TikTok Marketing Strategies
Using the following seven strategies, any company can advertise its products innovatively and creatively on TikTok.
As the age of social media continues to advance, a plethora of media platforms are emerging. Providing new and exciting features previously unavailable, these new companies are building off of their predecessors to create innovative and captivating content for their users. The hottest new social media network is none other than the short video platform known as TikTok, which boasts an impressive 1 billion monthly active users, and has become especially popular among Gen Z.
Through TikTok, users can create and upload short clips covering a wide range of topics, including pranks, dances, makeup tutorials, and life advice which are among the most prominent.
Part of TikTok’s draw is that every single one of its users has the potential to create viral content that can land at the top of its front page—which is known as the For You Page—which shows relevant content to millions of people. Because of this ability to reach large and diverse audiences worldwide, TikTok has created a compelling, unique, and successful marketing platform that allows brands and creators to market themselves personally and authentically.
TikTok has become a trend-setter across the industry, with legacy platforms like Instagram and YouTube scrambling to copy its hypnotic formula. As it continues to grow in use among the general population, it will become increasingly important to optimize all the features that TikTok has to offer its users. Using the following seven strategies, any company can advertise its products innovatively and creatively on TikTok.
Using Relevant Hashtags
One surefire Tiktok Marketing Strategy is using relevant hashtags alongside your content. This allows people to access your content more easily and enable you to market to your target audience more effectively. In addition, hashtags allow people to quickly find videos relating to the topics they are interested in, so choosing the right hashtags will help you reach your niche.
More general, broad hashtags such as #foryoupage or #fyp and #viral can help your content reach a wider audience by placing it on more For You Pages. So even if your content winds up lower on the FYP, it will allow people to find your content and discover your brand without searching for it.
Specific hashtags can help consumers find your videos. For example, if a clothing brand used hashtags such as #fashion or #outfits, it would make them more available to consumers browsing the hashtags they are interested in. TikTok is also unique because it has many different communities of users who self-identify with their interests and use corresponding hashtags, such as #booktok, a hashtag for the TikTok reading community. Therefore, hashtags that correspond with distinct TikTok audiences allow you to market to those communities.
TikTok’s Creative Center is a valuable tool for finding which hashtags are gaining the most traction or are already trending. In addition, you can use it to gain insights into which hashtags are most popular with your brand’s target audience so you can make strategic decisions when choosing the hashtags to include in your content.
Uploading Consistently
The more often and consistently you upload content on TikTok, the higher the chance that your video gets placed on other users’ For You Pages, which will allow more people to interact with your content and create a broader reach.
According to TikTok, businesses should post 1-4 times every day to gauge audience interactions. Because TikTok has so many users and is so saturated with content, it is important to post consistently to ensure that your content gets featured on the For You page.
Uploading consistently also helps you to gain insight into which strategies and content are the most successful. For example, suppose multiple videos posted on the same day generate vastly different metrics. You’ll need to compare the videos and discern which combinations of hashtags, audios, and content styles are the most effective.
Maintaining a consistent upload schedule also helps you determine what time of the day your audience is active, so you can regularly publish your content for when it’ll receive the most engagement.
TikTok’s Ad Platform
TikTok has an extensive and highly effective ad platform that offers users a wide range of resources. The ad suite serves as the cornerstone of your TikTok marketing strategy. Through the TikTok For Business platform, brands are allowed to create a business account with access to a variety of useful and innovative tools. We’ll cover three of the key features of TikTok’s ad platform.
Campaign Objectives
The first step in creating an ad campaign on TikTok is selecting a Business Objective. These help the platform determine your business’s goals and can alter to whom TikTok shows your content.
For example, if you choose the Conversions Objective, TikTok will show your ads to people within your target audience who are most likely to convert. On the other hand, the Reach Objective will push your ads to the highest number of people within your target audience at the lowest cost possible.
TikTok Pixel
TikTok also provides tools with which you can gain access to insights and data about the performance of your posts. For example, You can utilize TikTok Pixel, which can track the amount and types of interactions between your website and consumers. By installing TikTok Pixel to track the performance of your ad, you can access data analytics that will help to target your audience.
Video Templates
With a business account, you can also use the Video Template tool to easily create visually appealing ads, which will help you to release quality content consistently without needing to edit each video manually. Utilizing these features is essential to ensuring that you are making full use of everything this platform has to offer.
Interacting With Your Audience
In addition to creating and promoting your posts, sharing UGC that features your products and interacting with your followers is another great way to create traction and generate quality interactions with your page.
If a member of your audience creates content about how much they love your brand or product, interacting with them and sharing their endorsement can help you reach their audience and show customers that you care about them.
You can also use this free advertisement to direct users to your website or other platforms. This is especially true if you’re engaged in a sponsored collaboration with a TikTok creator.
Engaging with your audience also shows that your brand is customer-facing—meaning that you don’t just see them as just another number on a sales sheet. And while it’s always seen as a best practice on any platform, it’s one of the unique TikTok marketing strategies that can really propel your brand forward.
TikTok provides several unique tools to engage with your audience beyond just responding with a comment. Features like the duet tool—which allows you to place your video right next to another user’s video—and the ability to reply to comments with videos truly give you the ability to engage with your audience in ways that other platforms don’t.
If your brand feels authentic and engaged with its audience, you’ll be rewarded with a higher level of brand loyalty and a higher likelihood of conversions.
Creating Relationships with Creators
Collaborating with relevant TikTok creators with a similar target audience can be one of the most effective TikTok marketing strategy for extending your reach. Why? Because content creators and influencers build strong relationships with their audience, and as a result, their audience trusts their recommendations and endorsements. So by creating a partnership with a content creator that serves the same audience as your brand, you can position yourself to serve a whole host of new potential customers.
For example, if you are creating an advertisement for new releases from a clothing company, collaborating with a fashion-centric creator will help you reach an audience that is more likely to be interested in your products than a general audience. The key, of course, is to work with an influencer or content creator that draws high engagement and fits in with your brand’s goals and needs.
To have a successful collaboration, it’s vital to work with a creator whose audience corresponds with your target audience. The TikTok Creator Marketplace is a platform through which you can find and connect with creators to collaborate, providing the ability to search for creators in different locations and with different genres.
Utilizing Trending Audios
One of the easiest and most effective TikTok strategies is implementing trending audio into your content. Audio is a crucial aspect of TikTok content, and there are two main types of audio you can use: pre-recorded audio—like songs and voiceovers— or audio recorded while filming.
These audios often pair alongside specific trends, such as dances, pop culture references, or memes. Using relevant audios and creating videos that follow the current trends makes it more likely that your content lands on the For You Page and goes viral.
Additionally, participating in trends and implementing popular sounds into your content shows personality; it can indicate to viewers that your brand is relevant. Before selecting an audio to use, it’s a good idea to browse through the most popular videos under a specific sound to determine if you can create content that works within the trend.
TikTok’s Creative Center is a great tool that shows the most viral and viewed audios that TikTok has to offer. Using this tool, you can create content that is tailored to the trends and is more likely to extend your reach to a broader audience and gain more followers.
Authenticity
Overall, TikTok’s most compelling and unique feature is its authentic and inclusive nature, as any person from any background can reach millions of people. This inclusivity allows for new and exciting ideas to spread, which is an ideal setting for marketing a brand, a product, a company, or even yourself.
TikTok has become a great equalizer among social media platforms because you no longer need to have a large following to reach the masses. Instead, authenticity and originality are essential if you want any of the previous TikTok marketing strategies we’ve mentioned to actually work.
In a study by Nielsen, 64% of users surveyed globally felt that they could be their “true selves” on TikTok. Additionally, the study found that 68% of TikTok users believe that advertisements on TikTok are distinctive and unique compared to other platforms such as Instagram or Twitter. As these statistics show, TikTok users think they can use the platform to develop genuine connections, which is an ideal platform to build an audience and consumer base through authentic relationships and interactions.
Ads on TikTok are viewed differently than those found on other platforms. Since businesses can build a more personal relationship with their audiences on TikTok, ads are seen as less intrusive and are more welcome so long as they appear authentic. If your ads look overproduced, users will likely swipe right past them. So if you’re sharing customer testimonials or UGC, it’s best to have that content done as authentically as possible to keep the content from coming off like any old ad.
So long as you keep your content appearing authentic and not forced, TikTok will be the perfect place to experiment and cultivate a genuine relationship with your audience.
TikTok and the Future of Marketing
As TikTok continues to gain traction among young people and adults, marketing your business on the platform will become more of a necessity than a luxury.
The tools and collaborative opportunities on TikTok make it a powerful tool when you properly implement an effective TikTok marketing strategy.
By advertising through TikTok using these seven strategies, you can build a robust and interested audience that is only accessible through TikTok’s unique platform. In addition, TikTok’s ability to facilitate connections among over one billion users makes it a prolific, powerful tool that you can use to grow your brand or company.
If you aren’t sure where to start, Fidelitas is here to help! Contact our team today and we’ll help you create a content strategy that’s right for your brand!
