Marketing On Tiktok: 3 Case Studies [Paid Ads, Organic Content, Using Influencers]
A new survey from Marketing Charts found that 84% of marketers are planning to increase spend on Tiktok in 2022.
This shift was inevitable.
37.36% of America’s 267.6 million mobile internet users are on the app and five months ago, it hit one billion monthly active users. Though, audience size isn’t the only thing raising the brows of marketing departments worldwide. Engagement rates on Tiktok are in another stratosphere.
Upfluence found that influencers of all follower-sizes experience higher engagement on Tiktok than any other platform.
Micro Influencers on Tiktok are seeing engagement rates of 17.96%, miles above 3.86% on Instagram, and 1.63% on YouTube – even mega-influencers on Tiktok are experiencing engagement rates of just below 5%.
Is the engagement leading to conversions? And how valuable can Tiktok be for your bottom line?
This article will review three studies to highlight the effect Tiktok can have on business. First, we’ll look at a company that utilized Tiktok’s paid ads service, then we’ll look at an organic approach, and finally, conclude with a case using influencers.
Case Study #1: Slate & Tell (Tiktok paid ads)
Slate & Tell was founded in 2017, it sells personalized jewelry direct-to-consumer. Employees are referred to as silversmiths and artisans. The brand emphasizes a focus on sustainability. It also proudly claims to source its metals responsibly. Pieces aren’t manufactured but instead, are hand-crafted. In short, Slate & Tell is pretty good at marketing.
So how did its employees use their skills to leverage Tiktok?
Their approach was straightforward. They crafted a nine-second video featuring a few products, played an upbeat song in the background, and ended the clip with a picture of Slate & Tell’s logo accompanied by a “shop now” button that brought linked users to its online store.
The ad creative itself wasn’t all that innovative. Nonetheless, the campaign was a massive success. It reached 4 million users and resulted in 1,000 single session add-to-carts, surpassing the company’s goal to achieve a 2x return on ad spend.
Why was it so successful?
Two potential explanations come to mind:
Low demand for paid advertisements on Tiktok has created favorable advertising prices
Users are more willing to engage in social commerce on Tiktok than they are on other platforms
Brands have been hesitant to spend money on Tiktok paid advertising. The platform is new, there’s a misconception that its users are all kids, etc. It’s possible that the campaign did well because the low competition created attractive ad prices. In other words, holding conversion rate constant, it’s likely that it would’ve been significantly more expensive to reach 4 million people on Facebook, making Tiktok a great place to host the campaign.
Second, it’s possible that users feel more comfortable making purchases on Tiktok than on other platforms due to the way advertisements are integrated into the experience of using the platform. To clarify, consider Youtube for example, a user sees a video they’re interested in, clicks the video, and is then INTERRUPTED by an advertisement – that’s annoying. Compare this to Tiktok, where users see the ad in between two other videos on their feed; it’s not an interruption and they start the video in with no expectation. Maybe there’s an increased openness to the ads on Tiktok, leading to higher conversion rates.
Case Study #2: Oh My Lolly (Tiktok organic strategy)
Background:
If you navigate to the values sections of any random enterprise’s website, there’s a good chance you’ll find the word: Authenticity. Consumers value authenticity and brands put a lot of effort into coming across as authentic.
Building in public is one of the most effective ways to create an authentic connection with an audience.
It’s the process of sharing the challenges you’re facing and the solutions you’re coming up with, with an audience on social media, in real-time. CEO of Morning Brew, Alex Lieberman, shares his daily challenges, successes, and failures on his podcast the Founders Journal. Despite being less than a year old, it is ranked as the 46th most popular business podcast in Apple’s library, proving that people value this “behind the scenes” styled content.
Case:
Oh My Lolly is showing that Tiktok might just be the perfect platform to display this type of content. Eryn Smith, solopreneur and founder of Oh My Lolly, has amassed an impressive 220k followers.
What’s her content strategy?
Scrolling through her page, you’ll see that she posts about her business and its operations. You may land on a video featuring an impressive batch of perfectly crafted new candies, but – you also may run into a video with seven lollipops stuck together from a failed attempt. Posts warning customers about late orders are not uncommon, and neither are thank you’s to everyone supporting her business. It’s authentic and it quickly builds a connection with those viewing the video.
Her content has been so successful in generating business that her website currently informs visitors that she is pausing new orders because of the outstanding volume that is currently unfulfilled.
Case Study #3: Moose Toys (Tiktok influencer marketing)
Moose Toys is an Australian toy manufacturer. It was named Walmart’s 2021 toy supplier of the year. The firm has previously utilized Youtube for its marketing initiatives, partnering with the Collin Key channel to help promote Moose Toys’ products.
Though, before launching its new line, Oh! My gif., the brand experimented with a Tiktok campaign.
The first step was to create an original song and choreograph a unique dance for the campaign. With these two things set in place, the brand then hired 52 Tiktok influencers. The influencers posted a video performing the dance and captioned it with a link back to Moose Toy’s TikTok profile as well as a link to a landing page - interestingly, the landing page wasn’t for any of Moose Toys’ products, but instead was used to recruit additional influencers to the campaign.
On Instagram, the algorithm favors Reels, on Twitter, the algorithm favors threads, on Tiktok, the algorithm favors sounds and trends (and right now, seven-second videos… for some reason). Moose Toys strategy utilized influencers and played Tiktok’s game, and the company was rewarded for it.
The strategy proved to be successful, creators even began to do the challenge organically.
Overall the campaign attracted:
75,000,000 views organically
24,000,000 views from paid content
4.45x ROAS
