The creativity of TikTok and how brands can leverage it

TikTok has positioned itself as one of the world’s leading social media platforms. Since its merger with Musical.ly in 2018, TikTok now has over 500 million monthly users worldwide and is available in over 150 markets, in 39 different languages. TikTok’s growth in the GCC comes as no coincidence, with Saudi Arabia making up the 8th largest market in the world with over 9.7 million users. With this increasing demand we built Sila, the very first tool created for the Arabic-speaking world, to provide audience-first intelligence to our clients. This includes TikTok, so we’re sharing some of our insights here.

Brands and TikTok.

With its growing numbers of users, brands have found TikTok to be a great marketing platform. Users have become extremely creative with their content and brands have started investing in them. This involvement has only increased with the pandemic and the growth of creators' followers as well as brands' interest in the platform. Looking at some of the top GCC creators on TikTok, we have noticed an average growth of 90% on their total number of followers during the period between February and August 2020. Brands have started their own challenges to generate UGC in order to leverage TikTok creativity. Global brands like Pepsi and Barilla (our favourite pasta brand!) have developed an increasing interest in the platform.

@hadi.yehia.official##PepsiChallenge ##pepsichallenge ##foryoupage ##foryou ##foryourpage ##hadi_yehia ##fyp ##explore ##fypシ ##viral♬ Feel It Now (Pepsi Challenge) - Now United

@conciiii##barilla ##barillachallenge ##pasta ##best ##itlay♬ Originalton - ninjahightower

This is totally understandable as brands are generating great ROI on a daily basis from TikTok. A great example of this is Dettol’s hand wash challenge.

Sila x TikTok.

TikTok is quite unique, the short-form video platform has spread in the fastest way possible and continues to gain popularity within the region. Here at Digital Ape, we quickly recognised this potential and therefore implemented TikTok audience-first analysis. This makes Sila the very first tool created for the Arabic-speaking world. Moreover, Sila collects a pool of GCC TikTok creators and analyses their audiences’ activities. Sila is also able to look into all their videos, followers and interactions including those averages. Additionally, we are able to categorise users based on the content that they publish. This categorisation helps us identify perfect fit creators for our clients. For example, Sila is now able to match cooking TikTokers with related food brands. Through this, we guarantee the right fit audience for our clients. Furthermore, another quite distinctive function of Sila is its ability to find users through other platform accounts. For example, a YouTuber can be found on TikTok (if available). With the vast differences found between content on TikTok and other platforms, we are able to take a look at the bigger picture for the profile analysed. After all, the same users have differing personalities across platforms! After looking at all their social media accounts, we are able to gain a better understanding of both the audience (always comes first) and then the profile chosen cross platform and are finally able to customize campaigns to better suit those audiences.

Sila Market Analysis.

We analyse the best performing content on TikTok within the GCC region, this helps us gain an understanding of what works best with the GCC's TikTok market. In general, personal life scenarios that the audience relates to, including stories of growing up or daily home experiences, performed best for most lifestyle creators. Just like any other demographic on TikTok – challenges performed best. You can also read more about how Tik Tok Content Equals Brands New Biggest Form of ROI.

How Sila Works.

Using models based upon Arabic dialects, we see their audience’s reactions, their other influencer affinities, and brand affinities. Those models allow us to build on previous capabilities to see the audiences’ age, gender, location, and engagements. Find out more about the Art and Science of Influencer Marketing in the G.C.C or get in touch with us today.