It’s common knowledge in marketing circles that TikTok has been the fastest growing social media channel for a while now. And there’s no sign of this trajectory flattening anytime soon. Growth-focused brands are realising the benefits this platform provides, which is enticing more businesses to give it a try. Whether you’re looking to achieve the coveted TikTok engagement rate or want to meet other key business KPIs, you need to adopt a strategic approach when setting up on the platform.
The following article takes a deep dive into some important data you should know to maximise campaign performance on TikTok.
TikTok Audience Demographics
To achieve maximum ROI on your TikTok marketing efforts, it’s crucial to understand the user demographics on the platform. While TikTok is delivering amazing results for many businesses, it’s best for targeting a specific audience. Gen Z and millennials are currently the largest user groups on the platform. Here are some other key TikTok demographics:
- TikTok has 57% female users and 43% are male.
- The largest share of TikTok users are 18 to 24 years old. This amounts to 43.7% of users or 386.6 million users.
- The second largest group is between 25 and 34. This equates to 31.9% of users or 282 million users.
- TikTok users spend an average of 52 minute per day on the platform.
- 70% of TikTok users spend over an hour on the platform. This includes 11% who spend 5-10 hours per week on TikTok and 6% who spend 10+ hours on TikTok.
- 77.4% of TikTok users are looking for funny or entertaining content. This is the highest in this category among all platforms.
TikTok Engagement Rate Data
“TikTok is currently the most engaging social media platform with an engagement rate of 5.95%.”
Social Insider conducted a comprehensive study that analysed over 27 million posts on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. The goal? To identify the average engagement rate for each platform and benchmark the data against industry-specific metrics.
How to calculate engagement rates for TikTok posts:
Calculate the sum of likes, comments, and shares on each post. Divide this result by the total number of followers on the profile. Multiply that result by 100.
The results of the study showed that:
- TikTok is currently the most engaging social media platform with an engagement rate of 5.95%.
- The average TikTok engagement rate grew by 14.26% in 2021.
- FMCG food has the highest engagement rate of all industries on TikTok with a rate of 15.82%.
Influencers & Brands Working Together To Drive Engagement
TikTok creators — the official influencers on the platform — are great assets to brands. On the TikTok creator marketplace, brands have a choice of more than 100,000 creators to select from. Partnering with the right creators is an excellent strategy for reaching and engaging new audiences. Three statistics help drive home the benefit of creator partnerships:
- 65% of TikTok users enjoy when a creator posts about a brand or product.
- 35% of users discover products and brands from creators
- 39% of users consider products when interacting with creator videos
But aside from influencers, brands can also achieve incredible results on TikTok. Thai food and beverage giant Suntory PepsiCo Beverage leveraged the power of TikTok to quench the thirst of Gen Z consumers in the country. The company launched its new Mirinda root beer flavour on the platform to target the user segment propelling soft drink sales — the youth.
“The company’s organic approach towards building an online community, fuelled over 4.1 million video views. What’s more, they also welcomed nearly 290,000 engagements and reached 19 million users from this campaign alone.”
Their Branded Hashtag Challenge and Gamified Branded Effect campaign became one of the top performers for TikTok Thailand in 2021. The challenge page had over 5.3 million views while the branded effect saw great success too. It achieved nearly 800,000 total effect plays and 450,000 total unique plays. When it came to engagement, Mirinda’s campaign exceeded 33,300 user-generated videos. The company’s organic approach towards building an online community, fuelled over 4.1 million video views. What’s more, they also welcomed nearly 290,000 engagements and reached 19 million users from this campaign alone. As such, Mirinda quickly went from quenching people’s thirst to inspiring creativity among their target audience online.
TikTok Engagement Rate Per Industry – An Industry Comparison
As previously stated, the most engaging industry on TikTok is the FMCG food industry. It has an engagement rate of 15.82%. What’s more, it nearly doubled its engagement rate from the previous, which stood at 8.19%. Here’s a list of the top twelve industries by engagement on TikTok.
- FMCG Food – 15.82% engagement rate, up from 8.19% the previous year.
- Beverages – 12.79% engagement rate, up from 4.56% the previous year.
- Jewellery – 10.08% engagement rate, down from 11.12% the previous year.
- NGO – 8.83% engagement rate, a fraction down from 8.84% the previous year.
- Automotive – 8.80% engagement rate, up from 3.90% the previous year.
- Travel – 8.74% engagement rate, up from 3.57% the previous year.
- Home living – 6.46% engagement rate, up from 3.23% the previous year.
- Beauty – 5.98% engagement rate, up from 4.91% the previous year.
- Arts & crafts – 4.54% engagement rate, down from 7.06% the previous year.
- Fashion – 5.14% engagement rate, up from 3.49% the previous year.
- Magazines – 4.64% engagement rate, up from 3.35% the previous year.
- Media house – 3.43% engagement rate, slightly down from 3.83% the previous year.
TikTok Active User Country Data
TikTok is making waves among younger audiences in all corners of the globe. The latest data from Data Reportal lists the top 10 countries with the most TikTok users. The results are based on advertising audience reach numbers as per TikTok’s self-service tools at the beginning of 2022. These figures only include users who are 18 years old and above.
- The United States – 131 million active TikTok users
- Indonesia – 92.1 million active TikTok users
- Brazil – 74.1 million active TikTok users
- Russia – 54.9 million active TikTok users
- Mexico – 46 million active TikTok users
- Vietnam – 39.9 million active TikTok users
- The Philippines 36 million active TikTok users
- Thailand – 35.8 million active TikTok users
- Turkey – 26.5 million active TikTok users
- Saudi Arabia – 22.4 million active TikTok users
When the data is split up into world regions, the figures are as follows, from the largest to the smallest market:
- Asia – 341 million users
- Americas (North and South America) – 308 million users
- Europe – 194.5 million users
- Africa – 97.1
- Oceania – 8.8 million users
TikTok vs Other Social Platforms
Many still have questions about how TikTok stacks up against the other main social media platforms. The following section puts TikTok up against Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for engagement rate, user age, male to female ratio, and monthly active users.
TikTok vs Facebook
TikTok has a far superior engagement rate to Facebook — 5.96% vs 0.13%. The platform also has a younger audience on average with a large group of 18-24-year-old users. Facebook’s median user age is 31 years old and the platform has more male users (56.6%) than female users (43.4%). It’s the opposite for TikTok, which has 43% male users and 57% female users. Overall, Facebook ranks first for total monthly active users on all social platforms with 2.912 billion. TikTok is sixth with 1 billion monthly active users.
TikTok vs Instagram
Instagram has an average engagement rate of 0.83% across all industries, compared to 5.96% for TikTok. The largest group of users on Instagram is 25-34 years old. That’s older than TikTok’s largest user group, which is between 18 and 24 years old.
Instagram’s male to female ratio is more or less even — 50.7% male vs 49.3% female. This is the most even split among the social platforms analysed in this article. Of all social media platforms, Instagram ranks fourth for monthly active users with 1.452 billion. It’s two spots ahead of TikTok, which sits at sixth with 1 billion monthly active users.
TikTok vs YouTube
As of April 2022, YouTube’s average engagement rate stands at 0.41% according to the Social Status analysis tool. This is much lower than TikTok’s 5.95%. When it comes to general user age, TikTok has a younger audience once again. TikTok’s 18-24-year-old user group is the largest on the platform while it’s 25-34-year-olds for YouTube.
In terms of gender usage YouTube is the reverse of TikTok. The platform has 53.9% male users and 46.1% female users while TikTok has 43% male users and 57% female users.
When it comes to usage, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world behind Google. It’s also second only behind Facebook for monthly active users with 2.562 billion. This is two and a half times more users than TikTok, which has 1 billion monthly active users.
Reach & Engage New Audiences On TikTok
As you can see, the TikTok engagement rate is second to none. And the other main social media platforms don’t even come close! Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube all have more monthly active users and an older user age. But if you’re looking to reach and engage a younger audience with creative entertaining content, TikTok could be the platform for you.
Are you in the FMCG food, beverages, jewellery, NGO, automotive, travel, beauty, or fashion industries? Get in touch with the experts at House of Marketers for strategic guidance on maximising your ROI on TikTok.
House of Marketers (HOM) is a leading TikTok Marketing Agency. Our global agency was built by early TikTok Employees & TikTok Partners, which gives us the insider knowledge to help leading brands, like Redbull, Playtika, Badoo, and HelloFresh win on TikTok. Want us to convert more of Gen Z and Millennials with TikTok? Get in touch with our friendly team, here.
