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Am I bovvered? (or is TikTok good for marketing?)

I am of a certain age, as much as I hate to admit it, the thought of going out (pre lockdown) at 10pm at night (when my son generally started his evening out in a pub) is not appealing. 10pm for me is getting to the end of the night, not the beginning, rattling through with cheap vodka shots that taste remotely of boiled sweets. 

Being of “a certain age” (not giving anything away) means that I have a lot of experience in marketing and a wide range of knowledge when it comes to marketing campaigns (been there , done that, bought the hat, etc etc). I have used a lot of platforms, tried a lot of traditional tactics and of course embraced the “new” digital tactics. I dabbled in Periscope when it raised its head (see what I did there?) got on board with AR and found SnapChat to be extremely useful – I even think I can lob an inappropriate emoji in to conversations here and there 🍆 

However, my dalliance with TikTok was fairly short lived. I have two teenagers in the house, so I have been subjected to TikTok dance crazes, memes and catch phrases. Time to get on board I thought, let’s see what I can do with TikTok for my clients and bring a fresh new angle to their campaigns. The conversation went something like this;

Me: “Let’s look at TikTok for your brand.”

Client: “What, that thing with the dance crazes?”

Me: “Yes, that one, lets……”

Client: “No.”

Me: “But……:”

Client: “No, let’s look at Facebook.”

I thought to myself, right, I am not past it, I am going to crack this. Cue nights lying in bed, headphones in, faded blue light flickering, lighting up the room and endless scrolling of TikTok videos, just trying to get my head around it. I would fall asleep watching TikTok, wake up thinking about TikTok  – even humming “Blinding Lights” in the day when I was working. It became strangely addictive and I could see people online giving up jobs, buying ring lights (they became the most popular Christmas gift 2020) and producing content quickly and building a large audience. Lockdown only fuelled that growth and TikTok became the most downloaded non gaming app in 2020 surpassing Facebook and WhatsApp. Families got together to create TikTok videos and became masters of their craft of editing video content together using simple apps on their phones.

Yet, I …just….couldn’t see it working for me. Short video clips, random, busy, short attention span, trendy, viral and as much as I was enjoying the content, it was sucking me in. Fifteen minutes on TikTok became thirty minutes which turned into an hour, two hours and suddenly I was watching TikTok at 2am. Okay, something was there but i need to see how it could be used for a brand. I thought, it’s only for teenagers, , if you have a brand that is aimed at a younger audience, sure TikTok could be your USP but for the majority of my clients? Yeah but, no but…sumfing or nothin’.

Just before the Easter break, I took a call from one of our favourite clients ProtectaPet – we have worked together for a long time, ProtectaPet provide cat fencing solutions and have been very successful in providing a secure garden environment for domestic moggies up and down the country. A video of a ProtectaPet  installation had been uploaded to TikTok by one of their clients and the results had been amazing!!

The video has been watched over 300,000 times and liked over 30,000 times, the video resulted in a huge spike in website traffic over a two day period and bought in a lead online every 3 minutes. This is a secret, I probably shouldn’t tell you this but it was so successful I had to TURN OFF their Google Ads for a short period of time while they caught up with dealing with all the new enquiries.

  • Myth number one was well and truly busted. ProtectaPet’s core audience was not what you might call an exact match with the assumed TikTok audience.
  • Myth number two was smashed. You don’t need professional video content to be a winner online.
  • Myth number three was wrecked. Reviews from real customers definitely DO work.

I guess myth number four was my own prejudice  – TikTok was for “kids” , it is a gimmick, fab if you want to learn the latest dance craze but pretty useless in the business world. How wrong was i?

Now I can’t guarantee that you will have overnight success with TikTok, I can’t take any credit for ProtectaPet’s success with TikTok but what i can suggest is that you dare to be different and think about the channels you may of discounted before  – the world has changed and creating video content is moving higher and higher up the ladder of customer “must haves.”

Am I bovvered? Yes, I am bovvered immensely – find your differentiator and get in front of your tribe. Now, where is that ring light I have ordered?

If you would like to discuss any aspects of your marketing or explore using digital  to improve your advertising, be bovvered at Sharpmonkeys and contact us.