TikTok today is not just a platform for entertainment, but a full-fledged advertising channel for business promotion. It became the third most popular social network in the world with an audience of 1 billion monthly active users from 150 countries, beating Snapchat and Twitter.
I will tell you how an entrepreneur can use it, namely: how to attract customers, make a brand recognizable, strengthen the loyalty of the target audience, and develop your business.
The age breakdown belies the fact that only kids are on TikTok. For example, Instagram has a more solvent audience, while TikTok is young and progressive, but more prone to impulsive purchases.
A few facts about TikTok:
- The age of the solvent audience is 25-44 years;
- Low competition among brands compared to other sites;
- In 2021, the app was the second most downloaded app in the world;
- Unique promotion algorithms;
- It has become a replacement for TV and shows only those “channels” that are of interest to subscribers;
- Fifth place in terms of the time of use (overtook Facebook and Telegram);
- Only 30% of all users generate content, the rest consume;
- Possibility of fast expansion.
Categories of businesses that were the first to promote their brands on TikTok:
- banks;
- online stores;
- marketplaces;
- auto;
- courses, educational platforms;
- mobile applications.
Promising directions for the development of their companies in this social network:
- products for children;
- FMCG companies;
- goods for pets;
- chains of restaurants and cafes;
- cosmetics;
- clothing brands.
TikTok has a great opportunity to automatically get into feed recommendations and get hundreds of thousands of views from scratch. Accordingly, the audience can be easily recruited without investing huge budgets in production, targeting, or bloggers. On YouTube, for example, this will not work, where you need to shoot huge full-length releases with studio quality.
Who should go to TikTok now and who shouldn’t
Large brands need to try everything new and popular in order to retain current customers, increase sales and maintain awareness, especially since they have this opportunity in the form of a budget.
For example, Chinese marketplace AliExpress started developing its TikTok account in 2020. It uses humor, reviews interesting products. Its themes are style and fashion.
Brands should introduce new products to the TikTok market in order to get recognition. Developing your own channel on TikTok allows you to increase the knowledge of the product by the audience and bring new products to the market.
For instance:
- Hyundai makes creative and humorous videos about the new Tucson model.
- Vivienne Sabó launches its own challenge “Shaka Shaka” on the name of the novelty – foundation.
- Barilla and Bueno (from “Kinder”) are increasingly appearing in the recipes of food bloggers.
Brands with high expertise and the ability to create an educational platform also need to appear in this video resource.
Businesses with an adult audience can also find a lot of advantages in TikTok:
- While other brands are filming dances, attracting young people, you can make content for age and solvent audience, because it is about 25% on the site, and the competition is too low.
- The number of content and authors designed for an audience of 45+ in the topics “Garden”, “Recipes” is growing, as is the consumption of such content.
- The retirement age has been raised. If earlier marketers focused on an audience under 55, now it is worth taking into account the entire working-age population under 65.
- TikTok feed has replaced the TV, and the TV is watched by the 40+ audience segment. On other sites, the interface is too complicated, which requires learning, and in order to watch interesting video content on this network, you just need to learn how to swipe.
You should not enter the site if:
- Your activity is aimed exclusively at the B2B audience;
- Your subject matter is too narrow;
- You do not have a strategy (including not developing other channels);
- There is no fixed budget.
Where to start building a strategy?
As in any other market, competitor analysis is very important in TikTok.
- See the most popular topics from competitors.
- If there are no competitors on the site, then look at the channels of bloggers. Here you can find and re-shoot them in better quality or in a different presentation.
- Look at the top accounts and adapt their ideas for yourself.
- Analyze the most popular questions from the audience. This can serve as an idea for content.
People often ask questions in the comments under TikTok videos, and the section with answers to the most interesting of them is a great way to communicate with the audience.
- Pay attention to which person the story is coming from. It is important that the portrait of the target audience coincides with the presenter, so the viewer gains more confidence.
- Pay attention not only to the number of views but to a greater extent to the number of reposts.
- Is better, if you are useful, beautiful, or funny – these are the three most “entering” tonalities to users.
To match the interests of your audience, see what they are interested in online through Google Trends. To begin with, you can use the idea that was developed for other sites, and then add individuality and your own chips, creativity.
Tips for creating and promoting content
1. If you need reach, make creative video content that appeals to the masses.
2. If your task is to attract the target audience, work through CMJ and all objections at different stages.
3. Decide on the actor. It can be an employee of the company, a blogger or professional presenter, actor. And you can use a cartoon character.
4. Use a short preview at the beginning of the video. In the first seconds, you can intrigue and make you watch to the end. Or make captions with the theme of the video. For fast editing use an online video trimmer.
5. Follow trends and use them whenever possible. Here, the efficiency and relevance of trends for the selected audience are important.
6. Adapt the content plan from other sites into videos for TikTok.
7. Analyze each video by TikTok analytics:
- Growth of subscribers for each video;
- Visibility. It is desirable that it be at least 50%;
- The number of reposts. TikTok loves to be shared on various other social networks;
- Comments;
- The number of subscribers on the channel;
- Likes.
What is important to know for organic promotion
Targeted advertising. Like other social networks, TikTok allows you to set up and launch ads within the service using the TikTok Ads Manager.
Voice acting. Videos with accompanying speeches are more likely to appear in TikTok recommendations. 70% of users watch videos with sound.
Bloggers. You can start promoting on the site with integration with bloggers. Fast large coverages are guaranteed and are not yet available at exorbitant prices.
Replies to comments below videos. This can make the account feel more lively and interactive, which will also help promote organic activity. You can answer in the text in the comments, or you can release a separate video, as we described above.
Music. When registering a brand account, the use of trending music is limited by copyright. But you can add your own branded tracks. It is important to rely on the tastes and age of the audience you are counting on. Not all music will be welcomed by your target audience.
Integration with other social networks. TikTok may not deliver long-awaited sales. Direct users to Instagram, where people are used to buying.
Hashtags. Up to 15% of video traffic on average comes from hashtags. Work through a cloud of popular and low-frequency tags, use hashtag generator for TikTok.Broadcasts. Conducting streams has a positive effect on attracting a new audience to the channel – after all, streams also fall into the coveted “Recommended” block, like simple videos.
Conclusion
If you are still ignoring TikTok as a platform for promoting your business, then you are missing out. Here you can find the target audience, increase brand awareness, increase sales, and advertise offline stores.