TikTok is one social media platform that nearly broke the internet last year when it won Google as the top most visited website in the world. 

The video-sharing social media app has increased, having about two billion downloads and up to a billion monthly active users.

Additionally, up to half of all TikTok users have paid for a product and purchased it after seeing it in the app. Proof of this can be seen by using the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.

Records would show that it could be more critical for brands to have an active presence on TikTok than on any other social media platform. This is because it holds tremendous potential to increase sales and generate revenue for your small business. This is good for the app known for viral dance crazes and lip-synching videos.

It may not look like it initially, but TikTok marketing is good business. This guide will walk you through every step of the way to create a successful TikTok for Business account that will eventually grow.

Is TikTok Good for Marketing?

TikTok is perfect for marketing, mainly for businesses that want to reach a wider audience; it is one of the most used social media platforms with a wide variety of demographics.

The Chinese app, known as Douyin in its home market and owned by Bytedance, was revealed recently to have reached over 1 billion monthly active users. This is quite Impressive!

This has made TikTok one of the most used social media apps, falling just behind other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

When it comes to demographics, the user base of TikTok is quite diverse, even though many would want to argue that TikTok is a platform for the younger generations. 

In fact, in the United States, teenagers are about 25% of the active user accounts on TikTok.

On the other hand, users in their twenties are over 22% of the user base of TikTok, while users in their thirties account for around 21.5%.

Here is a graph that shows this, have a look:

Therefore, it is clear that TikTok can be used for any brand, regardless of the age group you’re aiming at, both the older and younger audiences.

What is more needed? The app has the best engagement rates compared to others, outperforming even the most used platforms such as Instagram.

For example, while the engagement rate of micro-influencers on Instagram is about 3.8%, on TikTok, it is as high as 17.9%.

That is a very noticeable difference if you look closely!

This metric is necessary and appealing to any brand looking to use TikTok to leverage its marketing strategy.

We can conclude from the statistics above that the platform has already established itself as the best primary social media choice for online users.

Marketing Charts study further supports this claim, as it found that 29% of United States teenagers prefer TikTok to Instagram, about 25%, as well as Twitter with about 3% and Facebook with about 2%, and only falling behind Snapchat with about 34% of the respondents choosing it as their favorite platform.

To sum up, TikTok can be an excellent marketing investment for all businesses, whether big or small.

The results produced from TikTok can be outstanding as long as you know your way around the platform because it comes with many benefits that can successfully accelerate your business to the next level.

We’ll have a look at them in the later part of this guide.

Getting started with TikTok for Business

There are four simple steps to create a TikTok for Business account, and the process is free.

First, sign up for a TikTok account:  This is done by downloading the app in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and then creating an account.

Next, set up TikTok for Business: Get to the “Me” page, tap “…” on the top right corner of the screen, then tap “Settings and Privacy.” 

From here out, “Manage Account” and tap ” Business Account.” Then, you can then choose the category that best fits your small business.

You can also optimize your TikTok profile: This would require you to choose a clear username and display name and upload a profile picture that best represents your brand. 

Then in the space provided for “bio,” add a couple of brief sentences that best describe your brand and include your website in the link in the bio box to drive traffic.

Start sharing content.

You can also attach your Instagram page link to your TikTok profile to help convert your followers across different platforms.

Business accounts have gained access to a few special app features designed to support small businesses: Business Creative Hub and TikTok Shopping.

The Business Creative Hub (link): This was created as a solution that is meant to inspire business users when they create TikTok content. It features content creation guides and constantly shares trending content to help everyone, from professionals to beginners. 

Using the Creative Hub is a great way to quickly learn about the best practices that increase engagement on the app. To find the Business Creative Hub, you should switch to the “Business suite” seen under your “Settings and Privacy” menu in the app.

TikTok Shopping is an e-commerce feature that allows users to shop for products without leaving the app. It is possible to see when a user has set up TikTok Shopping because they will have a dedicated shopping tab on their profile with a small bag mark.

Key to Effective Tiktok marketing

There are a lot of practices for marketing; some of the best practices on TikTok Marketing are:

– Constant Posting

– Post SEO contents

– Trends

– Link up with TikTok Influencers

– When to Start Marketing Campaigns

– Create Original Contents

Tiktok marketing is now a big deal for many influencers with many followers.

Creative content also boosts the presence of users on TikTok, not forgetting that trends and hashtags are the keys to successful TikTok marketing.

1. Constant Posting

To ensure that your presence is always noticeable on TikTok, you must maintain posting consistency; these posts could be memes, pictures, videos, or live streams.

This key helps you get a fan base you can trust for your business, those who readily engage your content quickly when you post.

This does not guarantee that you will gain followers, but it tends to generate more potential customers or clients that help you to market your products and services on Tiktok.

You also can have the benefits of your content suggested to a crowd of users with behaviors similar to your kind of posts. 

The daily post range for TikTok is between 1 to 3 times daily. TikTok does not support too many posts, and too many posts are regarded as spam by the TikTok algorithm, so please try to stick to the best practice of posting to get results.

Make sure you are very creative when you make your content and do relevant research to post what the audience wants you to post; it helps you know when to post it and also enables you to stay consistent and not lose followers.

2. Post SEO Optimized Contents

It is crucial to pick a specific niche when posting on any social media platform so that when you post content related to your brands, it will be among the top posts when people search for related information and be recommended.

Use relevant hashtags and keywords related to your post to build followership trusted and optimized for effective TikTok marketing; this helps the platform boost your ranking naturally on its inbuilt Search Engine Optimization mechanism.

Staying to a specialized posting segment and being consistent are also essential. If you have decided to post on comedy, finance, or fashion, do not post any other random post on your TikTok account to help you rank fast and higher when someone searches for your kind of products or services.

For this reason, you will always remain relevant, and your fan base or viewers will always anticipate your new posts. This is also very important in TikTok marketing.

3. Trends

When trends are followed in posting on TikTok, there is a tendency for you to get more engagements for your post.

This is because when many people log into their Tik Tok accounts, they tend to click on the trend button and follow the rest, so trends are the topics that are mostly searched. Some of these trends are #hashtags 

4. Connect with TikTok Influencers

An excellent way to grow your TikTok presence is to connect with influencers on TikTok.

There are three ways to connect with them, these are:

• Start-ups influencers
  
  
• Established influencers
  
  
• Run TikTok ads
  
  

Start-ups influencers: These influencers are those users who already influence their TikTok audience. Having millions of followers is not necessary.

You have to link up with them to build a community to share your content, and you can also share their content. This way, it helps your content to go viral quickly. This, therefore, makes the formula “post for me, I post for you” successful.

• Established influencers: These are the Influencers that have an already established set of massive followers and fan base, so when you link up with them for your TikTok Ads, you may be asked to pay a certain amount of money to them, which serves as a charge before they can help run your TikTok ads for you, but some may do it free.
  
  

• Run TikTok ads: If getting influencers to collaborate with you will give you a headache, you should run ads to boost your TikTok marketing strategy. To run ads, you must log into your account, navigate to the TikTok Ads manager, set up your ads account, and select your most preferred audience.

You have the freedom to run the following Tiktok ads

– In-Feeds TikTok ads

– Images TikTok ads

– Carousel TikTok ads

– Videos TikTok ads

– Pangle TikTok ads

– Spark TikTok ads.

5. When to Start Marketing campaigns

To have a TikTok campaign that influences, begin your campaign when you have some established followers and some number of posts on your TikTok handle.

When you launch an ad campaign on TikTok, and someone wants to check your profile and authenticate your goods, they often go as far as checking your followers, comments, and reviews.

If they don’t see anything else but the content you are promoting with little or no followers, their tendency to engage your ads will be very low.

This is because your profile lacks credibility and doesn’t pass helpful information to them, so this will make it difficult to buy their trust even if your goods and services are authentic.

6. Tell Your Own Story

The act of telling people about the how and why of your products is another great way of getting a good fan base for effective TikTok marketing.

So, don’t try to copy another person’s story because, apart from stopping you from ranking on TikTok, it will cause most people not to see what you are offering from another profile.

Make sure to tell your story authentically and remain consistent; resonated content will grow passion from your viewers.

Be sure that your contents are educational or entertaining and be more interactive when explaining and answering questions concerning your products to help keep your views coming even when you are asleep or offline.

Benefits of TikTok Marketing Strategy for your Brand

TikTok is still a very new platform as it was created recently. It was released six years ago in 2016 and just started hitting the mainstream in 2018 when the company that designed it decided to merge it with the now nonfunctional Musical.ly. 

TikTok for business is even more recent as it was launched in July 2020. 

Any digital marketing strategy you choose should offer your business lots of benefits because why should you use a strategy that doesn’t get you a good ROI (return on investment)?

Luckily, TikTok is not just a great place to create content but is also a way for brands to promote their products and services.

Let us see why you should use the platform as a marketer or business owner.

1) Less competition 

The fact that the competition on TikTok is minimal leaves TikTok open for innovation and new voices. Many major brands are yet to migrate to TikTok though they have a solid presence on Instagram and Facebook. 

A few examples of brands not on TikTok are The New York Times, Subaru, CVS Pharmacy, and though unbelievable, Pepsi. 

This shows that TikTok is not as saturated with the many competition as seen on other social media platforms.

2) Opportunity for open discourse 

As mentioned previously, TikTok has yet to have strict censorship practices, which means that people have the freedom to voice out their unadulterated opinions. This could be a double-edged sword as your brand can attract negative attention if you don’t do the right thing the right way. 

The freedom of expression guaranteed here also gives brands a unique perspective on how people see them. So, you can use this to your advantage by replying to negative comments instead of just deleting them, and you can spark discussions and engage. 

3) Virality 

It is important to remember that though virality can be an excellent outcome, it is volatile and can happen through chance. This is seen in OceanSpray, which is a perfect example. 

In August of 2020, a man called Nathan Apodaca shared a video of himself gliding serenely down the highway on his longboard, holding a bottle of Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice in his hand with Dreams by Fleetwood Mac playing in the background.     

Not only did the original video result in over 60 million likes in a few short weeks, it unintentionally caused creators to pay tribute to the original video; this “challenge” produced enough attention for celebrities like Ocean Spray’s CEO Jimmy Fallon and even Fleetwood Mac’s drummer to take part. 

These events are perfect examples of how TikTok and virality overall work. Though the video was the reason for the massive success of Ocean Spray and Fleetwood Mac, neither party had any control over it. 

While for these parties, the unplanned virality of this video was certainly a win for them, some brands have put well-thought-out strategies in place for creating videos that will get them lots of views and increase tons of brand awareness.

4) Increase your brand awareness

Brand awareness is one of the many metrics that all brands want, but it is not always easy to measure. 

However, social media is the best place to get your brand in front of many people, especially your target audience.

TikTok is not an exception, as it gives you the chance to go viral by creating engaging content that will capture the attention of your viewers.

For an increase in engagement rates, what you need to do is set out a good content marketing plan and get creative because with TikTok having over 1 billion views per day and having users from about 155 countries across the world, your brand is bound to gain a tremendous amount of recognition.

All in all, TikTok marketing can help your business get off the ground.

5) It elevates video marketing

Uploading posts and images on Facebook and Instagram are good ways of promoting your brand, but what about videos?

Though you can upload videos on almost any social media platform, the truth is that TikTok allowing only videos is of great advantage.

Compared to static images, posting social media video content is more fun and engaging, mainly because of the use of sounds and movements that can tap into people’s emotions.

According to a survey by Hubspot, more than half of consumers prefer to see video content from brands more than any other content format.

TikTok would not only allow you to use video content solely, but it would also leverage it by adding trending songs, stickers, effects, and relevant hashtags.

You can also combine videos with high-quality, user-generated content, and this is a tactic that makes your brand authentic.

However, to give you a small taste of brand awareness, look at the following TikTok by Shopify:

As part of its e-commerce social media strategy, the company used the power of UGC and video marketing to create videos based on trends that have gone viral.

6) Create a community

This is essential to how TikTok works, cultivating a community of followers.

Communities – This is an essential part of digital PR. This can be highly beneficial for businesses because they are vital to creating brand loyalty and helping your brand establish a robust online presence.

More is that you get to communicate with your community members, hear their opinions, and also encourage them to share their love for you and so much more.

TikTok gives you the opportunity you need to capitalize on these opportunities because it goes beyond just the standard social media options, like likes, comments, and shares.

For example, TikTok creators can upload their reactions to other people’s videos and collaborate in what is known as a “split-screen duet.”

Many brands have taken advantage of these to get closer to their audience.

An excellent example of this is that of Vessi, which is a waterproof shoe company:

By dueting with its UGC creators to promote its products, it collaborates with its most loyal supporters and uploads authentic content on its TikTok account.

Therefore, it helps to create a close community of like-minded people to help cause the brand to go to the next level.

7) Better organic reach

The feature that makes TikTok genuinely unique is its algorithm.

If you’ve spent time using the TikTok app, you have most likely been amazed by the number of views a simple video can get, a number that other social networks can rarely dream of having.

First, the endless scrolling format for TikTok helps videos gain more exposure because it is easy for users to go through the content. This is a feature that social media platforms like Facebook and Linkedin do not offer.

What is more, the content you upload does not only appear to your followers but also appears on the “For You” page of thousands and sometimes millions of users; therefore, this exposes your brand to a broader audience and makes it easier for them to discover you.

This is useful, mainly if you are a smaller brand looking to grow and develop through cost-effective methods, like organic content.

Also, note that users have many more options to explore relevant content.

What this means is that users can find targeted content through the use of:

Hashtags

Locations

Sounds

Effects

There is also the “Discover” page, where the platform algorithm presents users with relevant videos based on users’ preferences.

TikTok offers brands and content creators the opportunity to achieve better organic reach than any other platform, which makes it another reason you should use TikTok for your business.

However, if you don’t feel comfortable using it yet, there is no need to worry as everything you need to know been explained in this guide, and, after reading through it, you will be fully ready to use TikTok to take your business to the next level.

Conclusion

While TikTok can bring about loads of exciting opportunities and cause new eyeballs to land on your brand’s profile, the key to succeeding on the platform is not to take yourself too seriously and to understand what your TikTok audience wants.

Experiment with your content, try as much as possible to get creative, embrace this fast-paced, meme-riddled landscape, and you will find yourself on a coast toward success.

RELATED: Latest Tiktok Trends for Marketing in 2022 (Leverage These Trends for Explosive Business Growth)

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