TikTok Exec Says the App’s Experience is Built to ‘Inspire’ You to Buy Things

In a world where everyone is selling something, social media has become a fundamental tool to advertise and convince people to purchase products and services and TikTok’s business executive has acknowledged that the app was built to encourage users to buy products.

Inspiring Impulse Buying and Driving Business Growth on TikTok

During an interview with Talk to Me Data, Mahmoud Shammout, head of research & insights for TikTok for business in the METAP region, discussed among many things the ways in which the social media platform is set up to drive business for advertisement.

According to Shammout, in every 3 shoppers, 2 are compelled to shop even when they were not looking to do so and TikTok is one such tool that urges them to make purchases.

“TikTok’s experience is built to amplify inspiration – its video-first, native style and sound-on format leads to more impulsive purchases and higher spending when compared to other channels,” he said.

Shammout, whose main role is to help brands to make important strategic and tactical decisions for their businesses on TikTok based on data-driven insights, also revealed that TikTok’s data department is currently focused on shopping, understanding how users are triggered to shop and using these insights to empower businesses.

From their analysis, TikTok’s data division has discovered that 62% of online shoppers make an impulse purchase at least once a month, rising to 70% among TikTok users.

Additionally, over a third of impulse buyers say one of the most common reasons they make unplanned purchases is because it’s fun to discover/buy new things, a number that, again, peaks among TikTok users.

To attain these numbers, Shammout explained that inspiration played a big role and TikTok has been able to achieve this through TikTok Communities which currently have over 1 billion users. “ Communities come together to share and create, as well as inspire others to co-create content themselves. This leads to a snowball effect, and brands don’t even have to do all the heavy lifting themselves,” he said.

He further attributed the ability to inspire purchases to the fact that the platform has majored in creation and it boasts of the highest ratio of creators-to-viewers among social media platforms. This implies that the platform has creators from every industry and sector who can advertise and drive purchases for any product.

Unlocking Success on TikTok

TikTok has become a massive advertising tool for marketers seeing as the app is quickly becoming the most popular and had the most number of downloads last year.

According to statistics from Statista, its demographic mainly entails users between the age of 16 to 29 years most of who are women who are the target audience for most brands in this era. This demographic has made it the platform with the most purchases of beauty products in the US.

With these numbers, the platform has only attracted 18% of the world’s marketers yet TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, was still able to generate $38.6 billion in ad revenue last year. Moreover, TikTok has been experiencing steady growth in in-app purchase revenues and it closed the first quarter of this year at about $500 million.

And while these figures are very impressive, the app is yet to reach its peak as more users and marketers flock to it making it the prime marketplace with massive supply and demand which Shammout ascertained remains the driving force for business regardless of the tools and technologies that emerge.

To help marketers succeed on the platform, he also revealed the creative technique, which he named the ‘Triple-A Storytelling’. The technique consists of grabbing the users ‘attention’ by showing that the business has a story to tell.

Next, the brand drives ‘anticipation’ by giving the viewer a reason to stay by for instance captivating them with the product so they want to know more. Lastly, the brand should call the audience to ‘action’ by leading them to buy or participate in a conversation.

Related articles:

• SEO Marketplaces
• Snapchat Isn’t Just For Gen Z – Total Daily Time Spent By Users 25+ Jumped 25% in 1 Year
• How Much Money Can You Make on TikTok? Here’s How to Start Your Journey