TikTok Marketing – How to Make it Work for Your Brand
Check out Kingfluencers’ TikTok marketing services here.
1. Start With Your Target Audience
First off, know that while older generations are starting to adopt the platform, a quarter of TikTok’s users are under 20 years old – only 11% are over 50. TikTok is a great marketing channel, and we recommend you get into it. Just be aware that most of its users are Gen Z and Millennials – so if your product or service caters to an older population, TikTok might not be the best platform to market your brand. (Exploding Topics, 2023)
2. Research Your Competitors
You’ll want to know what your competitors are already doing on the platform so you can come up with the best strategy for your own TikTok marketing. If you see they’re investing into TikTok content, this validates that you’re about to tap into a receptive market. You can start by checking out what kind of videos the big players in your industry are creating.
Search for industry terms
TikTok’s search function also lets you find lesser-known brands trying to break out. By searching for different terms around your brand’s niche, you can gain insights and find inspiration from these competitors – who can often be more creative with their content than the big players.
Learn from their popular posts and hashtags
What makes your competitor’s top TikToks more popular than others? If you can find out their winning elements, you’ll know you can be successful with similar content. This doesn’t mean copy their videos – but you can get learnings from which formats are working, put your own spin on them, and then implement them for yourself.
Check competitors’ comments
By monitoring how people are responding to your competitors’ content, you can get valuable information as to what works for them – and where they might be falling short. You can then make your own TikToks better in the areas their audience thought could be improved. Their followers’ comments also often give you new ideas for different styles or content angles you could try.
3. Get On the Latest Trends
If you can join an emerging trend on TikTok, it increases the chance of your content going viral, which can be a big win in your marketing efforts. With TikTok’s algorithm, it’s possible for you to get hundreds of thousands views on a single one of your videos, even if you just started your account – simply by riding the wave of a current trend.
Research trending audio
On TikTok, sounds are part of the fun, and there’s always certain sounds going viral. Figure out which those are, add them to your videos, and TikTok’s algorithm is likely to show your content to a wide audience.
Caveat: As a business, you’re only allowed to use the copyright-free music from TikTok’s ‘Commercial Library’ – unless you purchase rights from the publisher. But even free sounds can go viral!
Hop on hashtag challenges
Hashtag challenges are huge on TikTok. People love to participate in them, and a good hashtag can spread quickly. If your brand can hop on that train, you’ll benefit from the organic exposure.
To stay up to date on popular hashtags, make sure to frequently browse the app: Go to the For You page and look for trending videos and their corresponding hashtags.
TikTok Content Ideas for Brands
4. Study Examples of Successful TikTok Marketing
You do want to be creative in your TikTok marketing. But – it’s okay to draw inspiration from what’s working for others. In fact, if you have some great creative input to work with, it’ll raise the quality of your own work.
Fun is #1 on TikTok. Find fun angles to your content that show your sense of humor, making your brand appear relatable to your followers. It’s good to push the boundaries a bit. But in general, choose an approach that fits with your brand image.
Mondelez and Warner Bros. promoted the new Batman movie and Oreo’s cookies by creating the ‘Batman x Oreo’ campaign. It became popular and users joined the challenge, making their own Batman & Oreo themed TikToks.
5. Start Your Own Branded Hashtag Challenge
Start your own hashtag challenge: Release a TikTok video that shows you doing a specific action involving your product or tying back to the service you’re marketing. This could be a dance, sports movement, conversation, style of make-up.. there’s many possibilities for creating a viral hashtag challenge.
Now, encourage your followers to take part in the challenge. If it resonates, you’ll reach a large new audience and gain brand awareness – which will convert to more sales down the line.
6. Get Your Fans Involved in Your Brand’s Account with User-Generated Content
A great way to create loyal fans and brand advocates while marketing your business on TikTok is to intimately involve your followers in your own content. TikTok’s app makes this easy for you with two unique features: Duets and Stitch.
Duets
With Duets, your fans can choose to play their own video next to yours in the same frame – like a real-life duet. This is exciting for them, because they can appear next to you or your brand ambassadors. And it gives you free organic reach to their followers.
StitchIf you enable TikTok’s Stitch feature, users can use up to 5 seconds of your video in their own TikTok, and then add their own content before or/and after it. By encouraging fans to get creative while using your branded content, you’re creating a more loyal audience for yourself and helping spread the word about your business.
7. Use TikTok Influencer Marketing
Influencers are the cornerstone of TikTok marketing: They’re experienced at creating high quality TikToks, people look up to them, and they’re in a unique position to promote your products and services to a receptive audience.
There’s different ways you can use influencers in your TikTok marketing:
Send your product
Showing your product yourself vs. having a trusted influencer creatively involve your product in their content makes a difference. Striking a deal with an influencer where you send them your product for free and make them an affiliate so they earn a percentage of each sale can both be profitable and give a boost to your brand awareness.
Collaborate on a video
You can also come up with ideas you can act on together with your influencers. For example, them working in your business for a day, you appearing in one of their videos, or simply showcasing your product together in a creative way.
Partner on a new product line
How do you get many relevant eyeballs on your new product as possible? By picking an influencer whose followers match your target audience, and having them introduce it to their TikTok fans. The reach, status and trust they’ve built up will help drive awareness and sales for your new product or service.
Ready to get started with TikTok influencer marketing? Check out TikTok services by Kingfluencers and contact us.
Executing Your TikTok Marketing Strategy
8. Start Creating Great Content
Once you’ve done your research and created your strategy, it’s time to make your TikTok videos. To do this, you can choose between different formats for your content:
- Showing off products. Can you make a funny, engaging TikTok in which your product plays a role? This would entertain your audience while creating demand for your offer at the same time.
- ‘Day in the Life’ videos. By showing your personality and giving a real, down-to-earth look into what goes on behind the scenes, you’ll make your followers feel more connected to your brand and identify with your more. Over time, this leads to great engagement on your TikToks and your followers turning into brand advocates.
Dance challenges. If your team is up for it, joining or even starting a dance challenge is one of the most fun and creative ways to gain brand awareness. Should your challenge catch on and go viral, you’ll have generated hundreds of thousands of free impressions on your brand’s content – while having fun creating it.
9. Post regularly
TikTok is the fastest-moving social media app. To stay top of mind, you should consider posting somewhat often. You can start with 1-3 TikToks per day – this should already grow your following at a good rate.
Bigger brands who are investing more heavily into TikTok marketing are posting up to ten times per day. You don’t need to do that at first – but do aim to up your game as you go, because TikTok is such a valuable marketing channel right now.
10. Engage With Your Audience
Engagement is key for TikTok’s demographics – and it’s expected. But don’t think of this as a chore to be checked off: Going back and forth with your followers can be fun, build a deeper connection, and most importantly teach you invaluable lessons about what your target audience wants.
11. Track Your Engagement with Analytics
To know what’s working in your marketing strategy, be sure to track engagement metrics on your TikToks. Your TikTok business account shows you a wide range of different metrics, from likes, comments and shares to average watchtime and trending video growth.
Discard or change the content ideas that didn’t work. Identify the winners. Then you can double down on what your audience wants, to grow your following most effectively.
12. Consider TikTok Advertising
TikTok ads are a new feature of the platform. It lets you display your own videos or your influencers’ videos as sponsored content in the feeds of users identified by the algorithms as your target audience.
13. Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment
Creative content that surprises the viewer – and is also being fun and nice to look at – wins on TikTok.
So don’t worry about following any formula or marketing template to a T. Be guided by your natural creativity, go after what’s exciting to you, while keeping in mind current trends and what your target audience likes, of course.
As you get more experienced creating TikTok content, you’ll carve out your unique style, zeroing in on content that works for your audience and your business goals.
Work With a TikTok Marketing Agency
That’s a wrap on TikTok marketing you can use to grow your brand! You can now have your team follow these strategies and use your TikTok presence as a profitable marketing channel for your brand.
If you’d rather spend your time and energy on other high-level tasks in your business, you could also consider hiring an experienced TikTok agency to do the work for you.
You then gain access to their proven processes for creating sound strategies, content creation, tracking metrics, and collaborating with influencers.
At Kingfluencers, we’re pioneers in influencer marketing since 2016. If you choose to work with us, you’ll benefit from our 3000+ strong network of vetted influencers, as well as our expertise that has gotten great results for prominent brands using TikTok marketing.
Check out our TikTok services and contact us here.
Author: Yoeri Callebaut, @Kingfluencers