TikTok and financial markets – a dance worth dancing
Overtime, the online platform may become a crucial resource for financial marketers to attract Gen Z customers.
Overtime, the online platform may become a crucial resource for financial marketers to attract Gen Z customers.
Launched in 2016, TikTok is estimated to have approximately one billion active users as of January 2022. The platform’s numbers are quite impressive, especially when compared to those of other major platforms that have existed significantly longer (e.g., Facebook and their almost three billion users and YouTube’s nearly 2.5 billion.)
Yet, in contrast to other social media applications, TikTok remains largely overlooked and underused by Financial Institutions. A 2021 survey found that banks and credit unions are disproportionately more present in more traditional social media channels:
While is it true, that the vast majority of TikTok users are under the age of 35 (approximately 70% of them), which may imply a limited market penetration capacity, studies suggest the platform has a considerable underexplored commercial potential. According to Insider Intelligence, “TikTok users will spend more time with the social media platform this year [2022] than YouTube users will spend on YouTube.” The same report finds that over 40% of Gen Zers currently spend more than three hours a day on TikTok.
In addition to being an excellent showcase for adds, as suggested by the usage metrics, additional evidence further suggests that TikTok is also a very promising tool for financial advice. A 2021 survey conducted by Magnify Money has found that nearly a quarter of investors aged 18 to 40, and 41% of those between 18 and 24 years old, have sought financial advice on the platform.
The users’ high demand for content related to personal finance, financial literacy, micro-investing, and cryptocurrencies has ultimately led to rise of ‘fin-fluencers.’ Such content creators, like Humphrey Yang, have followings that can be as large as 3 million-people big, which in his case enabled him to accumulate a total of over 45 million likes as of June 2022.
TikTok could thereby mean a potentially cost-effective alternative to prevalent digital marketing strategies. Instead of hiring a digital agency for content development and strategy, it might be much more cost-efficient to simply hire a TikTok influencer to give financial advice and sell products/services. Such “edutainment” videos typically do not need to be overly edited and tend to be inexpensive to produce.
Ma French Bank gained regional notoriety for adopting such an unconventional and unorthodox approach to promoting their brand and services. The France-based neobank, in partnership with some of France’s most popular influencers, released a TikTok challenge in order to promote the launch of WeStart, a current account exclusively reserved for teenagers aged 12-17 residing in France.
The #WeStartChallenge invited French Gen Zers to show their creativity and share content in which they utilized a unique playful branding effect, with the goal of getting the highest score and trying to win a brand-new PlayStation 5. The brand's hashtag challenge ran for seven days and was a hit with young users across the country. Nearly 300 million views were registered for the videos made as part of the campaign, with nearly 100,000 videos created.
Major insurance companies have also taken a bid on the social media channel. More notably so, Brazilian insurer Bradesco Seguros became a notorious case study for its impactful TikTok account. Its sketches, produced in partnership with a variety of Brazilian influencers and local TV celebrities, were published fortnightly and address several themes: insurance policy education, the importance of mindful health choices, the responsibilities linked to fatherhood, etc.
Such videos were mostly disseminated without financial investment in order to boost the reach and visualization of the content, and have ever since reached a total of roughly 70 million visualizations. Bradesco Seguro’s initiative had such an impactful repercussion, that it was shortlisted as one of the nominees for the Efma-Accenture Innovation in Insurance Awards 2022.
Leverage community expertise to redefine finance
Our communities cover diverse topics such as digital transformation, SME finance, or Embedded insurance, providing a platform to learn from industry experts and peers.