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Despite being a relatively new player in the social media space, TikTok has already established itself as an absolute powerhouse.

The platform is insanely influential, leading the way when it comes to viral trends and attracting a colossal audience of actively engaged users. 

Unsurprisingly, this also means that brands around the globe are frantically scrambling to capitalise on TikTok marketing opportunities. 

But in the race to stamp their mark on the TikTok app, many of these advertisers are overlooking the importance of a solid marketing strategy. 

The result? Rushed campaigns, mediocre content, and underwhelming results. 

If you want to maximise the full potential of TikTok marketing, then you’ll need an expertly planned, data-driven strategy that allows you to connect with your target audience and leave your competitors scratching their heads. 

Is TikTok marketing effective? 

TikTok marketing can be incredibly effective for brands, allowing them to reach a huge audience of younger users, produce creative content, and launch data-fuelled ad campaigns. However, if you want to drive optimal results on TikTok, then you’ll need a solid marketing strategy. 

A clear and actionable TikTok advertising strategy provides you with a strong foundation for everything you do on the platform. 

Your TikTok strategy will help you to establish who you’re looking to reach and how you can communicate with them. It will help you measure the impact of your marketing, create content that resonates with your audience, and differentiate yourself from the competition. 

If you’re trying to freestyle TikTok marketing without a clear strategy in place, you might as well run your campaigns blindfolded. 

But where should you start with your strategic planning? And what are the most important areas to focus on when you’re preparing to launch a new TikTok marketing campaign? 

Let’s run through the 7 key steps to a wildly successful TikTok marketing strategy. 

7 key steps to an effective TikTok marketing strategy 

Building a TikTok marketing strategy from scratch can feel a little intimidating at first – but if you follow these 7 steps, you’ll be equipped with all the insights you need to blow your objectives out of the water. 

Step #1 – Collect high-value UGC 

User Generated Content is extremely powerful on social media, and this is particularly true on the TikTok platform. 

UGC provides your brand with content that feels human and authentic. This helps you to generate instant credibility and authority with your target audience, which can build trust and ultimately lead to conversions. 

One study even found that UGC on TikTok outperformed traditional ads in several core areas, including attention, interest, and emotional engagement. 

Always ensure that you’re carving out a space for UGC in your TikTok marketing plans. 

There are several ways to gather UGC on TikTok, including:

• Searching for hashtags that are connected to your brand 
• Encouraging your audience to upload content (i.e. competitions, rewards)
• Partnering with ‘UGC creators’ to produce assets 

If you’re smart, you can even set up a never-ending cycle of UGC production on TikTok by constantly harvesting, promoting, and incentivizing fresh content.

Step #2 – Learn the platform inside-out ½

Familiarising yourself with the TikTok platform is a must before you start planning and executing marketing campaigns. 

Take some time to scroll through the TikTok feed to understand what types of videos are resonating with audiences, and how users interact with branded content.  

How are the most popular brands communicating with viewers? Which types of videos are engaging your target customers? Where are the biggest opportunities for your brand? 

Applying a few TikTok best practices will also have a major impact on your performance.

For example, videos that include closed captioning (or text that displays a CTA) deliver a 55.7% lift in impressions compared to videos that don’t. Video duration is also massively important – 1 in 4 top-performing TikTok videos run between 21 and 34 seconds. 

Understanding what makes trending TikTok videos successful will pay dividends when it’s time to produce your own assets. If you’re keen to unlock expert insights about TikTok advertising, then partnering with a specialist marketing agency can be a wise move. 

Step #3 – Focus on your target audience 

Establishing your target audience is a hugely important part of your TikTok strategy.

Once you’ve identified the users you’d like to reach, you can begin to gather insights about them, tailor content based on their interests, and target them with paid ads. 

There are several ways that you can build a clearer picture of your target audience on TikTok. For instance, you might: 

• Deep dive your existing customer data for demographic information 
• Apply audience learnings you’ve gathered on other social platforms 
• Analyse competitors to identify who they’re targeting on TikTok 
• Explore relevant topics and hashtags to understand audience interests 

Once you’ve launched your marketing efforts, you should also frequently check TikTok analytics to understand which audiences are engaging with your content. 

You might discover user segments that you hadn’t even considered targeting previously, which can open up new opportunities for content strategies and conversions! 

Step #4 – Learn from competitor successes (and failures)

While your competitors may be working hard to capture the attention of your target audience, they can also provide you with a lot of useful performance insights. 

When you’re pulling together your TikTok marketing strategy, write up a list of relevant competitors in your industry. 

(If you’re a small business, try to balance established corporations with brands that are of a similar size.)

Once you’ve identified a few of your most important competitors, follow their activity on TikTok to gather as many learnings as possible. If they post a successful piece of content, analyse why it’s resonating with viewers – have they utilised a new format, or experimented with a different creative message?

Keeping tabs on the competition is also a great way to discover new opportunities for your brand.  

Monitoring other brands in your market will help you to differentiate yourself and avoid duplicating similar content. You might even spot a gap in the market that you can fill with a new product or feature, helping you to stay ahead of the pack.

Step #5 – Stick to a set posting schedule

It’s easy to obsess over the quality of your TikTok uploads, but you should also place an equally strong emphasis on the consistency of your posts. 

Maintaining an active TikTok profile is vital to feeding the TikTok algorithm. 

The more you upload quality videos and interact with other profiles, the more engagement you’ll generate, which signals to the TikTok machine that your content is worthy of promoting.

To help you stay consistent, draw up a content schedule that dictates how frequently you’ll post on TikTok. Plan out a few different content ideas, and make sure that you’re producing enough videos to keep your profile lively. 

Creating a viral post with a flash of inspiration is great, but steadily building your TikTok presence and growing an organic following will pay off massively in the long run. 

Step #6 – Measure your results 

Crafting an intelligent TikTok strategy isn’t much good if you don’t know how it’s performing, so make sure that you’re constantly measuring performance on the app. 

By monitoring and analysing your marketing results, you can: 

• Identify (and expand) your best-performing content strategies
• Understand who your most valuable audiences are 
• Utilise performance data to optimise ad campaigns 
• Quantify the impact TikTok is having on your business/revenue 

You can also leverage multiple platforms to stay on top of your performance data and track different metrics. 

TikTok’s built-in measurement tools are great for collecting basic performance data, enabling you to track the engagements, views, clicks and conversions generated from your marketing.

Step #7 – Test, test, test your ad campaigns

The best performing TikTok strategies are those that evolve and optimise over time.

To make sure that you’re consistently improving marketing performance, focus on setting up regular A/B tests that enhance your campaigns. 

The more you test and experiment with different TikTok tactics, the faster you’ll boost advertising returns and reduce inefficient spend. 

There are plenty of marketing variables that you can test on TikTok, such as:

• Target audiences
• Ad formats
• Creative assets
• CTAs
• Ad text
• Bidding strategies 

And to make life even easier, TikTok allows marketers to set up automated split tests quickly and easily. All you need to do is select your desired test variable, confirm your primary KPI, and launch your test ad.

By following these steps, you’ll be able to create a potent TikTok marketing strategy that resonates with your target audience, strengthens your brand identity, and allows you to capitalise on the mind-blowing potential of the platform. 

But remember – don’t take your foot off the pedal once your strategy is complete. 

There are always new insights to gather and new learnings to apply, so make sure you’re constantly developing your strategy to deliver the best possible results for your business.

Featured Image by Mourizal Zativa on Unsplash

The post How to Create a Successful TikTok Marketing Strategy appeared first on noupe.

Signup and onboarding are important to get right whether you’re a SaaS or online business – while many of your customers registering with you will be genuine, some accounts will be made by fraudsters. While you want to stop these users from registering with you, deep customer vetting during the onboarding process can cause user experience friction as it often involves asking for documentation or too many questions. Some B2Cs avoid customer vetting for that reason, but one key frictionless method of checking security at onboarding includes data enrichment. We’ll be going into detail about how this works and how it can protect you against suspicious customers.

How at risk are B2Cs when it comes to fraud?

When it comes to B2Cs, the e-Commerce sector is particularly at risk of being targeted by fraudsters. (And SaaS companies have a lot to learn from this too.) According to Finances Online, e-Commerce sites have to deal with an average of 206,000 attacks every month. The same article also found in another survey that: “companies that implemented fraud prevention programs were able to reduce their fraud attack response expenses by 42%, their remedy expenses by 17% compared to companies without such programs in place”. This goes to show that while fraud is big on the agenda for e-Commerce, implementing fraud prevention software can reduce your expenses greatly. A good investment surely, but often companies find they’re reluctant to take the plunge because of one important factor that affects customer experience – friction.

As a business, you’re probably looking to avoid increasing friction regarding a user’s onboarding experience. You’re perhaps looking at implementing ways of making the process more streamlined so that there are fewer boxes to tick or fill in during registration (which can put some customers or users off registering at all). However, Profitwell found in their study that good customer onboarding can actually lead to higher retention and willingness to pay – so if you get this right, it could be of great benefit in the long-run.

Unfortunately, one of the most popular forms of fraud prevention technique – Know Your Customer checks which include document or biometric verification for example – can introduce a lot of friction for your customer (and extra costs for you). Some checks like biometric verification are known as hard KYC checks. This means that they’re particularly hard for fraudsters to get around but also provide a great deal of friction to all of your customers in general.
If you ask every customer for document identification, it’s going to not only cost extra time for the customer in terms of them locating important, relevant documentation (such as their driver’s license or passport), but it’s also potentially going to take time to verify that these documents are valid. Verification is also importantly not completely failsafe. Criminals can also find ways around document or biometric verification. This could come in the form of forging ID documents using Photoshop or combining real and fake data to make a synthetic identity, as SEON explains in their guide to synthetic identity fraud.

How to check security without involving friction

Thankfully, there’s another route to safer onboarding, and that’s via data enrichment. Data enrichment handles many different data points along the entire onboarding process, like a user’s phone number, email address, IP address and device fingerprinting.

Data enrichment isn’t limited to just fraud prevention per se (although this is what we’re interested in here) – it’s generally a means to merge a primary data point with other data sets in order to provide a bigger context for your original data point. For example, you could start with a user’s email address as a primary data point. Using a data enrichment tool on the email address, you can combine it with other datasets out there such as via internet open sources or other records to find out whether it’s linked to any social media accounts.

Uncovering a very limited or non-existent social media footprint using data enrichment on a user’s data points means they’re more likely to be a fraudster or automated attacker. A customer is more likely to be genuine if they have a history of social media that’s over a few years. What’s more, a suspicious user is more likely to be hiding their IP address behind a VPN, using a web browser like Tor, and has a disposable phone number or an email address that’s not linked to any social media profiles. This entire process is known as digital footprint analysis.

These are all clues that create a picture of how likely a user is a fraudster – some fraud prevention tools that enlist data enrichment to find out more about your customers have a “traffic light” system, which involves providing each customer with a risk score. Phone numbers belonging to a blacklist will lead to a user receiving a very high score, as will a user using a Tor browser. You might ban them outright before or during the onboarding process itself, as they’re likely a criminal based on the information you’ve gleaned. When it comes to suspicious users with a high score, you might ask for additional details in the form of a phone call with your customer services, or extra documentation to show that they are who they claim to be. 

Blacklisting and flagging suspicious users early means you’re more likely to catch them. When a customer’s been flagged as suspicious, it’s fine to introduce a bit of friction, because you’re trying to decide whether they’re fraudulent or not – most of your regular customers not flagged as suspicious don’t have to undergo this level of scrutiny. This is dynamic friction – in other words, friction that’s introduced only when it’s deemed necessary, not all the time and for every single user looking to register with you. 

Bringing it all together: by enriching a customer’s email address, phone number or by looking at the kind of device they’re using, you can find out a lot about their identity during the onboarding process (or even just via them taking actions on your site). You might even be able to use this process instead of KYC-related verification checks to save money and reduce friction overall. That’s because this data can be gained fairly early on – you can even find a user’s IP address and device information just through them taking actions on your site. 
Using data enrichment to replace KYC is an option if you don’t have to comply with any KYC and AML-related mandates, which you might have to if you’re in the gambling industry. As Experian found, as more people become interested in gambling, this is leading to an increase in fraud targeted at the industry itself.

In sum

As we’ve explained above, there are several ways to go about creating a safe onboarding process that doesn’t let in fraudsters. Hard KYC checks like biometric verification can cause the kind of friction that leaves most of your genuine customers unsatisfied. But with the help of data enrichment, you can filter out fraudsters even before they reach the onboarding stage itself.

Featured Image by FLY:D on Unsplash

The post Safer Onboarding Doesn’t Have to Involve Friction appeared first on noupe.

Human Resources are no longer restricted to the back-office, juggling piles upon piles of paperwork. The internet and modern technology have made HR a tech-savvy department. They can use cloud-based HR Software to manage time, hire, offboard, and manage time.

Human resources departments are often a hub of activity. Cloud HR software has made it possible for HR professionals to simplify and reduce administrative tasks such as record keeping and payroll. Instead, they can focus on the issues that will make or break a company’s success in an era of intense competition, such as employee engagement.

This video is a quick refresher course on cloud hr software. This vendor video is great for a refresher or crash course in cloud hr software.

These 10 Cloud Software Benefits Changed the Way We Think About HR

Small businesses who needed automation were the ideal target audience for HR software. It was developed in the late 1990s. As functionality became more sophisticated, innovation began to spread to larger companies.

The early 2000s saw a shift away from “one-size fits all” HR software to specialised systems capable of managing recruiting, training, evaluation and other HR-related tasks. Cloud-based HR systems provide businesses with the computing power they need to thrive and survive in today’s information age.

We’ll show you how cloud-based HR software has improved your workplace.

1. There is less paperwork
2. Performance assessments that are accurate and real-time
3. Employee engagement increases
4. 24/7 Access to Pay and Benefit Information
5. Fast deployment
6. Lower cost HR solutions
7. Security: A new approach
8. Access to innovation is easy
9. How to bring HR up-to-speed
10. Predictive analytics

1. Less paperwork

No more storing employee records inside large file cabinets. All files can be securely stored in the cloud with cloud-based HR software and accessed instantly using apps such as Box, Google Drive, or Dropbox. A cloud-based HR software allows HR employees to search for and print files in seconds.

2. Accurate, Real-Time Performance Assessments

Human Resources has a critical function: assessing employee performance. Assessments used to require a lot of paperwork and required a lot more time to complete.

Cloud HR software allows employees to be monitored in real time. Built-in dashboards, reports, and machine learning enable data analysis. Qandle HR solutions allow the HR team to quickly set up new systems or provide training.

3. Increased Employee Engagement

Cloud HR systems use big data and mobile technology for employee engagement. With Ceridian Dayforce HCM Software, HR is able to send out a pulse survey and collect feedback from employees in just minutes. Cloud HR systems can be used to track hours and manage employee payroll Software.

4. Access to Benefit and Pay Information 24 hours a day

Cloud HR software gives employees access to important information about their benefits and pay anytime, anywhere. They can see exactly how much of their salary goes towards taxes, 401(k) and other benefits.

Employees accessed outdated HR systems via telephone systems. These systems can be slow, may not be accessible at all, may take up more space and not have the same bandwidth as cloud-based HR systems. Cloud HR systems offer constant access at all times.

5. Quick Deployment

It is simple to use and manage HR software as a cloud service. It’s easier to use than legacy or standalone HR systems, according to reviews. As a SaaS provider, HR software is automatically updated and maintained.

6. Cheaper HR Solutions

Cloud-based HR software offers more value at lower upfront costs than traditional HR management software. Cloud solutions are immediately able to generate decent returns once they have been deployed. They also offer better data and time savings. This gives your company more resources to improve products and to increase employee satisfaction.

7. New Approach in Security

Security was not possible before cloud-based HR. Companies need to reconsider how they keep sensitive information secure, as employee records can now be stored digitally. International businesses are particularly concerned about data security due to the EU GDPR law. The GDPR defines personal data and makes companies responsible for protecting employees’ personal information.

8. Steps to Innovation

What happens when your proprietary HR management system becomes outdated? The total cost of ownership can quickly rise with upgrades, deployments, and training. Cloud computing gives startups and large corporations equal access to innovative cloud HR solutions. Cloud computing makes it easy to update existing solutions. Companies no longer have to spend extra on software and technology.

9. Bringing HR up to speed as a Strategic Department

The greatest impact of cloud-based HR software is the ability for HR to communicate with the rest of the organisation. The back-office has always been HR’s home, with a lack of information and poor communication.

10. Predictive Analytics

AI in HR systems is a great tool for employee retention and promotion. AI in HR systems can analyse data from the company and predict who is most at risk. It may reveal a dip in performance due to a lack of training or a problem with the workplace environment, among other issues.

Featured Image by Hunters Race on Unsplash

The post 10 Ways Cloud HR Software Can Improve the Workplace appeared first on noupe.