For years, Facebook has held its position as the main social media that is used for small business promotions and marketing campaigns, with Instagram coming in at a close second place for marketing influence. But now, TikTok is gaining its position as a strong contender faster all the time. More and more, businesses are turning to TikTok for its short-form video content and the marketing opportunities that come along with that, as well as the platform’s massive sway on the Gen Z audience.
This has been shown by the small business support service Hello Alice, which took a survey of more than 7,000 small business owners to try to gain a deeper understanding of what they’re doing to tailor their marketing campaigns to be better suited for a 2022 audience.
While the full study takes a deeper look at the key digital marketing trends of 2022 such as the increase in the importance of affordability as well as the leaning further toward creative storytelling as a marketing technique, we’re going to look at some of the highlights from the report.
Firstly the study made a note of the success of both Facebook and Instagram as key players in the digital marketing and outreach field, with both Snapchat and TikTok coming in not far behind them. It should be noted that Twitter was not mentioned in this study although it does hold a lot of power as an effective social media marketing platform, the difference in the types of content produced for the platforms may have been the reason the platform was left out of the study. With Twitter only allowing written content that is 280 characters or less, as well as photos and videos, perhaps the move towards more fast-paced video content has become more important to companies looking to market their brand.
The study went on to investigate the ways in which small businesses are working to gain traction and grow their audiences across each platform, with Instagram coming out as the leader in terms of the opportunities for organic promotion and growth. Although it of course depends on the intricacies of your individual marketing campaign, the overall consensus is that both the reach and the engagement potential of Instagram are offering companies a lot of value, despite its recent additions and updates making the platform feel significantly more cluttered.
TikTok, however, is making big steps towards overtaking even the best performing apps, with participants in the study identifying TikTok as the best application out there for brands to make use of storytelling and creative expression in their marketing campaigns. The good talk from some brands about the success that they have found in the short-form video hosting service has begun to reach other brands, and more small businesses than ever are considering making their mark on the platform after the success of other brands and competition.
This is because the study reported that among the businesses that have been making use of TikTok in their digital marketing campaigns, 58% of them said that the platform has had a positive impact on their business, with 78% of respondents planning to increase their budgets for TikTok marketing.
Another key to TikTok’s success is the increased drive for creative new ways to make use of social media, which is giving brands a fresh angle to promote their businesses.
As well as this, TikTok influencers have been popping up all over the place with huge audiences, some of the biggest TikTok stars include Charlie D’Amelio who has a massive 107 million followers and Addison Rae who has 75.8 million followers. Followings of this size make TikTok the perfect platform for affiliate marketing campaigns, and the short-form content is great for brands to really let their personality, as well as the personality of their affiliate partners, shine through. The format of TikTok allows influencers to really build a connection with their audiences, and audiences feel as though they are a part of the influencer’s lives, which can make affiliate marketing even more effective than on other platforms, as it feels more personal.
There are so many personalities across the platform that it should be easy to find an affiliate partner who is suited to your brand, and who can provide you with the audience growth and engagement that your brand needs.
This study gives a great insight into the continued growth of the social media giant, and it shows how TikTok is already offering a variety of marketing options in terms of creativity and expression, forcing brands to take a new approach to digital marketing.
It is estimated that the app will surpass 1.5 billion users this year, so the popularity of short-form content does not look to be slowing down anytime soon, opening up new avenues of marketing for all sorts of brands, including small businesses.
