TikTok

TikTok

TikTok is an app that creates short quierky videos that go around in a continuous loop that feature lip syncing and technical features that can take videos to the next level. The way they market is using other social media platforms that people are already on and posting popular videos made by its users. It is already up to 500 million everyday users and growing and it has only been up since December of 2017. The app has been huge in Asian countries and is leaking over to America grabbing the attention of the young adults and teenagers. Generation Z is tech savvy and very creative and this app is letting these kids demonstrate their creativity and wide variety of talents using these videos. They are also using social media celebrities to attract more young users to their app. Their marketing campaign has cost them little to nothing and has capitalized on what people already do on social media by looking at short videos their friends and people they follow make and making it convenient to click on these videos as they scroll through social media they already have.

Many people were skeptical about the success of TikTok because of how similar it is to the former app Vine that went under a few years back. The only differences really to TikTok is that it has a much wider variety of features the user can take advantage of and is more connected with other social media platforms making it easy to connect your video to whichever platform you wish your video to be seen on. That last part is huge in my opinion though because different trends are on different platforms and taking your video that is most relevant to the current trends is a big part of successful marketing. For example, some things can be said on twitter that cannot be said on Facebook and vice versa. The direct competitor that TikTok does have though is Snapchat and a lot of the same features are on Snapchat and they are already very relevant in the North American social media platform. With that being said, TikTok has done a great job of integrating music into their app that may set them apart from Snapchat. The marketing manager will have to do something remarkable in order to differentiate themselves from closely related apps out there. If that is accomplished we will see TikTok become one of the main apps that everyone has on their phone. TikTok has yet to have much marketing attention on their own app and I am a little concerned over the debt to income ratio they may be experiencing in the early stages of the app. It has only been out there for a year but if it does not take off soon it will risk going under just as Vine did. I am sure that the CEO already has a plan set for this and it will be interesting to see if the risk paid off down the road a few years.