Launched in 2016 by Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok is a content platform that pairs short-form videos with a peer-rated music library. While this unique format may not sound all that impressive, TikTok has amassed over 800,000 daily active users and over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide since its inception, making it a prized tool for advertisers and businesses. In fact, it’s now one of the primary marketing platforms for global brands such as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Netflix, Gucci, and Red Bull.
What Is TikTok?
So, what sort of content can you expect to find on TikTok? This platform is renowned for its short-form content, unlike other video platforms online. The idea is to pair short-form videos with music from the site’s extensive library. You can then add filters and other effects—in the app—to give your content a creative edge.
From a user perspective, engagement is a core concept of the platform. Not only do views play a massive role in content popularity, but users can follow specific accounts, comment, add a reaction, and share their favourite videos. And it’s this digital engagement you’ll need to master to capitalise on the near-endless pool of potential viewers.
However, like many things in business, less is more, meaning you’ll want your video content to stay between 15 and 60 seconds long. We’ll cover the specifics of creating TikTok content shortly, but for now, let’s take a deeper look at the benefits, specifically for businesses, of using this unique but rapidly growing social media platform.
TikTok is a social media platform available on iOS and Android. Created by ByteDance, it has over 800,000 active daily users across countries worldwide.
Why TikTok Is Important for Businesses
TikTok is more than just a global social media platform. It has the potential to connect your business with over 1 billion users worldwide, build brand loyalty, showcase your company values, and much more.
It Can Grow Your Business
Even if you’re new to TikTok as a business owner, you’ll have undoubtedly seen some of the platform’s “viral videos”. Racking up millions of global views in hours, this ability to reach people worldwide is an essential tool, especially if your target market falls between 16 and 34 years old. From a return on investment point of view, the time needed to create content versus the ability to reach millions of viewers is currently unmatched compared to other social media platforms.
TikTok also allows direct communication with your audience, helping you to keep up with trends and grow your brand, and it directly supports online accessibility. As a small business (and a large one, for that matter), it’s an invaluable tool.
Connects You to Millennials and Gen Z
We’ve already mentioned the platform’s key demographic. However, given that users under 34 years old account for over 70% of all users, it’s worth exploring a bit more. In fact, the platform was designed exclusively with younger audiences in mind, so it’s no surprise that nearly half of all users are aged 16–24. However, there’s still a market for alternative age ranges, with 13–17 and 25–34 years old in second and third place, respectively.
There’s also a slightly higher proportion of female users across all age groups—something to remember when planning your marketing campaigns. As for which markets are most lucrative, it’s important to check the figures for your target location, but the US, Indonesia, and Brazil lead the way in terms of total active users.
Great for Building Brand Loyalty
One of TikTok’s greatest appeals is the positive feedback loop you can create with your followers. Encouraging users to share, like, and comment builds a lasting connection with your brand, spreading across the globe in hours. It also lets you take advantage of a crucial commodity—loyal customers. Involving them in a TikTok marketing campaign not only strengthens their loyalty to your brand, but you can leverage them to spread your message for you.
Helps With Building Trust and Authenticity
If you’re asking yourself, should brands be on TikTok? The answer is a resounding yes. Provided your target demographic falls into the categories highlighted above, many users will search on TikTok to find information about a business or brand. This means a lack of social media presence could actually harm your reputation, even if you have the best product or service available. Creating an active community on TikTok builds trust and gives you an online presence that customers can relate to.
Whether it’s building brand loyalty, connecting with your target audience, or growing your company’s social media presence, TikTok’s benefits for business are significant.
How Can TikTok Be Used for Business?
If it’s clear that TikTok is the right fit for your brand or business, it’s time to get online and start creating. However, there are some critical differences between a personal and business account that you need to know about.
1. Create a TikTok Business Account
A business account’s benefit is access to advertising, auto-messaging, and user insights. If you’re entirely new to TikTok, you’ll need to create a personal account before switching it over to business. To sign up, you must download the app and create a profile using a valid email address.
Once logged in, head to settings and privacy, account, then tap “switch to business account”. You’ll then be guided through several more prompts to complete your profile. If you already have a personal account and it’s suitable for business use, switching is the same process as with first-time users.
2. Do Your Research
Before you can even think about creating a viral marketing campaign, you need a detailed understanding of how TikTok works, how users interact, and the features available. Here’s where you should spend time exploring other brands in your space, becoming proficient in the editing features, and getting to grips with the TikTok algorithm.
While we’ll never know the specifics of how TikTok recommends content, there are several factors that all high-ranking content has in common. These include:
- User interaction: Liked pages, shares and comments, and content similar to any you’ve created
- Video information: Relevant hashtags, captions, and video theme
- Account preferences: Language and location details, as well as your preferred content categories
3. Set Goals
You wouldn’t start a marketing campaign using traditional channels if you didn’t already have an extensive strategy (including key performance indicators (KPIs)). TikTok is no different. In fact, it’s paramount you regularly monitor your performance, given how quickly trends rise and fall. The most significant difference between TikTok and conventional marketing is the time-sensitivity. Videos can go viral in a matter of hours before fading into obscurity just as quickly.
Assign clear, measurable goals to check your progress. You’ll want to start small at first, tracking basic metrics such as follower count or shares. However, as you become more confident, the business dashboard provides an abundance of useful insights to help leverage your brand.
4. Track Content Using a Calendar
Like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, consistency is critical to capturing your audience’s attention on TikTok. However, you’ll need to plan ahead if you’re going to stay on track. A shared calendar helps to keep your marketing project focused, but planning too far into the future could actually prove detrimental. Remember, trends rise and fall quickly on TikTok, so you’ll want some flexibility in your content schedule to pull ideas that aren’t working, or jump on trends that are picking up in popularity.
5. Create Videos
This is where your team gets to flex their creative muscles. It’s also during the creative process that you’ll want to refer back to steps two and three. What is your goal for this marketing campaign, and what did your research uncover about your target audience? Keeping both questions at the forefront of the creative process will help to ensure your videos get the traction you need.
As for the creation process, that’s firmly over to you. However, don’t forget some of the parameters for a successful video mentioned earlier. You’ll want to make full use of the filters and effects, include captions, and ensure every video has the correct metadata.
6. Post at the Right Time
While it might seem like a small detail, the time your posts go live is crucial to their success. After all, you want to capture people’s attention when they are actively scrolling. It’s no good scheduling content for midnight only for a new wave of videos to overtake your content come the morning. Spend some time understanding what times your target audience is most active on TikTok and schedule your content to go live during that window.
7. Keep Your Audience Engaged
Engagement is a two-way street. If you want users to comment, share, or like your videos, you need to make them feel like the engagement is reciprocated. Reacting to their comments, sharing videos paying homage to your brand, and highlighting your most loyal followers are all great ways to keep your audience coming back for more. More recently, TikTok added the ability to reply to comments, so it’s crucial you not only respond, but also keep those responses timely and concise.
8. Dive Into the Data
Here’s where most content creators become dejected with their lack of progress and start to scale back their use of TikTok. However, now is when the most successful businesses will dive into the details and double their efforts. TikTok has a business suite with a plethora of analytics—it’s time to put them to good use.
Using the goals you set in step three, review the progress of your content schedule and look, in detail, at each video. What did the successful videos have that others didn’t? Did you reply to comments quickly enough? Does your posting time need adjusting? There’s always room for improvement, and with a platform as fluid and fast-moving as TikTok, you should ask yourself critical questions regularly.
9. Explore Advertising Options
If your following is taking off, your uploads are consistent, and you’re comfortable replying to comments and engaging with followers, it’s time to start exploring your advertising options. TikTok offers several key advertising formats, including in-feed ads, top-view ads, and branded effects.
Even better, you can pair your ad campaigns with a branded hashtag challenge and a call-to-action (CTA), encouraging users to respond with specific video formats. Another important aspect of business advertising is becoming a verified user. You’ll need to navigate to your account settings and provide the relevant details, but it’s essential to building trust and authenticity with TikTokers.
Creating a business account on TikTok is simple. However, it takes time and a detailed understanding of the platform to master its lucrative marketing opportunities.
Is TikTok Business Safe?
TikTok has always claimed to have the safety and security of its community as a top priority, but many businesses are still apprehensive. Of course, there is always a risk when engaging with potentially thousands of followers, but an experienced marketing team should be well-versed in the challenges of modern social media platforms.
Instead, what has caused concern are vulnerabilities within the TikTok app. In 2019, an independent study found that the app had several potentially serious security flaws that could lead to hackers using TikTok accounts maliciously or accessing personal information linked to accounts. ByteDance has since released updates and patches to address these issues, but uncertainty remains.
Ultimately, it’s up to individual business owners to decide if TikTok is the right fit for them. It will be for most, so it’s worth taking extra precautions. Setting up an email account exclusively for TikTok, limiting app access to specific devices, and keeping personal data to a minimum can all help mitigate any possible risks.
As a business, it’s up to you to decide if your brand or business is the right fit for TikTok, and to take steps to mitigate potential risks.
How Brands Use TikTok: The Best TikTok Brand Campaigns
If you’re still struggling to wrap your head around how to use TikTok to promote your business, then it’s time to look at the most successful accounts. Numerous global brands regularly post to TikTok, and there’s no reason not to use their content as a foundation for your own social media strategy.
Below is a summary of some of the world’s biggest brands and how they use TikTok:
- Gymshark: This fitness and sports brand uses the branded hashtag challenge to generate 193 million views, inspire users, and award loyal followers a Gymshark membership.
- Duolingo: The language-learning app has successfully leveraged “meme culture” of the last decade to create a personal, funny, and often chaotic space for themselves on TikTok.
- Crocs: Love or hate them, Croc is another global brand using the hashtag challenge to create engaging, product-focused content. The brand has successfully turned the controversy of owning Crocs to its advantage.
- GoPro: Expanding to TikTok for the action camera company GoPro seems an obvious step, given the format of their biggest-selling product. Videos are big and bold, perfectly showcasing GoPro’s unique selling point (USP).
- Marvel: Watched by billions of people worldwide, you may wonder whether Marvel even needs TikTok’s views. However, their social media account offers something the movies lack—behind-the-scenes videos and never-before-seen clips.
No matter your brand or business, there are always ways to leverage TikTok’s reach. Whether focusing on a specific USP or using TikTok to offer customers something they’ve never seen before, take inspiration from the platform’s biggest accounts to increase your viewership.
Regardless of the brand, service, or product, TikTok has been leveraged in dozens of creative ways to reach a wider audience. Use big-name brands as inspiration, and find a style that works for you.
Using TikTok for Your Business: Is It Worth It?
With the potential to reach thousands (possibly millions) of new customers at the click of a button, it’s hard to deny the appeal and value of TikTok. Provided you’re comfortable with the security concerns, the platform offers a truly unique experience. It’s also one of the fastest-growing social media platforms, with the app expected to exceed 900,000 active daily users in 2024.
Provided you have the time and experience to create short-form content and can maintain a consistent upload schedule, there are very few downsides to expanding your digital footprint. In fact, if your target demographic falls between 16 and 34 years old, it’s almost a prerequisite that your brand or business has a presence on TikTok. How long TikTok continues to grow remains to be seen. However, for now, it’s a lucrative and incredibly far-reaching platform.
