TikTok became one of the internet’s most popular social media apps in less than four years. In 2017, this platform was introduced to the western world, and by 2020, it had more than 300 million active users.
TikTok has moved further to influence modern culture to an unprecedented level. From entertainment, fashion, beauty, and even education, it’s hard to find an industry that TikTok has not impacted.
Even tech giants like Google and Meta have had to rethink their social platforms, introducing new features such as YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels to rival the new app in the system.
Developing a successful TikTok marketing strategy is hence of paramount importance.
What is TikTok marketing?
In simple terms, TikTok marketing is all about the act of promoting your brand, product, or service. There are many ways to make your marketing unique, from influencer marketing to TikTok advertising.
One important thing to always bear in mind about TikTok is that it is all about videos and content that are original. Videos that are short form are the trademark of TikTok, as no one wants to sit for long watching drawn-out videos on social networks as they scroll.
TikTok videos can last anywhere from 10 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on your target audience. This entails that you have the opportunity to get the information across to your audience quickly and in an effective manner.
Content creators can create just videos with the suitable filters, sounds, and effects the app provides.
Some TikTok videos last for just a minute, but the new features that are constantly upgraded mean that videos can be slightly longer than usual.
Interactions usually come from users scrolling down what they call the ‘For You Page.’ Information for the page on TikTok can be collected from the activities of its users, and then relatable videos are provided to match their algorithms.
Users usually stop depending on their likes and dislikes as they scroll down to like videos, comment, and share them. You can also use a range of hashtags to promote your videos so that when other users search for the same hashtags, your videos will have a higher chance of being seen.
TikTok covers trending topics in a way that’s engaging and fun; this involves activities like dancing and fitness videos to tutorials, fashion tips, and even cooking videos.
The TikTok marketing strategy that is best for your business would ensure that your business is shown to the right people with the correct algorithm.
TikTok’s marketing potential is enormous, and many businesses are finally catching on. It isn’t just about the sponsored content; free content on TikTok often generates a larger audience.
In June 2020, TikTok For Business was created, and this program allows companies and brands to promote their products and services through paid ads. It is an effective marketing strategy that can enhance brand content.
You can do many things with paid ads, allowing viewers to shop your products, connect with customers, get website visitors, and generate leads.
If your ads are creative and offer something of value like a webinar, you will be able to get people to sign up to your email list and also build a relationship that is long-term with them to sell your products or service.
This will also grow revenue for all comments, shares, likes, and others. The revenue on TikTok has increased significantly, with the estimated revenue being $58 billion in 2021. The numbers tell the truth, so TikTok has become the new way to advertise and increase brand awareness.
How to set up TikTok Marketing strategy
There have been a lot of attempts by more established brands to imitate TikTok’s video features, but none of them have been able to put a brake on TikTok’s rapid growth in popularity.
Business of Apps reports that TikTok hit 1.2 billion active users in the 4th quarter of 2021, and this figure has projected to hit 1.5 billion by December 2022.
These numbers will typically draw the eyes of social media marketers, but it’s impossible to launch a successful marketing campaign without a solid strategy.
With the platform’s popularity continually skyrocketing, TikTok’s marketing strategy should be an integral part of your digital marketing strategy alongside Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, email marketing, and SEO marketing.
If you establish and maintain a social media presence on TikTok, your business will reach new audiences and increase its exposure and revenue.
Below is a step-by-step guide to developing a winning TikTok marketing strategy for your brand.
1. Set up a TikTok Business Account
Like every social media platform, TikTok provides a separate account for brands or businesses. This business account comes with features that make it easy for businesses to create and track their campaigns.
These features include metrics like impressions, engagements, and follower distribution. TikTok business accounts also make things easy for brands to find suitable influencers.
First, to set up a TikTok business account, download the TikTok app, log in, or sign up for a new account.
After signing up, click on the profile icon at the bottom right of the home screen. Then, click the menu icon at the top right, then “settings and privacy” in the popup menu at the bottom. There’s an option for “manage account” in the next menu, then “Switch to Business Account” in the next window under Account Control.
How to Set up a TikTok Business Account
Fill your information in the spaces provided and choose the category appropriate for your business. After completing this process, you’ll notice options for a new creator and menu when you click the menu.
Don’t forget to return to your profile and add your business email, logo, bio, and links to your other social media channels.
When writing a TikTok bio, don’t worry about SEO best practices like optimal keyword density. Instead, you can use frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) optimization, which will consider keywords related to the root keyword you’re targeting. TF-IDF tends to open up your TikTok account to new audiences who are not yet aware of your brand.
2. Identify Your Target Audience
In commencing your TikTok marketing strategy, research and identify your target audience. You can use customer personas to analyze your target audience and see if they’re active on TikTok.
A buyer persona reveals vital traits about your ideal customers. It includes their age, location, social media channels, and other details.
Buyer Persona
You can use the data from your existing customer base to create your personas or conduct surveys through email and social media to gather more data.
It would help if you cross-checked the persona using TikTok analytics to find audience overlaps. For example, you can use the age or location of your target customers to know how many TikTok users are in that location.
TikTok is very popular among gen Z., But this platform is not just for teenagers millennials and older groups are also found jumping on the TikTok train. For example, Statista research shows that over 40% of the TikTok users in the US are older than 30 years old.
3. Reach Out to Influencers
One of the easiest and fastest ways to get results on TikTok is collaborating with influencers.
Influencers already have established followers who religiously consume their content. They also know their way around the TikTok algorithm, so creating a partnership with strategic influencers helps you to achieve your goals quickly.
In choosing an influencer, don’t just consider the number of followers but look for influencers whose audiences are like your own. The goal of having an influencer collaboration is for you to get your content or brand revealed or shown to your target audience.
The influencers you pick should also align with your brand values. For a long-term collaboration, remember people with time will start relating your brand to specific personalities, and you don’t want your brand associated with the wrong people.
TikTok Creator Marketplace
With TikTok’s Creator Marketplace, you can find potential influencers for your brand with an influencer marketing platform like Collabstr, Hypeauditor, Grin, CreatorIQ, or similar alternative tools. Or use Google to search for influencers in your niche, like “top restaurant influencers on TikTok.”
When you search for influencers, the engagement rate is significant. The Influencer Marketing Hub report in 2021 shows that micro-influencers ( those with less than 15 thousand followers) have higher engagement rates of 17.96% on TikTok than macro-influencers. This is also true for other social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube.
4. Explore Your Competitors’ Content
Analyzing competitors helps you identify the TikTok marketing strategy that works for your competitors. You can then refine these strategies and use them to blow the competition out of the water.
Are you wondering how competitor analysis works? You can get started by analyzing the type of content your competitors create and the results they get from this content. Look at their posts with the most impressions and engagements, and find out what elements may have contributed to their success.
These are some of the questions you should ask when you conduct competitor analysis for your TikTok marketing strategy:
What type of hashtags did they use on TikTok?
What time did they post the TikTok?
Was there anyone tagged in the TikTok?
Was its user-generated content?
Did they reply to comments?
Please do not ignore the TikTok videos that failed, as they can be valuable to use to learn from the mistakes of your competitors.
Also, analyze the collaborations your competitors are making with influencers. For example, which TikTok influencer personalities are they using? And how do they create their sponsored content?
5. Track Your Performance
Finally, you will need to track your performance and adjust your TikTok marketing strategy accordingly. The TikTok analytics tool also makes it easy for you to track the performance of your account and posts.
This tool provides various metrics, like the number of shares, likes, and comments. It also helps you see total views, playtime, average watch time, profile views, and others.
You can also track the activities of your followers from the Followers tab, which shows the following information about your followers:
Location
Gender distribution
Times & days they are most active
Other videos they watch
The soundtrack they listen to
You can also use these metrics to make adjustments to your content strategy. For example, if you see that most of your followers are listening to a specific sound, you can create a TikTok video incorporating that sound.
You can also use third-party platforms in addition to the free TikTok analytics tool, like Social Insider and SocialPilot. This platform generates good social media reports, but they are expensive for starting small businesses.
How to Create A TikTok Marketing Video
Because TikTok is also a platform for sharing videos, creating engaging video content is another vital element in your TikTok marketing strategy.
The guide above won’t work unless your TikTok videos are great. So, here are some top tips on how to create a successful TikTok marketing video.
1. Use Short Videos
TikTok users could only post videos a minute long or less until recently, which has branded TikTok as a platform for a short videos. While developers are working on introducing longer videos, users still prefer short and snappy video content.
Therefore, focus on creating shorter, highly engaging videos and pay particular attention to your videos’ first 3 to 5 seconds. This is where you’re most likely to get the viewers’ attention and stop them from scrolling to the next video.
Looking at the TikTok video of Levi’s, for example. Just 5 seconds into the video, the viewer’s curiosity is immediately heightened. While you can experiment with longer videos as you get more familiar with the platform, short videos will always be the hero of TikTok.
2. Utilize Video Features and Effects
TikTok provides many features that help you make videos entertaining for your followers. Firstly, these features offer a decent in-app camera. Using this camera to create TikToks can give your videos more personality.
You can also create videos with the use of professional gear and also edit them with a premium video editing software solution to make your content different or unique.
Another exciting feature you should not overlook is Duets, as it helps users produce split-screen videos, which feature the original video on one side and the user’s video on the other. This is the feature you are to use when creating collaboration videos.
For example, Nandos UK partnered with Jamie Raine for this duet, generating over 2 million views and over 400k likes.
TikTok effects are another handy tool. These effects will help you make your videos more fun, which goes a long way to humanizing your brand.
Levi’s is one of the few brands that understand this well. The account has a TikTok marketing strategy of using simple effects in short snappy clips to get its point across. These videos catch the eye, hook in the viewers, and stop them from scrolling to the next video.
3. Add Relevant Hashtags
Hashtags are a perfect way to increase the reach of your TikTok videos. Look at trending topics or hashtags, and create content around them. Remember to add the hashtag in your captions to ensure the clip is shown to the people following that hashtag.
Don’t fall into the trap of jumping on every hashtag trend you see. Even though it may help increase impressions on your video, it can do more harm than good to your brand.
Wisely choose your hashtags, ensure the trending topic you choose agrees with your marketing goals and brand values, and consider developing a unique hashtag for your brand.
4. Make Collaborative Videos
Finally, team up with strategic partners to create multiple TikTok videos. You can do this by approaching influencers. For example, GymShark partnered with Vikkstar, a YouTuber and one member of the Sidemen, for this home gym tour on TikTok.
You can also partner with other brands in creating a TikTok campaign. This partnership could work just like any other social media brand partnership. You must approach the right brand, agree on a drive, and start creating the content.
Ways You Can Make Your Tiktok Marketing Strategy Succeed
Your TikTok marketing strategy needs to be successful because, with the right TikTok marketing strategy and social presence, half of the work of getting your brand out there is done.
You have the opportunity to make your TikTok marketing strategy unique and reach your target audience, and if you want your business to be seen by a wide range of people, you will need TikTok on your side.
These are ways you can be successful on TikTok:
1. Use hashtags
Hashtags are not just meant for Twitter and Instagram; you can search for creators and videos using hashtags, use these hashtags yourself to promote your videos, and make them go viral.
You can also get involved in the fun hashtag challenge options and show your audience that your business is fun and can have fun.
Don’t forget to use relevant hashtags, ideas, or topics that fit your brand’s image.
2. Keep up with and get involved with viral trends
If you want your videos to go viral, TikTok is a place to keep up with viral trends. Your brand’s involvement in challenges on your TikTok channel makes your business stand out and look more relatable and exciting.
Your engagement rate will most likely increase the more you engage in changing viral trends. A new viral sensation is often every couple of months or so, so it’s essential to keep up with the latest.
3. Launch competitions
The business competition may be fierce in TikTok, but what counts is the element of fun that comes with it. You can launch competitions that your audience can share with other platforms, which will help promote your business in the best possible way.
4. Use soundtracks that are trending in your videos
The example above is an excellent example of one of the trending songs on TikTok, and under the song, you can see all the users that have added it to their videos.
TikTok sounds are pretty catchy, so when a particular song and sound go viral, every creator picks and makes a video with it. The use of sounds that are trending is the fastest way to improve your reach.
You’ll boost client interaction and discover new interests if you can see a challenge with the perfect music being shared on TikTok and include it into your plan.
5. Reach out to influencers
Influencers and other content creators are essential to giving your company a voice.
Reaching out to other influencers will help you go viral, and at the same time, it’ll help you to improve your marketing options.
Whether the micro-influencers or the more significant TikTok influencers out there, influencers can improve and show your brand and help you form creative content.
6. Target your audience
Most of your audience probably uses TikTok. Whether young or old, TikTok helps you create a custom audience that gives you a hit that targets the audience in your marketing strategy.
You can curate the demographic of your audience and create your content to appeal to them when you set up your TikTok marketing strategy.
7. Use video effects
The short video options on TikTok will help you extend your brand’s reach and connect with your favorite creators, but the effects that has one of the biggest influences.
You can add filters and colors, GIFs, and more to your videos to improve them and make them more attractive and eye-catching.
8. Post regularly
The TikTok algorithm is structured so that unless you post regularly, your content will not likely be seen or at least won’t be seen for a long time.
Social proof is the best way to improve your brand’s reach and image, and you will see positive results with regular postings. With your regular and relevant content, you can appeal to the business objectives that you set for yourself.
9. Comment regularly
Like posting regularly, you must often comment to improve your marketing efforts. This should be added to your content roadmap plan.
The trends and video ads currently out there need your voice on them, so don’t just comment on the particulars of your video comment sections.
Build your marketing in a way that will improve your reach and show you off, and your regularly commenting will help you form a presence on the platform.
10. Set goals
For your TikTok marketing strategy to work out fine, you will need to set realistic and simple goals that can be executed with the right timing and being reliable.
Your social content goals on your social platform help you create a content strategy that matters and reaches your target demographic. Organic content goals can help your business thrive.
Benefits of using an excellent TikTok marketing strategy
Marketing is essential for your business, mainly social media marketing. The reasons your TikTok marketing strategy matters are below:
a.) Reach a larger audience
One of the best reasons to create a TikTok marketing strategy is that you have a better chance of reaching a larger audience and gaining more followers. TikTok is a platform on most smartphones, and while it can be used on a desktop computer, it is better to access it via a tablet or smartphone.
This helps you reach people on the go and when they are doing their morning, lunch, or evening stroll on the app. TikTok is a hit with a younger audience; this platform is perfect if your business services are meant for a younger market.
b.) Boost engagement
User engagement rates on TikTok do not just happen from a double-tapped heart on each video. Users can also comment on videos, enjoy conversations in the threads, stitch videos to give their opinions, and even share them on other social media platforms.
For example, the people behind the graphic design software Vectornator post engaging and fun videos on their TikTok page that are meant for both their existing users and newcomers. The videos turn around creativity and practical tips and never fail to amuse and educate.
All of this engagement significantly boosts your business, and you can capture an entirely different segment of the audience when you are posting.
c.) Go viral
TikTok going viral means you will be able to see millions of people who can see your videos and your comments.
This means that your video will pop up on the ‘For You Page’ of millions of users looking at the same hashtags and looking for the same information you can provide. Going viral is a significant achievement for a business, and your TikTok marketing strategy can help you succeed.
d.) Connect with other creators
TikTok creators can connect with other creators, which is a good advantage for marketing campaigns. When you join other creators, you can use their platform and yours to manage your audience.
Other creators may have a part of the market that you don’t yet have a handle on, but when you connect with other creators, you can share in their segment, too.
The types of content you make can match what other content creators post, and you can get the attention of more active users this way, too.
Your video content is going to thrive, and this way raises engagement rates.
e.) Develop a brand voice
Another reason you should create a TikTok marketing strategy is you can develop your brand’s voice.
Whether you are a new business or not, you can pass across your message in a fun way with an increased engagement rate.
You can use many options to develop your brand voice within your digital marketing strategy and match up to viral trends better.
Your brand’s social presence is essential for your progress, as many of your target markets use it daily.
Conclusion
TikTok, having more than 2.6 billion downloads and 1.2 billion active users, is a social media platform you cannot afford to overlook. Statistics also show that it is no longer the “Teens app” it used to be.
So, even though Gen Z is still the most significant user globally, other age groups are also catching on.
Unless your competitors want to be pushed out of the market, a TikTok marketing strategy is crucial for your brand. You can follow this guide, and do not be afraid to experiment with ideas for your new video.
After all, most of the TikTok trends go viral by accident. So, you might come up with the next viral craze.
Related: The Complete Guide To Tiktok Marketing (Everything You Need to Know)
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As an experienced SEO and Social Media Strategist, I have dedicated the past four years to helping businesses enhance their online visibility and achieve remarkable growth. With a strong background in SEO and a passion for content strategy, I specialize in crafting compelling, optimized content that resonates with target audiences and drives engagement.
My expertise extends to guiding businesses of all sizes in leveraging video marketing tools. With a keen eye for innovation, I've honed the ability to identify game-changing video marketing tools and tactics that propel brands ahead of the competition. Whether through content strategy or hands-on writing, I am committed to delivering results that elevate brands to new heights.
