TikTok: The Muse of Diversification in Business Models
With more than 57 million Mexican followers and $11 billion in advertising revenue in 2022, TikTok it has become one of the most eye-catching applications for users, content creators, and brands.
But how do we go from “I don't like it” to "I absolutely love it" and become a resounding success in digital business?
Launched in China in September 2016, under the name of TikTok, the company quickly scaled its reach and by May 2017 it had entered the North American market, generating a global launch and changing its name to TikTok, but not satisfied, in November of the same year it acquired the famous music video app musical.ly and although, from this point on, Disney, the Pentagon, and Donald Trump they have been part of the controversial history of this application, growth has been maintained and exponential, achieving more than 1 billion downloads in 150 countries, and with a new commercial goal: music.
Starting July 16, 2023, TikTok has made available in some countries (including Mexico) the beta version of what could be the next rival to Spotify and Apple Music: TikTok Music, And although it's not the biggest surprise, given the impact and relationship of discovering music and audio streaming that was already done through the app, the solid and accurate steps to grow and diversify monetization methods become a great topic of conversation.
And watch out here, because it is precisely in this diversification that the possible answer to success lies.
One of the most important points for user growth and retention within new digital businesses lies in the intrepid challenge of enabling diverse revenue stream combinations within a single product. As we've already seen with other applications like Airbnb and its integration of experiences or Meta and the different advertising models, the companies named “successful” today do not arise from a single product or service, but from the implementation of a range of business models that shape and structure the markets in which they operate, and yes, that's where TikTok hit the mark.
And it's that within a hypercompetitive context, the strategic diversification It has become a solution that allows users' consumption activities, habits, and impacts to be connected across seemingly isolated businesses, so that their integration enhances brand value and improves the company's financial performance. It is no coincidence that since 2021, the super-app WeChat reached nearly 68 billion dollars, surpassing the three largest Chinese banks.
What do we have left? The usual: listen to users (inside and outside your business), analyze and structure wisely, and whether out of survival or ambition, diversification can bring more benefits than risks. Think about it: independent monitoring, performance guarantee, maximum resource utilization, and although we're not reinventing the wheel, knowing exactly where to focus your attention before pulling the trigger will be key to generating an effective diversification strategy.
