TikTok presents a valuable opportunity for brands looking to expand their marketing efforts. The platform offers unmatched reach amongst the coveted Gen Z demographic and powerful engagement potential driven by its addictive video experience and algorithmic curation.
Brands that adopt TikTok early can organically build a large, high-engagement audience of fans and community members interested in their brand story and products.
The short video ad format provides a canvas for innovative, attention-grabbing creative content that represents a brand’s identity in an authentic way.
However, realizing TikTok’s potential requires investing adequate creative, community management and analytical resources.
Challenges like adapting content strategy, creating mobile-first short videos and quantifying ROI need measured experimentation and perseverance.
But brands that embrace the platform’s culture and establish an authentic presence can gain valuable exposure and cultivate lasting engagement with future consumers.
Key Benefits of Using TikTok for Business
Here are some of the major benefits brands can get from having a presence on TikTok:
Massive reach and engagement
TikTok provides access to a massive audience, the majority of whom are in the coveted 13-34 demographic.
This provides a great opportunity for brands to get discovered and connect with new audiences organically.
Viral potential
TikTok’s algorithmically driven For You feed is very effective at surfacing trending content and creators.
A single video on the platform can go massively viral very quickly if it resonates with TikTok audiences. This provides a valuable opportunity for businesses to expand brand awareness at scale.
A catchy branded video campaign or challenge has the potential to accumulate millions of views.
Authentic community building
The platform’s focus on bite-sized fun content presented in a casual format allows brands to showcase their authentic personality.
Businesses have an opportunity to creatively engage with audiences and influencers to organically build a community around shared interests, values and culture.
Creative storytelling
TikTok’s short video format lends itself well to creative visual storytelling. Businesses can leverage music, effects, captions and more to craft everything from fun behind-the-scenes videos to educational content that informs and engages viewers. The bite-sized content is perfect for conveying quick tips, tricks, hacks, and product USPs.
Strong targeting capabilities
TikTok offers a range of built-in targeting, filtering and analytics capabilities. Businesses can target their promotions based on user interests, demographics, device, location and more. They can also track performance with metrics like impressions, reach, engagement etc. Ads can be optimized for objectives ranging from video views, followers, to sales conversions.
Shopping and ecommerce features
For ecommerce brands, TikTok offers features like auto-tagged shoppable video ads, on-profile shop tabs and in-app shopping capabilities that help drive product discovery and sales. The platform is continuously enhancing its commerce features to deliver more seamless shopping experiences.
Partner programs and advertising
TikTok offers a TikTok Partner Program that allows creators to monetize their content through advertising revenue share. Brands can leverage influential creators through effective influencer marketing campaigns. TikTok’s advertising platform also provides a self-serve ad interface for businesses to set up and run a variety of performant video and image ads with built-in optimization.
Challenges and Considerations for Brands on TikTok
While TikTok presents exciting opportunities for businesses, there are also some challenges to keep in mind:
Understanding the TikTok audience
TikTok’s audience skews very young, with over 50% estimated to be under 34 years old. Brands need to understand how to grab their attention and communicate with them in an authentic way. Content and engagement strategies that work well on other platforms may not translate directly to TikTok.
Adapting brand voice
The fun, casual vibe of TikTok requires brands to adapt their brand voice when creating content. Stiff corporate speak will not work well on this platform. Brands may need to loosen up and engage with more humor, irreverence and inside jokes to blend in better.
Creating vertical short-form video
Creating cohesive and engaging short vertical videos with just 15-60 seconds is a big creative challenge for brands used to horizontal landscape content. Companies will need to learn how to quickly convey their brand story and value in a bite-sized format tailored for a TikTok audience.
Investing time in trending content
TikTok moves fast, with trends changing daily. Brands need to be willing to continuously experiment with new trends, memes, effects and challenges bubbling up in the community. Investing adequate creative resources for reacting fast to trends is key.
Measuring ROI
While TikTok provides strong reach and engagement metrics, quantifying ROI and sales impact poses challenges. Brands need to measure beyond just vanity metrics and track performances via links, ads and influencer promo codes to quantify ROI.
Maintaining consistency
The TikTok algorithm favors accounts that maintain consistent posting activity. Sporadic, infrequent posting can cost brands their hard-earned audience. Maintaining content calendars and allocating resources is key.
Standing out in a competitive space
Big brands with large budgets have already established a strong presence on TikTok. For smaller brands, standing out with their content and cutting through the noise poses a real challenge.
Types of Content That Perform Well on TikTok
When it comes to content, TikTok is all about fun, entertaining, engaging videos. Some formats that tend to do well include:
Challenges
Challenges often spread like wildfire on TikTok, with users posting their own take on trending hashtag challenges. Brands can ride on trending challenges or launch their own branded challenge.
Reaction videos
Users love reacting to other videos, memes, or sounds via creative reaction videos. Brands can join trending reaction formats or prompt reactions with their own content.
Dance videos
Short form dance videos set to catchy music are hugely popular on TikTok. Brands can create their own choreographed dances or sponsor dance challenges.
Self-deprecating humor
The TikTok audience responds well to brands that are self-aware enough to poke fun at themselves. Clever self-deprecating humor humanizes brands.
Behind-the-scenes
The community loves being given a peek behind the curtain. Brands can showcase company culture, office hijinks, product manufacturing or brand history in fun behind-the-scenes style.
Life hacks
Short tutorials with clever life hacks and tips resonate strongly, especially for product brands. Quick demos of unique selling propositions and use cases get attention.
Memes
TikTok thrives on video memes and ironic digital culture. Brands that blend into trends by putting their own spin on viral memes can gain traction.
5 Steps to Building an Effective TikTok Strategy for Business
Here are 5 key steps brands can follow to develop an optimized TikTok marketing strategy:
1. Analyze your niche, competitors and audience
Study TikTok videos and creators in your industry niche to understand what engages that target audience. Research competitors on TikTok as well to benchmark content formats and engagement levels. Use TikTok analytics to identify and segment your ideal audience demographics.
2. Set clear goals and KPIs
Define your objectives clearly upfront – do you want to drive brand awareness? Product sales? Community engagement? Establish key performance indicators to track the success of your TikTok marketing. Metrics like video views, followers, shares, engagement rate, traffic driven and sales generated are helpful.
3. Develop engaging content formats
Brainstorm creative ways to adapt your brand messaging into fun, engaging short video content optimized for TikTok. Experiment with trends, memes, effects, captions and more. Create content around holidays, events and seasonal moments your audience cares about.
4. Leverage influencer marketing
Influencers with an aligned audience can help grow your presence. Partner with nano and micro influencers in your niche to produce collaborative content and run sponsored campaigns. Make sure to use trackable links or codes to quantify results.
5. Analyze performance and iterate
Analyze your top performing content formats, ingredients and types. Double down on what works while phasing out lower performing content. Continuously adapt and optimize your content based on performance data to improve engagement and conversions.
Creative TikTok Campaign Examples
Here are some examples of impactful TikTok campaigns by brands:
Chipotle #ChipotleLidFlip Challenge
The burrito brand launched a viral challenge that invited TikTok users to flip Chipotle lids into the air and land them on the lid seam upside down. Set to an original soundtrack, the #ChipotleLidFlip challenge amassed 104 million video views in just 6 days, showcasing the creative possibilities for brands on TikTok.
Guess #InMyDenim Challenge
Fashion label Guess partnered with TikTok megastars Charli and Dixie D’Amelio to launch a sponsored challenge that racked up 3 billion TikTok video views. The challenge inspired users to create transitions from loungewear to Guess denim outfits, amplifying the brand’s new denim line launch.
NBA Team Campaigns
The NBA developed team-specific TikTok campaigns that aimed to drive followers, ticket sales and community engagement. Fun content leveraged challenges, behind-the-scenes videos, celebrity cameos, memes and more. NBA teams with a strong TikTok presence saw tangibly higher ticket sales and engagement.
elf Cosmetics Hashtag Challenges
elf Cosmetics ran hashtag challenges like #eyeslipsface and #elfmagic that inspired users to showcase makeup looks and creativity using the brand’s products. The accessible, everyday brand racked up over 2.5 billion TikTok views across their campaigns.
Google Pixel 6 Launch Campaign
Google launched an integrated TikTok campaign for their Pixel 6 phone targeting younger audiences. The campaign used TopView ads, branded effects, influencer videos and organic content focused on highlighting Pixel 6’s key features in cool, creative ways optimized for TikTok’s engagement mechanisms.
5 Effective Tips to Boost Your TikTok Marketing Results
Here are some proven tips to help improve TikTok campaign results for businesses:
Leverage paid advertising
Complement organic content with paid advertising through TikTok’s self-serve ad platform. Their range of ad units like Brand Takeover, In-Feed Video and TopView ads can help scale campaign reach and conversions.
Optimize video elements for mobile
Ensure visuals are well-lit, in focus and optimized for a mobile screen. Use graphics, text and captions that are legible on a smartphone. Remember video is consumed without sound by many users.
Use relevant hashtags and challenges
Include hashtags and @mentions related to your brand, offering and target audience to get discovered. Tie into trending hashtag challenges popular in your niche to tap into engagement.
Retain viewers till the end
Reveal information across the video to build intrigue to retain the viewer. Include a strong call to action at the end for the user to follow, like or share. Cliffhanger endings work well to boost completion rates.
Interact with your audience
Liking, commenting and reposting user generated content shows audiences that there’s a real person managing your TikTok account. Proactively interact to build a relationship with your community.
The Verdict: Is TikTok Worth It for Business?
In summary, the answer depends on the brand, objectives and investment capacity. Given TikTok’s rising popularity and marketing power, especially among young audiences, most brands should consider having some presence on TikTok. With the right strategy, creativity and persistence, TikTok does offer a unique opportunity to engage, entertain and inspire the next generation of consumers.
