TikTok is the new kid on the block when it comes to social media marketing. It’s popularity is exploding right now with people seemingly joining the platform from everywhere. With TikTok’s growing user base comes the opportunity for businesses to market their products and services.
Here are some easy to follow marketing strategies businesses can use to tap into people on TikTok.
What Is TikTok?
TikTok is an app built around short-form videos no longer than 15 seconds. Most of the videos are musical, with lip-syncing being especially prominent.
They don’t have to be musical, though. Funny videos, dances, and challenge videos are becoming more common, too. It has a strong focus on localized content, and while it has no traditional ads, many brands are using it as a new marketing platform in which they can get the users to create brand-related content.
Who Uses TikTok?
Since launching, TikTok racked up millions of downloads globally and as of early 2019, TikTok was the third most downloadable app globally.
![TikTok app downloads [source: SensorTower]](https://socialmediarevolver.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/TikTokAppDownloads.gif "TikTok app downloads [source: SensorTower]")
From the very beginning, TikTok targeted Generation Z. About 50% of TikTok’s global users are under the age of 34, and about 60% of their users are male. It’s used globally but it’s most popular in the United States, India, and China. In China, however, it operates under a different name called Douyin.
How Can Businesses Use TikTok?
Since Tik Tok is so different from most social media platforms, it can be difficult at first to figure out how to use TikTok for your business.
Here are the best tips for using TikTok as a business:
Make Your Own Content
TikTok is famous for spawning viral videos. It’s free to use but you end up with far more clicks than you would on a more typical social network. You can easily end up with multiple viral marketing videos that cost you nothing to create. In fact, you can end up with viral marketing videos that were made by customers, not you.
The first step is to make your own content and be as creative as possible with it. Then you need to be consistent by posting regularly. TikTok is an environment that demands new content regularly, so you can’t just do one or two posts a month and expect a flood of new customers. Instead, create a content calendar for yourself and aim to post at least once per week. If you can do more than that, that’s even better.
Just like in the example below, Chipotle, a popular Mexican restaurant chain created a simple, yet creative video on their TikTok account to drive brand awareness.
@chipotleThe internet is wild #oneyearoftiktok♬ #Me at the concert – #someonelikeyou
Using TikTok for marketing is going to force you to be extra creative. You’ve got fifteen seconds to create a video that will capture people’s attention and inspire a response.
Hashtag Challenges
These challenges are one of the most essential parts of TikTok marketing. You may be familiar with them because of Jimmy Fallon. He regularly issues hashtag challenges and gets a huge response from his fan base.
Hashtag challenges can be as simple as asking people to make videos of them using your product. You’ll be surprised at how creative some of them can get with an open-ended challenge like that. The best part is that this is actually low-effort, free marketing for your business. All you have to do is come up with the hashtag, and maybe one video of your own to get things started.
[See related post: 10 Good Reasons Why You Should Use Hashtags In Social Media Marketing]
User-Generated Content
We mentioned that your own customers might end up going viral and doing your marketing work for you. That’s really one of the best features of TikTok.
User-generated content is similar to hashtag challenges, but without the hashtag. All you really do here is ask people to make videos of them using your product or service, or eating at your restaurant, and post it to TikTok. You can also ask influencers to do this for you, and have them encourage their followers to do the same.
User-generated content like that can go viral quickly. More importantly, more than one user video can go viral at the same time. It can skyrocket brand awareness overnight and bring in customers like nothing else.
Influencer Marketing On TikTok
This works more or less exactly the same way that influencer marketing works on any video platform. You just need to find an influencer whose audience will like your product or service.
Once you’ve done that, leave the content up to your influencer, they already know what their audience likes. Sometimes all you have to do is encourage them to make a video while wearing or using your product, even if the video content isn’t about your brand specifically. People will see them wearing or using your product, and they’ll want to buy it.
Remember though that this only works if your product is something the influencer would actually use. TikTok is geared toward Generation Z. Don’t market products for older folks on this platform, it just won’t work.
Since TikTok is focused on a younger generation, you don’t need to worry about production value. Gen Z isn’t interested in things like that. They want fun, unique content, and they don’t care if it’s amateur-looking.
Pay For Ads
You can put paid ads on TikTok, and they can be very effective. To do so, you first have to create a TikTok Ads account. It may take up to 48 hours to set up an ads account, but once that’s done the process of creating ads is simple.
In the TikTok Ads dashboard, you click on Campaign, and then you select the goal of your campaign. You choose between Traffic, Conversations, and App Install, depending on what you want people to do after they see your ad.
You then set your campaign budget, choosing either a daily budget option or a total budget option. The minimum for each is $500. You then choose your ad placement – The automatic placement options puts your ad where TikTok thinks it will be most effective.
You’ll then follow the prompts to enter keywords, URL’s, and images that you want in your ad. Next is the targeting section, if you’ve ever run targeted Facebook ads then you’ll notice Tik Tok has a lot of similarities where you can set location, age, gender, device, interest and language parameters to target your ads at the desired audience.
You can also choose the pacing (how quickly you go through your budget) and the schedule and duration of your ad campaign. Finally, you decide if you want to optimize your ads for conversion (they buy your product or service), clicks, or impressions.
Then you actually design your ad using TikTok’s Video Creation Kit. They can be in-feed ads that simply appear on a users feed, or brand-takeovers that become the first thing a person sees when they open the app.
Conclusion
TikTok is a rapidly growing platform that offers a great way to reach younger consumers with engaging videos.
Even better…
Tik Tok is still a relatively new advertising platform compared to more traditional online marketing strategies like Facebook Ads and Google Adwords meaning there is a great opportunity to leverage this platform before your competitors catch on.
[Images – Main: TikTok; #stickemup: Freerange, Gratisography, Creative Commons CC0 ;other images from their respective websites and/or social platforms]
Kat is the Co-founder and Head of Strategy at Engine Scout, a boutique Digital Marketing Agency based in Melbourne, Australia. Engine Scout helps businesses to generate more sales through the combined power of Google and Social Media.