TikTok has gone professional

TikTok has gone professional.  That is the latest word on the social media grapevine.

TikTok, a Chinese owned app, is known for its viral videos that often lead to Gen Z trendsetting. However, the company felt it was missing out on a particular market. Performance marketing. 

In order to appeal to the performance marketers at LinkedIn, TikTok used three case studies that all linked to a campaign landing page intended to nurture leads using the tagline ‘Great performance starts on TikTok.’ 

One of the campaigns, the ‘Talking Heads’ campaign was shown to have a 96% more efficient cost per view rate than LinkedIn. Whilst the wider campaign drove a 12% increase in marketers moving from reservation to auction base trading on TikTok. 

Furthermore, as a result of the campaign, more than 400 performance marketers opted-in for TikTok for Business marcomms. A figure that allowed TikTok to win the Business-Business accolade at the 2023 Marketing Week Awards.

Now, this might seem like common sense for a business, but what if it turns out to be a mistake?

As Mark Riston has argued previously, you cannot beat a company by becoming its clone. TikTok might have experienced an initial surge, but how sustainable can that surge be?

TikTok is known for viral videos that are short and to the point. Usually these videos are targeted to Gen Z and focus on issues that are pertinent to that generation. If the platform becomes swamped with companies marketing their products even in a performative manner, that could alienate a large portion of TikTok’s users.

They could find themselves wondering why the app has changed direction, particularly with the way algorithms work and manipulate the content that appears on your feed (watch one video and several more like it will soon appear.)

Of course, TikTok could have learned lessons from observing the reactions to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube’s attempts to mimic it and put steps into place to ensure users are not dissatisfied. 

Only time will tell.