TikTok Case Study – Revolution In World of Video Marketing

TikTok Case Study – Revolution In World of Video Marketing

TikTok is the destination for short-form mobile videos. Its mission is to capture and present the world's creativity, knowledge, and precious life moments, directly from the mobile phone. TikTok enables everyone to be a creator and encourages users to share their passion and creative expression through their videos.

TikTok as a Social Media Platform :

The trends on social media are moving too quick to stay track of everything that has been going around. These trends of social media boosted within the year 2008 once Facebook had grabbed an outsized market size. This was a chance for folks to showcase their skills and advertise their brands. Ever since then social media has evolved far more than simply being a section of people’s recreational activity and supply of recreation. Here within the case study, of TikTok you'll learn additional regarding its growth and revenue methods.

When it involves making amusing videos in today’s state of affairs there's only 1 app that folks are talking about: TikTok. It a mobile application that lets its users produce short videos with lip-syncing and with varied options.  TikTok was developed and launched within the year 2016 by ByteDance it's a Chinese app developer company. Before launching TikTok to the globe this company created an analogous application named Douyin within the Chinese market.  The app is out there on iOS likewise as on humanoid phones.

UserBase of TikTok:

Statistics show that TikTok is the most downloaded app with active users in the year 2018. TikTok is available in 150 countries and in more than 75 languages. It was recorded that there were more than 140 million downloads only on iOS devices and more than 650 million downloads on Android devices.  Also, it has been downloaded for 800 million times globally. TikTok has a number of users than Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, PUBG and WhatsApp within one year.

Features of TikTok:

There are various features that TikTok provides with its users.

• It lets the users create short videos of the duration of 3 seconds, 15 seconds and 60 seconds.
• Videos can be created with background music and Lip-sync.
• Viewers can “react” to the video with a counter video or with a “duet” on the same video.
• Videos can be created with a number of filters, Hashtags, in fast and in slow motion.
• The video can be shared on the user’s TikTok account as well as on the user’s other social media accounts.
• Security:

·       TikTok takes the security of the users with full concern. It gives the option to the users to keep their accounts “Public”, “Only Friends” and “ Private”.

·       It also provides a feature of “For You” were the users 16 and above get recommended video as their interest

Barriers in TikTok’s Growth:

TikTok has faced a lot of issues in its Domestic as well as in foreign markets.

1. On 3^rd July 2018, Indonesia banned TikTok for uploading pornographic videos. As a result, TikTok had to appoint 20 employees to review the videos clipped by the users and then upload them. Later on 11^th July 2018, TikTok was unbanned.
2. In the same year 2018, Douyin the Chinese variant of this app was objected by Chinese Govt. for uploading unacceptable content like depicting adolescent pregnancy videos. And banned videos related to human rights and also issued a list of a total of 100 types of videos that would be objectionable.
3. Content related to foreign leaders like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Mahatma Gandhi were also banned.
4. TikTok was also banned in India in the early phase of the year 2019 in India for sexually explicit content, cyberbullying and deep fake.
5. TikTok had to banned content related to homosexuality even in those countries where it is legal due to some similar circumstances.

Growth and Expansion of TikTok :

TikTok has proven to be one of the most popular apps in its segment. As mentioned above it had the larger number of active users in the time frame of one year within its launch. As TikTok developed this popularity even celebrities like Ariana Grande Britney Spears, Disha Patani, Jacqueline Fernandez and Shahid Kapoor started using it. And sooner this popularity gave growth start to TikTok with a great and successful. Within a year that is on 9^th November 2017, TikTok took over a Chinese company headquartered in Shanghai named musical.ly that operated outside China. Musical.ly is the app that has similar features as TikTok. Later TikTok redirected the musical.ly page to its updated version of TikTok.  Similarly, Tik-Tok has taken over companies with a similar product to abolish the market competition.

TikTok merge with Musical.ly accelerated growth :

 

In 2018, TikTok merged with Musical.ly, a popular mobile platform for short-form video. When the merge happened this is how Bytedance announced it:

We are delighted to welcome musical.ly to the Bytedance family. Louis, Alex and their team have built a hugely powerful and engaging platform, and we see immediate and exciting opportunities to build on the obvious synergy with our business. y integrating musical.ly’s global reach with Bytedance’s massive user base in China and key Asian markets we are creating a significant global platform for our content creators and brands to engage with new markets. At the same time, our global-leading AI technology will help musical.ly to accelerate their incredible pace of innovation in mobile video creation.

Revenue of TikTok :

TikTok does not have any form of paid Ads but it has in-app purchase of emojis and digital gifts. Though this does not sound a proper income generation method TikTok earned up to $3.5 million every month in the year 2018. This was an increase of 275% as compared to the year 2017. Out of this only, 42% of the revenue was been generated by the U.S and the rest was been generated by China.

This means the Chinese audience spent over $ 50 million on Douyin within a year. But the answer to the question of how does Tik-Tok plan to generate its further income stays unanswered. ByteDance says it has generated $2.5 billion in the year 2017 and $7.5 billion in 2018 it aims to generate 521% growth in revenue by 2019-2020. Tik-Tok was valued at $75 million and said to be the most valuable privately held start-up in the year 2018 which lead to Softbank investing $3 billion.

TikTok growth plan :

 

In early 2018 TikTok has gathered over five hundred million users, its growth has been so fast that Facebook has taken notice.

Indeed, according to TechCrunch Facebook is building an app called Lasso to compete against TikTok and stop its massive growth.

Given TikTok presumably multi-billion firepower, it won’t be easy for Facebook to stop TikTok growth.

As of the time of this writing, TikTok seems to be following users of specific demographics around the web via paid ads. Be it YouTube, Google or Facebook ad, TikTok appears to be ubiquitous.

This is blit scaling in action. In an industry, where a few players like Facebook dominate, having a relentless growth is critical to gain enough momentum to survive from a possible attack.

As Facebook is also investing in its own creative social media app, it makes sense that TikTok is pushing so much on growth.

However, this strategy is also hazardous, as when fuels start to run over, either the company will be able to get another round of investing and keep better monetizing its products, or it might risk falling.