A milkshake brand blew up on TikTok and its 460,000 followers have changed how it approaches marketing and its target audience
- F'real foods, a beverage company that sells flavored milkshakes at tens of thousands of gas stations and convenience stores in the US and Canada, began posting on TikTok after discovering that Gen-Zers were making their own videos about its brand.
- The company now has 460,000 followers, 8.8 million likes, and tens of millions of views on TikTok.
- F'real told Business Insider how it's approached building an audience on the app, how much it spends on sponsored videos, and how TikTokkers have reshaped the way the company thinks about its own products and target audience.
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F'real foods, a milkshake brand that sells flavored shakes at thousands of gas stations and convenience stores in the US and Canada, was already blowing up on TikTok when its marketing team first downloaded the app in June of last year.
"Our president mentioned that his daughter had seen people posting about F'real on TikTok," said Alec Ledbetter, a consumer marketing manager at the company. "That was a marketer's dream. We needed to have our own TikTok for the F'real brand and essentially amplify this wave of vitality that they're already engaging in."
Ledbetter created an official TikTok account for the company, which has since attracted 460,000 followers in seven months. The company's fan base dwarfs that of big brand marketers like Chipotle and Walmart, who have recently found success reaching Gen-Zers on the app through promoted hashtags.
TikTok has quickly become an important piece of many consumer-facing brands' strategies as it continues to top app downloads and usher in a new generation of social-media stars. The short-form video app recently launched a beta platform to connect influencer marketers with creators, and brands can pay to promote their own short in-feed videos or set up hashtag challenges on TikTok.
Since creating an account on the app in June, F'real's marketing team has focused on making its own videos and paying influencers to promote its products alongside its "#freal" hashtag.
The company has generated millions of views and likes on its own TikTok videos and earned more than 120 million free impressions from TikTokkers filming themselves making shakes with the hashtags #freal and #frealmilkshake. F'real has seen high engagement rates on its own, non-sponsored TikTok videos, averaging 23% on the app. Engagement rate is measured by comparing video views to the number of user engagements such as likes and comments.
F'real is considering putting more dollars into influencer marketing and paid media on TikTok going forward
While F'real said its organic reach on TikTok has been eye-opening - the company earned nearly 3 million views on its first video - it's now also paying influencers for sponsored posts on the app.
The company said it typically pays between $400 and $450 per sponsored post on TikTok, where it's averaging a 25% engagement rate for paid media, compared to 1.6% for paid ads on other platforms, Ledbetter said.
F'real has yet to test a promoted hashtag campaign on TikTok, which Ledbetter said starts at $115,000 for a three-day promotion. But he said the company is considering expanding its paid TikTok strategy after seeing the impact of its organic reach and sponsored posts.
"As of 2019, and moving into 2020, most of our paid efforts are going into other social platforms like Instagram and YouTube," he said.
Maintaining a sense of authenticity is key for brands looking to be successful on TikTok
When F'real first began posting videos on TikTok last year, Ledbetter spent hours researching popular TikTok trends in order to see where the brand could fit into the app's existing conversations.
"I think it's definitely a positive platform for marketers to be able to insert their brand into as long as they do it in an organic and authentic way," he said. "Followers can definitely sniff out ads very quickly. Being able to actually speak their language is very important."
Ledbetter said his team has a set of creative guidelines that they try to follow for each new post. They want their videos to be shocking or distinctive and to make their followers feel something (usually laughter).
"And of course the branding is really important," he said. "Otherwise we're just making funny videos that don't benefit the brand."
TikTok is changing the way F'real views its audience, and its own product
F'real's unexpected popularity on TikTok is shifting how the company views its target demographic.
While historically the company had focused on marketing to 18- to 24-year-olds, it now considers its audience to be anyone between the ages of 13 and 24 who lives in range of one of its 20,000 milkshake-dispensing machines.
Watching TikTok users interact with its machines is also helping the company dream up potential new products, Ledbetter said.
Some creators have posted videos where they've added toppings into shakes, which is leading the company to consider including a "topping lid" so people can add "extra texture."
"We'd always talked about making it more customizable by adding toppings," he said.
For more on how brands and TikTok stars are building a business on the app, check out these other Business Insider Prime posts:
- How a pair of 30-year-old video producers turned TikTok from a side gig to their main job: Greg Auerbach and his childhood friend Nate Twer are building a business making funny videos on TikTok. They have 590,000 followers and nearly 14 million likes on the app.
- A college TikTok influencer with 1.6 million followers explains how much money she makes - and her 3 main sources of income: Cosette Rinab has 1.6 million followers on the app and said she splits her time between studying film and public relations and growing her page.
- Marketers share what it's like to use TikTok's invite-only tool for finding the right influencers to hire for brand deals: Business Insider spoke with marketers who are beta testing TikTok's new matchmaking tool for influencers and brands, Creator Marketplace.
- Inside Walmart's thriving TikTok account, which has over 127,000 followers and is luring a new generation of Gen Z shoppers to the superstore: Walmart has garnered billions of views on its TikTok hashtag challenges like #DealDropDance and #SavingShuffle.
