Are you aware that TikTok has over 2 billion downloads globally on Google Play and App Store? Anyone who has been on the internet over the past few years has most likely heard of this social video app whose popularity has been soaring. In fact, you may have already interacted with TikTok videos on other popular social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, if you aren’t already on TikTok.
Every day, the average TikTok user spends roughly 52 minutes on the app, opening it around eight times per day. This is one of the reasons why more companies are becoming interested in the platform and even encouraging their staff to post videos while at work.
With the exponential growth of this social video-sharing app, brands and marketers worldwide are now opening channels to engage with TikTok users and gain more customers. Creating an effective TikTok marketing strategy requires you to identify your target audience and create intriguing content to develop brand awareness.
What is TikTok and How Does it Work?
TikTok is a social media app that allows users to create and share video content — both amateur and professional videos. This popular video-sharing app, owned by a tech company based in Beijing — ByteDance — lets users produce short-form videos, mostly around 15 seconds. TikTok basically relies on user-generated content to drive traffic, mostly Gen Z, to its platform.
TikTok users have to scroll through the app’s feed to watch and interact with other users on the platform. They can find TikTok videos from any niche on the platform, including DIY videos, pet videos, auto videos, and food videos. The app’s popularity rocketed mainly due to dance videos, where people basically recorded themselves dancing to hit songs on the platform.
TikTok offers various editing effects to spice up videos. It also comes with “like,” “comment,” and “share” buttons. The share button lets users send TikTok videos to other TikTok users or to users of other social media apps, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter.
If you have a TikTok account, users on the platform can like your videos and follow you to view the content you upload. Additionally, they can also set up alerts so that they receive notifications when you go live or post videos.
What is the Target Audience for TikTok?
Like any other social media platform, you should always create and post content that resonates with your target audience. In the U.S., TikTok has approximately 100 million monthly active users and about 50 million active users daily.
The primary target audience for TikTok is the young population. Remember, this social network was originally created for short-form dance videos targeted at teenagers. The main user demographic of this social media app is the Gen Z population. This generation includes all people born between 1997 and 2012. Most users of TikTok are under 30 years old, with the majority being between 16 and 24 years old.
When thinking about TikTok marketing, make sure your strategies align with your target audience to get the most out of this popular platform.
Why Do You Need a TikTok Marketing Strategy?
Today, many brands use social media to gain a competitive edge over their competitors. An effective TikTok marketing strategy can help you reach a larger audience since you can share video content with your next-door neighbor or a TikTok user at the other end of the globe.
Digital marketing has now become easier given the platform’s ever-growing audience. A practical TikTok marketing strategy can help you to:
- Create brand awareness
- Increase your following
- Increase engagement and conversions
- Reach a younger audience on social media
The social media platform’s global popularity makes it an ideal place to introduce your brand to a younger audience from all parts of the world.
How to Set up TikTok for Business
A business can sell out products from a single TikTok post. If your TikTok content goes viral, you can gain an enormous following and experience high engagement rates. TikTok has the ability to change the trajectory of a business overnight.
The right content strategy can help drive traffic to your TikTok account, increase exposure, and build brand awareness. Interactive content such as video challenges are key to success on the platform. TikTok challenges are an efficient way to capture the attention of users without appearing too salesy. But first, you need a TikTok business account to build a reputable brand on the social media app.
How to Create a TikTok Business Account
Most TikTok users know of this platform as a place to watch funny and engaging videos posted by other users. However, that’s not all that TikTok offers.
TikTok users can now create TikTok business accounts — known as pro accounts — that distinguish business accounts from personal accounts. Pro accounts are loaded with extra features that can help you with TikTok marketing, including:
- Option to run paid ad campaigns
- Performance tracking
- Ability to partner with TikTok influencers
- Analytics regarding trends in your TikTok content
- Ability to drive traffic to other sites
Creating a business account on TikTok is easy. All you need is your mobile phone. Here’s how to create a pro account:
- Download the TikTok app on your phone
- Log in or sign up for a TikTok account. Make sure you use credentials like phone numbers, emails, or social media accounts that you are comfortable sharing with other members of the business. It’s best to avoid personal accounts.
- Tap the “Me” button in the lower right corner, then tap “Manage Account”.
- You can now select “Switch to Business Account”, then choose the industry that best suits your brand, then tap “Next”.
- You can now post information about your services and products on TikTok.
How to Create a TikTok Ad Account
Are you also thinking about running ads on your account? Then, you need a TikTok Ad Account to run such marketing campaigns.
To find out if your business qualifies, you can reach out directly to TikTok Ads. You’ll fill out relevant information, including your billing country, type of business, and contact information. TikTok will review your information and, if your business qualifies, someone will contact you to assist with setting up your advertising account.
How to Create a TikTok Marketing Strategy
Most TikTok trends are usually random. This user-generated content may come from developing events around the world or a user-specific video that becomes a trending hashtag. With that being said, there is no unerring TikTok marketing strategy that businesses use. One has to get familiar with their audience and adopt a strategy that best applies to them along the TikTok.
Many businesses often make the mistake of using the same marketing approaches they use on other social media platforms, like Facebook or Instagram. TikTok is a unique platform that relies on entertainment and educational content for digital marketing.
When creating a marketing strategy for TikTok, get familiar with the platform and find out what content will be relevant to your business and target audience. Watch TikTok videos by others in your niche to get a better understanding of how TikTok works.
You should also watch out for trending hashtags and songs that you can use to create interactive content for your users. Make sure you explore the app’s features, like effects and filters, to find out how you can use them to your advantage.
When creating a TikTok marketing strategy, it’s critical to find out how the app’s algorithm works. This will help you optimize your videos and content strategies to get the most out of TikTok.
Define Your Target Audience
When running marketing campaigns on TikTok, you should have a specific target audience that you want to reach. It’s essential to learn about TikTok demographics and find out who is interested in what you are offering.
Even though TikTok is most popular with teens, it would be ill-advised to rule this app out as a teen app. The app has a large following of 20 to 29-year-olds in the United States at 22.4%. This was as of April 2021.
It’s critical to analyze your audience on TikTok as well as other social media platforms. Do not downplay the emergence of unexpected followers who like your content on the app.
Defining your target audience on TikTok can help you grow your following as soon as you start posting on the platform. This helps boost your marketing metrics, including driving user engagement and reducing bounce rates.
Once you’ve done that, sit down and brainstorm the best content ideas for your account.
Do Competitive Research and Identify the Best Performing TikTok Trends
A successful TikTok creator always gets involved in trends. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for popular trends on TikTok that you can use to create and share your own videos. It’s important to remember that TikTok trends can be fast-paced, so it’s better to take advantage of them before they become irrelevant.
While on the app, you can tap on the “Discover” page to learn which audio and videos are trending. This section may contain TikTok challenges as well as organic trends that could blend in well with your TikTok content.
When you produce content inspired by a trend, followers of the trend are more likely to see your content and share it since it is a hot topic on the social media app. Users will pay more attention to your videos when you embrace TikTok trends. Always find a way to make your TikTok video unique to make it stand out from other videos leveraging the same trend.
Start a Branded Hashtag Challenge
TikTok relies on hashtags to sort video content on its platform. It’s vital to get ahead of your audience by discovering what they love and incorporating suitable hashtags. Optimizing your content using relevant hashtags can help more people find you on the platform.
To identify relevant hashtags on TikTok, search broad and specific keywords in your niche. The results will give you a rough idea of popular hashtags worth considering.
Alternatively, you can create your own branded hashtag challenge to increase brand awareness and your user base. Hashtag challenges can increase engagement with minimal effort. They are excellent when you are running organic marketing campaigns.
Branded hashtag challenges inspire people to talk about the challenges and your services or products on TikTok, other social media platforms, or offline. They are effective in spreading messages to audiences a business may not be able to reach. The target audience may share the challenge with colleagues, friends, or family, allowing them to recreate the challenges, which spreads the information further.
Before embarking on a branded hashtag challenge, look into what your competitors are doing on the platform and determine whether similar challenges exist. This information can help you model an effective TikTok marketing strategy to drive more users to your challenges.
Start a Collaboration or Duet with Other TikTok Users Through TikTok Marketing Campaigns
Partnering with relevant TikTok creators can help you if you are trying to build your TikTok presence. You can find people to partner with by searching for relevant keywords within your field.
For instance, if you are in the product review niche, you should consider collaborating with other TikTok users in your niche with many followers. You can work with them on various product review projects and upload relevant videos to increase your account’s engagement. This may be an uphill task for beginners with few followers since most accounts with extensive reach may not be willing to work with smaller accounts..
If you come across someone within your field with a large following that seems to be a good fit, contact them to find out if they’d be interested in collaborations or duets. Always be careful about who you choose to collaborate with, since some TikTok users could pose a risk to your brand’s reputation.
Use TikTok Ads
Like most other social media platforms, TikTok has embraced the use of ads on its platform to generate more revenue by letting brands advertise their products and services.
For businesses trying out TikTok marketing, advertising is an easy way to reach your target audience without investing significant time building an organic following. You can start an ad campaign in as little as 24 hours on TikTok.
Before setting up ads on TikTok, do your homework to find out more about the platform’s advertising program. First. establish your goals and expectations for your marketing campaign. Then, select the type of ads you want to run for your TikTok campaigns.
Types of TikTok Ads
Here are the various ad products that this popular video-sharing app offers:
- In-feed native ads: These are skippable ads that function like Instagram stories. You can embed website links or “Order Now” buttons within such ads. Visitors to your account can click on links and be redirected to your sales page. In-feed ads also allow TikTok users to get marketing insights such as your impressions as well as how many times users viewed an ad.
- Top view ads: These are ads that appear as soon as users open the app. They run for 5 to 60 seconds with the option of skipping them in the top right corner of TikTok. You have a couple of seconds to hook users before they tap the “Skip” button.
- Hashtag challenge ads: Users view banner ads that direct them to promotion pages. There, a user finds a challenge that they can accept and start immediately. A banner challenge ad can help you reach your specific consumers, increasing your chances of conversion.
- Brand takeover ads: This is an ad that uses images, videos, and GIFs that appear when one opens TikTok. They can feature internal or external landing pages.
- Branded effects: TikTok contains a large effects library that TikTok creators can use to customize company ads. They can apply filters, stickers, and special filters to come up with branded effects for ads.
Types of TikTok Ad Targeting
TikTok allows you to target your audience using various parameters, including:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Language
You typically have two targeting options when using TikTok ads:
- Interest targeting: This type of targeting is where a brand selects interests that match its target audience. TikTok will then show your ads to users who choose similar interests.
- Behavioral targeting: This strategy targets TikTok users based on their behavior within the app over the previous two weeks. It helps when targeting people who’ve frequented TikTok recently or those who constantly engage with the platform.
Use TikTok Influencer Marketing
Today, people on social media are more likely to trust influencers than brands. Many TikTok users seek out influencer recommendations when buying products or services. In fact, around 49% of consumers rely on influencers for purchase advice.
Influencer collaborations are prevalent across social media platforms, including Twitter and Instagram.
TikTok influencer marketing feels more authentic since it has a human approach to it. You can collaborate with influencers who have built up their reputation on TikTok to endorse your products or services and influence their huge followings. If you are struggling with TikTok marketing, partner with relevant influencers to gain customers.
This TikTok strategy has become very lucrative for many brands. However, many brands find it difficult to choose suitable influencers to market their brands. For this reason, TikTok created a TikTok creator marketplace that provides metrics for use in making informed decisions when selecting influencers that can have a high return on investment.
Encourage User-Generated Content Creation
TikTok is mainly made up of Gen Z. This generation has shown that they want their voices to be heard. An impersonal ad may not work for this generation.
User-generated content may be the best way to promote your brand. You can encourage users to incorporate your brand’s labels and hashtags when creating content to upload to TikTok. This increases the chance of your brand going viral if their creations become extremely popular.
User-generated content is also a smart way to win over an audience. They’ll form a connection with your brand and may even grow into loyal customers.
Monitor and Evaluate Your TikTok Marketing Analytics Data
Regardless of when you joined TikTok, it’s good to have insight into what’s happening with your account. TikTok analytics can help ensure you make better decisions regarding TikTok marketing.
To monitor and evaluate your TikTok data, you must have a pro account. To switch your account, follow these steps:
- Head over to your account
- Tap “Manage my account”
- Tap “Switch to Pro account”
Once you are done, select a “category” to view your customized analytics on the dashboard. TikTok stores your account’s analytics weekly or monthly. You can choose either of these options to monitor your marketing analytics data. TikTok shows you analytics for every video you’ve uploaded, including:
- Likes
- Shares
- Overall views
- Comments
- Cumulative playtime
What Type of Content Works Best on TikTok?
You should always go for engaging, authentic, and valuable content for TikTok marketing. Users on the platform love funny videos. Always make sure your videos offer some type of value to your users. Help people learn new things when they watch your content.
The time you choose to post on TikTok can also affect your results. For the best visibility and engagement, post your content between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Still, you should conduct an analysis to find out when users interact most with your content.
It’s also advisable to create an in-depth bio that tells visitors who you are and what you do. You can also have a call-to-action on your TikTok bio, such as asking visitors to follow you for amazing deals.
Creating a Comprehensive TikTok Marketing Strategy: The Takeaway
TikTok has witnessed tremendous growth over the past few years, with over 2 billion downloads on Google Play and App Store. This application has surely taken the internet by surprise.
Today, no one can downplay the benefits that any brand can reap from effective marketing strategies on this platform. It can work as a great marketing channel to reach Gen Z as well as other users, including millennials. When implementing TikTok marketing, it’s essential to consider trends, hashtags, and challenges but also place importance on originality and creativity.
