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5 Growth Lessons to Learn From Tiktok’s Success Story:

Nov 4, 2020

5 Growth Lessons to Learn From Tiktok’s Success Story:

By Thuraya Salih

Tiktok is a Chinese social video application that was launched in August 2018 and is rated the number one most downloaded app in the world, with 1.5 billion monthly active users in 150 countries around the world.
So what made Tiktok very popular and successful in a very short period?
Here are 5 lessons to learn from it’s success story:
  1. BENEFITING FROM ACCUMULATED KNOWLEDGE AND RESOURCES:
ByteDance (the company behind Tiktok) first launched a social video app called Douyin in 2016 in China, it got very popular and attracted millions of users within China.
later on when Douyin wanted to expand to the global market ByteDance acquired the already successful also social video app Musical.ly which had 200 million users.
This way when Tiktok was launched it didn’t start from scratch, it actually started from millions of users base both in China and the US.

 

  1. LEARNING FROM PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES:
the model used by Tiktok was previously used by Vain and Musical.ly, which was remarkably successful and catchy specially for teenagers and millennials in general.
Tiktok took an already established idea enhanced it by adding even more features and better algorithms and launched it so it was guaranteed success.

 

  1. USING AI ALGORITHMS:
It uses advanced AI algorithms, while most of social apps uses algorithms to suggest content for users, Tiktok uses an advanced AI algorithm to drive specified content according to users’ preferences. This strategy made Tiktok more convenient especially for younger generations, which led to it being rated most used app even more than Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix.

 

  1. GREAT MARKETING STRATEGY:
ByteDance had a strong marketing strategy that targeted young generations, using young Chinese celebrities to promote the app.
ByteDance  also benefited of the lockdown period by creating different communities that share a variety of contents such as:
  • DIY
  • Hacks,
  • Skincare & Makeup
which attracted more customers and boosted the number of users while maintaining teenagers as their main targeted category.

 

  1. FINDING A MIDPOINT:
the legislation in China clashes with most of laws and regulations in the rest of the world specifically the US_ and the internet in China is censored.
ByteDance created an innovative solution which is running the app in China under its same old name Douyin according to the country’s legislation, and for the rest of the world it was named Tiktok.