Is Instagram not fun anymore? Or did TikTok do a better job at targeting the right audience?
Linqua’s report on influencer marketing from a few days ago proves this theory - TikTok won the brands’ hearts and money.
As we at Brybe.com live and breathe influencer marketing, we decided to explore TikTok’s origins and see how one app that almost everyone neglected, turned out to dictate the influencer marketing trends in 2021.
Let’s dive in.
The “Overnight” Success Of TikTok
TikTok’s enormous social influence didn’t happen all of a sudden, although it seemed that way.
TikTok’s founder, Zhang Yiming, launched TikTok’s parent company ByteDance in 2012. The company’s first product was a news aggregator named Toutiao, which used artificial intelligence to share any news with users. This product helped Zhang visualize AI’s power first hand, and he used the same approach to create and launch TikTok in September 2016.
TikTok’s users can create short music videos, usually lip-synching popular songs.
What made TikTok stand out from the rest of the social media networks was that it helped users explore creativity rather than build connections with other people. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen any other app made such a huge social influence on its audience - Snapchat maybe.
The company’s target audience is primarily youngsters - aged 14 - 25, with a short attention span, a lot of free time on their hands, and limitless creativity waiting to be shown to the world.
Plus, the videos can be only 15 seconds long, pushing young people to think outside the box.
Although initially created in China, TikTok is used by users all over the world.
By January this year, it was reported that TikTok received over 2 billion downloads on a global scale, and it has 689 million active users! What was once referred to as the app for youngsters, now has taken over the world and social media experts couldn’t deny its business potential anymore.
TikTok’s Success Can’t Go Unnoticed By Brands
A lot of factors influenced the rise of TikTok in the last year.
We were all closed in our homes. With its sometimes toxic political discussions and opinions, Twitter is not a good place to entertain ourselves. Facebook’s popularity is long gone, as more and more young people are leaving the app. Instagram is no fun when influencers have nowhere to go due to the pandemic and no places to show on their Instagram accounts.
What’s the alternative?
TikTok.
The thing that separates TikTok from the rest of the platforms is its unique algorithm.
The algorithm shares content according to user preferences, which increases the user’s screen time. TikTok’s design adds value too - to view the videos, users only need to scroll down.
Users can use hashtags on their videos, which creates an even easier way for more people to find interesting content and for the creators to increase their number of followers.
This is why even users with fewer followers can achieve overnight growth with TikTok. The “For You” page that’s designed with the user’s preferences only can show a random video of anyone who fits into your preferences.
The fact that TikTok is built to increase user engagement by placing quality content in front of the users, which is the most important metric in influencer marketing, grew TikTok’s popularity even more.
This makes the entire process of finding the right influencers much more critical for the success of the whole influencer marketing campaign. All this is simplified with Brybe, as we made things easy on any business founder who wants to launch an influencer marketing campaign. By creating multiple influencer categories like industry, price, social network, etc, we’re helping you identify the influencers who will be the best fit for your brand. You can immediately check out their TikTok followers or profiles and see whether they fit into your brand’s picture or not.
However, back on the subject of TikTok.
The most significant innovation TikTok brought was the popularity of vertical videos. The app showed that vertical videos combined with a sophisticated algorithm and a user-friendly design are the winning recipe for success. That’s why Instagram and Twitter didn’t wait too long to hop on that train - not too long after TikTok’s major success, Instagram introduced Reels, and Twitter launched the Fleet feature.
The future is defined by the trends of today and the trends, well, those are defined by TikTok, as we’re witnessing. With 2 billion downloads in 5 years since its launch, TikTok’s power simply can’t be neglected by any brand.
Single-handedly, this app redefined the course of developing an entire marketing strategy, and that’s why brands can’t ignore its enormous impact anymore.
Especially marketers whose main focus is influencer marketing.
The Growth Of Influencer Marketing Via TikTok
Let’s go back to Linqua’s report and its data.
The researchers from the company interviewed 163 corporate professionals, marketers, CEOs.
Here’s what they found out.
TikTok is now the second most popular social media network for influencer marketing, after Instagram!
At the beginning of 2020, only 16% of marketers planned to invest in influencer marketing on TikTok. Now, that number is 68% - a staggering 300% increase in just one year!
Not only that, but marketers over the world are becoming more accepting of the idea of using influencers to promote their brand’s products or services. Even though the influencer marketing industry was hit hard due to the pandemic, 57% of marketers still invested in influencers last year. This year, as the report shows, that number has risen to 71% of marketers planning to collaborate with influencers!
This means only one thing - the influencer search will be on the rise! That’s why using a trustworthy influencer marketplace to find suitable influencers will become a standard procedure when planning the next marketing strategy.
Brybe can help you with that too! All of our influencers are top-rated professionals with verified profiles and connected to their social media accounts, so marketers can instantly know the partnership's long-term potential.
We are aware of the effect TikTok did on this year’s marketing budgets.
The vertical videos proved their point - they play an essential part in any influencer marketing strategy.
Besides the groundbreaking stats related to TikTok, brands are experiencing higher ROI with influencer marketing campaigns than with any other type of brand-related promotional content. The report also shows that 50% of the marketers who have used the two kinds of promotional content have said that the influencer content outperforms the branded content.
With the numbers being more and more on the side of influencers, more brands will leverage the enormous power of any talented influencers, creators, and bloggers.
With the rise of influencer marketing as an effective marketing solution, the increase of influencer marketplaces will inevitably happen, but we at Brybe.com are always one step ahead. Many of our influencers are popular on TikTok as well, so be sure to check out some of their profiles so that your brand can leverage the power of this social network.