How to Market to Subcultures

What do anime, astrology, and videos of people eating have in common?

Answer: They’re subcultures.

And TikTok believes they’ll help you make your next sale.

Traditional demographics, like age and gender, have dominated how marketers think about their audiences.

But a platform like TikTok runs on rich, long-lasting subcultures: Communities that rally around particular topics.

So what does this mean for your marketing?

Here’s what we uncovered:

For example, if your ad account is from Europe, you can’t target the US unless you request it from your ad rep, and vice versa.

There are many other limits on TikTok’s targeting that leave a lot to be desired.

In normal words, that means you can now go narrower in your US-based targeting.

Features that would be considered normal elsewhere, like lookalike audiences, are still not available to everyone on TikTok.

TikTok is a subculture-focused platform, so you should take advantage of that in your ads.

If the info above sounded discouraging, the good news is that TikTok’s ad reps are quite helpful, at least in our experience.

You may unlock plenty of features after spending a few thousand dollars.