TikTok is one of the most popular social networking apps for music and video. But in recent years, it has also become one of the more popular marketing and advertising platforms too. In this post we are going to show you how to use TikTok for your marketing campaign.
What is TikTok?
Tik Tok is a new social media app that’s been gaining mainstream traction fast. The app allows you to share short videos with your friends, or more specifically, your followers. It was launched in 2018 and has since been downloaded more than 1.65 billion times by everyone from skateboarding grandmas to lip-syncing teenagers and celebrities. But how much can businesses owners get from using TikTok? and where do they start?
On the surface, the platform seems to be a place for funny, irrelevant videos and dance crazes so you may be wondering how your products or services would fit into this hyper-connected world.
However, if you scratch beneath the surface, you will find that TikTok is a great marketing tool for businesses because of its features that allow you to post a lot of content and interact with your followers in a fun and creative way.
Why is Tik Tok so popular?
One of the biggest draws of TikTok is the ability to post anything easily. Humour, hobbies, fitness, travel, music, photography and dance; every category is open and gaining huge attention. Each area is offering exposure for those you can adapt their content to the short-form video model.
The video app saw rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic because many users found time to explore the platform and connect with audiences in new ways. The rapid rise of TikTok set the record for the most downloads in a single quarter for a social app, a staggering 315 million installs were successfully completed in such a short space of time – amazing!
Another, more technical reason, for its popularity, is the algorithms it uses to determine what shows up in the ‘For You’ feed. The results of the video feed in this part of the app change over time based on your viewing preferences and habits. This is usually based on your video likes, video shares, accounts followed and comments posted. The algorithm also considers how far a user got in the video before they pressed pause or exited and whether they watched it in its entirety. Watching a video from beginning to end is a strong sign of interest and carries greater weight in the TikTok algorithm than some other contributing factors.
Understanding the platform
If you’re considering using Tik Tok in your marketing strategy, then you can set up a small business account and start exploring. If you’re thinking of going in for the hard sell for your products and services think again, because this kind of promotion isn’t going to get very far on TikTok. As soon as you check out what your competitor and other brands are doing you will get a good idea of what you should be aiming for. You may want to try and work out if your audience is on Tik Tok before going any further, roughly 50% of TikTok’s global audience is under the age of 34.
When you’re exploring the platform, here are a few things for you to try:
Watch videos: Open up the app, and you will no doubt see a feed with tons of different silly videos which will probably have no relevance to your brand or industry. It is likely however that there are many accounts that are like yours and they may be active or inactive. Click around and watch a couple of videos to get a feel for the platform.
Create your own video or simply upload an existing video from your phone: You will not be aiming for professional videographer quality at this stage of the game. Most of the videos posted on TikTok are created by the users themselves. Start recording with your phone or upload an existing video, add in filters, use cool effects like face zoom, subtitles, giffs there is a lot to choose from make your videos fun and engaging.
Add music: TikToks algorithms are clever when it comes to music, it reads the information in the video and pushes relevant music forward. For example, if you post a video of a London skyline it will return songs related to London like ‘Take Me Back to London’ by Ed Sheeran.
Follow accounts you like: Look for other competitive businesses on TikTok and like their accounts so you can follow them and see what kind of content they post. Make sure you follow the leading industry giants to seek inspiration from their marketing campaigns.
Tik Tok for your marketing: Try different kinds of content.
Once you have researched your competitors and you are familiar with your potential audience, it’s time to create content for your business. While it’s tempting to copy what’s trending or popular like funny lip-sync videos, there are many other options you should use to promote your business.
- Introduce yourself and your team with a song that captures the culture of your company.
- Give followers a quick tour of your workplace or behind the scenes work video.
- People love to hear and share inspirational stories. Do you have a success story about how you started your business or a person at work who has achieved something worth sharing with your followers?
- Instead of going in for the hard sell on your product or service, see if a valued customer would like to share a few words about their experiences with your company.
- Does your business donate or support any charities or support groups in the community? Share that and tell people why it’s important for your business.
- How’s your product made? Whats’ the process? Is there anything about it that needs explaining?
- Don’t make the mistake of making the video too lengthy, speed the slow bits up because timelapse videos are highly popular on TikTok.
Tap into your customers by user-generated content
Whilst creating your own videos is a good way to promote your business and bring brand awareness on TikTok, you can also tap into your customers’ content. This is where hashtags come in, create a hashtag for your business and ask your customers to use it whenever they post something on TikTok about your products. This way, prospects learn about your company through the best marketing vehicle: word of mouth.
Keep the engagement up
If someone comments on one of your videos, respond back! It’s important not only because the user might see that interaction but also because it makes the commenter feel valued which can encourage them to follow you back or even purchase something from your business.
The key here is engagement! You want users interacting with each other, so people are more likely to follow each other back and create an open dialogue with one another.
Tips for gaining followers
There are many strategies for using Tik Tok to your marketing advantage. First, you need to discover what your followers want and give it to them. Figure out what your followers like and don’t like about the content they’re seeing on Tik Tok. Once you do that, you’ll be able to tailor your videos to their liking.
You should also provide valuable content that viewers can’t find anywhere else. If you post the same content as other influencers, people will be less likely to follow you because there is nothing new or original about it.
Another way to gain followers is by mentioning them in your posts. For example, if someone posts a photo of their food at a restaurant, mention how great it looks or complement their outfit if you see them wearing something cool. This will make them more likely to follow you back if they like how you interact with them.
Conclusion
We hope you have found this blog post useful and inspired you to create some unique marketing videos for your business and brand. Tik Tok has a whole lot to offer brands and businesses that want to grab the attention of their audience in a fun and creative fashion. It is an awesome platform that allows you to target your audience with short engaging videos and other forms of fun content. If you are looking for a new marketing avenue, Tik Tok should be your top choice.