As the world moves toward an increasingly digital-first paradigm that guides how we communicate and engage with the world around us, it’s unsurprising that this trend has extended to the way customers purchase products and services and discover and engage with brands.
It’s not enough for businesses to adopt digital transformation within their core processes but still offer limited digital engagement opportunities to their customers online. Expecting customers to adjust their communication and preferred engagement style to match your platform (such as email or direct messaging) is no longer going to work in a world where multi-platform engagement exists at the click of a button.
Simply put, customers don’t want to cater to a business’s communication channels - they want businesses to cater to them by meeting them on their preferred platform or channel of choice - and if a business doesn’t, they’ll simply migrate to a competitor who does. For the majority of consumers today, these are social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Having an established social media presence is becoming an increasingly integral part of a business’s sales and marketing strategy. In its 2022 State of Connected Customer report, it was found that 57% of customers prefer to engage with companies via digital channels instead of voice, with this figure rising to 65% for younger millennial and Gen Z customers. On top of this, 61% of consumers plan to shop more on social media over the next three years.
Social media platforms allow businesses to engage with a wider, more diverse audience at every stage of the customer journey. Salesforce is making it easier for businesses to do this.
Their recent integration with the social media giant TikTok is another move to make it simpler for businesses to connect with their customers across a variety of digital channels, boosting their sales conversions and driving greater customer engagement and loyalty.
Read on to learn how Salesforce and TikTok are joining focus to drive greater value in every customer interaction.
Why is TikTok Becoming an Invaluable Commercial Platform?
TikTok is a social media platform that allows users to create and share short-form video content that ranges from entertaining clips to instructional and educational videos. Its user base shot up during pandemic-influenced lockdowns around the world and has remained one of the largest social media platforms since, currently hosting over 1 billion active monthly users globally.
But, its value is rapidly expanding from entertainment into commercial as businesses begin to realise the potential that TikTok holds as a marketing tool for targeting leads, driving conversions and boosting sales, particularly as younger consumer demographics like millennials and generation Z come of age.
Gen Z is currently the fastest-growing consumer demographic in the world, having made up about 40% of consumers in 2020 and holding an estimated $140 billion in collective spending power. Gen Z is also the generation powering TikTok, making up about 60% of its existing user base.
Through its extensive existing user base and global reach, TikTok has become an invaluable platform for businesses to connect and engage with new and existing customers - and Salesforce has recognised this inherent value it offers for building consumer awareness, driving engagement, increasing conversions and offering a better customer experience.
How Is Salesforce Connecting Businesses and Customers on TikTok?
By connecting Salesforce Commerce Cloud with TikTok, allowing integrations between the two platforms, Salesforce empowers businesses to drive greater value in every customer interaction and engagement, evidenced in their tagline “make every transaction more profitable.”
The integration between Commerce Cloud and TikTok allows businesses to seamlessly build an effective social media presence on TikTok through advertising, targeted campaigns, lead identification and retargeting and audience segmentation, through three new features released:
- Automated campaign delivery - businesses can sync with pre-existing campaigns on other platforms created in Commerce Cloud, allowing them to launch consolidated campaigns and advertising promotions on TikTok with a click of a button.
- Dynamic Video and Collection Ads - this feature allows sales and marketing teams to design and build tailored sales journeys through video content, from discovery to purchase.
- TikTok Pixel and Performance Analytics - Commerce Cloud Users can utilise Pixel on TikTok to track, monitor and analyse the performance of their campaigns.
What makes this integration even more valuable is the connection between Commerce Cloud and Marketing Cloud’s CDP.
Leveraging the data captured on CDP, brands can seamlessly identify and segment their customer base, allowing them to target each segment within TikTok with more personalised campaigns, entirely within the Salesforce platform.
Brands can get even further insight into their performance on TikTok, such as spend, conversions and ROI, with advanced reporting from Tableau.
Through the integration and free flow of data between TikTok, Commerce and Marketing Cloud, businesses can identify how to enhance their customer interactions by leveraging insights collected from users’ behaviour, guiding them further down the sales funnel.
In Conclusion
Building more meaningful, personalised engagements and experiences with consumers is the key to winning and retaining customer loyalty. Salesforce and TikTok have made it easier for brands to do this, surprising and delighting their customers with a more connected, end-to-end customer experience that allows them to make every connection count throughout the customer journey.
CloudSmiths is Africa’s largest Salesforce implementation partner and trusted advisor. We offer end-to-end Salesforce consultation, implementation, development and support services:
- Consulting and advisory services
- Salesforce development
- Salesforce licences
- Managed services and support
- Salesforce implementation
- Salesforce Training
