TikTok has become one of the most influential social media platforms in recent years, particularly with younger demographics such as Millennials and Gen Z. A visual app, TikTok’s unique success can be found in the fact that it focuses on video to engage users.
In the past several years, TikTok has risen to prominence as people around the world use it as a digital vehicle for sharing their own homemade choreographed dance videos, pranks, entertaining content, life hacks and more.
TikTok today boasts a whole range of video content that is interesting, funny, informative, engaging and imminently shareable. Many brands and businesses turn to TikTok as a barometer of the latest and greatest consumer trends. As of January 2022, TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users with 167 million videos watched in each “Internet minute”. Rather impressive for a social video app!
You may be wondering what TikTok has to do with selling on Amazon. After all, Amazon is a completely different website and app. One (Amazon) is for shopping, whereas the other (TikTok) is for entertainment. Can TikTok really help move the needle for your Amazon FBA business?
The answer is that it absolutely can! Here are ways in which you can – and should – leverage Tiktok to boost your Amazon FBA business in 2024.
All about TikTok
TikTok was founded in China in 2016 as a video-sharing social app. It launched in the US and Europe in 2017 and has become very popular with Millennials and Gen Z, specifically for its unique video-led features. It currently is available in 141 countries and is within the Top 10 in 124 countries, and in the top 50 of 140 countries.
Because TikTok was created to share videos, it has carved a niche for itself as a social space where people can create entertaining, funny, outrageous and even informative videos and share them with other users worldwide.
It’s a great platform for ‘going viral’ and trends that begin on TikTok often make it into the mainstream media. For example, dance crazes and even dinner recipes have become popular around the world after going viral on TikTok.
TikTok boasts incredibly high engagement rates, higher than Instagram or YouTube. For example, micro-influencers (that is, content creators with small, but niche followings) have an engagement rate of 17.96% on TikTok, whereas on Instagram the engagement rate is 3.86% and 1.63% on YouTube. Similar engagement rate trends follow for mega-influencers (those with huge followings).
What Makes TikTok So Popular?
TikTok is super popular because it offers something no other social media platform offers – the delivery of an ever-changing ‘feed’ of content that is almost exclusively user generated and focused on entertaining people.
Here are some of the features that differentiate it from other social media platforms and make it particularly unique and popular with younger demographics.
Video creation & consumption made easy
First and foremost, TikTok has made creating, uploading and sharing videos extremely easy. TikTok has a short format, which makes it easy for users to create videos without much effort.
Although nowadays your TikTok videos can be up to 10 minutes – up from just 60 seconds a year ago – this is still a relatively short format that lends itself well to creating bite-sized, easy-to-watch, and instantly shareable content.
As soon as the app opens, it plays videos in succession, giving users a constant stream of changing, engaging content. This makes TikTok fun and keeps people on the platform longer.
In other words, you don’t need a long attention span to enjoy TikTok because the videos are short, they keep coming one after another and they are entertaining.
This format also makes it appealing for people to be able to make their own short videos to share with the world.
It allows the use of copyrighted music
One of the most popular things about TikTok is that its videos are often set to music. On other social media platforms, this can be tricky due to copyright issues. However, on TikTok, you can use popular music to back your videos.
The reason for this is that TikTok has a Copyright License Agreement or IP Licensing Agreement with many labels and artists – something that YouTube and Twitch do not have.
When TikTok started gaining momentum, record labels quickly saw how it could be beneficial to allow the use of their music on the platform, as it provided a tremendous marketing opportunity. That is why great music is all over TikTok, making the platform all that more engaging.
Hyper local content
While TikTok is a global platform with users from all over the world, it excels in delivering content that is locally relevant to each user.
TikTok creators will often create video content that is very personal to specific areas (for example, videos on London slang), and local videos leverage specific hashtags to drive trends. The trending hashtags suggest popular topics for other creators to make more videos. In this way, the app leverages local trends and generates viral content. TikTok is therefore local and global, at the same time, making the most of both types of audiences.
Highly personalised
TikTok has strong personalisation algorithms, which means that users are able to get content delivered to them that is most relevant to their age, location and general demographic. This is useful in offering the types of content that is most popular with different types of users.
For example, just as Google personalises its ads to users, TikTok’s feed can personalise videos based on your online footprint, so that someone who is a fashion lover won’t be getting sports content, and vice versa.
TikTok’s algorithm ‘learns’ how you use the platform and gives you the type of content you want to see.
It drives trends
We’ve touched on this above, but one of TikTok’s biggest assets has been its ability to drive trends around the world. Many popular fads, fashion trends, songs, dance moves, and life hacks often come from TikTok, when a video goes viral.
The trends that start on TikTok often end up on mainstream TV, on other social media platforms, in magazines, and being played out amongst everyone you know. It’s a great place for new ideas and trends to start.
All of these factors make TikTok popular with brands, too.
Just as everyday people use TikTok to create funny, engaging videos, similarly, brands can use TikTok to create videos that inform consumers about their products, whilst offering entertainment and humour.
Let’s now discuss how brands can use TikTok to add a new twist to their marketing strategy.
TikTok and brands
Everyday, TikTok’s 1 billion monthly active users get a lot of value from the platform. Not only in the way of entertainment, but also information around new products to try, new life hacks to employ, new music, the latest fashion trends and so much more.
For brands, this makes TikTok an ideal place to reach consumers looking to try new things. Brands can do so by creating branded videos that add entertainment value for users, or by partnering with influential content creators to promote their products within existing popular TikTok feeds.
Brands can start by having a look at the most popular categories on TikTok in 2022.
Top 10 most-viewed categories on TikTok
- Entertainment
- Dance
- Pranks
- Fitness/Sports
- Home innovation/DIY
- Beauty/skincare
- Fashion
- Cooking/recipes
- Life hacks/advice
- Pets
Understanding the most popular categories can help brands think about where their product or service fits best, and how to create content that will fit well in one of these categories.
How Amazon FBA sellers can use TikTok for business
So, now you’ve learned a bit more about TikTok, what it is and how brands can use it for business. But what about Amazon FBA sellers? How can businesses selling on Amazon best leverage TikTok to reach their target audience?
For starters, because TikTok is great for building brand awareness, Amazon FBA sellers are no exception. The platform can be leveraged to build sales for an Amazon FBA business. Here’s how.
Building an online presence
Every business is online these days. Just because you’re selling on Amazon doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be building your brand awareness outside of Amazon’s big name. Your business has its own unique presence and you can use TikTok to build it out.
Using TikTok’s unique video format, you can create video content that allows you to promote your products on the platform. Just be sure that your listings are well-organised before you start – you want to drive traffic to the best possible version of your brand.
You can use trending hashtags to identify trends and start creating branded content on your brand’s TikTok account that you promote using those hashtags. You can also connect your TikTok account to other social media accounts, such as Instagram or Facebook, increasing your reach.
Reaching new audiences
Creating engaging video content on TikTok gives you the opportunity to put your brand in front of audiences you may not have targeted previously. Funny, entertaining videos might capture the attention of new market segments, increasing your brand visibility. Once you get a sense of how your video is performing via TikTok’s insights, its algorithm can then help share your video far and wide with the right audiences for your products.
Product research & development
Not only will TikTok provide you with insights into the latest online and offline trends, but it can also help you understand more about your competition.
Using TikTok to research the category you’re in will give you an idea of what competitors are doing, what they’re offering and how they are speaking to consumers. You can use insights to narrow down your keywords, hashtags, and identify potential influencers to work with.
Doing a bit of research before you launch into TikTok will help your brand perform better on TikTok, but it can also help generate new ideas about how to market to different demographics, particularly the youth market.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is one of the most high-growth marketing disciplines of the moment, expected to reach a whopping $16bn this year! Many brands are already working with influencers to increase their brand awareness and align their brands with those who hold like minded values.
Collaborating with influencers or industry leaders can help drive your Amazon sales. Best of all, you don’t need to build your own audience. Instead, you work with content creators who already have a large following and will be able to incorporate your products into their content, giving your Amazon business unparalleled visibility.
TikTok advertising
TikTok offers brands great advertising opportunities, ones which can benefit many Amazon FBA sellers. Similar to ads on Facebook or Instagram, advertising on TikTok inserts your ads in between videos, which guarantees eyeballs and can be a quicker way to reach your audience than through organic traffic.
The different advertising options offered by TikTok include:
- In-feed Ads
- Top-view Ads
- Branded hashtags
- Branded effects
- Brand takeover
Each one of these will be most useful depending on the type of advertising campaign you’re running. Similar to other social platforms, TikTok provides useful analytics and insights into how your campaign is performing, allowing you to act on those insights and tweak your campaign accordingly.
Understanding TikTok metrics & insights
As with any form of digital marketing, you’ll want to measure how your branded content is performing on TikTok. This is the case whether your content is organic or paid advertising.
Fortunately, TikTok makes it easy to access insights that can help you make the right decisions about how to optimise your marketing budget within the platform. Just bear in mind that TikTok’s metrics are different than Amazon’s. TikTok looks at factors such as:
- Engagement rate
- Video completion rate
- Overall account rating
And of course, an important metric will be to see where traffic is coming from to your Amazon store, and whether your store has seen an uplift in sales. In this way, you can use TikTok and Amazon insights hand-in-hand to gauge performance.
Boosting Amazon sales with TikTok
TikTok is a fun, youthful platform that can give your brand the opportunity to be creative and innovative. You can promote your Amazon sales by unleashing your creativity to engage with new customers, and different audience types.
Many of today’s most successful global brands are already using TikTok to grow their business. That includes some of the biggest Amazon sellers in the world, too. As an Amazon FBA seller with a bit of research, know-how and willingness to try, you can do the same.
