We all must start taking TikTok seriously because what seems to be an online teen’s fun network is now a platform that people of all ages accept and utilize for business marketing and advertising strategies.
TikTok is now where millions of people spend hours, trapped in an endless scroll of content. Therefore, you are missing a massive opportunity if you are not using TikTok marketing for your brand.
Breif History of TikTok
TikTok is a site for social networking that can be used to create and edit videos. It was launched in 2016, and since then, it has gained a massive following and is used in over 150 countries.
Last year, TikTok was downloaded more than 3 billion times, and it currently has more than 1 billion active monthly users and over 1 billion video views per day.
A fascinating fact about TikTok is that 57% of TikTok users are females. So if you want to market to women, especially those between the ages of 19-29, this is where you will find your target customers.
During the pandemic, TikTok grew in a big way, not just in the increase in the number of viewers but in demographic diversity too. In the last 18 months, adult users have increased 5.5 times.
TikTok users who are under 18 are 28%, 19-29 are 35%, 30-39 are 18% and 39+ are 19%.
These new mature users are not just passive observers but also contribute to boosting the engagement rate by 17.99%. They are making original content out there.
The Concept of TikTok Marketing
TikTok has recently become very popular as it waves in the cultural and political spheres.
Therefore businesses and brands can use this opportunity to get their business trending to reach target customers and increase sales of products and services by advertising on this platform.
Advertising on TikTok
Apart from TikTok, you probably have heard of TikTok for Business, a centralized platform for advertisers on TikTok.
It was created for TikTok users who are into marketing so that instead of devising their TikTok marketing strategy, the platform could guide them through creating ads, reaching the right audience, setting budgets, and analyzing campaign data.
Examples of Brands Winning with TikTok Marketing
1. RyanAir
This is one of the brands that understand how to take advantage of TikTok’s algorithm and fleeting trends.
This European airline company always posts videos with a lot of Gen Z-esque humor, making it easy for younger audiences to understand.
Ryanair understands that what separates people from seeing or perceiving a brand as excellent rather than an annoying, try-hard one lies in understanding what your audience on TikTok wants and giving it to them.
They perform so well in combining hilarious visuals and filters with trending TikTok sounds to make their brand more relatable, personable, and memorable.
Therefore, it makes sense and shows us why they are very successful. A massive, multi-million dollar airline having TikTok content as slapping faces on their planes and making memes has to be a brilliant marketing strategy.
2. Crocs
Crocs, as a company, joined TikTok in October of 2019 and since then has been doing great and have gone all-in on the short video sharing platform.
Since joining, they have engaged in challenges, viral videos, and ads. In 2019, the company did a challenge with Post Malone, which was called the #ThousandDollarCrocs challenge, and it currently has over 3 Billion views.
According to Crocs, the challenge was to encourage fans to post content on TikTok that shows what their $1,000 Crocs would be like “by customizing, enhancing or just embodying the Come As You Are mentality and letting the world know I’m gonna be whatever I want.”
The hashtag had been viewed 95 million times on TikTok, and more than 45,000 videos had been created in less than 36 hours after launching the challenge.
Besides their successful challenge campaigns, Crocs has embraced their product’s quirky nature and displayed it for the world to see.
This level of authenticity, combined with their creative approach, has helped them gain over 2.9 million account likes and 400k followers.
3. Duolingo
The language learning app Duolingo is another success story; after changing its marketing strategy and hiring its current social media manager, Zaria Parvez, it has gained over 1.5 million followers in a year.
The company’s social media team openly tells how it uses ‘slightly unhinged’ content to appeal to TikTok’s audience.
This content strategy is prevalent on TikTok, and many businesses can not get behind the seemingly brazen humor needed to push brand reach higher.
The silly mascot antics certainly paid off in the case of Duolingo. It has gone from a famous player in the language learning game to a household name, even for those who do not use the app.
How Can businesses Market their brands on TikTok?
There are mainly three ways brands can market on TikTok.
- Brands can create their channel and upload relevant videos through their medium.
- They can also work with influencers to help spread content to a broader audience.
- Also, brands can pay to advertise on TikTok. TikTok advertising is still in its very early days, so there is certainly not a market yet like there is for YouTube. But, TikTok may become more popular and established with time.
Many brands combine advertising by running their channels and working with influencers to spread content to a broader audience.
There are some ideas that you could try out listed below on your channels. You could also suggest that your influencers create and share this content.
Creating a Brand Page on TikTok
To start marketing on TikTok, create a page for your brand and begin experimenting with content types. Content can be made very fast and with no budget.
The best thing you should do is follow trending hashtags and also get involved with the latest memes and apply them to your brand.
You also have the app’s built-in filters, effects, soundbites, and editing tools that you could use to create and share authentic content.
The organic reach on TikTok is usually massive. Still, the impactful engagement is only gotten if your audience relates to your content and if this content obeys the rules of the platform.
Tik Tok Advertising
TikTok is a new advertising channel that is one of the most exciting because it features other social media platforms such as Instagram. Still, it is not yet a platform saturated with advertisers.
This, therefore, means that generating impressions and clicks would be more affordable.
TikTok marketers have the opportunity to run in-feed adverts, sponsored hashtag challenges, and banner ads on the homepage of the app.
Also, by targeting age, location, and demographics, advertisers can target the people who have viewed similar content as yours. Advertisers can sign up to TikTok for Business to participate in self-serve advertising campaigns.
Hashtag Challenges
Challenges are a significant feature of TikTok’s community. Users of TikTok love taking up a challenge and making and uploading videos accordingly.
These challenges are usually called a hashtag name to ensure they are both memorable and easily accessible.
The #tumbleweedchallenge by the US tv personality Jimmy Fallon is perhaps the best-known challenge on TikTok.
He challenged users to upload videos of themselves dropping to the ground and rolling around like a tumbleweed, and it was to be completed with a western music theme playing in the background.
This caused over 8,000 submissions and more than 10.4 million engagements. Since then, Jimmy Fallon has continued to give TikTok challenges.
Brands can also encourage hashtag challenges on TikTok. It is better to work with influencers to kick-start your #harshtag challenge unless your brand has managed to build up its own popular TikTok channel.
Once a #hashtag challenge is launched on TikTok, people get to participate with just a few clicks.
User-Generated Content
This type of marketing that brands can either engage in this type of marketing from their TikTok channel or work with influencers to encourage their followers to create user-generated content (UGC), thereby supporting the brand.
Ardent users of TikTok love the whole immersive experience. That is why they do not sit at home watching television, as it is too much of a passive experience. Most TikTok users prefer to be involved.
You are more likely to get a high sale outcome if you could encourage your customers to share videos of themselves using or interacting with your products or services.
A tool was also developed to guide how influencers earn on TikTok. This should provide you with an indication as to possible influencer pricing for user-generated content campaigns.
Influencer Marketing
All the influencer marketing techniques you see on other video-based platforms, such as YouTube, function also on TikTok.
Influencers understand TikTok and know how to use its tools, features, and trends to their advantage. Brands can utilize this opportunity to approach and collaborate on campaigns that use these influencers’ skills and knowledge.
TikTok has its Creator Marketplace, designed to act as a link-up between brands and creators.
If your product or service suits an influencer’s audience, your TikTok influencer campaign is more likely to succeed.
In most cases, you should leave it to the influencers to create the content because they know what their followers like.
Setting appropriate goals that target a particular part of the purchase funnel is always the key to influencer marketing success.
Influencers of TikTok would need to stay or remain authentic to their followers for influencer marketing to be successful.
A lot of times, all a brand needs to do is to encourage or convince influencers to make videos showing them wearing or using the product of the sponsor.
This will work if only the influencer is the type who would typically use the product. There is little or no value in trying to encourage an influencer to promote a product that is not appropriate.
Therefore, it is unlikely that you will sell retirement homes or hearing aids successfully on TikTok.
You also must trust the influencers you choose enough to allow them to produce their videos their way, even if they look too simple to a marketer’s eye. TikTokers are more interested in originality and fun and not the quality of your videos.
What are the Benefits of TikTok Marketing?
There are various benefits of marketing on TikTok. Some of these benefits are:
- Easy Connection With Customers
TikTok users have a unique way of bonding to content as they scroll through the videos on their feed. So viewers tend to connect to videos they can relate to.
As a Business to Business service (B2B) or Software as a Service (Saas) company selling severe products or services, using TikTok for business to showcase your brand has profound benefits as it helps you connect to target customers, most likely TikTok users.
Most users of Social media are searching for human connection and authenticity. They want to know that someone is going through what they are experiencing or thinks the way they do.
Even though TikTok has a place of educational value, presenting your company or business as conversational and easy to connect with will ensure that customers feel more comfortable patronizing you and enter into a long-term partnership with you.
Truthfully, there is a time and place for certain things, but it is guaranteed that your business has a threshold for leisure and humor it has not reached. And you never know, this might be what your company needs to grow and connect with customers.
- More Reach
Today, TikTok is the app downloaded the most in Apple’s iOS Store, with more than 33 million downloads.
This sets the platform ahead of other platforms that have been in existence longer, like Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter.
This is not a surprise because video content presently leads; if there is anything that TikTok excels at, it is video.
This also means that TikTok is an excellent platform to reach an international audience as contrary to popular belief, just like our analyses above mentioned, teenagers are not the only people that spend hours scrolling through the app.
- Go Viral
One of the most exciting and captivating aspects of TikTok is that anyone on the platform can go viral. This means that a person with 0 followers and 0 views can post a TikTok video one night and get a million views the following day.
This ability to provide anyone with a significant number of followers in a short time, therefore, means that Tik Tok has a limitless pool of influencers to choose from.
So if your brand or company is looking to target a particular group of people in a specific location, then there is likely a perfectly suited individual that fits that criteria and already has a big following.
Recent research shows that nearly 86% of marketers have used influencer marketing to generate sales or increase brand awareness.
However, going through all the influencers on Tik Tok can be a rather strenuous process, and it is usually unclear whether a particular influencer is right for your product or service.
Because of these issues, Tik Tok created the Tik Tok Creator Marketplace, an analytics tool that helps companies find TikTok users to partner with. It lets you see the influencers’ engagement, reach, demographics, views, and many more.
- Reach Across Multiple Platforms
TikTok videos are usually just 60 seconds long. They are generally short and customizable and can be reposted across all your social media channels.
Also, recent development has allowed users to create up to 3 minutes videos that will enable users and businesses to develop content targeted to various audiences.
You can decide to add one of your TikTok videos to an email you want to send to your customers; this would spruce things up for them and increase their curiosity about the future emails that you will send them.
Also, suppose you are still trying to build your community across multiple platforms. In that case, you can send that TikTok video directly to your WhatsApp Status or your Instagram and Facebook Stories.
This video could also be published on your website, or you can use it in presentations or onboarding videos. The more creative you get in TikTok video creation, the more brownie points you will earn with users.
But, in all you do, ensure you are conveying the same message on each channel because while TikTok may be ideal for lighthearted content, the use of images and messaging that differ completely may be confusing to someone who encounters you on another platform or visits your company’s website.
When you are using TikTok for business, you cannot simply overlook the engagement rate. An average user of TikTok spends 52 minutes per day on the app, and this increased screen time means ample opportunity for advertisers to reach their consumers.
With the different forms of content on TikTok, your brand or company will not be expected to lack engagement. Whether you are a clothing or fashion brand, restaurant, or transportation company, there is space available for anyone to increase the visibility of their products or services.
And due to the unique delivery algorithms of TikTok, it is possible to get higher engagement on your videos with much less effort.
- Opportunity for open discourse
TikTok has yet to enact strict censorship practices; this means that people are free to voice their opinions in different ways without sanctioning them.
This can be a double-edged sword as though your brand can attract negative attention if you do not act the right way; the freedom of expression provided by TikTok also gives brands a unique perspective about how people view and understand them.
This could be used to your advantage. So learn to reply to negative comments politely instead of simply deleting them; you could spark discussions and engage them.
- Cost-Effective:
Many brands and companies are still not confident about investing their time and money in marketing on TikTok because they think it will be challenging to set up campaigns and keep track of another app’s data.
However, the most attractive part of TikTok for business is that it can gain success no matter the budget. And also, compared to other established platforms, it is still relatively easy for not-so-popular brands to achieve organic reach without breaking the bank.
Katy Lucey, Director of Paid Social at Tinuiti, said, “With engagement becoming more costly on Facebook, brands should look to emerging social channels for more affordable growth opportunities.”
This is why you need to change your media mix and focus on the content on platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and others with faster growth potential.
Improvement Tips for TikTok Marketing
- Do not be too serious.
TikTok is all about fun, creativity, and engagement; this is different from Instagram, which is about having that perfect profile. Therefore, what works on Instagram and other social media platforms will not work on TikTok.
TikTok video creators who try too hard, act too seriously or spend so much of their videos trying to sell their products or services usually alienate their audience.
If you are an ardent TikTok user, you must have probably seen videos where the creator spent two-thirds of the video asking people to subscribe. This is not so good so do not be like that.
- Experiment with your contents
Content must be made to be creative and entertaining on TikTok. The worst thing that can be done on TikTok is to post dull, repetitive content such as Instagram selfies and stories.
Always remember that your viewers need to be entertained or educated by your videos whenever you post. Due to this, dance, music, and comedy are present in most TikTok videos.
- Participate in TikTok Trends
Participating in TikTok trends or challenges is also imperative, as this is a sure-fire way to increase your TikTok popularity. This involves being part of dozens of weekly trends that are usually available on the app.
Try to have fun and enjoy yourself even if you do not feel like you belong. A lot of times, TikTok videos made by creators who do not look like they are the type to perform a silly dance routine become the most popular clips of all, leading to a lot of engagement.
- Keep an eye on the competition.
There is most likely a TikTok user who creates content on a similar topic to yours, no matter what field you are in.
Therefore, finding these competitors and going through their accounts is crucial. You could, for example, use the SWOT method to determine their strengths and weaknesses and what opportunities and threats their accounts face.
- Take advantage of TikTok analytics for businesses.
Like every social media platform, TikTok provides its marketing users with analytical information, and you should always take advantage of it as a business or brand owner.
To find it, go to your profile page; on the upper right corner of the screen, there is an icon with three lines; tap on it, press Creator Tools, and select Analytics.
- Use hashtags for TikTok SEO
One of the best ways to organically promote your video on TikTok is by including relevant hashtags in video captions. The field for caption has a limit of 100 characters, but you could include as many hashtags as possible.
- Include captions in your videos
Whenever you create TikTok videos that include you or others speaking, you must consist of captions, as this dramatically increases the ease of access for other users.
You do not need to do this yourself, as many apps automatically add closed captions to videos.
- Use user-generated content for marketing your products
TikTok users value being accurate, so they will likely respond much better to videos of other people enjoying your products than clips of you advertising them.
But the best TikTok business accounts are the accounts that do not even try to sell their products at all.
Problems business Brands Face with TikTok Marketing.
TikTok, with all of its features, is an excellent social media site with a vast audience.
Music that trends on Twitter ends up being also successful in the music industry, and videos that trends would reach a large audience, but this does not make TikTok the best platform for advertising because of some critical reasons like:
The Nature of TikTok
There is no point denying that TikTok can be used to engage customers and improve its online presence, but it can be more challenging to drive traffic and directly convert sales.
The recreational and fun tone of the app can be somewhat overwhelming, and no available function allows you to link content to a website.
Because of this, it isn’t easy to drive sales or click-through through TikTok. Campaigns only aim to encourage user creativity and interaction, which is different from actual purchases.
Performance Tracking
Analytics of TikToks in-app is only available for 28 days. For a company to track its long-term TikTok analytics, it must start keeping a record. This consumes more time.
The performance of the TikTok engagement rate is calculated by summing the posts’ likes, comments, and shares divided by the number of video views for a specific time range. The outcome is then multiplied by 100.
TikTok is Just a Trend
TikTok, which has gained so much popularity and success, can attribute its fast growth to the lockdown. Many users link the various trends and challenges that were made from Lockdown Saviour with what they did while they were forced to stay at home.
Also, many apps that became popular were not able to sustain that momentum. Some applications like Snapchat and Vine (always used as a source of comparison for TikTok) can testify to this.
Time will tell if or not TikTok will, in the long run, be able to stand up to other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook or if investing significantly into it is a total waste of resources and time.
Marketing Reach
TikTok users who create digital content on TikTok would love to be allowed to share it across other digital marketing platforms.
Even though the rate of engagement on the app is steadily rising compared to other rival social media platforms, it still leaves much to be desired.
Brands of Digital marketing cannot afford to wait for the engagement levels to rise on TikTok. But the best they can do is make use of the act of cross-sharing to promote their presence on the platform.
Digital Engagement
The return on investment (ROI) of TikTok is based purely on marketing engagement and digital brand presence compared to sales.
This is also a brilliant way to reach out to the younger target audience between the ages of 16 to 28. However, this younger audience is very tone specific and has multiple niche interests.
Therefore, to secure interaction with this audience, the #Challenges/Duets you create must be simple, silly, and focused on your brand. But still, relying solely on organic reach will not produce the desired results.
Also, you will need digital Influencers and may require the prowess of niche digital marketing agencies to help you out just the same. TikTok proved this fact by getting Jimmy Falon to do the #TUMBLEWEED challenge, and today, these digital challenges do not stop coming.
Conclusion
Finally, you may think you do not need another social media platform. Depending on your business, audience, and niche, this may be a good thought, but remember that being on TikTok may be an investment worth making for your brand’s long term.
TikTok can be used for marketing as it is a vital and growing force that should be considered for your business as it helps you connect, engage with, and interact with particular members of your audience(target customers) and make them more aware of your business, thereby generating more leads and increasing sales.
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