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First Published: 12 October, 2022
This user base provides a huge opportunity for businesses to expand their reach to a wider audience. TikTok is still relatively new within the digital sphere, so it offers lesser competition than other social media marketing platforms.
TikTok’s popularity sky-rocketed in 2020, drawing millions of users to create fun and engaging short videos. Today, brands are taking advantage of this new social media sensation and exploring new, engaging ways to connect with their target audience. This comprehensive guide to TikTok marketing will help you take your business to the next level. So, without further ado, let’s dive into it!
TikTok is a short-form, video-sharing social media platform. It allows users to upload creative and fun videos like challenges, dances, funny videos, magic tricks, pranks, and anything else they can dream up. Initially, TikTok allowed its users to upload only 15 seconds videos. However, TikTok has since increased the video duration limit from 15 to 60 seconds. Today, it allows videos up to three minutes in length, while some users are approved to run up to 10-minute videos. Advertisers, however, can only run videos up to three minutes long.
With more than 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, TikTok is disrupting the digital space. It is one of the most widely used social media platforms, falling just behind Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. Therefore, it offers excellent marketing opportunities for businesses that want to reach a wider audience.
TikTok primarily targets the younger generation; however, it has quite a diverse user base. In the United States, teenagers account for merely 25% of TikTok’s active users. On the flip side, users in their twenties account for nearly 22%, and users in their thirties account for over 21.5% of the app’s users. Keeping this in mind, TikTok is suitable for any business, whether they’re targeting the younger generation, older, or both.
Above all, TikTok has one of the best engagement rates for social media apps, even outperforming Instagram. For instance, the average engagement rate of micro-influencers on Instagram is 3.8%, while on TikTok, it is as high as 17.9%.
TikTok is gaining popularity in marketing for a wide range of industries. With ever-growing active users on TikTok, marketers have discovered that advertising on TikTok is time-sensitive and crucial, especially in today’s digital world. Advertisers on the platform find it a potentially untapped market with a sea of actively engaging users. Here are some of the most prominent reasons why you should start utilising TikTok for marketing:
With such a high volume of users actively engaging on TikTok, you must think that marketers would run at the opportunity and saturate the TikTok market. So far, however, it has been quite the contrary. There are many consumers on TikTok, with only a few marketers. As a result, there is significantly less marketing competition on TikTok, which lowers your advertisement costs. Also, businesses that market on TikTok witness a tremendous response from consumers, largely due to the sheer lack of advertisements appearing on the platform.
The amazing thing about TikTok is that it gives you maximum room for freedom and creativity. As a result, it allows marketers to get creative and find unconventional ways to engage the audience, educate them, play with their emotions, or compel them to take their desired action. With the right strategy and creativity, marketers can spark conversations about their products/services, encourage user-generated content, and create hype to drive more sales. Many companies also capitalise on current trends to post their engagement and follower base.
TikTok doesn’t merely bring creativity and authenticity to the table; it offers incredible exposure to a diverse group of audience. For businesses, one of the greatest assets a platform can provide is exposure. The more exposure you get, the better your chances of converting users and retaining customers. The best thing about TikTok is that it allows marketers to target users at all stages of the sales funnel. With the right strategy, marketers can create a series of content targeted at each stage of the sales funnel to push the users to the next stage until they take their desired action.
With such a high volume of active users and low competition, videos have a high chance of reaching a greater audience and going viral. TikTok’s algorithm makes it easy for good content to reach several users. You simply need to produce quality content, use appropriate hashtags, and understand the algorithm of TikTok. We will discuss this in further detail in the upcoming section. Once your video goes viral, millions of users will view it, helping you get more conversions.
Now that you understand how TikTok can revolutionise your marketing efforts, let’s check out some interesting strategies for using TikTok in your digital marketing campaign.
Randomly shooting arrows in marketing isn’t going to help you reach the right target. Therefore, starting with a proper TikTok marketing strategy is important to reach your true potential. TikTok also operates very differently from other social media platforms, relying heavily on hashtags. Here’s a brief overview of how you can create a marketing strategy for your brand:
Understanding the TikTok Algorithm isn’t as easy as it sounds. Unlike Instagram—which openly discusses how its feed ranking works—the inner workings of TikTok are a bit tricky to hack. However, based on the app experience, here are a few valuable insights on how the TikTok algorithm works for the “For You” feed:
The next step is to create valuable, relevant, and engaging TikTok videos. Simply posting material won’t get you very far. With so many companies and content creators adopting the platform, you’ll need to come up with something unique, amusing, and authentic. A simple way to go in the right direction is to understand what your users would like to see.
Also, look for any trends or TikTok challenges happening right now. Once you find them, find a creative way to incorporate them into what your company has to offer. Similarly, look for popular hashtags, sounds, and effects to add to your videos to build a strong TikTok presence.
Hashtags play a significant role in the content on the TikTok “For You” page. You can see the trending hashtags grouped on the discover page. Try using appropriate hashtags when you upload a video to TikTok. While many users incorporate any trendy hashtag in the title of their TikTok video, this isn’t the right strategy for increasing views or brand awareness—especially for marketing purposes. Instead, be strategic about which hashtags you use based on their intent.
The easiest approach is to look at other videos with the same hashtag, identify trends, analyse intent, and try to duplicate them in a way that reflects your brand.
Brand awareness is something every business pursues. After all, creating solid brand awareness allows users to behold a strong presence of your brand image in their minds. TikTok, like other social media networks, is an excellent platform for building a strong brand presence. It allows your businesses to connect and engage with your target audience.
Social media is the first place a user will interact with your brand. TikTok is no exception; it allows you to build a solid presence by generating compelling content that captures the attention of your viewers. Above all, if your video gets viral, you will get more engagement than you can handle.
While TikTok’s nature is fun, light-hearted, and relaxed, producing content that lives up to that concept requires a fundamental thought process and creativity. Brands must strategise their content to get the most value for their efforts. When it comes to TikTok, Nike has adopted an interesting approach. Rather than creating their public video content, they focus on user-generated content (UGC).
If you look at their TikTok profile, you’ll notice that their account is private, and you’ll need to request access to watch their videos. To witness the actual marketing magic, look up the hashtag #nike. Over 929 million people see the hashtag appearing in millions of TikTok posts. You’ll witness videos and GIFs of people wearing their Nikes, painting and dancing in their Nikes, and more as you scroll down. This user-generated content (UGC) provides free advertisement for the brand.
Whether you are an established brand like Nike or a new business to disrupt the market, you can use this tactic to get tons of free user-generated content and engagement. Encourage your users to showcase the products/services they purchased from your business or use your business hashtag. You can do this by giving vouchers as a reward to your customers who upload a video related to your brand.
This way, you would get free advertisement and compel the users who get the voucher to shop again and utilise it. Another cool way to encourage user-generated content is to offer lucrative prizes and rewards to the people who upload content related to your brand using a lottery system.
Influencer Marketing is a tried-and-tested strategy that can apply to most social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Working with relevant influencers can help you get your brand and products in front of many people online. Whether your objective is to drive sales or raise awareness, TikTok provides content tools and the audience for influencer campaigns. Brands can benefit from TikTok influencer campaigns to advertise themselves, especially with trending videos and challenges online. Since TikTok’s popularity has grown, influencer marketing has become increasingly popular. Pittsburgh marketing companies were the first to break new ground in this area and were instrumental in igniting the trend.
Sponsored content is a game-changing strategy for businesses seeking to build a strong social media presence. Even though TikTok did not include this feature from the beginning, it is doing incredibly well compared to other platforms. Brands appear to be quite interested in TikTok advertising, and understandably so. After all, the platform has a large and diverse user base catering to practically every company’s target market. Here are four types of TikTok ads that you can use to promote your business:
In-feed ads are one of the basic advertisement types, allowing you to upload your social video ad in the “For You” section of your target audience’s home feed. These ads allow users to like, comment, and share your video, resulting in increased brand recognition and marketing. Apart from this, you also have the option to include a Call to Action (CTA) button encouraging visitors to download your app, visit your website, or follow your TikTok account. In-feed ads can help businesses boast Return-on-Ad-Spend (ROAS) when done right.
Top view advertisement is an excellent method to promote your business to a wide audience. Top view ads are like in-feed ads; however, they appear at the top of the “For You feed, so they tend to grab the most attention. According to TikTok, “pairing the Top View Ads and In-Feed ads together provide the most effective ad type in achieving sales impact.” You can run videos up to 60 seconds long in this ad format, so you’ll have plenty of time to be creative and get your message across.
Using branded hashtags and branded effects is a fantastic method to advertise your business and build a community using the power of user-generated content. You can profit from both organic and sponsored channels by developing unique branded hashtags and inspiring your fans to generate their content based on them. They’re an important aspect of influencer marketing initiatives and can help spread awareness.
Companies can be more creative with branded effects by using customised effects and filters. This can be done as a stand-alone campaign or as part of a hashtag challenge. As they’re fun and engaging, it’s easy to persuade users to create content with them.
These advertisements are full-screen branded videos that appear as soon as the app opens. As users can’t interact with them, the ads are brief and concise, conveying their message in just a few seconds. They can also be in the shape of an image or a GIF, and they can include a link that directs users to a landing page or a website.
TikTok Pro offers analytics to measure your account performance and check key metrics. If you’re serious about TikTok marketing, it’s time to upgrade to the pro version and get your hands on analytics. TikTok Analytics allows you to:
TikTok, like Instagram, requires frequent and regular posting to ensure engagement. The more videos you post, the higher your follower count and engagement. So, be consistent with your posting to ensure your videos reach the maximum audience. Also, make sure to keep your brand voice consistent throughout your content.
It’s 2022, and today, people want fast content. TikTok understands this growing change in content viewership. With an ever-growing user base, the application is evolving into a marketing platform for brands and businesses and has expanded into a commerce platform. In such a short time, TikTok has completely revolutionised the landscape of video advertisements.
Looking at the current trends of users and the next billion users on the internet, it is evident that the future of TikTok offers great value in the digital marketing space. With the popularisation of micro-content, TikTok has completely changed how consumers perceive ads and how businesses interact with their customers. We can safely predict that TikTok will evolve further and bring even more exciting features for marketers in the future.
Want to take full advantage of the marketing space on TikTok? The first step is to devise a solid marketing strategy. However, if you do not have the required skills, you can consult a professional Marketing agency to help you out. That’s where we come in. Here at Pure SEO, we stand proud as a leading social media marketing agency in New Zealand, offering content marketing strategy and ad optimisation services.
Whether you’re looking to begin your TikTok marketing journey or you need to revamp an existing one, you can rely on our experts. Our team of professionals can create an excellent TikTok marketing strategy for your businesses to help you stay ahead of the game in your industry. Please contact our experts, or drop an email to schedule a free meeting.
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