Only two of the social media giants has a reach of over 3 billion downloads in the world – Facebook and TikTok. Whereas Facebook has evolved over the years from a network of friends to a place where business matters, TikTok has seemingly improved its operation over a much shorter period. If you are looking for different ways to market your business online you might assume that TikTok isn’t for you, it’s just short videos after all right? You’d be wrong. TikTok is now one of the biggest players around, and with the right approach to TikTok marketing you can successfully incorporate it into your wider digital marketing efforts, alongside Facebook and other platforms.
What makes TikTok and Facebook so appealing to businesses?
The big factor here is that you can see how addictive both apps are to the population. Everywhere in the world, people are downloading and using Facebook and TikTok in huge numbers. Daily active use remains high, and they provide very different means of content and potential audiences to target. Whereas TikTok has primarily taken hold with a younger generation as Facebook has shifted towards an older demographic of user, they both hold great sway. If you can make a connection with a potential customer through one of these apps, you are onto a winner as a business. There is so much potential through paid advertising on social media platforms that it is worth exploring for any growing business.
TikTok Marketing
Owned by the Chinese company ByteDance (and called Douyin in China), TikTok is a video-sharing social media platform. People can create and upload funny, entertaining clips and looping videos for followers to view. Lip-syncing videos have been one of the drivers of success on TikTok in recent years and was a great way to grab the attention of the teenage market. It has fast become one of the most popular social platforms in the world. It has greater numbers of monthly active users than Snapchat and since 2019 has developed its paid advertising feature (which at first was not included in the app).
The different advert formats of TikTok
There are different types of advertising products that can be used within your TikTok account to reach new customers. These include In-Feed Ads, Lead Forms, Spark Ads, Branded Hashtag Challenges, Branded Effects, and Spark Ads. In-Feed Ads are the only option open to all advertisers and appear on the ‘For You’ page, featuring a range of organic and paid content that is unique to each individual user. This type of ad contains a video or image that runs between 5 and 60 seconds, a brand display name, text up to 100 characters in length, a call to action and an invisible destination URL.
There are also some prefabricated video templates that allow you to add greater character counts to your copy. Alongside this are some nifty tools and features for the social advertiser to make the most of. Smart videos, smart video soundtracks, automated creative optimisation and specific ad targeting tools help to make TikTok an interesting platform to try and reach new customers with digital advertising.
The benefits of TikTok marketing
There are still some digital marketers who are not completely sold on advertising through TikTok. This is generally down to the overwhelming numbers of teenagers and youngsters using the site and the merits of chasing that customer profile over older profiles that might spend more money. As it is relatively new, it requires less creativity to make ads on TikTok, and it represents better value than Facebook for this reason. Due to the fact the For You page on TikTok is catered to your individual interests, TikTok isn’t just for kids and that does make it more attractive as an option for businesses looking to diversify digital marketing efforts.
The world domination of Facebook
Every child, grandmother and pet cat have a Facebook account. Over the last fifteen years it has gone from a network of friends, college course mates and colleagues to a behemoth of social media that has power in how the trends of the world are shaped, both culturally and politically. With such large numbers of active users, Facebook is a prime location for paid advertising, alongside organic social advertising.
Why use Facebook paid advertising?
Facebook allows you to create specific business pages for free. You can use this to post information about your business and to promote products and services, discounts, and offers. This is all well and good and can build a reasonable community of customers online, but it will only get you so far. By paying for Facebook advertising, you can reach users that you wouldn’t usually reach, and it takes away much of the hard slog that is a necessary part of building a business page organically without paying anything extra to promote your Facebook page. It helps you to reach the friends of users already connected to your business page and then to the audience beyond them. Paid ads can get you that little bit further and in a way that garners real results and value, targeting key words, specific locations, and user types.
Should you use Facebook or TikTok advertising?
For many of us, the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 were spent scrolling social media looking for anything and everything to entertain us. One of the most joyous things to happen was the success and growth of TikTok, with new crazes and dances taking place on the platform seemingly every single day. There was always something happening on TikTok, and it is now a viable place for businesses to market online. Facebook paid advertising still has its merits though, with such a huge global reach that it is hard to ignore. Your demographics of target audience and type of advertising (in terms of content) might change from one platform to the next, but you can make some serious inroads into acquiring new customers through paid advertising on social media.
TikTok and Facebook advertising for your business
Social media platforms are a fantastic way to reach a whole new audience and to make connections with users that really matter. If you can make a positive impression on influencers and leverage your TikTok and Facebook accounts to attract a whole new audience, your business will grow as a result.
If you would like some specialist assistance in creating and managing your social media platforms, get in touch with the Candy team today. We understand social advertising and social media management, connecting you with your customers in a genuine way that builds your brand in a positive fashion and keeps abreast of the latest social media trends the world over. To find out more about how we can help you with social, contact Candy today on 0161 826 0123 or email us hello@candymarketing.co.uk and we’ll be happy to set up a meeting.
