How marketers and small businesses are pivoting ahead of TikTok ban
Though lawmakers have all but sealed TikTok’s fate in the U.S., the social media platform remains hugely popular and many businesses rely on it to reach younger customers.
While TikTok’s ban on national security grounds is all but certain to go into force in January, the many Americans who still rely on the Chinese-owned social media site to drive trade to their businesses, or promote themselves to potential customers are still scrambling to adjust.
It’s a complex conundrum: recent data show that spending on the app has been rising, even as creators are starting to urge their followers to switch to other apps like Instagram. And fresh data from Pew Research show that roughly six in 10 U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 use TikTok daily. What’s coming with TikTok’s ban is a large-scale impact to millions of people’s online lives, as well as disruption to countless thousands of smaller businesses.
Reporting on the impact to the marketing industry, news site Digiday suggests that marketers must deal with an unsettling reality: They’ll have to work to find their customers via different channels.
Jason Loomis, senior vice president and head of media at marketing company VaynerX, said his company has had to work ahead of time so that when U.S. lawmakers force TikTok and app stores like Apple’s and Google’s to “pull the plug” on the app, they’ll switch to the contingency plans they have in place, knowing “how we’ll spend those dollars, what channels we’ll start to move to.”
Other marketing executives also reported working on contingency plans, focusing on Instagram and Snap as alternatives.
A source familiar with TikTok’s business told the site that TikTok’s reps have been told to “keep communicating business as usual,” and if clients ask about the ban they’ve been told to say “we believe we will be able to carry on business as usual.” TikTok’s partners have also been apparently told the same thing, with the company apparently not addressing the looming ban by not sending out any official communications on the matter.
The marketing industry will likely weather the change as a mere bump in the road—by its very nature, the industry has to bend and sway with shifting social media currents. But as Benzinga points out, things may be different for thousands of smaller businesses that rely on the platform.
The investing site quotes a TikTok Newsroom post claiming that small businesses that rely on TikTok for marketing may lose over $1 billion dollars in revenues in just one month when the ban takes effect. The post adds that creators could suffer about $300 million in lost earnings unless they can quickly build large numbers of followers on alternative platforms.
The site also reports March 2024 data from research outfit Oxford Economics, that reported the app supported $15 billion in revenue generated by smaller businesses in 2023.
Meanwhile, the next generation of America’s online shoppers, the millions of teenage social media users, are still engaging daily with the contentious TikTok app. New data from Pew Research conducted in October show that while YouTube remains the most popular social media site used by teens aged 13 to 17, about six in 10 say they regularly use TikTok, and some 16 percent of youngsters surveyed use the platform “almost constantly.”
Interestingly, the data show that teens in lower income households are more likely to say they use TikTok than other platforms, compared to teens in the highest-income households (73 percent versus 59 percent).
What does all this mean?
It means that if the TikTok ban actually comes into force, as looks increasingly inevitable, millions of teens will surge to other platforms to get their social media “fix” and marketers and smaller businesses will have to quickly pivot to market their wares to this cohort and adults with more spending power who spend time on Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and alternatives.
There’s every indication that a dramatic digital upheaval is inevitable, and if your company either markets itself on TikTok or relies on the platform to communicate directly with customers, and you have no contingency plan in place, it’s time to change your habits significantly.
This article was written by Kit Eaton from Inc. and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.
