TikTok marketing can be very successful; there is no doubt about this, as it is one of the ways to reach out to potential customers and followers. But many people would ask how exactly to make their brands successful on TikTok.

First, you must understand how TikTok works as a social media platform. TikTok as a platform is mostly about short, fun, and easy-to-consume videos. This has made it the best or perfect place to promote your brand or business.

For your brand to be successful with TikTok marketing, you will need to create engaging and entertaining videos to capture your target audience’s attention.

Also, you will make sure to optimize your videos for the TikTok algorithm. This means you would have to use relevant keywords and hashtags and ensure that your videos are engaging and high-quality.

Why is TikTok Important for Digital Marketers

TikTok is one social media platform that has taken the world by surprise due to its tremendous growth since its worldwide release in August 2018. 

The latest official data showed that it has 500 million active monthly users worldwide, and more recent data show an estimate of nearly a billion users. TikTok was the most downloaded app on Google Play and Apple Store in 2019 and was also one of the most downloaded apps of the last decade.

With these numbers, marketers’ attention should be directed towards it. Yet, this is not the only reason your brand should want to market on TikTok. Here are 3 reasons why:

1) Young engaged audiences:

Many young people have a drive toward social media, and TikTok is not an exception. The data from 2019 showed that 68% of users are of the age of 24 and below. 

While there is an increase in numbers on this platform, TikTok remains youth-driven and has a large audience that engages. In the United States alone, about 100 million users use the app daily. So if that demographic is your brand’s audience, then you will be a winner.

2) Global reach:

TikTok leads the social media trend in one critical aspect: it is truly global. China, India, and Brazil make up its biggest markets, and it is used in another 150 countries.

 For brands with ambitions of going global, using TikTok for marketing may be a wise decision to enter new markets quickly.

3) Sophisticated marketing tools: 

TikTok had Ad features added to it at the beginning of 2019. With new features like paid content opportunities, analytics tools, and a marketplace created so that brands can link up with creators, there are now many options that can make your life easy for you as a marketer.

But, TikTok is not for everyone because features like paid ads on TikTok are new and still scarce compared to other channels so you may need a larger budget compared to other channels.

Also, if you are not willing to get a little bit silly, you might find out that you just don’t fit in.

How to promote your brand successfully on TikTok

There are several ways your brand can be promoted on TikTok successfully. Some of these ways are:

1) Use attractive visuals:

This is one crucial detail to remember when using TikTok for marketing purposes. Make sure your videos are appealing to visualize because people are more likely to watch and engage with good-looking videos. It is worth putting in the extra effort to ensure your videos are on point.

2) Use relevant hashtags:

Using hashtags is a great way to ensure the right people see your videos, so ensure to use them strategically. 

You could research popular TikTok hashtags related to your industry or brand and include them in your video caption. This helps expose your video to a broader audience and also those who may be interested in what you have to offer.

3) Keep your videos short and sweet:

In the attention-deficient world of today, it’s essential to make sure your videos are short, precise, and to the point. 

TikTok users prefer watching quick and snackable videos, so make sure that your videos are less than 60 seconds. This helps hold people’s attention and ensures they don’t get bored halfway through videos.

4) Be creative with your content:

TikTok has a lot of noise, so making your content stand out from the others is essential. Try to think outside the box when it comes to the ideas for your video, be creative, funny, or even educational.

If your videos are entertaining and engaging, people are likelier to watch and share them.

5) Use engaging music:

Music contributes in a massive way to the TikTok experience of users, so make sure you choose the right music track for your videos. 

Choose a song that corresponds to the mood and tone of your video, and ensure it’s catchy enough to keep people’s attention. You can also use the built-in Lip Sync feature of TikTok to add popular songs to your videos.

6) Collaborate with other users:

Collaborating with other users is an excellent way to get your name out there and reach a wider audience. Check out for popular TikTok users with a similar target demographic as yours. Speak with them about performing a duet or working together. This helps to expose your brand to their followers and vice versa.

7) Host a contest or giveaway:

Everyone prefers a good contest or giveaway, so considering hosting one on TikTok to promote your brand would be a good idea. So, you can give away products, gift cards, or even cash prizes. Ensure the rules of the contest are easy to follow. This is an excellent way to increase engagement and get people talking about your brand.

8) Use TikTok ads:

To reach a larger audience with your marketing efforts, the TikTok ad is a feature that can be used. These video ads are usually short (15 seconds or less) and appear between users’ videos in the feed. 

They are an excellent way to increase the awareness of brands and also get people to talk about your product or service.

9) Partner with influencers:

Influencer marketing is a powerful tool for most social media platforms, and TikTok is no exception. You could find popular users who relate to your brand and contact them about partnering to make a video. 

This can be a great way of getting your name in front of their followers and increasing the awareness of your brand. You can also grow your audience and buy more Tiktok Followers to get more eyes on your content and videos.

10) Make use of trends:

TikTok is a social media platform that is all about trends, so ensure you use this app to your advantage. 

Research popular trends relevant to your brand, and create videos that connect to them. This helps ensure that your videos are seen by a wider audience and get more engagement.

11) Use calls to action:

You must include calls to action in your TikTok videos, just like any other form of marketing. This is because it tells viewers what you want them to do, be it visiting your website, downloading your app, or recreating your video.

Including a call to action in your videos helps increase your conversions and drives your business results.

12) Pay attention to analytics:

TikTok has an analytic system that provides users with detailed analytics that helps them track their progress and see what is working. 

Therefore, pay attention to the numbers and find out which video performs well, so you can use the same method to replicate that success in future videos. This data can be of great value to you as it will help you fine-tune your TikTok marketing strategy.

Tips to make your TikTok Marketing Strategy Successful

Now that you know more about the channel let’s talk about its strategy. TikTok is a platform with an audience that responds well to particular forms of content. 

You shouldn’t expect that the content you create for other channels will be received well on TikTok; your content has to be what the audience relates to.

You should adopt some best practices and mistakes to avoid to get your TikTok marketing moving. Here, we’ll take you through the three ways TikTok can boost your brand: organic content from your profile, collaborations with influencers, and paid TikTok-supported ads.

1) Successful TikTok Content is All About Tone:

This has been said repeatedly, and we need to emphasize that the tone of the content you post on TikTok matters a lot.

TikTok is a fun channel for light-hearted and shareable entertainment. It is not LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. Content that is too dry, heavy, polished, and corporate will not land well, especially with younger audiences.

Because of this, one of the biggest mistakes a brand can make when marketing on TikTok is to get the tone of their voice wrong. When a brand enters a space where users want to be entertained, it must tread carefully. 

This is because the worst thing to happen to your brand is not just being ignored but getting ridiculed in the comments and losing brand equity which is not a sign of success.

The Washington Post is an example of a brand that has got this right. It is a prestigious newspaper that has gained nearly 800 thousand followers on TikTok and closes to 30 million likes.

This happened because they lost their seriousness and presented news in a tongue-in-cheek, self-aware, and still relevant way to their audiences.

Even though they had a readership age well above the median age of TikTok users, this paper has shown that it is relevant to its readers, movers, and shapers of the future generation.

2) Allow Users To Be Your Content Creators:

Another way to avoid the pitfall of your content is by encouraging other users to create content for you. Taking advantage of the power of this user-generated content (UGC) is a must for you to market on a platform on which content is built around challenges, trends, and tongue-in-cheek humor.

The act of creating your brand challenge (and corresponding hashtag) is one of the best ways you can build awareness for your brand on the platform.

For example, if we take the food brand, Chipotle as a case study, we see that they launched their TikTok presence with their #LidFlipChallenge, which encouraged users to flip the lid of their burrito bowl.

This went viral and had about 100,000 videos responding to it in less than a week. The challenge they made that followed #GuacDance had the same result. It generated hundreds of millions of views and brand impressions organically.

The main point is that with a successful brand challenge and hashtag, your content production is obtained, with 100,000 videos (in Chipotle’s case) pointing back to your product. 

But to go viral, your campaign needs to be memorable, have a clear hashtag, light-hearted humor that resonates with the masses, distinct audio, and a little luck. Linking up with influencers, just like Chipotle did, can drive the hashtag trend.

3) Connect with the Right Influencers:

Based on influencers, TikTok is a platform that values good content, mainly from influencers. Spending little time on this app reveals who is big and who might be worth connecting with.

But Philip Brown from the Influencer Marketing Academy says in a conversation about influencer marketing KPIs that the key to using influencers is not just pure reach but also relevance. 

Brands should always dig down into the popular hashtags in their niches to find influencers that resonate with their target audiences.

A good example is Kroger, the American grocery chain that sought an audience that was not their core market (that is, Gen Z) to build awareness and drive sales of the brand’s back-to-school range. 

They did this by partnering with four TikTok influencers, who posted videos of themselves kitting out their room with Kroger products. The hashtag #TransformUrDorm gained nearly a billion views.

TikTok also helps to facilitate these relationships through the TikTok Creator Marketplace. It lets brands link up with creators in their target niche and lets you see the performance metrics before sealing the deal.

4) Use Paid TikTok Ads ( If You Can):

Organic marketing works very well on TikTok. But, to monetize its platform, TikTok created paid ad features in 2019. They still try to keep ads to a minimum, and paid advertising can be a little expensive.

Paid ads can be seen in three different ways on the platform, as TikTok works hand in hand with brands and agencies to produce this content. These ways are:

In-feed:

These are sponsored ads seen among authentic videos in a user’s feed. These are identified with a clear ‘sponsored’ label and are directly linked to your page. According to Digiday, its prices start from $26,000 for 3.6 million impressions.

Brand takeover:

Whenever users open the app, a three-second image or a five-second video is shown to them. Brands need to spend $53,000 for 8.9 million impressions, and just one brand has the opportunity to do it per day.

Topview ads are like brand takeovers but can last up to 60 seconds.

While you don’t need to use paid options, giving organic content the boost it needs to gain traction is helpful. So, if you can afford it, you should try it out. 

Just remember that, for you to be successful, your paid content should have these elements, which are relevance, fun, and potential for virality.

5) For B2B Brands, Be Personal and Remember You’re Targeting People:

TikTok might not look like an excellent place to try B2B marketing. In many ways, it isn’t for every B2B brand out there. 

Therefore, to succeed, remember that your standard dry marketing content is just not appropriate. So you are not on LinkedIn now, and the audience for which your regular B2B campaigns might work isn’t going to be on TikTok. 

However, if your B2B product or service is used by Gen Zs in college or just starting in the workplace, you can create personable content that resonates with your audience.

One of the best practices B2B brands can remember about TikTok is that it is more effective than speaking as a brand to talk as a collection of individual humans. 

You could use TikTok to show audiences the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of your business and have your employees, your CEO, or fans of your products talk about it.

Finally, do not forget that, even in B2B contexts, humans will look at your videos, not just other ‘businesses’ per se. And these humans like to be entertained just like else.

6) Keep Creating Content:

TikTok has nothing like evergreen content as the platform lives and breathes trends.

Continuous creation of content that responds to these trends or, even better, starts its trends is key to a successful TikTok marketing strategy. Not knowing and understanding what audiences want to see can spell failure.

One mistake your brand can make on TikTok is resting on your laurels. Though it is true of all platforms, it is more straightforward to be left behind on the platform than anywhere else, so a content production team’s job is never finished when working with TikTok as you will need to follow trends, look around for inspiration, and continuously create.

Conclusion

A lot of times, users go to TikTok to be entertained. So, if you are going to be successful on the platform, your brand needs to respect this simple rule. 

TikTok benefits your brand at every funnel stage, from awareness to loyalty and sales. However, like any social media channel, high-quality content is the key to success. Users visit websites to be entertained, not to view ads.

Content that oversells or one that fails to entertain would not just work. And any content that is poorly landed can be worse than no content at all.

There is no obligation to make TikTok a part of your marketing strategy. But, your brand must consider it an option for a platform with a billion users and growing. 

RELATED: The Complete Guide To Tiktok Marketing (Everything You Need to Know)

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