TikTok has rapidly grown to become one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 1 billion monthly active users as of 2023 according to Backlinko (Source). The appeal of TikTok lies in its short-form, entertaining videos that can quickly go viral and reach a massive audience. Having a large following and high view counts on TikTok has become highly desirable, turning regular users into internet celebrities. With its huge userbase, TikTok offers major opportunities for brands and individuals to promote themselves and grow their audiences. There are several options available to promote TikTok accounts, including leveraging TikTok’s advertising platform, collaborating with popular creators, using hashtag challenges, and cross-promoting across other social platforms. This article will provide an overview of the different tactics and tools for promoting TikTok accounts, their costs, and tips for measuring return on investment.
Organic Growth
Organic growth on TikTok refers to gaining followers, likes, shares, and engagement without paid tactics like advertising. Here are some key tips for growing a TikTok account organically:
Optimize your content and captions with relevant hashtags that make it easy for users to find your videos. Use trending sounds, effects, and viral challenges to increase visibility. Post consistently, at least once per day, and at peak times when your audience is most active.
Interact with your audience by liking comments, responding to questions, and engaging with viewers who appreciate your content. Collaborate with micro and nano influencers in your niche to cross-promote content. Develop an authentic brand identity that resonates with your target demographic.
Cross-promote your TikTok content on other platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter to drive traffic. Add TikTok links to your Instagram bio and YouTube descriptions. Reuse top-performing TikTok videos on other channels. Encourage viewers to follow your TikTok from other social profiles.
Duet top influencers and creators in your niche when it makes sense. This puts your content side-by-side with bigger accounts. Make reaction and response videos to trending memes and challenges. All of these tactics can expand your reach and gain impressions from a wider audience.
TikTok Ads
TikTok’s advertising platform allows businesses and creators to promote content, engage with audiences, and drive conversions on the platform. Some key things to know about TikTok ads:
There are several ad formats available including In-Feed Videos, Brand Takeovers, Branded Hashtag Challenges, and more. Ads can be targeted by demographics, interests, behaviors, and placed either in TikTok’s newsfeed or on specific videos.
The minimum ad spend to launch a TikTok ad campaign is $50 per day. Campaigns can be optimized for awareness, traffic, conversions, app installs, and more. Budgets can be allocated across multiple ad sets.
The average cost per click for TikTok ads is approximately $1 and is based on a bidding system. CPM rates vary but tend to range from $5-$12 on average. Conversion costs depend on your goals, target audience, and competition.
Overall, TikTok advertising provides a way to reach the platform’s young user base in a native, engaging format. With strategic targeting and creative optimized for the platform, TikTok ads can be an effective promotional tool for many brands.
Influencer Marketing
Paying influencers to promote your content on TikTok is a common and effective promotion tactic. According to IZEA, the average cost for a sponsored post on TikTok is $3,514 (https://izea.com/resources/how-much-do-tiktok-influencers-charge/). However, prices vary greatly depending on the influencer’s follower count and engagement.
Nano influencers with 1,000 to 10,000 followers may charge $20 to $100 per post. Micro influencers with 10,000 to 50,000 followers typically charge $100 to $500. Macro influencers with over 50,000 followers can charge $500 to $5,000 or more.
When negotiating pricing with an influencer, consider their niche, content quality, audience engagement, and whether the partnership will be one-off or long-term. Require genuine promotion that aligns with the influencer’s brand, instead of a one-time shout-out. Establish clear expectations for content, captions, hashtags, links, and performance tracking.
With strategic influencer partnerships, you can expand your TikTok reach and engagement authentically. Just be sure to work with creators who truly resonate with your brand and target audience.
Hashtag Challenges
Hashtag challenges are branded marketing campaigns on TikTok where a brand sponsors a branded hashtag for users to create content around. The hashtag is promoted on TikTok’s Discover page and users are encouraged to participate in the challenge by creating videos using the sponsored hashtag.
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the cost for a sponsored hashtag challenge starts at $150,000. This base fee gets the hashtag featured on TikTok’s Discover page for 6 days. Additional costs apply for extending the length of the campaign beyond 6 days.
For more interactive branded challenges, there is an additional cost of $160,000 for the Hashtag Challenge Plus feature according to inBeat Agency. This allows brands to supplement the hashtag challenge with their own landing page that aggregates the challenge submissions.
Successful hashtag challenges in the past have come from major brands like Guess, Chipotle, and Ocean Spray. For example, Chipotle’s #ChipotleLidFlip challenge received over 130,000 video submissions. The interactive and fun nature of the challenge resonated with the TikTok audience.
Cross-Platform Promotion
One effective way to promote a TikTok account is by leveraging other platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. You can promote your TikTok content by sharing it natively on these sites or running paid ads.
To share TikTok videos natively on Instagram, you can download your TikTok videos and upload them directly to Instagram as regular posts or IG Stories. There is no additional cost to promote your content this way beyond your time.
YouTube also allows you to natively upload and share your TikTok videos. Again, no extra costs beyond your time to repost content.
For paid ads, you can run TikTok video ads on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Instagram video ads tend to cost between $0.10-$0.30 per view depending on targeting and delivery. Facebook video ads cost around $0.15-$0.30 per view.
So cross-promoting your TikTok content on sites like Instagram and Facebook via natively sharing or running paid video ads can be an effective and relatively affordable promotion tactic.
Talent Agencies
Working with a TikTok talent or influencer agency can be an effective way to promote your account. Agencies represent top TikTok creators and will collaborate with brands to create sponsored content and campaigns. Some key benefits of agency representation include:
– Access to top influencers with millions of engaged followers. This provides built-in reach and exposure.
– Campaign management. The agency handles collab negotiations, content strategy, contracts, payments, etc.
– Measurement and optimization. Agencies provide in-depth analytics on campaign performance.
Pricing varies but typically involves monthly packages. According to Clickstalent, pricing starts at $500/month to access their network of 50k+ influencers. The cost scales up based on factors like number of influencers, post requirements, audience size, etc. Overall working with an established TikTok talent agency provides a proven pathway for promoting accounts through influencer marketing.
Other Promo Tactics
There are a few other promotional tactics TikTok creators can utilize to gain more exposure and followers:
- Spotify audio ads – These display a TikTok video ad on Spotify between songs. Costs range from $0.015 to $0.03 per view based on targeting.
- TikTok LIVE gifts/badges – Fans can purchase virtual gifts to send creators during livestreams, with creators getting a cut. The more expensive the gift, the bigger the creator’s share.
- Contest and giveaway prizes – Creators can offer prizes like free merchandise or cash to reward fans for participating in contests. Prize budgets vary greatly.
- Physical merchandise – Having custom clothing, accessories, or other physical items made to sell to fans. Production costs depend on merchandise type and quantity.
While these tactics don’t have fixed costs like ads, they incentivize fans to engage more with a creator’s content. The resulting growth and exposure can be valuable.
Measuring ROI
When running TikTok ad campaigns, it’s important to track key metrics to understand the return on your spending and optimize future efforts. Some key metrics to monitor include:
- Impressions – The number of times your ads are displayed.
- Reach – The number of unique users who see your ads.
- Engagement rate – The percentage of users who engage with your ad content by liking, commenting, clicking etc.
- Click-through rate (CTR) – The ratio of clicks to impressions, indicating how many users interacted with your ad.
- Cost per click (CPC) – How much you pay when someone clicks your ad.
- Conversions – Users completing a desired action like visiting your site, making a purchase etc.
- Return on ad spend (ROAS) – Revenue generated per dollar spent on advertising.
Analyzing these metrics can determine the success of your promotions and calculate ROI. For example, tracking engagements, CTRs, conversions and ROAS over time provides insight into how well your ads convert users into buyers. Setting benchmarks for your campaign goals allows you to correlate growth in conversions and sales to your ad spend. Optimizing for key metrics like CTR and engagement rate can improve conversions and ROAS. Continuously monitoring performance and tweaking targeting, creative, bidding strategy based on insights ties growth directly to your bottom line.
Summary
There are several effective options for promoting a TikTok account, ranging from free organic growth tactics to paid advertising and influencer campaigns. While organic growth takes more time, you can start seeing results from paid tactics like TikTok ads within days. Here’s a quick recap of the main promotion methods discussed:
- Organic growth – Using hashtags, trends, high-quality content. Free but slower results.
- TikTok ads – Paid ads via TikTok Ads Manager. Results fast but requires ad budget.
- Influencers – Paying influencers for promotions/collaborations. Varies based on influencer rates.
- Hashtag challenges – Sponsoring branded hashtag challenge. Costs at least $150,000.
- Cross-platform – Leveraging other platforms like Instagram. Free but more effort.
- Talent agencies – Hiring an agency to handle promotions. Expensive but hands-off.
When setting your TikTok promotion budget, focus first on low-cost organic tactics, then expand into paid options like influencers and ads as needed to achieve your goals. Monitor performance closely and adjust spending according to your targets and ROI. Aim for a healthy mix of organic and paid tactics tailored to your brand and audience.
