What is a TikTok Business Account?
A TikTok business account is designed for brands, businesses, creators, and publishers to manage their presence and promote their products or services on TikTok. Unlike a standard personal account, business accounts unlock additional features tailored for professional use, including analytics, advertising options, and tools for engaging with followers.
Some key features and benefits of a TikTok business account include:
- Access to TikTok Analytics for in-depth audience and video performance metrics.
- Ability to promote branded content, products, websites, apps and more.
- Tools to easily manage messages and comments from followers.
- Profile optimization for brands including business categories, contacts, and additional info.
- Promoted video ads to reach new audiences with in-feed native ads.
- Lead generation via links, site traffic, and conversions tracking.
Overall, business accounts enable companies and creators to maximize their presence and achieve business objectives through the highly engaged TikTok platform.
Setting Up a TikTok Business Account
To set up a TikTok business account, you first need to convert your personal TikTok account. This can be done directly within the TikTok app by going to your profile page and tapping the menu icon in the top right corner. Then go to Settings & Privacy > Manage Account > Switch to Business Account.
TikTok will walk you through the process of converting to a business account. You’ll need to provide some basic information like a business category, business name, and contact info. TikTok also requires a business verification like a website or social media page to confirm it’s a real business.
According to TikTok’s support page, here are the requirements to convert to a business account:
– Your account must be public.
– Your account requires a profile photo and bio.
– You’ll need to provide a business category, business name, and contact info.
– Your business must be verified with a website, social media page, or business phone number (Source).
Once your business is verified and approved by TikTok, your account will be converted to a TikTok business account with access to analytics, advertising, and other business features.
Access to TikTok Analytics
One of the key benefits of a TikTok business account is access to in-depth analytics. This provides valuable insights into your content’s performance that can help guide your strategy.
The TikTok Business Suite offers analytics on growth, content performance, audience demographics, and live engagement. You can view metrics like plays, likes, comments, shares, followers gained, and more for individual posts. This helps you identify your top performing content.
You can also see aggregate data on all of your TikTok content in the analytics dashboard. This gives you a big picture view of how your account is doing over time. You can view stats like total video views, profile visits, website clicks, and follower growth.
Analytics provide actionable data to optimize your approach. You can dig into audience demographics like age, gender, geographic location. This allows you to fine tune content for your target audience. Ultimately the analytics from a TikTok business account help guide content creation and promotion to boost engagement.
TikTok Advertising Options
TikTok offers a wide variety of advertising options for businesses to promote their products and services (https://business.tiktok.com/). Some of the key advertising formats and features include:
Ad Formats:
- In-Feed Video Ads – video ads that appear in between natural, user-generated content
- Brand Takeovers – full screen ads that show when the app is launched
- TopView Ads – video ads that appear when users first open the app
- Branded Hashtag Challenges – ad campaigns that encourage user participation
- Branded AR filters and lenses
Advertising Features:
- Detailed audience targeting options (interest, behaviors, demographics, etc)
- Creative optimization for different placements
- Multiple bid strategies such as CPV, CPC, CPM, and more
- Automated creative generation and A/B testing
- Detailed campaign analytics and reporting
With precise audience targeting capabilities, TikTok ads can reach users by interests, behaviors, location, device, gender, age, and more. Businesses can create customized audiences and reach users who are likely to engage with their brand (https://www.tiktok.com/business/en-US).
Promoting Products and Services
With over 1 billion monthly active users, TikTok has become an extremely popular platform for businesses to promote their products and services. The platform’s immersive short-form video environment makes it easy for brands to showcase products in action and drive interest. TikTok has leaned into ecommerce with features like Shoppable Videos that add “Shop Now” buttons, prompting in-app purchases.
According to TikTok, the platform drives significant results for merchants. Brands utilizing TikTok’s ecommerce features have seen a 2-10x lift in conversions compared to their non-TikTok conversion rates [1]. The platform’s commerce solutions allow businesses to add shoppable product links or their online store URL to their videos and profile. This seamless shopping experience taps into the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt phenomenon, where users showcase and purchase products they discovered on TikTok.
With native TikTok traffic converting at higher rates, it presents a major opportunity for merchants to drive sales directly within the app. Brands can target engaged users who are primed to shop the moment inspiration strikes. TikTok gives businesses tools to turn that initial interest into transactions and grow revenue.
Increasing Brand Awareness
TikTok can be a powerful platform for increasing brand awareness and engagement. According to research, the average organic reach for brands on TikTok is about 118% (https://coschedule.com/blog/tiktok-influencer-marketing). The platform’s algorithm is optimized to promote entertaining and relevant content, making it possible for brands to reach a large audience without relying solely on paid advertising.
To increase brand awareness on TikTok, focus on creating branded content that resonates with your target audience. Use branded hashtags, develop a consistent visual style, and showcase your products or services in an authentic way. Collaborating with influencers who appeal to your target demographic can also expand your reach (https://lookinla.com/blog/tiktok-marketing-a-strategy-for-increasing-brand-awareness/)
Engaging with the TikTok community is another important tactic. Respond to comments, create Duets featuring user-generated content, and host challenges or campaigns. This helps build an emotional connection with your brand’s followers. Make sure to use relevant popular hashtags so your content surfaces for users interested in your brand, products or services (https://try.commentsold.com/blog/marketing-strategies/getting-my-brand-noticed-on-tiktok-tips-and-tricks/).
With strategic branded content and community engagement, TikTok can significantly increase brand awareness and ultimately drive conversions for your business.
Is a TikTok Business Account Free?
Yes, setting up and using a TikTok business account is completely free. According to TikTok’s blog, “Setting up a TikTok Business Account is free of charge and only takes a few seconds.” Upgrading an existing personal account to a business account does not cost anything either.
The terms of service do not indicate any fees associated with a standard business account. As long as your content and account abide by TikTok’s community guidelines and terms of use, you can take advantage of a business profile’s features without paying anything. TikTok offers business accounts as a free tool to help brands, businesses, creators and organizations reach their target audiences and promote themselves on the platform.
TikTok Pro Account Option
TikTok offers a Pro account option for more advanced users who want additional features beyond the standard TikTok account. Pro accounts provide users with analytics about their videos and account growth, allowing them to better understand their audience and fine-tune their content strategy. According to TikTok’s website, Pro accounts give creators and brands access to “valuable insights to orient your content strategy and grow your audience.”
While TikTok’s basic accounts are completely free, Pro accounts offer premium tools for marketers and content creators. Key features of a TikTok Pro account include:
- Advanced analytics on video performance
- Audience demographics and interests
- Content planning and publishing tools
- Account management features
The good news is that TikTok Pro accounts are currently still free for all users. TikTok has not yet announced pricing plans or subscriptions for Pro accounts. To upgrade to a Pro account, users simply need to switch their account type in the app settings. So any user can easily unlock the Pro analytics and tools at no cost by following TikTok’s instructions to “ask for a Pro account.”
Managing Multiple Accounts
For users who wish to maintain multiple TikTok accounts for personal and business use, there are a few ways to easily switch between and manage the accounts on a single device.
Within the TikTok app, users can log out of one account and log into another by tapping the “Me” icon in the bottom right and selecting “Log out”. After logging out, simply enter the username and password for the other account you wish to access.
This allows seamless switching between any accounts you own, though it can be time consuming to repeatedly log in and out. Using a third party app like GoLogin allows streamlined access to multiple accounts, with the ability to switch between different TikTok identities in just one click according to a recent blog from GoLogin.
With a multi-account manager, users can also easily monitor analytics and engagement across different accounts simultaneously. This provides a centralized hub for controlling brand accounts, personal profiles,Creator accounts, and more from a single platform.
Maintaining separate accounts for business and personal use is permitted by TikTok, and using tools to manage them simply makes the process more efficient.
The Value for Business Use
Having a business account on TikTok can provide significant value and return on investment for brands and businesses. Some of the key benefits include:
Increased brand awareness and reach – TikTok’s large user base, especially among younger demographics, gives businesses access to a massive audience to get their brand and content in front of.
Targeted advertising capabilities – TikTok Ads Manager allows for highly targeted and precise ad campaigns based on demographics, interests, behaviors and more. Businesses can promote content, products, offers and more to relevant audiences.
Viral potential for branded content – The right branded content done well can spread widely on TikTok, as its algorithm is very effective at pushing trending and engaging content.
Direct sales capabilities – TikTok’s shoppable video features allow businesses to tag and sell products directly within their videos, enabling seamless shopping experiences.
Valuable analytics and insights – TikTok Analytics provides data on content performance, audience demographics and engagement that can inform content and marketing strategy.
There are many success stories of major brands finding great results from TikTok. For example, the NBA ran an ad campaign for the 2022 Finals focused on TikTok and generated over 2 billion video views. Beauty brand Elf Cosmetics saw their TikTok videos drive a 57% increase in website traffic. Retailer Hollister achieved an 11% lift in store traffic with its #BackToHollister challenge campaign. The results showcase the tangible ROI and impact TikTok can have for businesses.
