TikTok can be a massively powerful tool in any marketer’s arsenal. By using TikTok, you can reach a huge number of people, tap into something in which younger generations are heavily involved, and potentially find amazing new audiences for your product. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of TikTok in your marketing strategy; it’s a social media platform, after all, and social media is king in marketing nowadays.
However, if you are going to approach TikTok as a marketing platform, there are a number of things you’ll need to keep in mind. Your approach to TikTok should be different to the one you use for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram; TikTok has a different set of values, and its community isn’t the same as the ones you’d find elsewhere. Here’s how to use TikTok to market your brand.
Build Your Following First
A brand heading onto TikTok without a significant following, then trying to market its product, will inevitably run into difficulties. That’s why you need to think about building your TikTok following up. You can do this by creating organic content and trying to get it seen by as many people as possible, of course, but we’d recommend using a free TikTok followers service if you want the best possible results. That way, you can have a ready-made following so that when people discover your brand, you’ll already be established on TikTok.
Create Content Like Any Other User
Any brand that shamelessly and constantly markets itself on TikTok without trying to add anything to the conversation won’t get very far. Part of your TikTok strategy should be organic content creation. Think about your brand and the products or services you’re selling. How can you incorporate those into content? What kind of videos can you make that will simultaneously show off your brand and also get users organically engaged? Remember TikTok’s primary demographic is folks aged 16-24, so your content should take that into account as much as possible.
Show Off Your Brand, But Do It in a Relatable Way
Have you ever seen that picture of Steve Buscemi from 30 Rock? The one where he’s holding a skateboard, wearing a T-shirt that says “MUSIC BAND”, and the caption is usually “hello, fellow children”? That’s how you’ll come across if you simply try to ape the values of TikTok users without actually espousing them. TikTok is all about tutorials, challenges, and other interactive elements, so try to use those when you’re crafting content for your brand’s channel. Consider trying to create a new dance challenge or a new lip-syncing craze. Other brands have done it!
Reach Out To The Right Influencers
The wrong influencer marketing campaign could seriously damage your product, especially if it’s an influencer with a negative community image. When you reach out to influencers – and you should be doing so if you’re a brand, because they’ll be invaluable to your campaign – you need to make sure they reflect and espouse your brand’s values, whatever they might be. Follow them, comment on their content, and build a rapport with them. There’s nothing worse than a brand simply sliding into an influencer’s comments section apropos of nothing and begging for a collaboration, after all.
Create Content Regularly
This holds true for brands just as it does for individual influencers. On TikTok, frequency is key. Creating content regularly means you’ll always be in the public consciousness, and people will think of you as another user they need to pay attention to. That’s why it’s crucial to have someone on your social media team who can consistently think of interesting, compelling TikTok content ideas. Recycling the same videos over and over again isn’t going to do you any favours, so make sure the content you’re creating is fresh and original every time.
Use Tiktok’s Built-In Ad Service
Like other social media platforms, TikTok has native advertising built into it, which means you can run a conventional ad campaign just like you can on Facebook or Twitter, for example. The trouble here is that advertising on TikTok can be extremely costly, and if you’re a new or small brand, you likely don’t have the money to spend on TikTok advertising. However, if this is an avenue you’re interested in pursuing, you’ll need to create a TikTok ads account, set up your campaign, and decide where your placements should go and who you’re targeting.
Cross-Promote With Other Services
It’s important to build up a social media network comprising all the major platforms. While your predominant focus might be on TikTok, that doesn’t mean you should neglect Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms on which you might find a receptive audience. If nothing else, you can use those platforms to point people towards the content you’re creating on TikTok. When used properly, social networks can all integrate together, showing users where they can find your brand and helping you to build an organic following.
Show People Why Your Brand Is Good
It might sound completely obvious, but you’d be amazed just how many brands lose sight of the fact that people will be naturally skeptical towards any new brand that appears on the scene. To truly use TikTok to market your brand, you’ll have to use your content to show people what’s good about your brand. It can be easy to lose yourself in the moment-to-moment marketing of your business endeavour, but remember that people outside of that don’t see what you see. Show them why you’re worth bothering with and they’ll reward you!
