TikTok is entering the space race program- alright, that was only an exaggeration to illustrate the platform’s ability to effortlessly expand into new markets, but what TikTok has been up to lately is to build on its business development potential. TikTok’s latest effort on this front is to prompt users to add a location and share their experiences with brick-and-mortar stores in the app.

TikTok for Business

As seen in this screenshot, posted by Ahmed Ghanem, TikTok’s now trying to get more users to add a location to their posts by luring them with potentially more reach for the clips if they do.

If they happen to add a business location, TikTok’s also testing new in-app prompts to get users to add an in-app review. That could be another step towards building its discovery potential. With Google noting that some 40% of young people already use TikTok and Instagram to search for restaurants, as opposed to Google Search, that could be a big opportunity, if TikTok can build this out in-stream.

True enough, the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, already acts as a key search engine for restaurants and places of interest. As noted by Anderseen Horowitz back in 2019:

“Since many Douyin videos are geo-tagged and automatically categorized into buckets – restaurants, tourist attractions, hotels, culture, entertainment, shopping, exercise – users can browse them to find interesting places to visit and things to do. Businesses are also able to attract new customers by supplementing Douyin with basic information, waitlist support, and coupons.”

If you check out that last sentence again, this could open up a range of additional business opportunities in the app, it does seem that TikTok will be looking to replicate this, hoping to further shape its discovery tools, becoming a bigger consideration for more brands. Given all of the talks about a US ban, this could be a hard sell. But of course, TikTok is building for the future, in hopes that a ban isn’t enacted, and it could be that the platform does become a bigger discovery engine as a result.

The Wrap

For a broad range of businesses including restaurants and nightclubs, this could be an important shift, especially as TikTok looks to build on these tools with in-app prompts like this, urging users to add more contextual data. Essentially, TikTok’s next stage could see more storefront businesses having to consider building their presence to maximize opportunities. It’s not as essential as Google, at least not yet in the same magnitude, but if it catches on, it could well become a much bigger focus in the future.

Sources

https://bit.ly/41JM9AC