TikTok Sweepstakes & Promotions
You might be thinking it’s time to see what TikTok can do for your brand. Among the social platforms, it’s one of the newest but one of the biggest with more than 2.6 billion downloads. We know increasing your brand engagement is king, which makes TikTok ripe with users consuming, sharing, creating, and interacting with the latest trends and cultural movements.
If user-generated content – photos and videos – is important to your brand, then TikTok can make that happen IF you set up your sweepstakes right – that means understanding TikTok promotion guidelines.
TikTok can certainly be an immersive world with a huge range of voices and people hungry to devour the latest content and trend.
Let’s look at who is on the app, what works on it, and tips for your business to run a promotion or sweepstakes to hit your marketing objectives.
Who’s on TikTok?
It’s important to realize the audience you are getting in front of if you decide to focus on putting efforts into a contest or promotion on TikTok.
Bottom line: The demographics skew young and their usage is high.
Content on TikTok may only be 15-second video clips, but there’s no shortage of volume of content to consume and users to create it.
About 2 out of every 3 users on TikTok are under the age of 29.
Does that mean they are not a relevant audience for B2C marketing? No. In fact, they are a prime audience segment with more than half of users in the US making an annual income over $75K.
The youngest slice of users are ages 4 – 15 and spend almost an hour and a half a day on TikTok. But don’t count out those over 30 years old. TikTok is seeing a significant rise in the 30-44 year-old group lately.
Users aren’t necessarily using the app all in one sitting. They say 90% of users open TikTok multiple times a day – an average of 8 times per day.
If this is the right audience for you, it can be a VERY effective tool.
Tips for a Successful TikTok Sweepstakes or Promotion
Now that we know who you are reaching, let’s talk about the basic steps for your TikTok promotion.
Set your goals > Set your parameters and prizes > Execute > Track and Measure
Your goals have to be the first step when running a social media contest. Otherwise, your outcomes might not be useful, and your sweepstakes could be a wasted marketing effort. Use your goal, like lead generation, to steer the call-to-action your audience will take to enter. Maybe you are focusing on awareness, in which case you can cast a wider net than if you wanted deeper engagement from a segment of your potential customers.
Parameters include a lot of important information that structure your contest. This protects you by setting rules, start and end dates and times, eligibility requirements, We can’t stress enough the importance of legal compliance with TikTok’s rules and the regulations of the federal and state government. This includes copyright infringement, which would include contestants using music or images that are copyrighted. Failure to post terms and conditions, how to enter, details on the prizes, and how a winner may be chosen can come back to haunt you. This alone is a good reason why partnering with a Sweepstakes administrator, like US Sweeps, might be the smartest decision you can make.
Choose a prize that suits the audience. Remember that demographic we talked about, and make the prize something they care about, not what your business cares about.
Executing the plan is next. Launch your planned content and schedule your future TikToks and marketing to support it. Once the sweepstakes has concluded you’ll pick and announce the winner (if applicable to your rules).
Tracking and measuring runs in parallel with the sweepstakes being executed. Check to make sure your hashtag(s) are unique to your promotion. Good metrics will show real time data you can use to help for future promotions. For example, did the biggest surge in engagement come on launch, after a promotional post or on the final day? Did users respond best in the mornings, on the weekends or late at night?
What Works on TikTok
One of the things that makes TikTok unique is the open forum that unapologetically welcomes trendsetters and idea makers.
Our advice for content that works here – Be relevant. Be personal.
You have to put yourself inside the trends that matter to the users. Use the Discover feature to find out what’s ‘in’ and literally trending. What hashtags are blowing up? What are people talking about? It’s not a smart strategic move to try to create the topics. Be a part of them instead.
You have to find the balance between your own niche areas of expertise and following the trends. Stay true to you and your goals as a brand, but be aware of how to work the pop culture into your content. Authenticity is what TikTok users demand.
TikTok is a massive app, with a massive user base, which also means running a good promotion can be a massive undertaking. US Sweeps has the tools and team to step in and help.
We are currently offering a free 30 minute consultation on your sweepstakes where we’ll give you recommendations for planning, legal advice, and an attainable timeline to execute your sweepstakes. If you are interested, simply fill out this form and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
