our advertising objective. You can then choose the demographic of your target customers by selecting the age, location, interests, and behaviors of TikTok users.
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