TikTok is a highly influential social media platform that is invaluable for trends and information sourcing.
It might not have the direct conversion of other platforms, but most brands should consider a TikTok marketing strategy.
As the size of the available audience grows, many businesses are looking at how they can harness the platform.
To build a proper TikTok business presence on the platform, you need to account for the nuances and the predominant demographic and accessible audience on the channel.
In this article, we will be looking at how businesses can get started using TikTok for marketing and how you can take full advantage of this short-video platform for your brand.
Why Use TikTok For Marketing?
TikTok exploded onto the social media scene in the U.S. back in 2018. It had a rapid increase in users and became the fastest-growing social media platform seen so far.
Now, with over 1.6 billion monthly active users, TikTok has become the fourth most popular platform.
TikTok is dominated by Gen Z and Gen Alpha, which use the channel for product research and news sourcing. They also use this social media channel as an alternative to Google.
Figures from 2023 show that a third of U.S. adults use TikTok, and nearly two-thirds of those under 30 use the influential platform.
62% of U.S. adults who use TikTok are looking for product reviews and recommendations.
17% of adults get their news from TikTok, and this has grown fivefold from 2020 – a huge 39% of young adults under 30 get their news regularly from the platform.
The majority of accounts that users follow are from mid-tier influencers and small accounts.
TikTok also experiences incredibly high engagement rates with its content. 46% of users engage with content without distractions or multi-screening.
This means that TikTok is a platform that has influence for product reviews and news, especially with a younger audience. And that partnering with smaller influencers can be a way to access this focused attention.
How TikTok Works
While TikTok shows users a personalized feed, it doesn’t necessarily show them content from the accounts they follow like other platforms do.
Instead, it uses an algorithm to show a “personalized information flow,” meaning people get shown content similar to what they’ve already liked.
So, if businesses can create content that aligns with trends or that’s similar to popular formats, it has the potential to be shown to more users and even go viral.
You can repurpose the short-form content you create for other platforms, like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, to maximize its value. You can also directly link your social media accounts so you can cross-post automatically.
TikTok for Business makes it easy for brands and businesses to advertise on TikTok with analytic tools and TikTok Ads Manager so you can refine how you target users with paid content, too.
There’s also the built-in TikTok ecommerce features through TikTok Shop that allow businesses to list and sell products directly through the app.
Making use of these features means that brands can streamline the customer journey, taking users from discovering a new product to checking out in a few simple steps.
The hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt highlights how some products can go viral through TikTok content and become must-have items.
How Is TikTok Used In Marketing?
There are a number of ways a business could use TikTok for marketing:
- Establishing an engaged community online – building a community of loyal customers and brand advocates with a high affinity for your business.
- Improving brand awareness – getting your business’s name out there online and reaching a wider audience.
- Showing off products and services – showcasing new products and popular services in an effort to connect them to more potential customers.
- Highlighting testimonials from other users – pushing positive reviews from customers via a platform to improve brand sentiment and authority.
- Creating educational content – helping to answer common questions in your industry or about your business so more people understand the value your brand presents.
- Making entertaining content – the second most common reason for using social media is to fill spare time, making entertaining and light-hearted the perfect answer to this.
TikTok provides an ideal digital space for all of these options.
Although TikTok focuses on short-form video, photo, and story content, there are a variety of ways you can create content to use for TikTok marketing.
The visual-first format suits all sorts of content brands can use to achieve their marketing goals.
6 Types Of TikTok Content That Get Attention
1. Discussion-Based Content
Something that helps to grow both your profile and your content’s reach is engagement.
Encouraging people to actively comment on your content can boost the reach of your post, as TikTok sees it as popular and engaging.
For example, Dr Pepper.
Asking users to respond to a prompt, such as “How do you do this,” “Wrong answers only,” or “Tag someone who does this,” can create interesting and entertaining comment sections where people can express their creativity.
2. Reply-Based Content
If you have users responding to your content through comments, you can even create content that replies to those specific submissions favored by makeup brands.
This can build on previous content you’ve created or offer new content opportunities for you to dive into. Maybe a user has asked for more details or additional footage of something you showed in a previous video.
3. Trend-Based Content
By jumping onto popular trends or current events, you can capture what is currently interesting to users and put your own brand spin on it.
TikTok’s trends are constantly evolving at a rapid pace, meaning that there’s always something new you can potentially get involved with.
For example, Oreo is great at jumping on current events such as the eclipse.
TikTok’s Creative Center has a trend intelligence tool, so you can see what’s trending at that moment in time, including hashtags, songs, and specific videos.
It’s essential that what you create is both true to the trend and feels authentic for your brand. Otherwise, users may feel you’re not creating content for the right reasons (or call it “cringe”).
4. Behind-The-Scenes Content
Giving your audience a glimpse behind the curtain can be a great way to make your content more interesting and authentic, such as in this example.
Social media content allows businesses to give users a more candid look at how their brand operates, showing behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes from video content, and more.
Not only does it humanize your brand, but it also provides entertaining content that people can engage with.
5. Shareable Content
TikTok’s true social element is shareable content. If a user enjoys something enough and sees a relatable element within it, they’ll likely share that content with people who will also get it.
Starbucks taps into this with both students and office workers.
If your business creates content that actively encourages people to share it with others they know, you’ll expand the reach of your posts and get more eyes on your business.
6. How-To Content
Creating quick video guides to using your products and services can be valuable content for your business.
It could also be a guide on how to do something that’s within your industry, rather than just linked to your brand.
Home Depot shows us how to make content about a toilet cistern. Scrub Daddy goes all-in on cleaning the grill.
Users can easily find tutorials produced by the brand itself, meaning that the content is trustworthy.
How To Create A TikTok Marketing Strategy
Create Your TikTok Business Account
The first step is to create your TikTok business account, setting up your profile as a business account and ensuring your brand comes through in your profile picture and bio.
Once you have the app and have signed up, it’s a case of following these simple steps:
- Tap the Profile icon in the lower right corner.
- Click on the hamburger menu in the top right of the Profile page.
- Go to Settings and Privacy.
- Click Account.
- Select Switch to Business Account.
- Choose the category that best fits your business.
Your TikTok profile should ideally align with your other social accounts so that your brand identity is clear and consistent across all platforms.
While the content can vary, your bio information should all be up-to-date and point people to the right places.
Understand The Platform
It’s hard to get to grips with TikTok without first-hand experience of how it all works. Take some time to use the platform as a user, scrolling the For You page, checking out different hashtags, and seeing how other users create content.
It’s also worth diving into how the TikTok algorithm works to get an idea of how content is ranked and pushed to users. This can help guide how you use the platform as a business and content creator, as well as see what kinds of content are clearly being favored by the algorithm.
TikTok’s Business Learning Center is a great starting point for an introduction to the platform, as well as some key lessons on ad formats and other great features for businesses.
Set Our Goals For Using TikTok
Like marketing on any social media platform, you’ll need to decide what your overall goals are so you can measure your success.
That could be building up your TikTok business profile’s following, boosting sales of specific products or services, or clicking your main website to learn more about your brand.
Maybe you want to add paid content to your strategy or increase the budget after seeing positive results. It could be that you want to push more into trending content and need to spend more time researching current TikTok trends.
Define Your Audience For TikTok
Once you have your profile set up and an idea of how TikTok works, think about your audience. While Gen Z is the most common age demographic on the platform, plenty of other age groups are active.
Understanding the age, gender, location, interests, and more surrounding your target audience on TikTok will help you to start thinking about how your content can appeal to these users.
You can go even deeper and start to build customer journey maps, identifying what might motivate a user to buy your product or service, what concerns they might have, and what they might want to know about your business.
Complete A Competitor Audit
As TikTok is becoming so popular, there is plenty of competition with brands already experimenting. So, run a full TikTok competitor audit to help you understand where your brand stands in relation to your competitors.
Look at these other brands to understand how they’re using TikTok and the types of content they’re producing. As your audiences are likely to be similar, you can get an idea of what content is resonating with those users.
However, it’s important to still be unique on TikTok, so make sure you’re not simply copying content you’ve seen completely. TikTok is full of inspiration for new ideas.
Aside from your direct competitors and industry, you can also take inspiration from other content and hashtags that are trending as this is central to how TikToks can go viral.
Look At The Different TikTok Ad Types
As a TikTok business account, you will also have access to TikTok ads. These take different forms on the platform, so it’s a good idea to get to know them.
Running TikTok Paid Ads
With TikTok Ad Manager, creating paid ads for the platform is incredibly easy. Rather than posting content organically, you can set a budget behind a video or photo and have TikTok push it to new users.
This can increase the visibility of your content to new audiences. It’s managed all through the Ad Manager with analytics to track impressions and engagement.
You can also use TikTok Promote to boost your existing content and livestreams, helping your business profile to gain new followers and increase traffic.
Consider Using TikTok Influencers
TikTok influencers are users with engaged audiences and high follower counts compared to the average user.
They can range from micro influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers, up to celebrity influencers on the platform with follower counts in the hundreds of millions.
Working with influencers can be a great way to get your brand in front of new audiences.
As mentioned above, the mid-tier influencers are the accounts that are followed the most. So, working with smaller influencers can be a strong strategy.
Fender has great examples here and here.
When partnering with an influencer, it’s important to choose one that has some overlap with your audience.
There are plenty of tools out there to help match your business profile with suitable influencers, such as HypeAuditor’s free Audit Checker.
Look Into Affiliate Marketing On TikTok
Affiliates are an effective way to get your brand noticed by having multiple users talking about your brand.
While potentially not as authentic as influencers, the discount codes and vouching done by the affiliate can still help convert users into customers.
Create Your TikTok Marketing Calendar
At this point, you should have an idea of who your audience is, what sort of content you’d like to create, which hashtags you want to include, and whether you’d want to experiment using paid ads or partnerships.
You can introduce paid content at any time, but it can also be a great tool to get your profile off the ground.
With the information you have, you can start to map out content creation and posting dates so you can get a full view of your marketing calendar.
By having an organized plan of what needs to be achieved, you can keep up your TikTok content production and post regularly.
As with all social media channels, consistency is key.
Monitor Your Profile’s TikTok Analytics
After you’ve set your strategy in motion, monitor the analytics TikTok provides.
By tracking how your content and profile are performing, you can use this information to start planning how you can refine your TikTok marketing strategy.
This doesn’t mean you need to be reactionary and change everything if the metrics aren’t where you’d like initially. It can take time for new profiles to get going.
What is useful is noting down what content has done well, what content you’ve spotted that could be good for your brand, and where you can make improvements.
These can then be discussed at a review checkpoint when looking at your goals. Then, you can set new goals for your business and continue the process.
6 Examples Of Brands Marketing On TikTok
1. Duolingo
By having an anthropomorphized mascot, Duolingo takes advantage of various trends and audio, using Duo as the star of the video.
Happy Duo and Sad Duo examples.
The online world has also turned Duo into a meme, as the app frequently notifies users about lessons.
This has been parodied into Duo being an intimidating teacher figure, which the brand’s TikTok account then uses to post shareable, user-generated content.
2. Scrub Daddy
Scrub Daddy has a strong brand and a strong following on TikTok, where it posts trend-based content using its product as a substitute for a character.
However, it also has some great examples of educational content around its product and how to use it effectively.
Such as Scrub Hub and how to use them in hot and cold water.
Scrub Daddy has also been quick to jump on trends such as Subtle Foreshadowing.
3. NBA
The NBA has an incredibly successful TikTok profile that features highlights from recent games.
It does a great job at showing the best bits of its product – the matches – to entice more people to watch the full games. Did Anthony Edwards really just do this?
The captions and text that the NBA TikTok account adds to its posts are authentic to the TikTok video format, despite using professionally shot footage.
This makes its content feel more at home on the platform despite not being shot using a phone as the majority of TikTok content is.
4. Crocs
As a cult fashion product, Crocs has quite a following across social media.
The Crocs TikTok account features lots of lo-fi content that feels native to the platform, but it also uses it to feature official collaborations such as Fortnite and Shrek Crocs.
It also leans into timely content and partnerships with influencers like the Rockettes.
5. Chipotle
Mexican chain Chipotle has also grown its TikTok following to a respectable size, too.
One of its favored forms of content is “hack” content, using user-generated content that mixes up popular items from Chipotle’s menu to create new foods.
These usually involve food influencers, such as Logan and Yano, who bring their audience to Chipotle’s profile, which is a great way to grow and reach an established audience.
6. Gucci
Luxury fashion brands are also making full use of TikTok marketing, bringing their business to the platform with their own take on content.
With many celebrities wearing custom articles, as well as others acting as brand ambassadors, Gucci features them heavily within its content.
It can also bring in red-carpet events like the Gladiator II premiere and Olivier Awards to keep its content current and relevant.
It also uses TikTok to showcase behind-the-scenes content from its runway looks, giving more context to the clothes that people have seen, such as deconstructing Sabato De Sarno’s creations.
How TikTok Can Work For Brands
The best way to get started is just to try and experiment to see what works for your brand. Try different formats and see what connects with your audience.
It can take some time to get fully comfortable with the platform, especially if you don’t use it personally, so start by emulating other successful brands and TikToks and then start getting creative with your own ideas.
Depending on the budget available to you, combine organic TikToks with paid content.
Balancing the two with a steady production of high-quality branded content that shows your brand off will help to get traction.
Ultimately, focusing on being authentic, creative, and jumping on trends is the best approach to take for marketing on TikTok.
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Featured Image: ARMMY PICCA/Shutterstock
