Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 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. 

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 in the beautiful Greenville, South Carolina, office of Radical, home of the Southeast's fastest, largest, baddest-ass digital agency in the country. I'm excited today because 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 of weeks

ago, but I have Suran. 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 decided to go 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 you'll you'll set me straight but i call it the vortex obviously 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 actual videos on tiktok which come in maybe when you get to the hundredth or the 500th where they basically say, stop, you've been here long enough. 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? You're an expert. Yes. Uh, you know, remember the, I think it was a commercial or something a few years ago. It was like that you've come to the end of the internet. 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 ride. Yes. Well, I'm excited to have you on. We're going to talk today about a study that NeuroInsights 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 directing to the point. Who the hell wouldn't want to know how to do that? Oh, perfect. Yeah, and it started off right in September when there was talk of the platform getting banned. It was getting banned in a couple of other countries. And people started to throw a riot 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 a 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 um 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, which is detail, grants, 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'm saying TikTok is the Gatorade that allows you to keep playing the game. All right. Okay. Sorry. My, uh, you know, my head goes down the, uh, the wrong, the bunny hole there. Yes. So, uh, it's the Gatorade. It's, it's the, uh the replenishing in real time the electrolytes that you need. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's funny. My story with TikTok, I haven't been a big social media nerd in the past. 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. 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, 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 the video then you spend 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 off instagram pinterest vine and now

they've come here and they've sort of understood how to do it right yeah and tick tock 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 grab hold of the magic, and they just haven't gotten it, bottled 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, 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 brand, it is starting to basically engage you visually, engage you with text and closed 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. man her dance moves and just what she does is insane it's it's created and magnified content creators on a whole nother level and it's i mean staggering i just saw like i was reading an article yesterday the 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 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 just, it's kind of endless. I mean, I kind of get lost in the vortex on a 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 ADD-ism 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. 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. 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. gosh how do you make that happen you just keep it just 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 um but what people do is uh they'll put snippets of a movie and some key scenes and and then it just starts to vote from there. And then, in fact, 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 Nine-Nine 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 finish a season's 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 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. I think it's super interesting what they've got. It is interesting. I do want to talk some more about the study. Maybe some key takeaways or key things that maybe were enlightening 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, 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 could 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 to watch a TikTok reel that we had created with ads, about 12 ads interspersed between them. Now, when you put such a high content load 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 ShamWow 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 ugly. 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 were 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 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 uh 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 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 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, the hierarchy of purchases for in Ryan Alford's world. And usually for me, so I i'm a focus group of one on that is there one of those three that you saw maybe uh 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 sale things. And then, of course, trial is, you know, an influencer

shows a new pair of shoes that i've never had but i'm i'll trial 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 you know the the three uh 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 um and if i say that at the end 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 a 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 and I mean, 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 Smucker's Gems. It's such a basic product, but I have a Smucker's Gem because of that. Because I like i want to try that recipe she used that i'm going to use that yeah uh i don't remember the last time i saw a smoker's jam commercial on tv that made me want to go and buy it yeah uh and i think that's

the the key is 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 Charli D'Amelio did the partnership with Dunkin', I thought that was spectacular because she's become such a lifestyle brand to have people uh to partner with

duncan was so much smart 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 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, makes them feel, but they will not understand it. But this is where storytellers need to basically carve their niches 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. From the way you move 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, 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's an unbelievable opportunity because you still have organic reach, you have all these things. Yes, we're moving quickly towards the pay-to-play,

but you can't just phone it in by doing the auto-share of your posts like you just said. Facebook, Instagram, and I think 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 um this is uh I was just thinking about this the other day. We've been through, 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 side, 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 and to your point the smaller brands if you're trying to advertise on tiktok 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 uh from moms and kitchens to uh you know uh to to there's this college student who gives legal advice um on not leave but she provides um she provides an analysis of all the legal proceedings that are happening in um 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. And 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's 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, they are. Yes, they're the celebrities that tell the story and they are the sponsors. But more than anything, it's, you know, what channel do you want to be on? 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 uh 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 like um and tiktok also tells you when they're going on live yep so. So I get buzzes like saying, oh, this person's live. Do you want to go and see what they're doing? Yep.

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, NeuroInsights 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. He was talking about Super Bowl. And we've got a bunch of more fascinating stuff coming over the rest of the year 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 neuro. And of course, with mediums like TikTok, I could talk about it all day, but really appreciate some Ratsaran 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,

Neuro Insights. You know where to find them. And of course, you know where to find us at the.rad.cast on Instagram and theradcast.com for all our past, present, current episodes, snippets, highlights, everything is there. And you know where to find me, at Ryan Alford on Instagram. We appreciate some rot, and we hope everyone has a blessed day. We'll see you next time on the Radcast. Yo, guys, what's up? Ryan Alford here.

Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the Radcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else. We'd really appreciate it and go leave us a review at apple or spotify do us a solid tell more people leave us some reviews and hey here's the best news of all if you want to work with me directly you want to get your business kicking ass and you want radical or myself involved you can text me directly at 864-729-3680. Don't wait another minute. Let's get your business going. 864-729-3680. We'll see you next time.