TikTok fever swept through the Western world, becoming the fastest growing and most popular app of 2018. How did this happen?
Campaign Reach
Campaign Engagements
Ages 20-29
Campaign ROI
On the heels of a major $1B acquisition of Musical.ly, Chinese owned social network, Byte Dance had everything to lose. There was tremendous pressure. If their entry to the United States was not successful, their billion-dollar investment and market share opportunity would be lost. It was critical to secure a successful launch, and win the mindshare of the targeted millennial demographic.
Influencer sentiment and content proved to be a turning point for the nascent company. They would be setting the stage for the kind of virality that TikTok needed to reach mass adoption.
Plus, if influencers did not adopt the app, their appeal to the greater content creator community would fall short, leading to a decline of activity.
We had four primary objectives for a successful campaign:
1. Identify global top creators who could hit 1M+ Impressions in a single post
2. Coordinate 10 separate launch campaigns to promote different aspects of the app
3. Execute rapid turnaround campaigns on 3-10 day notice
4. Drive measurable downloads and KPI’s that tracked directly back to app growth
It was important to nail an effective multi-channel strategy that targeted the right aged user. Influencers don’t exist on one platform, as their reach and influence spans across various networks. As is often the case for influencer promotions, it is doubly important that followers feel an engagement is genuine if an endorsement occurs on one platform.
To combat any risk and create organic sentiment, SugarFree coordinated synchronized promotions across YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat, with Instagram stories as the lead platform and post format.
In addition, for the network to reach a critical audience, attracting an older demographic over the age of 20 was key. This was important in deciding which influencers to work with, especially those with a more mature audience. Rather than promote just music and dancing, we optimized for Vloggers, comedy, and influencers with mature audience appeal.
In August 2018, TikTok absorbed Musical.ly, and all Musical.ly accounts were automatically migrated to TikTok. The following month, SugarFree worked on its growth and promotion.
1. By Q3 of 2018, it surpassed Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat in monthly installs in the App Store.
2. Downloaded more than a billion times in 2018.
3. While it hasn’t overtaken social behemoth Facebook (2.27 billion global monthly active users, including Instagram and WhatsApp, which it owns), it’s far ahead of Twitter (336 million) and Snapchat (186 million); in addition, aas of February 2019, 27 million of active users were in the US.
We had four primary objectives for a successful campaign:
1. Identify global top creators who could hit 1M+ Impressions in a single post
2. Coordinate 10 separate launch campaigns to promote different aspects of the app
3. Execute rapid turnaround campaigns on 3-10 day notice
4. Drive measurable downloads and KPI’s that tracked directly back to app growth
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