As we all know, the world of technology has evolved exponentially in the past 10 years. Naturally, with this evolution comes the need to evolve avenues that interact directly with the technological age, one of which is marketing. With the advancement of social media apps, the way companies market themselves and their products has shifted to reflect the current social climate and maximize their reach with key demographics. In order to cater to the audiences that mainly traffic these platforms, companies have turned to influencers and content creators to direct their advertisements towards what is seen and likely to succeed in the eyes of the viewers. Let’s dive into this practice by seeing it in action on one of the most popular social media apps available today: TikTok.
TikTok was rolled out in 2016 and in its short 8 years, it has grown into a huge community of creators, musicians, actors, vloggers, and everyday people who all share the joy of presenting parts of their lives with the world, whether it be comedic or heartfelt. A natural circumstance of such an environment is meme culture. There are matching sounds and trends, fun and silly challenges, and even different “universes” of TikTok that each grace the user’s personal “For You” based on their tastes and previous video interactions. Countless trends have been done by many creators as entertainment for the masses, but how does this tie in to marketing?
Let’s take a look at one of the most successful marketing accounts on the platform: Duolingo. Typically, companies will create ads that are scripted and have some “young people lingo,” but that doesn’t resonate with the target audience because there is a noticeable disconnect between the creators of those ads and their audience base. Duolingo, on the other hand, has a dedicated media team that keeps their finger on the pulse of what is hot and relevant on TikTok and creates content based on those trends. With this, you find yourself scrolling through your TikTok and all of a sudden, the Duolingo owl is on your screen participating in a viral thirst-trap dance. You may find yourself wondering “what does this dance video have to do with language acquisition?” and the answer is simple: IT DOESN’T!
What Duolingo is doing is creating content that performs EXTREMELY well and puts the name of Duolingo firmly into the minds of whoever is viewing (and trust me, it’s a LOT of people). Millions of people watching, sharing, and commenting on that dance video has a higher likelihood of a fair portion of those viewers thinking of Duolingo and giving it a shot than if they were to go with a generic scripted ad talking about their services; viewers can tell it is an ad and will scroll away. It all boils down to the basic goals of marketing: get the audience to think of the brand, then hope that thought turns into action.
With these silly trend videos that Duolingo and many other businesses like Scrub Daddy and even Wendy’s are making, they are getting their brand name into millions of minds and likely a chunk of those minds put those thoughts into action to invest in the company in some type of fashion. This is the current climate of social media marketing and something that companies should definitely keep their eyes on.
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