TikTok is a rapidly growing social media platform focused on short-form videos. As of 2022, TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide (Source). With its huge audience, highly engaged users, and video-first format, TikTok offers an exciting opportunity for brands to promote their products.
Creating branded content on TikTok can help businesses increase awareness, engagement, and sales. The platform’s algorithm is optimized to quickly deliver relevant and entertaining content to each user. By leveraging popular trends and hashtags, brands can get their videos seen and shared by large numbers of targeted users.
In this guide, we’ll walk through the key steps for creating and optimizing a branded TikTok account. We’ll cover how to set up a TikTok business account, customize your profile, understand your target audience, produce engaging videos, promote your content, and analyze your performance.
Create a TikTok Business Account
The first step to posting products on TikTok is to switch your personal account to a TikTok business account. This allows you to access useful analytics and other business features. According to TikTok’s support page, switching to a business account enables features like Analytics, Workspace, Activity and Support [1].
The key benefits of switching to a TikTok business account include:
- Access to analytics on your content performance, helping you optimize your strategy.
- Ability to promote your website or online store through links in your bio.
- Tools to manage messages and comments from followers.
- Ability to use TikTok’s ads platform to boost content.
Overall, a business account provides data, tools and exposure options to help businesses and creators grow their audience on TikTok. Converting to a business profile takes just a few taps, and unlocks features vital for effective product promotion.
Optimize Your TikTok Profile
Optimizing your TikTok profile is an important step to help showcase your brand and products. Here are some tips:
Add your brand name, logo, website, and other relevant info to your profile. This helps establish your brand identity. According to this source, your bio is valuable real estate to share your brand story.
Create an eye-catching profile photo that represents your brand. Use your logo or product imagery. According to this article, the profile photo is one of the first things people will see, so make sure it looks professional.
Craft an interesting bio that engages your audience. Briefly explain what you do and your value proposition. Include relevant hashtags and a strong call to action, like “Shop now” with a link. Check out these examples for inspiration.
Fill out the website field with a link to your online store or product page. Add contact info and links to other social profiles like Instagram.
Using optimization best practices for your TikTok profile will help you stand out, drive traffic, and get more eyes on your products.
Understand Your Audience
One of the most important steps to successfully marketing a product on TikTok is understanding your target audience. Research what types of content perform well in your product’s niche by exploring relevant hashtags and sounds.
You can gain insights into your audience’s interests by typing keywords related to your product into the TikTok search bar. Look at the popular videos, effects, and audios used in that niche. Pay attention to the content that goes viral and gets high engagement. This will give you ideas for how to best appeal to your audience.
For example, if you sell makeup, search beauty-related hashtags like #makeup or #beautytok. Analyze trends in music, effects, challenges, captions, and video styles. Observe what connects with viewers and what compels them to like, comment and share. Use these learnings when creating your own videos.
You can also check out TikTok’s creative center for inspiration on what performs well in your niche: https://www.tiktok.com/business/en-US/blog/how-to-connect-with-your-target-audience-on-tiktok
Getting inside the minds of your ideal audience is key for creating engaging and relevant content that converts viewers into customers.
Create Engaging Video Content
When promoting a product on TikTok, it’s important to create fun, engaging video content that will capture your audience’s attention. Here are some best practices for product TikTok videos:
Be creative and entertaining. Don’t just show your product – tell a story or create a skit that highlights your product in an entertaining way. Comedy, drama, and suspense are great hooks to draw viewers in. Use effects, text, stickers, and popular TikTok sounds to make your video lively and fun to watch.
Use popular TikTok trends and features. Stay on top of the latest viral TikTok challenges, effects, sounds, and hashtags that are gaining views. Find ways to organically work these into videos showcasing your product. Duets, reaction and transition videos are also very popular right now.
Short, snappy videos work best. TikTok videos are typically 10-60 seconds long. Keep your videos focused and succinct. You want to highlight your key product benefits and features in a compelling, easy-to-digest way.
Show your product in action. Don’t just hold up your product to the camera. Demonstrate how it works, its features, and the value it provides. Lifestyle videos of people using your product in real world settings perform very well.
Leverage influencers and creators. Partner with TikTok influencers in your niche to organically showcase and endorse your product in their own style. This brings authenticity and taps into their existing audience.
Showcase Your Product
Strategically revealing and highlighting your product in TikTok videos is key to promoting it effectively. Avoid showing the full product right away. Tease it first to build intrigue. Use partial reveals, unique angles, and close-ups to showcase the most eye-catching elements.
Demo your product’s features and benefits in an engaging way. Don’t just talk about what it does – show your audience firsthand. Explain how it works while demonstrating. Point out key selling points and how they improve the user’s experience. https://www.shopify.com/blog/tiktok-video-ideas suggests making comparison videos to highlight advantages over competitors.
Get creative with visuals. Use graphics, animations or text on-screen to call attention to important features. Pair demos with your brand’s personality and style. The goal is to make your content entertaining and memorable, not just promotional. With smart product integration, you can turn a standard TikTok into an effective marketing tool.
Encourage Engagement
Engagement is critical for growing your audience and reach on TikTok. There are several effective ways to encourage more engagement on your videos:
Ask questions in your video captions to spark discussion in the comments. You can ask for opinions, recommendations, or feedback. Responding to commenters shows you value their input.
Run contests and giveaways to increase likes, shares, and follows. Require users to tag friends, follow you, or use a branded hashtag to enter. Offering prizes like your products, gift cards, or discounts incentivizes participation.
Go live and interact with viewers in real-time. Livestreams allow you to have candid conversations and build personal connections.
Respond to every comment you receive. This shows followers you are invested in engaging with them. Ask follow-up questions to keep conversation going.
Duet and stitch other users’ videos to put your own spin on trends. This exposes you to new audiences and demonstrates your interest in the community.
Cross-promote your TikTok content on other social channels to maximize reach. Encourage established followers on Instagram or Facebook to engage with your TikTok.
According to research from PlannThat, using these engagement tactics can help boost your overall engagement rate on TikTok.
Use Branded Hashtags
Hashtags are essential for getting your TikTok videos seen by others. Researching and using relevant niche hashtags will help your content be discovered by people interested in your product or industry. Some popular niches on TikTok include fashion, food, travel, pets, dance, comedy, and DIY. Tools like Social Pilot’s TikTok Hashtag Finder can help you identify trending hashtags to use.
You’ll also want to create your own branded hashtag featuring your business name, product, or slogan. Encourage your audience to use it in their own content as well. This helps spread brand awareness and gives you a way to track user-generated content.
Cross-Promote
Once you’ve created great content on TikTok, it’s important to cross-promote it on other platforms to reach new audiences. This expands your reach and helps drive more traffic back to your TikTok account. Here are some tips for effective cross-promotion:
Share your TikTok videos on other social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. You can directly upload the TikTok video or download it and re-upload it natively. Make sure to include your TikTok handle in the caption. According to The Art of TikTok Cross-Promotion, asking influencers you’ve collaborated with to share your TikTok content can be an effective cross-promotion strategy.
Repurpose your TikTok content by turning it into other formats like static images, gifs, or even blog posts. For example, you can take a compelling scene from your TikTok video and turn it into a gif or image to share on Instagram. You can also take your caption and expand it into a blog post. Remember to link back to your TikTok account on these other pieces of content.
Strategic cross-promotion gives your content new life across multiple platforms. It helps you maximize the value of your TikTok videos and grow your overall brand presence.
Analyze Performance
It’s important to analyze your TikTok account’s performance to understand what’s working and optimize future content. Use TikTok’s built-in analytics to track key metrics. In the app, go to your profile, tap the 3 bars in the top right, and select “Analytics”.
You can view metrics like total video views, profile views, followers, and likes. See which videos are your top performers. Check referral traffic to understand where viewers are coming from – TikTok’s algorithm, hashtags, other profiles, etc. This article explains how to leverage TikTok analytics.
Regularly monitoring performance metrics will help you tailor content and messaging to maximize engagement. Focus on creating more videos that drive the results you want. This guide covers key TikTok metrics to analyze. With the right analytics, you can grow your TikTok presence and effectively promote products.
