The bridge to bigger and better marketing outcomes

This post is sponsored by TikTok.

Over the past 50 years, the marketing industry has undergone significant transformation in order to effectively support brands at different stages of growth to reach customers. From large out-of-home billboards in the 1970s to the proliferation of the internet in the 2000s, the industry has made a dramatic shift.

Media consumption habits have also played a crucial role in shaping the marketing landscape. The rise of various platforms has created a complex operating environment for brands as they strive to engage customers within their specific niches.

Marketers have had to continuously enhance their digital marketing strategies while seeking the perfect balance to unlock the ultimate consumer experience.

In recent years, a particularly authentic method of marketing has emerged on platforms such as TikTok, where brands have been empowered to unleash their creative visions through integrated app features to bring their innovative ideas to life.

With the rapid emergence of this authentic, entertainment-first approach that has captured global attention, brands now have an unparalleled opportunity to shatter conventional advertising barriers and forge sincere connections with their customers.

However, initiating this transformative journey and achieving successful consumer engagement requires strategic steps and essential considerations.

Incorporating entertainment to maximise marketing opportunities

According to data.ai, consumers worldwide are spending a whopping 200 billion hours on entertainment and short-form videos, surpassing the time spent on other applications such as social media networks, which amounts to about 40 billion hours.

This paradigm shift has also reduced the traditional barriers between content and consumers, and created an exceptional avenue for marketers to directly engage their target audience through the power of entertainment.

In fact, it goes beyond supercharging marketing; entertainment-first content has proven to be instrumental in driving purchases. It has given rise to a new concept known as “Shoppertainment”, which combines elements of content, community, and commerce to captivate audiences and drive sales, and is predicted to uncover a US$1 trillion opportunity for Asia-Pacific (APAC) by 2025.

This innovative concept creates an immersive shopping experience that entices and engages consumers on a whole new level, and is the reason why marketers are looking to transform the way they connect with target audiences online.

TikTok has taken centre stage in the industry as the channel for brands and marketers looking to build an entertainment-first marketing strategy. Its format of short-form videos provides an efficient and engaging way for brands to swiftly connect with consumers to drive awareness and brand recall.

The platform’s success has also spurred its evolution beyond being solely an entertainment platform. It has become a window to the world for creators and brands to seamlessly connect with their consumers, providing a comprehensive platform for brands to showcase their offerings and engage in direct commerce.

“Leveraging entertainment platforms such as TikTok allows brands to engage with consumers in a way that goes beyond functional value alone, and creates a deeper emotional connection that can lead to conversions, brand loyalty, and even advocacy,” said Tomohiko Sugiura, executive vice president of Dentsu Digital Inc.

With multiple sub-communities peppered on TikTok such as BookTok, CleanTok, and CheeseTok, users are presented with a wide range of content, all to fit their different interests.

The presence of these sub-communities on TikTok is one way brands can begin establishing genuine connections with their ideal customer base. From there, brands can explore collaborations with creators on the platform and leverage TikTok’s easy-to-use creatives tools and features to create compelling content that resonates with target audiences while gaining more knowledge from the platform to grow their brand.

Marketing leaders such as Maria Risa Puspitasari, senior vice president of brand marketing at tiket.com, attests to the idea of reaching customers through shoppertainment to communicate products and promotions “without being too hard sell”.

And that has proven to be true through many successful stories of brands on the platform that have managed to welcome better sales results through creative and entertaining content.

Hitting all-time highs with entertainment-first marketing

Maybelline New York

Take make-up and cosmetics brand Maybelline, for instance, which collaborated with entertainment creators on its “Colossal Curl Bounce Mascara” campaign. Aiming for additional reach and awareness, its campaign successfully reached over 28 million video views.

The brand saw a sales uplift that was 75% above benchmarks and hit 9% above awareness benchmarks. Innovative forms of creator collaborations, including those beyond its niche, have worked wonders for it.

Koiniwa

In Japan, we were able to see a truly unique take on branded entertainment through a creative execution by the innovative app Koiniwa. The team found a groundbreaking way to combine two thrilling, but seemingly unrelated activities – dating and gaming in its campaign, delivered through episodic storytelling.

Every story was accompanied by illustrations, with sequentially rolled out videos to accompany their storylines to keep users engaged as they followed individuals who were able to build romantic connections through the gaming environment. Quite remarkably, they achieved a 1.3 times higher return on ad spend (ROAS) through the campaign.

An infinite loop to engaging with the customer

Truth be told, creativity has become one of the most important factors in helping brands grab attention and connect with audiences. Alongside that, by combining content and community, brands now have the ability to connect with the consumer in more ways than one, and it provides more opportunities to convert across the journey.

This has resulted in infinite opportunities to convert – an infinity loop encompassing earned media, paid advertising, and both upper and lower-funnel strategies, all driven by the collective forces of consumers, communities, and brands.

The TikTok Marketing Science Global Entertaining Ads Study (Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand results) 2022 conducted by MarketCast found that entertaining content drives impact across the funnel with brands seeing a 15% higher brand affinity, 14% higher purchase intent, and 15% higher likelihood of brand recommendation.

And when it comes to paid media, brands get a 1.6 times higher ROAS than they do on other media channels – and a total of 2.6 ROAS when earned media is amplified with paid.

Like the countless brands that have found success on TikTok, with proper holistic planning for short and long-term impact, brands of all sizes will be able to unlock opportunities on the platform.

Now, almost any business can successfully create that visceral connection with its target audiences just with a few quick shots and simple editing. It is the opportune moment for marketers to create their very own infinite loop of discovery, purchase, and loyalty towards their brand.

TikTok has collaborated with specialist information, data, and analytics company WARC in outlining insights for brands of all sizes to drive a long-term performance plan on the platform to foster bigger impacts on their consumers.

Explore more in their joint study, When Entertainment Meets Effectiveness, to find out more about how you can maximise your marketing strategies on TikTok.