How to Connect TikTok to Foot Traffic at Brick and Mortar Stores
December 12, 2022 by
TikTok is eating the world.
The typical TikTok user spends 95 minutes per day in the app, watching videos and staying in tune with the latest music trends. Ninety-five minutes. That’s equivalent to watching a full length movie every day – a highly captive audience.
All of those captivated users are drawing a lot of attention from advertisers. While roughly 45 million TikTok users in the U.S. are teenagers, more than twice that number – 93 million people – are adults with disposable income to spend on consumer products. TikTok’s ad revenues reflect this reality. Advertisers are planning to spend nearly $9 billion on TikTok ads in 2023. That’s more than the amount spent on Twitter, Snapchat and Pinterest combined. And it’s well over the amount marketers spend today on YouTube. In fact, TikTok’s ad revenues are projected to grow nearly 50% in 2023, which is more than triple the typical digital advertising channel.
@revealmobile Happy Wednesday ✨ #advertising #marketing #digitalmarketing #attribution #geofencing #tiktok #entertainment
The potent combination of fast-growing audiences and an influx of ad dollars means scores of marketers are reaching and converting their target audiences on TikTok in ways that advertisers haven’t seen before. And not all marketers are using TikTok to drive digital conversions. A growing number of retail, restaurant, entertainment, hospitality and apparel marketers are using TikTok to drive foot traffic to physical stores. Soci, the marketing platform for multi-location brands, asserts that a presence on TikTok is a must for restaurants and brands because the platform provides ample opportunities for local businesses to win against larger competitors.
With a minimum daily ad spend of $50 and an ads manager that’s easier to use than Facebook’s, it’s no surprise that digital marketers of all types are running paid experiments on TikTok to see just how many consumers will visit their locations as a result of this powerful paid social channel. Three out of every four consumers are discovering new products and services on social media, and TikTok is the fastest growing channel for discovery. The more experiments you can run the more you’ll learn about what works to persuade TikTok users to visit your locations.
While it may seem reasonable to put as much money as you can into TikTok to drive results, keep in mind that this channel adds horsepower to other ad channels where you’re running ads. In fact, consumers reported that watching an Instagram influencers’ content is 43% more memorable if they were previously exposed to the content in TikTok. This means your Instagram influencer marketing promotions are more effective if you couple them with TikToks.
Similarly, consumers reported being 31% less likely to skip a YouTube ad if they had first watched an ad for the same product on TikTok. So your YouTube ad spend becomes more potent when you couple that video channel with TikToks as well. The value of TikTok also extends to traditional video channels. Consumers reported that watching an ad on linear TV after viewing a TikTok ad for the same product increases memorability by 13%.
Combining Organic and Paid to Drive Earned Media
As you build your ad strategy for TikTok, it’s important to think like a marketer and act like a creator. TikTok has a unique algorithm, vocabulary, and aesthetic all to itself. TikTok rewards authenticity. It’s about being transparently human. As you create organic content for TikTok, show up authentically, and build trust. From those posts, learn how consumers engage with your content, and then do more of what works.
After you’ve learned which organic posts are the most effective after a few week or a month of posting, power those TikToks with ad dollars to reach a broader audience who also has relevance to what you’re promoting. By amplifying top-performing content to reach new audiences, you can get access to deeper insights into what resonates with your target audiences. Finally, the more you post and amplify what works, the more you maximize earned potential and the impact you make on your target consumers. This is where you start seeing results in the campaigns you’re running.
Think like a marketer. Act like a creator.
A TikTok strategy that combines organic and paid content maximizes earned potential.
Source: TikTok Auto Dealer Playbook 101, October 2022
Best Practices for Making TikToks
- Frame content vertically. People watch TikToks differently from how they watch other video.
- Leverage the power of sound. TikTok ism at its core, an audio platform.
- Overlay concise and informative text. Show and tell your audience what you want them to know.
- Get your key message out early. TikTok is not a patient platform.
- Include a strong call to action as soon as your content starts. Let people know what your content is doing.
- Break the fourth wall. Be genuine. Be authentic. Be human.
- Keep your story real and entertaining. Users want to feel something from your content.
- Ride the latest trends. Jump in where everybody else is, and don’t worry about getting lost.
We made a TikTok that gives you a clear and entertaining view into the top three best practices.
@revealmobile Some tips for your Tuesday ✨ #attribution #marketing #advertising #geofencing #retail #fyp #restaurants #campaigns #digitalmarketing
Maximizing Conversions on TikTok
VidMob recommends four things you can do to get the most out of your TikToks, helping to ensure they drive the consumer conversion that you’re looking for.
- Go High Rez – Videos shot at 720p or higher saw a 312% lift in conversion compared to lower resolution videos
- Go Vertical – Videos shot in 9:16 aspect ratio saw a 91% lift in conversion compared to videos that did not match screen format
- Go Ask – Calls to action in text format provide a 152% lift in conversion compared to videos that don’t clearly state what the audience should do next.
- Go Short – Video ads that fall between 21 and 34 seconds receive a 280% lift in conversion compared to videos that fell outside that duration.
TikTok Advertising Maturity Model
Source: TikTok Auto Dealer Playbook 101, October 2022
How to Drive Foot Traffic to Stores Using TikTok
Let’s use a hypothetical brick and mortar restaurant to show how to drive foot traffic from advertising on TikTok. We’ll call them The Fry Up. First, we want to identify the business case for driving more customers to Fry Up locations. We know, using foot traffic analytics, that foot traffic is down month over month. Using the same location intelligence platform, we can see that The Fry Up has a low proportion of new customers, relying too much on existing guests to drive sales. This results in slow growth.
Next, we need to build an addressable audience composed of mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) that have been seen at The Fry Up’s competitors. That’s how we can ensure we’re targeting consumers who are in market for Fry Up food. We can acquire that audience using geofencing technology. This is software that provides marketers with privacy-compliant, opted-in mobile ad IDs from consumers who have visited specific physical locations in the recent past – or as long as 18 months ago. So we geofence Delicious QSR, Yummy QSR, and Tasty QSR, and collect the eligible MAIDs that have been seen there.
Now comes the fun part. We take that list to TikTok and upload it as a custom audience. We can filter down further into that list using TikTok’s targeting tools, if needed. Next, we run our ads using this list as our audience and watch the goodness happen. Of course, we want to make Fry Up’s food the start of the show, so our ads focus on their signature menu items and include a few glimpses of the restaurant’s interior. That way, guests have a feel for their experience before they visit.
How to Measure Store Foot Traffic from TikTok
This is where the geofencing technology we used to create the custom location-based audience comes back into play. Because we served our TikToks to only those audience members, we can continue to keep track of where they dine and attribute our ads to visits to The Fry Up’s locations. Here’s what part of that report looks like.
Source: VISIT Local from Reveal Mobile
More TikTok Inspiration
The TikTok help center and creator portal has all the info you need about tools that live in TikTok Ads Manager. You can search for a feature, set-up guide, or training videos. You can explore additional tools offered in the ads manager. And you can find best practices and troubleshooting tips for every kind of campaign.
For campaigns that are designed to drive foot traffic to physical locations, such as brick and mortar stores, restaurants, casinos, auto dealerships, and more, reach out and ask one of our experts.
