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Did you know that the ages 40+ is the fastest growing demographic on TikTok?
You’re not alone if that’s surprising to you.
One of the biggest complaints we hear is that businesses think that their ideal clients aren’t on the platform. As someone who wrote the #1 selling book on TikTok Ads on Amazon, I disagree.
What we say is TikTok in 2024 is Facebook in 2007. Because what were people saying about Facebook in 2007?
“It’s just kids, it’s not for me, it’s not serious”, and now it’s everybody.
But TikTok has gone up that curve even faster. And as a result 40+ is the fastest growing demographic.
Put another way:
Over the past five years, TikTok’s ad revenue has experienced significant growth. In 2021, TikTok’s ad revenue was approximately $3.88 billion.
This figure tripled to around $11.64 billion in 2022 and $14.5 Billion in 2023, a significant increase. The platform’s ad revenue continued to rise, reaching $14.3 billion in 2023, which represents a 52% increase from the previous year.
Looking ahead, TikTok’s ad revenue is projected to hit $17.2 billion this year in 2024, a 30.7% increase from 2023, with further growth expected to reach $22.5 billion in 2025.
From a purely business perspective, TikTik isn’t about singing, dancing, going viral, or young adult influencer stuff.
TikTok is for 40+ business owners to share their expertise in short selfie videos.
Talking about themselves, who they’ve helped, and how they can connect others to a product or service to help them
We have folks who are selling life insurance and retirement products to people that are turning 65 using TikTok ads.
We have realtors selling million dollar homes using TikTok.
Just like Facebook, there’s no reason for you not to be taking advantage of the platform in 2024.
Think of TikTok as the ultimate vending machine.
The machine is so smart, all you have to do is put in what you want and let the AI do the rest.
Sitting down with Kim Garst, we discussed what TikTok had done, where it’s at compared to other social networks, and where it’s headed into the future.
Kim is an international best selling author, international keynote speaker, one of the world’s most retweeted people among digital marketers and a highly sought after marketing strategist.
She’s also a good friend of mine and share the concerns and interests of thousands of marketers around the world.
Here’s one of the biggest misconceptions about TikTok:
TikTok is a business amplifier.
The biggest problem with people coming on the TikTok is they don’t have an existing business. To be clear – you have to actually have a real business and business strategy.
Someone thinks they’re going to join the platform, talk about themselves, and instantly get traction.
Social media is throwing fuel on the fire.
If you don’t have any tinder, nothing will light up.
This isn’t unique to TikTok either.
Facebook, Google, and others all rely on amplifying what’s working and sharing videos which highlight success for yourself and others.
What makes TikTok unique is its ability to learn like nothing else.
If you’re on TikTok you’ve probably had the “how did they know?” experience of being recommended a video even though you hadn’t searched for anything related to it.
It’s not just TikTok but other social media companies as well.
From an advertising perspective, this is fantastic because it means that the platform does most of the heavy lifting for us.
You don’t have to sing and dance for your meal anymore.
Being social and promoting other people instead of just yourself, is the short answer.
Tommy Mello has one of the world’s largest home services businesses. He’s got all these trucks that go around and repair garage doors. So when his technicians Install a new garage door. They’ll say, “Hey, Kim, how was your garage door?”
And you say, “Oh, it’s really great. I love it. It looks beautiful.” Awesome. Then they’d say, “Can we make a little video about that?”
So now he’s got he’s turned all his technicians and all the people driving around those vans with garage doors into content collectors because he built a whole process.
The trick is to leverage other people and have others do the promotion for you.
Let’s say you’re having a wedding and post about it. TikTok is going to show that to other people who are having a wedding. TikTok can figure out who’s in the process of planning a wedding. And choosing a caterer, choosing a venue and choosing a limo and just let the algorithm do the work for you, but you have to feed it the right thing.
That’s why collecting your customer feedback is so important.
Whatever you show, TikTok is going to find more people like that.
Setting up TikTok Ads is probably the easiest out of the ads platforms.
There’s a business center, which is like Facebook and the TikTok team even told me they intentionally copied what Facebook was doing.
One of the key differences with TikTok is that you don’t have to have a TikTok account to run TikTok ads because you can boost other people’s posts.
When TikTok started building ads they knew one of the biggest problems would be blatant self-promotion.
So why not have businesses get with their top clients, their employees, creators, partners to be able to make videos and then boost those videos?
Wouldn’t it be so much better if you had a video of me talking about how awesome Kim Garst is?
And then you boosted that post from my profile rather than you talking about your stuff.
The fundamental problem with social advertising in general, which TikTok solves, is they know that if you talk about yourself.
The platform already has your ideal customers scrolling.
I was with Noah Briarley, who’s got 6 million followers on TikTok. Perry Marshall and I were interviewing him about this TikTok thing, and he was saying something that was surprising to me.
“You guys are doing well for old people like you.” I think he meant it as a compliment.
The funny thing is that even though TikTok is dominated by younger content creators, that’s not necessarily the case with the people watching as it’s incredibly diverse just as much as Facebook or YouTube is.
Whether you sell legal services, funeral home services, tax attorneys, etc.
There’s an audience waiting to hear your message.
Want to learn more about TikTok ads?
Check out our TikTok Ads course.
Dennis Yu
Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best-selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads. He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations.You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel.You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.