TikTok - would it really work for my company?

Could TikTok work for marketing at Premier IT?

Maybe, maybe not. At first glance it doesn't seem like an app our target audience would use. But the following facts could persuade my manager to give it a go:

1. There are over 800 million active users worldwide! Lots of potential business, and way more people than Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat.

2. Over 1.5 billion downloads on the app store!

3. The average TikTok user spends more than 50 minutes per day on the app.

4. It has localised content

5. It's the next big thing!

I've investigated whether our target audience/customers ARE on TikTok...and they are! Lots of NHS hospitals have jumped on the trend and created accounts, which means probably lots of NHS health workers and nurses are too. This means it could be suitable for our customer segment if we create the right content. Maybe something funny/relatable/trending somehow related to our products? It would take some clever thinking. Because at first glance to someone not involved in the healthcare sector, appraisal and revalidation doesn't sound too interesting.

There are a number of different forms of advertising on TikTok. On ads.tiktok.com you can create your own ad. I have tried to do this but it says it's not available in my region yet! I have signed up to be notified when it is though.

But in the US, TikTok ads start at $10 per CPM (cost per 1000 views). And they require you to spend a minimum of $500 on a campaign. This is because TikTok recently received a major investment from SoftBank's Vision Fund and was ranked as the current most valuable startup.

I have carried out some hashtag research... #revalidation (481 views) , #medicalrevalidation (no views), #appraisal has 848.2k views!! If we were to post a video under this hashtag this means we could get quite a few views, even if it's just a few hundred at first, because this is clearly a popular hashtag, as well as #nurses with 260.9m views, and doctors with over 600m views! Wow.

A lot of doctors and nurses, dentists and surgeons are on TikTok and they share interesting medical facts and demonstrations. One man from the Instituition of Human Anatomy is using TikTok to share videos of the human body and it's insides... using a real dead body! Freaky!

Regarding out expected ROI, looking at the number of views the hashtags we would use get, I reckon it would be much better than other social media channels especially Facebook and Instagram, where we are barely getting any activity! We may not make more money, because we would only be posting videos for fun and not paying for ads,  but it could create bigger brand recognition.

Regarding our key performance indicators, it would be good to have an increase in reach, interaction, sales and get more positive customer reviews.

I think it's worth a try, like I said, at first we wouldn't have to spend any money, we could just do it for fun, but if it turns out to be successful we could integrate it into our marketing plan officially and start running some ads.

How often we would post is hard to pin because for our business creating engaging, interesting content to do with healthcare software could be hard! We're not really a big business so at the beginning maybe we could just post whenever we find a relevant trend we can respond to.

Overall, TikTok is definitely something we could consider.