Only last year, TikTok surpassed Google for the title of most popular site of the year. It has since emerged as a top social media and marketing platform for businesses.
According to statistics, TikTok has more than a billion users in the United States. Even with recent rumors of TikTok bans, it’s unlikely the app is going anywhere. For senior marketers and executives, TikTok could be a cost-effective marketing platform. In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about TikTok to determine if it’s right for your business.
Table of Contents
- Audience and Reach Statistics
- TikTok As a Search Engine
- What’s the Average Cost of TikTok Ads?
- TikTok Ad Costs Vs. Other Platforms
TikTok Audience and Reach Statistics
TikTok was launched in 2016, and since then, it has taken social media by storm.
- TikTok was the top ten most downloaded apps in 2021. It was downloaded 656 million times.
- According to a press release in September 2021, the platform has surpassed 1 billion users.
- It is the sixth most popular social media platform. It’s behind Facebook. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Youtube in terms of user numbers.
- Most TikTok users as of April 2022 are in the United States, followed by Indonesia and Brazil.
- The most active users on TikTok in the USA are between the ages of 10 and 19.
- About 11% of the users are 50 plus in age, and 21.7% are between 30 to 39 years old.
- According to a TechCrunch report, retail brands will be spending more on influencer marketing on TikTok than Instagram by 2024.
TikTok As a Search Engine
While TikTok is a strong entertainment platform, it is becoming a search engine for Gen Z and older generations. Some even claim that it could become more popular than Google for search, but it’s not quite there yet.
For certain searches, Google is still the number one place people go. However, there is a trend for younger generations to search TikTok for places to eat. In a conference held in July 2022, Google disclosed that around 40% of its young users used TikTok rather than their platform to search for a lunch place.
Why do some prefer TikTok over Google as their search engine? There could be many reasons.
People have short attention spans. TikTok provides quick and to-the-point results for their searches and saves them time. Secondly, TikTok provides users with a visual learning experience. Over 65% of people are visual learners and videos help them remember information. Lastly, TikTok gives audiences search recommendations and social proof in one video.
The popularity of TikTok is an indication of an increase in demand for short videos, and an opportunity for businesses to leverage the platform for marketing.
What’s the Average Cost of TikTok Ads?
TikTok is a rising star with a lot of potential for marketers. It doesn’t take much to produce a video on TikTok, but the outcome can still be engaging and successful.
The platform launched TikTok Ads in 2022. How much do businesses need to spend on TikTok Ads? Since it’s a newer platform, TikTok doesn’t charge much for its ads.
For instance, the cost per thousand or CPM is around $10. Alternatively, the cost per click or CPC is $1. These rates are standard for all targeted audiences. With these low rates, you can also advertise an audience with an average engagement rate between 5% and 16%.
Average ROI, ROAS, CPC, And Other Ad Metrics
ROI or return on investment for TikTok ads depends on a number of factors—industry, target audience, pricing, landing page quality, etc.
A good ROAS or return on ad spend for many businesses launching TikTok ads is 250%. This means that if you plan to spend $1 on TikTok ads, the return received will be $2.50.
The average cost per 1,000 views or CPM on TikTok is $10. For instance, if you plan to have 1,000 views for your ad, you will have to pay $.50 to achieve that.
The CPC for every click is $0.02, and that’s the lowest limit. Plus, all advertisers must pay $500 for their single ad campaign. The average CPC is $1.
The click-through rate (CTR) for TikTok varies according to the ad. TikTok ads’ conversion rate is also promising. Since TikTok users are highly engaging, the average engagement rate for TikTok ads is between 3% to 9%.
Does the Performance of TikTok Ads Vary By Industry?
TikTok is a popular platform for almost all industries, but the most popular on TikTok are related to beauty, fashion, and jewelry.
Almost 7 in 10 people find TikTok a more trend-setting medium than other platforms. According to statistics, 67% of users agree that TikTok has powerful ads that easily capture their attention. In addition, the platform ensures to move on with trust, entertainment, and fun as its core values and inspires marketers from various industries to reap benefits.
TikTok Ad Costs Vs. Other Platforms
It isn’t easy to compare ad costs between social media platforms. However, when it comes to CPM (cost per mile) and CPC (cost per click), TikTok is head-to-head with Instagram and Facebook.
For instance, according to data, the average CPC is $1, and the average CPM is $10.
Alternatively, the average CPC of Facebook is $0.974. Similarly, Instagram’s CPC is between $0.5 and $0.75. This shows that Instagram is a comparatively cheaper platform than Facebook and TikTok regarding ads, but the competition is tight.
Similarly, the average CPM of Facebook was $14.9 in 2021. Moreover, its average CPM fluctuated between $8 and $10 in April 2022.
Instagram’s average CPM is $7.91. Again, this cost may vary according to the format of ads and their promotional strategies.
These figures are prone to changes pretty rapidly. With the continuously growing number of TikTok users, it is easy to imagine that TikTok could take the lead.
Why Should Businesses Add TikTok to Their Marketing Mix?
TikTok is an ideal platform for brands to market their products and services to a wider audience. The platform is known for uncovering new trends and recommending viral products.
Here are other reasons you need to incorporate TikTok into your marketing strategy.
TikTok’s Innovative Machine Learning Algorithms
TikTok’s machine-learning algorithms have made it one of the top-visited sites. As soon as you log into your TikTok account, you enter the “For You” feed. It helps make your TikTok experience personal and customizable.
Unlike Facebook, TikTok is based less on your personal profile and more on the type of content you like consuming. Considering TikTok’s popularity, other platforms have also started their “For You” feeds, with Instagram having Reels and YouTube featuring Shorts.
Highly Engaged Users
According to recent reports, engagement on Instagram has declined significantly. This is especially true with Reels.
Rival IQ, recently concluded that the current user engagement of TikTok is 4.1%. This rate is higher than Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Effective Video Marketing
TikTok’s strong focus on video marketing has helped it keep its users engaged and entertained. Video marketing helps brands connect with consumers even with short attention spans.
Your company can reap many amazing benefits of video marketing while being on TikTok. For starters, a video helps customers to make wise decisions quickly. Also, it engages people better than images, allowing them to scroll from one relevant video to another.
The video marketing strategy on TikTok can help increase awareness for your brand, build communities that engage, sell your services and products and receive feedback from audiences and customers.
Other than that, TikTok provides its users with many advertising formats. You can mix and match these formats to create a strategy for your brand.
For instance, the Top View ads are displayed as soon as you open the application. Brand Takeover ads appear right after the launch of a brand and usually contain Gifs or short videos.
The in-feeds are long ads with links to a call to action. Users can interact with your brand through likes and comments.
Cost-effective
TikTok is a cost-effective medium from which both small and big enterprises can benefit.
As mentioned above, the standard fees for high-quality ads cost less than platforms like Facebook.
TikTok gives you many opportunities to grow and build an audience. Once you become confident about TikTok’s results, you can ramp up your budget and design bigger campaigns to run on the platform.
It’s More Than Gen Z
Many of us believe that TikTok is for Gen Z. It was once but not anymore. It doesn’t cover dancing or lip-syncing GenZers only. TikTok’s user base is made up of all demographics. Instead of focusing on age, look for content topics that relate to your brand—science, parenthood, cooking, beauty, skincare, etc.
It is Very Easy to Use
Many brands think content creation on the platform is tricky because of the quality of videos it demands. However, it is very easy to make content on TikTok. The platform doesn’t demand perfect ads. Instead, it encourages brands to make simple ads that feel like native content.
In addition, the platform has various editing tools. For example, you can create ads with many effects and filters.
TikTok Is Becoming More Popular
TikTok has become incredibly popular in a short amount of time. It is one of the most downloaded applications and it has a highly engaged and active user base.
There is no denying that TikTok can become an important part of your marketing mix. Now is the time to experiment with it. If your target audience includes people ages ten and older, you should be on TikTok. If you’re interested in TikTok marketing, contact Goodway to talk with a marketing specialist.