Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Tiktok Hits Different

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

In this episode on The Radcast, host Ryan Alford talks with Samrat Saran, Head of Client Solutions at Neuro-Insight, discussing TikTok for brands, and how to optimize your content on the world's most dynamic social media app.Ryan and Samrat break down the following questions:Why do some videos perform well on TikTok?What is the best way to optimize your video content as a brand?How can brands "show-up" better on TikTok?Why should your brand be on the app?Keep up with neurology in marketing by following Neuro-Insights here!If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and share the word if you love our podcast, so we can keep giving you the strategies to achieve radical marketing results! You can follow us on Instagram @the.rad.cast | @radical_results | @ryanalford | If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to the Radcast. If it's Radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? It's Ryan Alford. Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. We're coming live, as always, from the Radcast Studio and the beautiful Greenville, South Carolina, Office of Radical, home of the Southeast,

fastest, largest, baddest-ass digital agency in the country. I'm excited today, because if you're Unless you've been living under a rock, you know about the topic we're going to talk about today. It's one of the hottest video platforms on the planet. That would be TikTok. And I'm here with the head of client solutions from Neuro Insight. You might recognize that name from a guest we had a couple weeks ago. But I have some Ron.

What's up, brother? Welcome to the show. How's it going? Thanks for having me here. Hey, man, excited to have you. I'm ready to talk some TikTok. TikTok. You don't stop.

I tell you what, I woke up at 3 a.m. last night, couldn't go to sleep. What did I do? I went on TikTok. A good three hours before I said it goes off again. All right. My name for it is the vortex. The TikTok vortex. There might be another probably like technical term. Maybe you'll set me straight. But I call it the vortex. I'll just be sitting there and it's like the time vortex. I thought it was three minutes. It was three hours. You know, you're on to something because there are actual videos on TikTok, which come in maybe when you get to the 100th or the 500th where they basically say stop.

You've been here long enough. When you're making content like that? Yes. And you're like, oh, did you get the one with the green screen or were you getting the guy in the sofa? That's when you know that you're an expert. Yes. You know, remember the, I think it was a commercial or something a few years ago that you've come. to the end of the internet. I've yet, I've yet to come to the end of the TikToks.

And that was my mission once, and now I've decided it's not. It's just to enjoy the right. Yes. Well, I'm excited to have you on. We're going to talk today about a study that NeurIncites sponsored and put together, given the growth and importance of TikTok, which is how to advertise successfully on the world's hottest platform. Hey, I love the title. It's direct into the point, who the hell wouldn't want to know how to do that? No, perfect. Yeah. And it started off right in September when there was stock of the platform getting banned.

It was getting banned in a couple of other countries. And people started to throw right up. And they were like, no, I don't take TikTok away from me. I was like, why is it that people are so passionate about this? I don't know about other social media platforms that they would quite say the same thing. So we decided on our own, without anybody asking to actually study this. And we study it differently.

We don't ask people, hey, I want you to go on TikTok, and then let's have a conversation for about 15 minutes, and you tell me how great it is. We were actually calling people in asking them to go on their TikToks, watch it while we were actually studying what was going on inside their brains. And when I say studying what's going inside their brains, there are different parts of your brains that light up when you're engaging with content, when you're engaging with a platform.

The first one that we can all agree with, and we see and we sense, is I want to do this longer. And it's called approach or withdrawal. So when you're watching comedy and you want to continue to watch the movie, there's a part of your subconscious that tells you, let's spend some more time with this. And when somebody comes on the street and says, hey, you owe me five bucks, you're like, let's get out of this situation. That's withdrawal. The other parts are engagement. is this something that's personally relevant? Can I continue to, you know, engage with this?

And we sense that all the time, and we spend more time with that platform. The other part is an emotional intensity. Do I feel a strong sense of emotion when I'm on this platform? Then comes what actually ends up changing our behavior. That is memories. Does this content platform actually create new memories for us? we've spent hours, especially me and during college, having Doritos and watching infomercials, and they never stuck. But on TikTok, what we were seeing was memories actually being created for people, for ads, for content, and two kinds of memories.

One, for the actual narratives or themes or visuals, which we call global, which are very important in developing equity associations. and another one which is detail, brands, call to actions, messages. And the funny part is, it's not like TikTok was a leader by leaps and bounds over other platforms. We've looked at Instagram, we've looked at Pinterest, we've looked at all the different social media sites. When you combine all those scores together, TikTok wasn't different.

It wasn't the best. but what was different about TikTok was the speed at which it was doing it. So if an average curve was, you know, every couple or three or four minutes, you're getting a high from a platform, a subconscious high,

TikTok was doing it almost four times faster. And when it's doing it that quick, you just spend more time to your point of the vortex. That's basically it. So what you're saying is TikTok is the cocaine of social media. Is that what we're saying? I've seen TikTok is the Gatorade that allows you to keep playing the game.

All right. Okay. Sorry. You know, my head goes down the wrong, the bunny hole there. Yes. So it's the Gatorade.

It's the replenishing in real time the electrolytes that you need. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's funny. My story with TikTok, like I haven't been a big social media nerd in the past. I've never, like my wife kept bothering me to get on Facebook,

so I did, but that was pretty much it. When it came with Instagram and Pinterest, it felt daunting to get on the platform. Yeah. As soon as I got on TikTok, it was just amazing how intuitive the algorithms are. And how quickly it starts to pick up what you want, and how quickly it changes based on when you get tired of something.

Yes. And I think TikTok just hits different. It does hit different. You know what? One thing it is about TikTok, it's, platform is the right word, because it's the combination of the content that's put there combined with the swiping and the navigation UI of the platform combined with the content. creation tools, it is the mix.

It's the mixology of all that that makes it hit different. Is that fair? Absolutely. And I'd say even beyond the Discover page, beyond the content creation page, the comment section. Yeah. Man, it is so fun. Spend a minute watching a video. Then she spent two minutes reading the comment.

And I think TikTok's also coming at the perfect time. Because you think about it, you have now a generation of veteran content creators from the guys who sort of started building it out of YouTube, learned it off Snap, learned it of Instagram, Pinterest, Vine. And now they've come here and they've sort of understood how to do it right. And TikTok just gave them that space. So I think it was a perfect storm that worked for TikTok. Yeah, because like we talked about pre-episode. You've had a lot of tries at this, whether it's vine, whether it's twiller, and that's still around, and others that are trying to, you know, grab hold of the magic.

And they just haven't gotten it, bottled that all that up the way TikTok has. And I don't know that it's hard to put your finger on exactly one thing because I don't think it is one thing. It's a lot of things. It's a lot of things. And I think when we were doing our research, you know, and I think the numbers have completely blown up now, we were looking at about 52 minutes average time spent with the platform.

And this is when with Instagram it was about 53. Today, I think those numbers are way over. But why is it that somebody can actually spend so much time with a platform and still want to go back? And the truth is, in the way it engages, the brain. It is starting to basically engage you visually, engage you with text, and close captioning is a big part now of how people do TikTok. It gives you the emotional highs,

and it's constantly relevant. And that keeps you wanting to stay longer. And I think the content also is very diverse. I mean, from the duetting to the filters to how creative people have gotten. I don't know if you follow Happy Kelly. I do. Man, her dance moves and just what she does is insane. It's it's created and magnified content creators on a whole other level. And it's staggering. I just saw like I was reading an article yesterday day before like it's creating like billionaires out of content creators like and that might be the small percentage, but just the fact that you're talking about billions, not millions, for content creators. But it's it is.

It's like it's stimulating this amount of creativity in people that maybe they had it in them all the time. But it's opening up certain channels, whether that's influencers, whether that's just other outlets for people to express themselves. I mean, it's kind of endless. I mean, I kind of get lost in the vortex on tip, not tick, tip talk, you know, all the tips and stuff, you know, and there's all, but I will say there's this kind of, it's played off the ADDism in all of us, I think, or our culture, because everything is pretty much, it feels like it's chop, chop in a good way, choply edit, chop editing, you know, like quick to the point, whatever.

And it's like, I think that's why I like it. Like, my brain enjoys it because it's like, okay, we got to the point. Like, you know, whatever it is. But it's fascinating. Yeah, and what's funny is that what started off as, you know, just minute-long clips, now you can actually see, I don't know whether the movie producers would like to hear this, but you can basically see all of John Wick on TikTok. There's like 600 parts to this movie.

Oh, my gosh. How do you make that happen? It just goes. So what people have done, and I don't know how much of this. is driven by the studios, because if it is, it's a very smart move. But what people do is they'll put snippets of a movie and some key scenes, and then it just starts to vote from there. And then, in fact, that's how, that was one of the other things that I started noticing

about TikTok was how quickly it influences behavior. So I was on TikTok. I was watching randomly scrolling, and a Brooklyn 9-9 montage came on. where a couple of the characters were, it was just all the different episodes in which they're sort of talking and bantering with each other. I was like, oh, this is pretty smart comedy. I like it.

And then after watching it over three or four days, I was like, I actually want to go and see the show. So I get on a Hulu, and I start watching Brooklyn Nine Nine Finishes Seasons episode. But I've seen Brooklyn Nine Nine ads on TV all the time when they were on, never went to watch it. But these quick hits were like these little invitations you get,

Hey, why don't you come in for a happy hour? Hey, we're having this special now. And it just gets you to want to, you know, spend a little bit more time with the main content. So I think it's super interesting what they've got. It is interesting. I do want to talk some more about the study. So, you know, maybe some key takeaways or key things that maybe were enlightening, you know, that you found or what ultimately does. create successful advertising on the platform.

Obviously, advertising on the platform is very early. You know, the platform as a whole is early. Everybody thinks these things are, you know, you're on the bell curve. We're still riding up this bell curve with TikTok as far as, you know, the masses of the U.S., you know, I've certainly, what, age 12 to 22 is probably well at the top, if not on the other side of it. but like everybody else is still going up that bell curve. But I am curious, you know, like some of those key takeaways that you can share.

Sure. So the first one, whatever, what makes a good content, what makes a good platform for content doesn't necessarily translate always to a great platform for advertisers. But TikTok, like we said, hits differently. What we've found is, and just to preface, with the way that we did the study. So people came in, they watched about eight minutes of content. And this is September, mind you that you know,

you could have been scrolling for two hours before you saw an ad. So we did eight minutes of that, and then we did about 12 minutes of getting people watched a TikTok real that we had created with ads, about 12 ads interspersed between them. Now, when you put such a high content or ad load on a platform that's technically not

supposed to have so much at the time, you will see dips in how effective branding is or how effective advertising engagement is. We weren't actually seeing that. We were actually seeing it pretty damn stable. And not just stable, we were seeing it at the thresholds where people actually store the information into their subconscious. So when you walk into a store and you decide to buy something. It could be for many reasons. It could be because you're, you know, this is something that you've bought always out of habit. It could be because a friend or a family member told you that, hey, this is a great product. You should go for it. Or it could be an ad that you watched. But it's not any ad that you watched, but it was an ad that had created a story

and showed the brand in a way that made your subconscious feel like, man, that's important information, I should remember that. Sometimes it can be as nauseating as the sham wow guy, or sometimes it can be as subtle as an ad that just for a brief moment said, you know, milk for humans. And it's only where the brain's actually like, man, this is important information. Let me save that. And that causes people to change behavior. Now, some work better than others, driven by creative differences.

But what we were seeing was it wasn't ads that try to be too native to TikTok that we're working. It was ads that were being like, hey, we're an ad, but we're entertaining in this scenario, and we're getting it out to you. And people were like, that's fine. Like, I appreciate that. When they tried to go on trends and try to go too far down a trend. So those, when people try to be too authentic to the content and try to be too authentic to the influencer, people were able to call bullshit right away. and those weren't working. But from an advertising perspective, it was working really strongly.

Yeah, that's interesting because that's, it's contrary, I think, to what you've seen on other platforms. It also makes it that much harder to do, you know, and to become because you're constantly having to ideate around creating fresh content, fresh ideas. And, you know, unless you stay at home all day, like some of these guys, it's hard to do. And I think this is where, if you're going to be a content creator for TikTok, you have to realize that, yeah, you probably may be able to write the wave of the algorithm for the first few months and you might be able to get your influence or you might be able to get your followers really quickly. But that doesn't guarantee you that you're going to sustain. And you have to think of TikTok literally, I believe, as a cable network or as a TV, a full spectrum of. channels. And you have to keep building content to get people to continue to want to watch your channel. And you can't just keep one thing going because the competition is just too high.

So when I think of reasons that people buy, this is the Ryan Alford made up acronym, but I think of the, I call it the N, C, or T. You have a need, it's convenient, or you're trialing something. those are my three those are the hierarchy of purchases in Ryan Alford's world and usually for me so I'm a focus group

of one on that is there one of those three that you saw maybe that TikTok advertising fulfilled like you know in selling better or responding better

either something like and when I say need I think they're pretty basic but to give you time to think about it while also kind of explaining more and need is like toilet paper

or batteries. You know, you need that stuff to live and to go. You know, convenience is, you know, right place, right time, and a lot of that's point of sale type stuff, but even digitally there's point of cell things. And then, of course, trial is, you know, an influencer shows a new pair of shoes that I've never had, but I'll try all that, you know.

So is there a certain category of product or service, or can all three fit within this platform from an advertising standpoint? I think that's the cool part about this platform is all three can stand on it. Because in our world, while I get the three things that you're talking about, for us it's all about stories. If I tell you a story and I make it super interesting, and if I say that at the end of the, of this story, this is the product that helped me get you get me here, your perception of

that product will change. Now, and then depending on whether you have a need or whether you want to try it, that depends on you. But most mediums don't allow you to tell stories that way, but TikTok does. Yeah. So I think if you're toilet paper, you can make some amazing stories on TikTok that people will watch. And if you're a brand of, and this is actually, again, I don't know how much of this is

sponsored and how much of this is original content, but there's this woman on TikTok who basically shows new recipes of muddle cakes or things like that. And she's using things like smuckers jams. It's such a basic product, but I have a smoker's jam because of that Because I'm like, I want to try that recipe You use that, I'm going to use that I don't remember the last time I saw Smokers Jam commercial on TV That made me want to go and buy it

And I think that's the key It's the storytelling piece and the diversity in storytelling That you're allowed on TikTok That and then also being smart enough to be able to leverage as an influencer how you are doing. So, and when Charlie DeMilleo did the partnership with Duncan, I thought that was spectacular because she's become such a lifestyle brand. To have people to partner with Duncan was so much smarter to have a drink of hers in Duncan

versus have her with the Duncan coffee inside TikTok. Yeah. That's the part that I think people really need more. help on is what kind of stories do I tell on TikTok that will get people to either think me or think of me as a need or think of me to try. And if you try to do what you've traditionally done on Instagram, it won't work. Or if you're trying to do what you've done on Pinterest, it won't work. Or what you've tried to do on Facebook, it won't work.

It is something that you have to learn and will constantly evolve with TikTok. The best story that I think I can give you on this is, if you ask a bunch of fish, how's the water? They're probably going to run away. And if you keep asking them the question, one day, one of the fish is going to come up to you and basically be like, what are you talking about what is water? That's the same thing with TikTok.

In a few years time, people won't understand what this platform is. They'll know how it feels, it makes them feel, but they will not understand it. But this is where storytellers need to basically carve their new shoes out. And then brands need to figure out how to tell their stories. Yeah. It's definitely the most authentic platform going right now just by the nature of what works with the algorithm. And again, back to understanding the world that we live in with attention spans and everything else.

I feel like the entire platform is built with that premise in mind, you know, from the way you you know, move from from video to video, how you skim and the UI of it to the type of content that's on there. And, you know, it's not, it's both a wonderful thing and a terrible thing for brands in the fact that they can't just mail it in, you know, like it's an unbelievable opportunity because you still have organic reach, you have all these things. Yes, you know, we're moving quickly towards the pay to play. But, you know, you can't just phone it in by doing the auto share of your post, like you just said. Like they're Facebook, Instagram.

And I think, you know, the large brands are starting to understand that. But unfortunately, the small to medium brands kind of get left behind a little bit unless they really focus on a strategy and get behind it or have an owner that understands and appreciates marketing. No, absolutely. And I think this is. I was just thinking about this the other day. We are going through a paradigm shift where the world was all about TV advertising and then you had this little thing called social on the site, right?

I think with TikTok, it's just completely shifted now. I think now the thinking needs to be, I need to invest my dollars the way that I invest on TV on these platforms. Because these are the platforms that are going to drive my actual sales and TV will give me some awareness but it's no longer a 80 20 or 70 30 this is a 50 50 if not more in terms of investment yeah and to your point the smaller brands if you're trying to advertise on tic talk you have to really start thinking about it in terms of you can do it as a brand if you

decide to be completely authentic and make your own crazy stories and it could work but at the same time there's a bunch of content creators and influencers that you would not have even thought about. From moms and kitchens to, you know, to, there's this college student who gives legal advice. Not leave, but she provides an analysis of all the legal proceedings that are happening in the court systems. But she's just a college student. But as a voice, she's very authentic, somebody that you can partner with. There are people across the board in terms of entertainment that can help you build your brand and do it in a very authentic way. I think this is the time when you actually, influencer stops becoming that little appendix at the end of your creative review and starts becoming, this is the influencers we will use.

These are the stories we will tell. And this is how our brand will integrate. It doesn't start with here. a 30 second spot. That's right. And back to what you said, the influencers slash their pages are kind of like the channels on TV, you know? I mean, they are, yes, they're the celebrities that tell the story and they are the, you know, sponsors, but it's more than anything, it's, you know, what channel do you want to be on? You know, no different than you're doing a cable buy, you know, for television. You know, You're going to be on ESPN, are you going to be on CNN?

Are you going to be on Fox News? And, you know, when you choose the influencers, you know, you're going to see that same chart, you know, the flow chart that was TV stations. It's the influencer chart. And instead of, like you said, page 77 of the deck, it's suddenly page seven. And that's what's amazing. It's like these guys have become sitcoms and episodes in their own right. And TikTok also tells you when they're going on life. Yep.

So I get buzzes like saying, oh, this person's life, do you want to go and see what they're doing? Yeah. And like, you go, because if it's something that interests you, you go. Yep. I love it. I definitely want to follow back up on this. This is going to be a fascinating topic to cover. Where can everybody keep up with everything?

you know, Neuro Insights and Samrat, like, where can they keep up with you? Where's a good place to kind of learn more, so to speak? So you can always come to our website, Neuroinsight.com, and we have a bunch of case studies that are published. But yeah, follow me on LinkedIn. And I keep sharing out little bits of tidbits on what I think is happening within the marketing world. You had Tyler on the other day. We was talking about Super Bowl. And we've got to do. got a bunch of more fascinating stuff coming over the rest of the earth that we'd love to, you know, people can keep reading up on.

Right. Well, I know we're going to have you back on again if you'll do us that favor and continue talking all things, the latest and greatest in Nero. And of course, with mediums like TikTok, I can talk about it all day. But really appreciate some Ratsurant coming on today. If you aren't on the TikTok bus, it's time to get on, ladies and gentlemen, because it's here. It's rolling. and it's not stopping.

So keep up with everything, Neuroinsights. You know where to find them. And of course, you know where to find us at the dotrad. com and the radcast.com for all our past, present, current episodes, snippets, highlights. Everything is there. And you know where to find me at Ryan Offord on Instagram. We appreciate some rot, and we hope everyone has a blessed day. We'll see you next time on the Radcast.

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