Social media is here to stay. While a lot of people use it for entertainment, many have found its benefits in terms of promoting their business and their services. No matter which social media network you opt for voicing out, advertising through social media isn’t as easy as people think.
No matter what your ecommerce business is, you need to select either Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok to spread the word. You can combine several of these networks, choose all of them or focus on just one.
In recent years, Instagram and TikTok have started to stand out. Both have a large number of users and you can definitely find your audience somewhere' in there. These are slightly different outlets – Instagram is all about photos, memes, etc, while TikTok is great for short videos, guides and it proves out to be a great addition to places such as YouTube.
You can make short videos on TikTok and link it to your YouTube video that stretches for 10 or 12 minutes. This can be done on Instagram as well, but will it be that effective?
These are the nuances we will discuss further in the article, and if you want to know whether you should opt for Instagram or TikTok to advertise your ecommerce business, keep on reading!
Daily Users
First of all, both platforms have a large pool of users where' you can target your audience and create an engaging page.
Instagram has something over 500 million, where'as TikTok counts 100 million more, which gives it a slight advantage. But you shouldn’t worry that much about the actual number of users. Both platforms have more than enough people where' you can show them what you have to offer.
Avarage Time Spent
It is no secret that we spend a lot of time using both Instagram and TikTok. In fact, their policies revolve around catching our attention and motivating us to stay there as long as possible. This means that they will show us content which we tend to like and show us more of it.
The average Instagram user spends around 30 minutes per day, while the extremes go way beyond that, spending 2-3 hours! On the other hand, TikTokers spend over 50 minutes per day on average!
What does that mean for your business?
It means that there’s more chance someone will notice it on TikTok. Once the video on TikTok goes viral, it usually spread to the other places online, such as YouTube, Instagram etc. On the other hand, ,if you create a great Instagram post, it tends to stay mainly on the platform or maybe end up in a few online portals.
What helps for a TikTok video to spread is the number of likes. The more likes the video has, there’s more likelihood that the people will share it with their friends.
The Age of Users
Social media platform change at the speed of lightning. Do you remember when Facebook users were mostly teenagers and young adults? Now, Facebook is a great platform for the elderly, although there are some younger people as well.
But the younger people are mostly using Instagram and TikTok. How young is the audience exactly?
On instagram, 70% of the users are under 34. Meanwhile, on TikTok, the audience is significantly younger, and almost 50% are between- 16 and 24!
This should raise some questions. So far, TikTok has appeared to be better for your ecommerce brand promotion, but learning how young the audience is, this may change. The buying power is actually on Instagram.
You may advertise your product on TikTok and not many people will buy it, not because they are not interested, but because they’re still teenagers. That doesn’t mean that you should advertise on TikTok too (you should and you will read why later on), but it is Instagram where' clicks can turn into actual sales.
Competition
Where’s your competition and what they are doing? You should always check out some of your biggest rivals and see how they are advertising and what their success is. It appears that a large number of promotions happen on Instagram, up to 35% while only 4% of the marketers are using TikTok.
That means that you will almost have no competitors on TikTok, but there must be a reason why people don’t bother to advertise on TikTok.
And there is – young people don’t like ads. They will most likely shut those down or simply skip them. They want to watch funny videos, lip singing, dancing, cats and dogs and do various challenges on TikTok. And that’s about it.
Don’t get disheartened from Advertising on TikTok
Something that would be an effective ad on Instagram isn’t an effective ad on TikTok. If you can incorporate challenges into your advertising policy, you might as well consider TikTok as your go-to platform. You need to tailor the content to fit what people watch. Otherwise, you don’t stand a chance. If you aren’t ready to find someone who knows the platform inside out, then switch to Instagram.
Their algorithm is more predictable and they have certain rules that when you follow, you will surely have some success.
Still, the best would be to stay active on both platform, but you will need to adjust the content for each. You cannot post one thing across the platforms because, that will not work well.
What’s you brand?
Last but not least, what do you try to advertise? If you are a design company, maybe Instagram would be the solution, where'as for film and video makers, TikTok is definitely the top choice.
The examples are too obvious, but they are taken to illustrate a point. Think about your brand and what you want to achieve and that should give you an answer to choose Instagram, TikTok or both!