TikTok May Go Away; Influencer Marketing Won’t

You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Jenny, today’s topic, TikTok may go away. Influencer marketing won’t. All right. So I always envision that this podcast would be evergreen, right? There’s always content that can last, you know, for a few years. Never really wanted to do time-sensitive episodes, but it’s not every day that, you know, the US government is threatening to ban a large social media platform and advertising platform. So I feel if we’re going to break this rule, now’s the time. In preface here, we’re recording this in early January. This episode will be released before January 19th. We’ll get into that while that’s important. But Jenny, what are we going to talk about today? Yeah. Well, we’re going to talk a lot about influencer marketing today. We talk a lot about influencer marketing and a lot of episodes, but we’re going to talk about the power of influencer marketing in the platform like TikTok and why it’s so great. And really, what happens if TikTok goes away, right? Where do we go to next? Can we still effectively run influencer marketing campaigns without TikTok? That’s really kind of the beat of what we’re going to get into today. Yeah. And we’re purposely putting this episode out before we get a decision if TikTok is going to be banned or whatever happens to it because it’s like just a great springboard to have a conversation of like, what are we going to lose? You know, you never know what you got until it’s gone. It’s kind of like we’re at the final hour here with TikTok. So we’re kind of a reflection of like what makes TikTok great in this perspective of influencer marketing. But to get to the news, January 19th is when the ban is supposed to be taking effect. This is going to go in front of the Supreme Court recording this before that hearing. And so there’s a big chance that this gets kicked down the road. And then we have this other factor of Donald Trump who’s come out and support TikTok is he really going to enforce these type of bands just to get into the weeds a little bit. The ban would be on for basically Apple Store in Google Play would no longer be able to host the TikTok app. So TikTok is not going to go away. Boom midnight January 20th. But what would happen is nobody in the US would be able to download the app and then there would be no software updates. So we’re kind of looking at this as once again, just a good focus of an exercise on what would we lose. And we are hopeful that this will get delayed and TikTok will be around forever. All right. So Jenny, what are we going to lose? Why do we care if TikTok goes away? Yeah. So again, in the lens of influencer marketing, it’s really one of the best performing social media platforms to promote influencer marketing campaigns to promote that creator content that’s putting put out to promote that user generated content. Right. It just performs great. So when we look at like amplified influencer marketing, you know, generally that is running both Instagram and TikTok. You’re going to go, you know, negotiating with influencers to build content on both of those platforms. And then what we usually see is that depending on the type of influencer that we’re working with or the audience that we’re targeting, in many cases that performance on TikTok will outperform Instagram when it comes to things like views, engagement and even ticket sales. So, you know, we could have influencers with a really small following and huge amounts of views on TikTok that we just we can’t get to scale that way in Instagram. But both platforms are absolutely strong at, you know, delivering this message’s content. Just TikTok inches it out a little bit more, especially when we’re looking at a younger audience. Yeah. So you’re not necessarily saying like, oh, just run ads on TikTok. You said this term, amplified influencer marketing unpack that for us. Yeah. So, you know, I think just going back to influencer marketing as a whole, just kind of a reminder there it’s someone else talking about you, right? So it is someone, generally on TikTok and Instagram, those are kind of the two largest social channels where this happens. But it’s someone who has a following that following can be different sizes now. But they have a following and they can influence their followers to do something, right? So whether that is, it’s usually very focused content as well. So in my influencer who can focus you to go try new restaurants in a city and my influencer who can influence you to or a creator who can influence you to buy, you know, new baby products because I’m a mom and I talk about parenting hacks, right? You have an ability to drive someone to do something because you’re trusted and you’ve built an audience off of creating content that appeals to them. So our endorsers are, you know, we’re getting a lot of our content information from on what to do, what to buy. So you’re talking about people posting videos on Instagram and TikTok about my attraction. I mean, I do that. I’ve got a fancy camera in the marketing department. We’ve got a team that goes out once or twice, three times a week and, you know, I’m a zoo and I’m one day where we’re highlighting the penguins aren’t they so cute in the next day we’re showing behind the scenes and the construction side of our new exhibit. I’m posting a lot of video content. I’m good. I don’t need this influencer marketing thing. Yeah, but, you know, I think that’s the nice thing about cultural attractions is you do have access to a lot of great content that you can share through your social channels, but that’s you sharing your content, not someone else sharing your content. It’s also a little bit different, right? So when someone else is sharing and it’s, you know, word of mouth, there’s no better endorsement than someone else saying how great something is. And again, these influencers have built a following in a community of people who trust their recommendations. So that UGC piece of it, like you can’t do that, right? Somebody else has to get boy. You use your generate content. Yeah, user generate content, but somebody else is posting about you. And that’s word of mouth advertising, right? That’s always going to perform better. So, you know, that’s one part of it. Yeah, I’m thinking, okay, I don’t want, you know, going back to, hey, my team is producing a lot of video already. You know, I don’t want my team in the branded polo with the name tag highlighting the brew of the zoo, right? Maybe that’s an event, you know, maybe more cocktail, because that just does not align with my staff drinking beer in Elizabeth a band, right? Like I want somebody else, I want the visitor to be producing that video and sharing it with their friends and say, hey, look, what a great time this is. Yeah, or, you know, just a combination of both, right? So again, more content is always better. And having more people talk about your attraction is always going to be better. So, you know, they come down to just the, if I’m seeing you as a brand, as an attraction talking about how great you are, I might be interested, but then if I’m seeing somebody else talk about how great you are too, like, no, I’m really interested. Yeah, it’s like that trusted friend taking through their adventure. All right. So that’s influencer marketing. What’s the amplified part? Like, why do you throw that extra word in there? Yeah. So it’s just scaling it. I think a lot of cultural attractions are probably, you know, doing some type of influencer marketing in terms of someone, whether it’s someone reaches out to them for tickets and they say, yes, you’re going then content posted or there may be a little bit more strategic about how they’re going to reach out to influencers to come and visit. Some things usually happening there, especially with like, zoos. But in many cases, what I hear is often like, okay, so what happened? Like, they came out. I don’t know what I got for it. So when we talk about scaling it, but we’re really talking about us putting advertising dollars behind it. So, and that’s going to shift the approach a little bit. So we’ve got episodes where we dive all into our approach and process for this, but just from like a high-level standpoint, it means that we’re going to actually source out the type of influencers that we want to work with. So we’re not, we’re being proactive about that. We’re not being reactive and waiting for someone to come to us. And then we’re going to pay to put dollars behind that. So we’re going to pay the influencers so that we can repurpose that content. We can use it any way we want. Most importantly, we can use that in ads on TikTok and Instagram so that it doesn’t look like an ad, but we’re running it. And we all know that if it looks like an ad, especially in social, chances are it’s not going to do that well. So the more organic it looks, the more it fits into that platform, the better it’s going to perform. And influencers are amazing at creating that type of content because already creating that type of content that fits the platform for their own followers. So we’re going to put the ad dollars behind it to reach new followers, to reach followers that aren’t yours who’s followers, to reach followers that aren’t even just that influencer, but other people in the market that we want to reach to, you know, to invite into the attraction. Okay, so amplified means expensive. It means I got to pay for it. You know, my budget only have so many dollars. So I got to take away dollars from billboards or I got to take dollars away from print or something like that. Like why? Why should I care? Well, I don’t think I’ve had one conversation going into 2025 with a current or a new client who, when we talk about their goals, they don’t say reaching a young, diverse audience, right? As a cultural attraction, you want to represent your community. Your community is getting younger, your community is getting more diverse and this is really kind of one of the best ways that you can reach a younger, more diverse audience in social with influence or marketing. So when I look at a plan and I see, you know, a lot of newspaper print ads, I’m not necessarily saying you shouldn’t do any of that, especially if your audience is, you know, that 25 to 65, like a lot of attractions will appeal to a pretty wide demographic, but if the goal, if the objective is to drive a younger, more diverse audience, you’re going to have to shift that budget somewhere and that the place that makes the most sense is in social with influence or marketing content. All right. I think I’ll… I think, you know, the other thing I think about this is just how great video does as a whole. So if I could, you know, build a perfect plan for, you know, a cultural attraction in terms of, you know, how to execute that throughout the year, especially if they’re event-heavy, then I would say video, video, video, but there’s a restriction to that, right? You don’t always have video content to run in every single channel and what influencers allow you to do is get really great content turned around very fast at a pretty low rate and from your visitors POV in that kind of word of mouth format that works so well. So we don’t have to overthink the production of this spot. We don’t have to have a six-week timeline to put this all together, right? We can get this done pretty quickly. And now I can have video behind a really small event that maybe just runs on weekends in one month, right? Where, you know, I might not typically build a TV spot for something like that. Right. Yeah. I mean, I’m thinking, okay, TV, the local station can put together some B-roll, a seven-second, a 15-second, quick little hit spot, but now I’m committed to running a TV schedule with them. So maybe this is that middle ground, this having influencers go out there and shoot video on their phone, edit it up, put some cool music to it, maybe some voiceover, and some captioning, like that video asset, I now own, and that’s kind of like that middle ground between stuff I’m producing on the weekly basis internally. That’s coming from me. It’s my brand. There’s, I’m a little limited on what I can do there. And the other end of the spectrum is the TV commercial that I have to run on TV. This video content is kind of like in the middle there. It’s still other people talking about me, but I can do it quickly. Yeah, but also if I go back to my goal of reaching a younger, more diverse audience, it’s not on TV. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So sure, the TV station could produce it for you, but then are you reaching that audience, right? And you’re walking to doing that. Okay. So number one, reaching that new audience, number two, getting a lot of video content, what else? And I think just remembering that this is both an awareness play, a reach play and a performance play, right? So we can sell tickets this way. And in fact, it’s one of the best tactics that I utilize for many clients and being able to sell tickets. So we talked about kind of in some past episodes. About this kind of opportunistic versus impactful channels, impactful channels being more of your brand building awareness channels TV is that, but influencers I absolutely would place in that bucket of impactful. And then opportunistic, right? We are more of your digital channels where you have a chance to really kind of drive an action from the audience that you’re targeting. Social just has the ability to be both especially when we’re talking about that influence or content in social channels. So we can drive reach and we can drive performance. And there’s not a lot of channels that we can do both of those things well in. Yeah, we got to remember like these ads are it’s on the phone. You know, it’s your people are on Instagram on on TikTok. They’re they’re by themselves or maybe they’re watching TV. They’re on the couch within two or three clicks. They could be buying four passes to your attraction within the next five minutes. That’s hard to do with the television commercial or billboard. Right, right. All right, so your three reasons are reaching new audiences like why you should be investing in amplified influencer marketing. One, reaching a new audience typically that younger, more diverse audience. Two, you’re going to be able to produce a lot of different creative messages and that creative is a video, right? The most impactful type of advertising we can get. And then number three, it gives us a great opportunity to sell tickets. You got it. You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast conversations on how non-profit attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing. Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of attend media. Attend media is a media planning and buying agency, specializing in zoos, aquariums, gardens and museums. For more information, please visit attend.media. Now back to Ryan and Jenny. All right, Jenny, so we’re talking about like what happens if TikTok goes away and you’re saying you love TikTok so much because it performs very well when you’re running an amplified influencer marketing campaign. You also use Instagram. So let’s kind of compare TikTok to Instagram in terms of running paid ads of influencer marketing content. Yeah, just why TikTok is such a powerful platform to execute these types of campaigns. And I think the first thing is just lower CPMs. I think if you’ve run any ads on Facebook and Instagram or TikTok, Instagram typically has a higher CPM than the other two platforms. But you know, TikTok across the board with any content that we’re running, we see lower CPMs. So we can drive higher reach, higher views. And when we’re looking at running video to be opportunistic, to be impactful, sorry, with a to reach a new audience, a CPM is going to matter, right? It’s going to allow us to reach more people if we have a lower CPM to do that. So that’s one of the reasons we love it. But the other reason sidebar here is real quick. So time onsite with TikTok. You know, it’s looking this up just to get some fresh data on it. But I think the average American is spending 50, this is the average, like all age groups are spending 50 plus minutes a day on TikTok. 52, 52, yeah. Yeah. And then, I mean, that’s the highest in terms of social media, social media platform. And I think like Instagram was like 30 minutes. So part of my math here, but almost twice as much time as being spent on TikTok than on Instagram. You know, I think that’s where one of the reasons we can get these lower CPMs is they’re just more advertising opportunities, kind of a supply and demand thing. Well, yeah. And this is based off the algorithm that TikTok refuses to sell off, right? So they built an algorithm that makes you want to stay on their platform and can see more content. You know, so more time onsite, which is definitely a part of why the CPMs are lower. All right. Lower CPMs. What else you got? I feel like I said this a couple of times already, but a younger, more diverse user. Like compared to Instagram. Yeah, compared to Instagram. So that 18 to 24 audience for sure, but also that 2534 audience. So we run, I’d say a lot of campaigns targeting or focus on reaching 2534 and then 3544, right? So I would say for a lot of the campaigns we run, if I’m linking just to that 25 to 34 audience, I generally see that demographic perform better on TikTok as in driving a lower cost, particularly sale than on Instagram. And definitely Facebook. But if I, if I looked at it as a whole, I might still be able to drive like if I’m targeting any age group, right? Overall, I still might be able to drive a lower cost per conversion on Instagram. But for that particular audience at 2534 audience, I almost always see it confer better on TikTok. So again, if I go back to my objective is driving more visitation from a younger audience, TikTok’s the platform that’s going to help me get my message in front of a younger audience, and help me convert them at a lower cost. So that goes away. And we need to shift them on Instagram. It’s not that we can’t reach them, but it’s going to cost us more to reach them because they don’t convert quite as high as they do on TikTok. All right. And what else you got? I mean, I almost kind of hate saying this word, but you know, how viral TikTok can be. I almost always see influencer campaigns. If I’m looking at it from like a total views, total impressions that we’re generating from all the influencers that are working with, I see the majority of those made up on TikTok. And I think what’s really interesting is it absolutely does not matter the size of the follower. So I’ll give you an example. We just wrapped up a campaign where the influencers working with actually chose because of their followers and engagement on Instagram. So like 20,000 followers on Instagram. And they really didn’t have they had a TikTok page, but they didn’t have a lot of content posted to it and they had a hundred followers like 92 followers, something like that. And the video on Instagram with a hundred followers hit, I’m sorry, on TikTok with a hundred followers hit a hundred thousand views. Those mostly driven by organic views. And then it didn’t perform poorly on Instagram, but it just it kind of the usual 20,000, 30,000 views that I would expect with a little bit of ad dollars behind it, but a hundred thousand views for a hundred followers. So I can generally find it really find and work with smaller influencers on TikTok that have the ability to generate so much more reach and views. And again, I’m running these types of campaigns. These influencers marketing, he made two reach new audiences. So it is important that they’re able to generate views beyond just their current followers. So just I’m always just shocked. It’s always my influencers with just a couple hundred followers that don’t even really prioritize that channel who post a video there and then it just goes crazy. So it’s awesome to watch that. Virality. Is that the word virality? You’ll look that one up. All right. I still have something else on my list. What else? Reason why TikTok is better than Instagram? Yeah, the, so we talk about amplifying it, right? Amplifying means putting ad dollars behind it in the way that you do that within TikTok is in a format that they call a spark ad. In a spark ad on TikTok actually comes from the influencers handle, right? So it’s you know, Atlanta influencer posting this content even though it’s an ad, it’s not the Atlanta Museum posting this content as an ad. So the actual ad format looks very organic in nature, right? Going back to that UGC word of mouth, right? Like we don’t want it to look like an ad. We want it to look like it’s coming from this influencer. I mean, it is coming from this influencer, but when we run it as an ad, we want it to continue to look like it’s coming from this influencer. So just a way that it looks, it’s just a little bit different versus like a partnership ad in Instagram where it’s saying like the influencer and the attraction, there’s nothing wrong with that. Like that’s still great. I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s showing that this is a partnership of these two people working together or entities working together, but it just looks a little bit more natural on TikTok and that just makes it that much more powerful on TikTok because I am in this business. I am in this industry. I run these ads for a living, right? And when I’m on TikTok, I still so often will be watching a video that is actually a promoted ad this way. And it takes me, you know, several seconds to realize this and that. So it just blends in so well. It’s one of the, the best features that they have when it comes to an ad platform. Yeah, I think he was, uh, my favorite quote from a guest we’ve had on this podcast, uh, Scott McPherson, uh, great episode. If you’re, uh, wanting to know more about influencer marketing, um, what he said was if it looks like an ad, I don’t want it. And I think that’s kind of playing into what you’re saying here. Like that user generated content, that word of mouth advertising, it can’t really look like an ad. Um, all right. So to recap your list, uh, why TikTok is better than Instagram, at least in terms of influencer marketing is you’re going to get those lower CPMs, right? Remember, you’re paying, you’re, you’re putting ad dollars behind it. So we’re going to be buying impressions. Uh, we’re going to get a better rate on TikTok compared to Instagram. Number two, TikTok is going to have that younger, more diverse audience. So if you’re an attraction who has that, um, that younger, more diverse audience as a growth audience, you’re going to find them on TikTok compared to Instagram. And number three, a word that I hope is not made up of Irality. You can have influencers with really, really small followers below up, so to speak, on TikTok compared to Instagram. At least that’s been our experience. And then number four, Spark ads look more organic. IE, they should convert better than the, uh, the comparative on Instagram. How do I do? Mm, you got it. All right. I’ll check on that word. All right. So let’s talk about Doomsday here. Um, what happens if TikTok goes away? And can I load this question up a little bit more because, you know, most of the attractions that we work with are not on TikTok. So should I just not, I mean, I’m like, all excited about TikTok now. That’s the future. Yada yada. Should I go set up a TikTok account? Like, so what’s going to happen? And then what happens if I don’t have to talk? What can I do? So many ways to connect. So this, um, I double barrel that question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where are you? Technically sorry about that. Um, oh, I think the first thing I would just say is influencer marketing is not going away even if the platform does. So even though we just spent several minutes talking about how great this platform is, if it goes away, there are other channels that can deliver this type of content. And so if it goes away, we’re just going to switch platforms, but I think we need to be really strategic in how we think about this because sure, if it goes away on January 19th and I want to move my dollars from TikTok to Instagram if I’m running it, that’s easy to do. That’s a no brainer right? No one’s spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in this, um, industry on TikTok to where they’re really going to go, oh my god, what am I going to do? Right. Um, but the reason we just spent, you know, five minutes talking about why TikTok is so great is because if our goal is to drive visitation from a younger, more diverse audience and convert them into first time visitors, we need to find platforms that can reach them. And it’s not Facebook. So don’t just go push all your dollars into Facebook. That’s not where it’s at. Um, so yes, Instagram is is going to be a, you know, we’re going to be able to move the money and we’re most cultural attractions I work with are not over-satred Instagram either. So shift those dollars over, keep working with your influencers, keep having them push that content on Instagram, keep promoting that content on Instagram. Um, but do know that that one audience at 2534 audience is going to cost you a little bit more to convert on Instagram. Don’t optimize away from them though that your campaign as a whole might increase in that cost per conversion. If you’re going to still try to reach that younger audience on Instagram, but keep going because you need a channel that’s going to reach them. But I think more importantly, start thinking about other channels that you want to test, you know, moving forward. So do I have a little bit of budget where maybe I could test some creator, content, or creator partnerships on YouTube or on Snapchat? I think both of these channels come up a lot. I think Snapchat kind of probably is coming up a little bit more just because it was Snapchat before TikTok and then take that replace Snapchat. So now everyone’s like, well, let’s just go back to TikTok. Artists Snapchat a little bit. But I think YouTube is kind of really the next channel that maybe, you know, stands to probably see a little bit more ad dollars come to it other than the obvious Instagram, of course, but, you know, YouTube has, you know, high reach, I think it’s, I think it exceeds Facebook with the younger audience, but I think it’s right around the Facebook Mark, even with the older audience. So it’s like Facebook, it can reach everyone, but unlike Facebook, it can reach that 2534 audience, that 18 to 24 audience, right? So it’s a really powerful platform for reaching the younger generation. And they are doing a lot in terms of, so, you know, YouTube shorts, the six second clips is kind of trying to, you know, mimic what TikTok was with short video content. But they’re also kind of incorporating some integrations that make it really seamless to work with creators. So the way that I can get an ad code from a creator and TikTok to very easily promote that content in TikTok is being done in YouTube now. You know, that can be done in Instagram as well too, but like YouTube is now really making that kind of easy. They’re also making it to where a creator can post content and actually share it with the brand that they’re posting it for, right? So imagine a creator comes to your zoo and post a video and then actually sends you that to say, do you want to promote this? You’d be like, yes, awesome. I didn’t have to cause source or creator to do this. So some of those things are happening to where YouTube or, you know, Google is really trying to make it an easy platform to work with. So I think over this next year, whether or not TikTok goes away, we’re going to see more people starting to test that type of content in YouTube. I don’t know for me, especially if TikTok goes away. You know, one of the first things I’m going to be doing is asking my creators that we’re posting on TikTok to start doing some testing on YouTube, like how can we work together on this? You know, how can we be an early partner of yours to start getting, you know, building content on YouTube? And, you know, how can we work together to start promoting this as well, too? So that’s kind of where my head is into what’s, you know, what’s next? And quite, honestly, I’d probably say that’d be my focus over Snapchat. But certainly if you’re already running in Snapchat, that might be a channel that you want to prioritize over YouTube. So just kind of depends on your strategy and where you’re building content. Yeah, it kind of ties back to the title of this episode, TikTok may go away, but influencer marketing won’t. When we were talking about some of the differences between TikTok and Instagram, we didn’t really mention the behind-the-scenes stuff as in ad codes and creators, you know, creator marketplaces, things like that. The ideas that TikTok brought to the table to the social media world aren’t going the way. Is somebody is going to pick up the mantle and run with it? Is that the same? Yeah, someone’s going to take it. And we’re thinking it’s going to be YouTube shorts more specifically. Let’s talk about, like, once again, not a lot of folks that we work with in the cultural attraction space have an existing TikTok account, or maybe it was set up like three years ago and it’s a desert. Do I need a TikTok account in order to do disamplified influencer marketing thing? Not at all. And that’s kind of one of the great things when we talk about, I think a restriction to running TikTok for a lot of cultural attractions was I don’t have time to invest in building out a page and putting content on that page too. And when you’re working with influencers, they’re going to produce that content and then like, you talked about with that Sparkhead, it’s coming from their handle anyways. So, I as the agency or I as the marketing team can run that out of a business manager ad account the same way it can run an ad out of Facebook, but it’s coming from the user, the influencers handle. And that’s what again, makes it look more organic, but also gets you around the restriction of having to have a, or the roadblock, I guess, I’ve having to have a TikTok page with content in it already. Yeah. And with that Sparkhead, if I click on it, I could either go to, I guess, you know, the attraction’s ticketing page, or I go to the actual influencers profile, I don’t have to go to fill in the blank aquarium profile where there’s like nothing there and it looks weird. Right, right. Yeah. So, you’re going to go back to the influencers page or you’re going to go to the, you know, the website, the URL that you’ve placed in there to, to drive people to. All right. This is good stuff. Let’s recap it here. You got three things to recap, what you got for me. Info and marketing in 2025 still is something that I truly believe every culture attraction should be doing and, and be investing more in. So don’t let TikTok slow you down. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t like this use of TikTok slow you down. We know that there are other channels where we can execute this type of content that are very effective. And I’m super excited to see what else kind of bubbles up, just with this use of it potentially going away too. But yeah, explore, explore YouTube, explore Snapchat, explore other channels. I think the worst thing you can do if you are running TikTok, the worst thing you can do is to just say put it all in met and that’s it, right? Like, like, think about some other ways, especially if your goal is to reset your own audience to reach a younger audience, right? So, yeah, plenty of ways to still execute these types of campaigns, even without TikTok. But based off the poor reform, I’m saying, I hope it doesn’t go away, but we’ll see what happens in more, we’ll adjust if it does. All right, Jenny, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit our website at MarketingAttractionsPodcast.com.