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With over 800 million monthly active users, TikTok is now the 3rd largest social media platform, just behind Facebook and Instagram. As a channel that is starting to emerge for mobile UA, the potential is massive. What is cool about TikTok is that it has opened up immense creative possibilities for marketers.

It certainly has inspired wholly new ways to think about creatives for TikTok – but these strategies for what we call TikTok style videos are equally effective on other platforms. Today we’ll look at 5 key ingredients of winning TikTok style videos – and how you might be able to apply these to your own creatives.







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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Welcome to yet another edition of the Mobile User Acquisition Show. So, this episode is about something that we are very excited about lately and this is TikTok.

TikTok has 800 million plus MAU – behind Facebook and Instagram it’s the next biggest platform. And really, I think the potential for marketers is immense as we are finding out in our own experience lately. Now what’s cool about TikTok is it has opened up immense creative possibilities for marketers. It certainly has inspired completely new ways to think about creators for TikTok. However, the strategies for what we call TikTok style videos are equally effective on other platforms just as well.

Today, we’re going to look at five key ingredients of winning Tik-Tok style videos, and how you might be able to apply these to your own creatives, which you can use on or off TikTok. So let’s jump right in.

1. Winning creatives are creator driven, narrative driven, character driven. Typically, these are what you would call native influencer videos. Typically app walkthroughs or gameplay don’t work nearly as well. So keep in mind, you have to engage more, as you have to engage real people to make your TikTok style creatives.

2. Creatives on TikTok are movement driven, and music driven. Again, if you’ve played around with the platform, you probably notice there’s a lot of music, a lot of movement, a lot of dance in there. In fact, we oftentimes tell our models and actors, just do a simple dance, just do something stupid simple, that’s better than talking to the camera. If anything, a monologue that involves just talking to the camera can be one of the worst things to do on TikTok because it just looks so out of place.

3. Portray primary emotions. Again, this is so crucial because of the short form nature of the platform, you want to hammer home emotions, you want to hammer home big emotions. So, if someone’s happy, see if you can make them really happy, if someone is sad make sure they are very, very sad. So that emotional intensity stands out and elicits a response from your users.

4. Exaggeration is good. Again, I think this is somewhat similar to my point about portraying primary emotions. But then again, it’s not just about emotions, it’s about actions or messages you want to exaggerate when possible. In fact, some of the more interesting videos we have made have involved actors or models flashing lots of money. So of course, obviously, these aren’t huge dollar bills, but the fact that they threw money around, they show money and to just that they portray that there could be monetary gains by using this particular platform. I think that can be very, very effective and can be very powerful. And of course, it just doesn’t have to involve money. You could show and portray exaggerated emotions or messages in other ways just as well.

5. Raw, unpolished, unfiltered creatives win – as I like to say: Instagram worthy is not TikTok worthy. So whatever is doing well on Instagram is oftentimes polished, slick, and really nice looking. That’s not what works on TikTok, the more unpolished you are, the more effective and a more powerful your creatives can be.

And that brings us to the end of the five key ingredients or elements of winning TikTok style videos. 

In summary, one: use character driven narrative driven videos. Number two: always lead with music and movement and dance. Number three: portray primary emotions. Number four: exaggeration is good. Number five: raw and polished unfiltered is great. I hope that is helpful and instructive.

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth at rocketshiphq.com. We read all reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!

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