Many marketers have been waiting to join TikTok for their brands to see if it is a trend that is here to stay. In 2020, TikTok surpassed Facebook and became the most downloaded app in the United States. So, it’s safe to say that TikTok isn’t going anywhere.

Now that marketers are realizing the value of TikTok for marketing purposes, they’re rushing to capitalize on the channel and not always building a solid foundation for a successful strategy. And that’s where this post comes in. We’re about to dive into everything you need to know about marketing on TikTok so that your strategy has a solid foundation. 

What Makes TikTok Unique

If you’re going to market on TikTok, it’s important to embrace how different it is from the other social channels and you need to create dedicated content for this channel, not re-use content that you post on other channels.

Content that is popular on TikTok includes challenges, lip synching videos, dancing, fails, pranks, fitness routines, and more. The key takeaway about TikTok’s content is that it is fun and light and if your brand is going to leverage TikTok, you’ll need to embrace entertaining content that TikTok users expect.

While short videos are nothing new, TikTok makes content creation easier on their platform than other channels. The platform provides editing tools, music clips, sound effects, filters, and more to make it incredibly easy to create professional content.

TikTok users are more engaged than on the other platforms. The nature of the platform calls for more participation with the popularity of challenges.

Let’s Look At the Numbers

Every marketing strategy should be rooted in data so it’s crucial to look at the numbers before choosing to launch your brand on TikTok.

• We’ve established that TikTok has been downloaded more than any app this year. In fact, TikTok has over 100 million users in the US and over 1 billion users world-wide.
• The biggest source of hesitation that marketers have when it comes to marketing on TikTok is that the audience is young and doesn’t align with their brands. However, that is a misconception. 53% of TikTok users are over the age of 30 showing that it’s not just an app for Gen Z anymore.
• With brands being hesitant to market on TikTok, the cost and competition is low compared to the other social platforms.
• TikTok has higher engagement rates than all of the other social media platforms.
• Each TikTok user in the US spends more than 850 minutes on the app per month.
• 92% of users say they take action after watching a video on TikTok

How Brands Are Leveraging TikTok

There are 3 ways brands can leverage TikTok.

Establish an organic presence: Creating entertaining content consistently on TikTok for your brand is the best way to get started. You should build your organic presence and followers before you use the budget to pay influencers and ads on TikTok.

Work with influencers: Influencer marketing on TikTok is very similar to the influencer campaigns you’ve run on other channels. It’s an especially handy marketing strategy if you’re struggling to build your organic presence on the platform as influencers already have the targeted following to benefit your brand.

Paid ads: We recommend diverting your social media marketing budget to TikTok for a month or two to get a feel for if it’s right for your brand. There are 5 ways that marketers can run paid campaigns on TikTok. In-feed ads, branded hashtags, top view ads, branded effects, and branded takeovers. In-feed ads are the most popular and are great for any size budgets.

Hashtag Tips

As is the case with other social platforms, hashtags make your content more discoverable.

In the search function of TikTok you can type in broad keywords and the app will suggest hashtags you should use.

It’s smart to use a combination of broad hashtags and more honed in hashtags to reach a variety of your target audience members.

2-3 hashtags are ideal.

Posting Best Practices

• Create a detailed bio so your followers understand who you are
• Jump on trends and hashtags for maximum views
• Encourage employees to post behind-the-scenes or company culture related videos
• Define your target audience before you start posting
• Research your competitors on TikTok and aim to produce better content than they do
• Experiment with themes, hashtags, ads, etc. 

Measuring Your TikTok Marketing Strategy

To get TikTok analytics, you need to upgrade your account to a pro account which doesn’t cost anything. 

The app offers plenty of insights so you can decide which posts work and which ones don’t so that you can scale accordingly. 

Within the app, you can also pull follower analytics and get strategic insights on the types of content your audience views so you can create content accordingly.

Keep in mind that you have more data available on the desktop app than the phone app.

Do you have any tips for marketing on TikTok? We’d love to hear about your strategy in the comments below!