So, you've finally decided to take the plunge.
Or maybe you're just curious about learning more about the platform.
Either way, you know that TikTok marketing has massive potential as a marketing strategy for modern brands.
But how exactly does marketing on TikTok actually work?
Is this the right marketing tactic for every business?
And how do you utilize TikTok to drive engagement, increase brand awareness, and boost sales?
This guide to TikTok will walk you through everything you need to know, from account setup and content creation to organic reach, paid ads, and influencer marketing.
TikTok is a social media network that focuses on highly shareable, engageable short form videos.
Users can create videos from scratch or modify existing videos, then share those videos with their friends and followers. Creators and brands can publish TikTok videos from scratch or modify existing ones using editing features built in, such as filters, captions, sound effects, slow motion transitions, and trending audio. The platform allows for videos of up to 10 minutes, but most people on the platform focus on making much shorter, punchier videos. TikTok users are much more likely to engage with a video that's less than a minute long, so most creators prioritize this.
TikTok marketing is a marketing strategy designed to take advantage of this social platform to promote products, services, and brand values through engaging content, influencer collaborations, paid ads, and community building.
Much like other social media strategies, you can use organic posting to build a following and nurture your biggest fans. You can also use paid advertising to reach new people and cut out the messy middle work. Unlike other social media channels, TikTok’s unique format rewards creativity, relatability, and consistency over polish. That makes it a powerful tool for brands willing to create fun, relevant content tailored to TikTok’s audience, especially younger audiences.
TikTok marketing isn't guaranteed to be effective, and it's not the best medium for every brand. However, there's enormous potential here – and with the right strategies, you can greatly amplify your overall marketing reach.
Not convinced that TikTok fits into your overall social media marketing plan?
Let’s take a look at some of the statistics:
As you can see, TikTok is an extraordinarily popular app, and it seems to be growing in popularity with each passing year. At the same time, a tiny minority of marketers are currently using TikTok, representing a potential competitive advantage for you.
One important thing to note is that TikTok is disproportionately favored by young people. The user base of TikTok skews very young, and older adults are more likely to have negative feelings about the app.
TikTok excels at content discovery, organic reach, and building highly engaged audiences. Compared to other social media platforms, brands can reach a broader audience faster — even with one video.
Keep this in mind; if you're not interested in appealing to children and teenagers, this strategy may not be viable for you. Or at the very least, you'll probably find better results with other social media apps and mediums. Brands targeting older demographics may see better performance on other platforms or other social media platforms entirely. TikTok should be treated as one marketing tactic within a larger, well-rounded marketing strategy.
Creating a TikTok business account is easy represents an essential business account step for brands getting started. After creating a normal account, go into your account settings, select “Manage account,” then choose “Switch to Business Account.
”From here, you'll be able to create and post videos to your business account and leverage the power of TikTok Ads Manager.
A TikTok business account provides more control, access to TikTok analytics, performance metrics, ad formats, and promotional tools like TikTok Promote. This setup allows social media managers to measure results, refine their own strategy, and optimize for optimal performance.
How do you create TikTok videos? The app allows you to make novel modifications to videos, like using video editing tools, adding stickers, sound effects, specific lines of dialogue, filters, and tons of other special features. When creating a video, you'll have the option of pulling in a video saved on your phone or filming a new one from scratch.
Either way, once you have a video captured, you can modify it as you see fit. The app is designed to be simple and intuitive, so you should have no trouble experimenting with some of the interesting and dynamic effects available to you. Additionally, new effects are being added all the time, so there's always new material and popular trends to explore. To create engaging content, focus on storytelling, pacing, and creative flexibility. Even lightly TikTok edited videos often outperform overproduced ads.
Once you're done editing, you can review the video and post it to your TikTok business account. If you need further help creating videos for the first time, TikTok has some excellent guides worth reading.
The biggest decision you'll make in TikTok marketing is deciding whether to pursue organic marketing or paid advertising.
A successful TikTok marketing strategy typically balances organic growth with paid promotion.
TikTok organic marketing is all about trying to reach people naturally through the TikTok algorithm by creating content as if you were an average TikTok user. You'll create videos on a regular basis, share them with your followers, reach out to new people, and eventually build a following. From there, you can create videos on any topic and rest assured that your content will reach a large chunk of your audience.
TikTok makes it easier than most social media platforms for your content to reach new people, since it algorithmically chooses content to display in a section called “For You.” In this section, users can review carefully curated videos that match their interests and personality.
Once your content starts to become successful, you'll start showing up in “For You” sections of regular users, introducing them to your brand and potentially drawing them into your audience.
These videos are selected based on a number of criteria determined by TikTok, including:
Organic marketing is effective because it generates natural, genuine interest in your brand and its products. However, it can also be difficult, inconsistent, and unreliable.
Even if you make amazing content, there's no guarantee it's going to reach the people you want, and no matter how engaging you are, your content will never reach 100 percent of your following. On top of that, it usually takes months, if not years to build up a strong following.
That's why many TikTok marketers turn to the world of paid advertising as an alternative.
If you have any experience with bidding on ads in Google Ads or a similar platform, TikTok Ads Manager is going to look familiar to you. The ads manager utilizes a bidding system, allowing different brands to competitively bid on ad placements.
Paid advertising allows brands to scale faster through structured advertising efforts and different ad formats, including:
Additionally, you can bid in a number of different ways:
Compared to organic marketing, paid advertising on TikTok is a practical guarantee of results; if you pay money for ads, you'll get a specific number of impressions, views, or clicks in return. Paid ads help drive sales, support lead generation, and expand reach to a wider audience, though they work best when paired with organic, relevant content. It's also much faster and easier to scale, as long as you have the budget to do it. However, users may not be willing to engage with ads as much as organic content, and the strategy can be expensive for some users.
If you’re familiar with content marketing in general, you already know some of the most important fundamentals that will lead you to success in organic TikTok marketing. But here are some additional tips that can help you build a successful TikTok marketing strategy:
These tips can help you find more success with a paid TikTok advertising strategy:
If you can't stand the idea of learning yet another new social media platform, or if you just feel overwhelmed at the thought of marketing on TikTok, your best course of action is to work with a marketing agency.
Your marketing agency can help you with every step of the process, from content creation and influencer marketing, TikTok Shop, helping you set campaign goals, helping you film and edit successful videos for distribution.
An experienced agency can help brands utilize TikTok effectively while integrating it into a broader marketing strategy across social media channels and other channels.
If you're interested in learning more about how a TikTok marketing agency can help you, or if you're ready for a free quote, contact us today!
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