TikTok fined £12.7m – What this might imply for SMEs advertising and marketing on the app 

TikTok has been fined £12.7m for misusing kids’s knowledge, following an investigation performed by the Data Commissioner’s Workplace (ICO), which discovered that the platform breached knowledge safety legal guidelines.

This follows a string of controversies revolving across the social media platform, together with a ruthless questioning of its CEO within the US Senate, and a latest ban on UK authorities gadgets.

The buildup of dangerous headlines has solid a darkish shadow over TikTok, which is trigger for concern for SMEs which have plugged their advertising and marketing methods onto the platform.

Amid the rising tide of TikTok controversies, ought to small companies suppose twice earlier than betting on the upstart app for his or her advertising and marketing?

Enormous consumer engagement for SMEs

Some 47% of customers say TikTok is the platform they use most to interact with SMEs. On prime of this, 77% stated they got here throughout small companies on the platform earlier than discovering them anyplace else.

Taking a look at issues from the angle of SMEs, 73% say TikTok has helped them attain new prospects, and 78% noticed a optimistic ROI after integrating the platform into their technique.

The escalating mistrust in TikTok’s use of delicate knowledge may spell catastrophe for people who use TikTok as a advertising and marketing lifeline. This might notably affect SMEs that use it as a channel to attach with youthful audiences.

Why diversification of channels is essential

Breaking information of TikTok’s misuse of youngsters’s knowledge might be extremely consequential for SMEs that benefit from the platform’s excessive advertising and marketing ROI. Nonetheless, to Joseph Black, Co-Founding father of UniTaskr, the headlines haven’t been a motive for panic.

“I believe, naturally, it performs a priority, as a result of it does play an enormous a part of our enterprise. However, diversification can also be a key phrase,” says Black. “You need to by no means actually be counting on one platform to drive your whole progress.”

TikTok made a spot for itself within the social media advertising and marketing leagues, because it allowed SMEs to experiment with brief kind content material that might be shortly created for a low quantity of sources, and probably go viral. This has sped up the timelines of selling campaigns and injected a brand new stream of creativity into promoting. In reality, 81% of SMEs say that promoting on the platform makes them suppose exterior the field.

“From an natural standpoint, as soon as we’ve obtained an understanding of what works effectively, it’s fairly straightforward to change your paid technique to be in step with that,” explains Black.

Nonetheless, this bitesize type of advertising and marketing is now not restricted to TikTok. It additionally lives on YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and Snapchat. This provides alternatives to SMEs to hold over advertising and marketing methods to different platforms to mitigate the reputational danger TikTok might introduce if additional dangerous press hits.

“I believe the sweetness about the truth that all these platforms have now tailored to brief kind content material means that you may equally repurpose comparable content material on one to a different,” reveals Black. “There’s no hurt from the small enterprise perspective in repurposing that very same content material now in order that they’ll at the very least begin to construct a larger viewers.”

Will TikTok be banned?

Whereas the dangerous TikTok press does warrant concern, it’s nonetheless unclear whether or not there shall be a totally fleshed ban of the app within the UK.

Black doesn’t suppose there shall be one. “I fully recognize every thing that’s happening, however I’d discover it very stunning to consider will probably be taken down.”

This isn’t the primary time this query has been requested. Again in 2019, criticism was raised within the US about TikTok’s censorship, privateness, and baby security.

“It’s just like what occurred a couple of years in the past, they put this stuff in place, they scrutinise the place they should, however finally, it opens up dialogue for the place probably, the platform can do higher to deal with these considerations.”

If something, what’s at present unfolding is a correctional interval that different social media platforms have skilled. Take the notorious Cambridge Analytica knowledge scandal with Fb which misused consumer knowledge for political promoting. Though Fb was fined $5 billion by the US Federal Commerce Fee because of privateness violations, the platform continued to function.

There isn’t any assure that the story will play out in the identical manner it did for Fb. However, the report does present {that a} social media big doesn’t merely disappear in a single day.

“In my thoughts, I really feel that it’s a correctional interval which can do higher for the platform that can result in tighter restrictions on knowledge and age restrictions,” explains Black.

Mitigating the TikTok danger

No matter how cloudy the way forward for TikTok appears like, it continues to function and supply monetisation channels to SMEs.

“It’s a little bit of a high-quality line between desirous to diversify and minimise future danger, however equally within the brief time period, nonetheless driving excessive efficiency outcomes on condition that one platform is at present working higher than others,” says Black.

SMEs needs to be trying to step by step diversify their channels to organize for a possible TikTok storm. “In a post-apocalyptic world the place TikTok will get taken down tomorrow, the [SMEs] which might be actually going to endure are those that haven’t really constructed audiences in different places,” predicts Black.

Nonetheless, as SMEs look to diversify and nurture their communities in different social media gardens, they need to carry instruments and ideas which have made TikTok a raging success amongst advertising and marketing groups.

A kind of ideas is the authenticity that comes from face-to-camera content material that isn’t extremely edited and feels extra private. “Tying that authenticity and really buyer centered content material that you just see on TikTok over to different channels and increase a extra outlined viewers on them is what I might be trying to do,” recommends Black.

What comes subsequent?

If what’s at present unfolding is TikTok’s correctional interval, it begs the query of what a newly polished TikTok may seem like.

Black’s TikTok utopia would characteristic a renewed method to their advert platform that injects vitality again into natural attain. “I’d prefer to see natural come again to maybe the place it was once as a result of I believe it introduced extra alternative for the smaller guys that don’t essentially have huge budgets to pump into commercial”

As customers turn out to be more and more preoccupied about how the platform may intrude into the privateness of their knowledge, it will be anticipated that TikTok presents extra transparency on this enviornment. Importantly, this transparency would additionally give extra confidence to companies that need to proceed to market on the platform.

What stays sure is that each SMEs and shoppers will proceed to carefully monitor the TikTok headlines. However the bounce scare attributable to the latest controversies serves as a cautionary story to companies in regards to the significance of diversifying advertising and marketing channels and constructing communities throughout a number of platforms.