How Can Brands & Marketers Leverage TikTok?
More than 800 million people use the TikTok app on a monthly basis. That is a serious amount of traffic that potential brands and influencers can tap into in order to market their products and service to a younger demographic.
In order for brands to properly leverage TikTok they have to have a little understanding of the app itself and the kind of user demographic that the app attracts. We will dive into some of the most effective TikTok marketing strategies for brands, influencers and creators.
Related Content: How to Increase Your Brand Exposure With TikTok Marketing in 2020
Who Uses The TikTok App?
Before brands and influencers can start to create a marketing strategy for their business through the app they have to understand the demographic that uses the app.
Some well-known facts about the app is that it primarily targets Gen-Z users who are predominantly female. Approximately 65% of all users on the platform are under the age of 30 and happen to be female.
The app also has massive international reach with users from countries such as the United States, India, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and many more.
So knowing these statistics can give brands a little more information on the type of user base the platform has to offer. It’s also important to understand how the app actually works and the type of content that users make on the app.
The TikTok App
The app encourages it’s users to make and upload short video clips ranging from 15 seconds to 60 seconds in length.
Although most videos on the app are of people lip-synching and dancing to new and trending music, other types of popular videos on the platform include:
- Sports highlights clips
- Quick How to Tutorials
- Comedy Clips
- Prankster videos
- Fashion
- Workout related videos
- Stunts
The platform is constantly adding different types of videos from users and expanding its reach. If you checkout their Discover section they have unique content from individuals and even celebrities.
Most users don’t even have to follow anyone in order to receive entertaining videos. All a TikTok user has to do is open the app and check out the For You section and they will be presented with fresh trending content that they can endlessly scroll through.
Effective TikTok Marketing Strategies
There are three primary ways that brands, advertisers and influencers can leverage the TikTok platform in order to market themselves and their products.
- Create their own TikTok channel and start to upload content and gain a following
- Partner up with established influencers and create a sponsorship deals
- Sign up for TikTok Ads and pay to advertise to a targeted audience
Big brands are typically in the process of exploring all three options and testing to see what kind of engagement the functionality of the platform is bringing to their business. Recommended Reading: #InMyDenim
Pro tip: What are the best social media tools for marketers?
Creating Your Own TikTok Channel
Before creating your own TikTok channel it’s important to have a basic understanding of the TikTok algorithm and the best way to use the app to enhance the exposure of your brand.
Checkout this article we put together for further information: How Does the TikTok Algorithm Work?
Once you have successfully installed and created your account on TikTok, it’s time to put together your first video. This can be an introduction video that give people information about your brand or content type or you can simply make a fun video.
Before creating your video you should have a basic idea of the type of niche you want to orient your content into.
Creating Your TikTok Video
Once you nail down the specific niche you plan to market inside, it’s time to craft your very first video. Videos on the TikTok platform range from 15 seconds to 60 seconds. We recommend going with a quick 15 second video if you are just starting out.
If you are creating some sort of tutorial or longer form content, then we suggest making your videos at least 60 seconds in length.
Once you have your video ready it’s time to make sure it has the highest possibility of being seen by the most amount of people.
We will use the following video below as an example.
This next part involves a bit of strategy.
Use Relevant Hashtags and Descriptions
In order to ensure you videos get discovered you need to use relevant hashtags and descriptions.
Inside the Discover section in the TikTok app you can view some of the most trending hashtags which tend to drive a high level of interaction and traffic.
Let’s take a look at the screenshot below from the sample account.
Channel Name
We can see that the name of the account is Michaeleckert_fit which already gives us an idea that the channel is most likely fitness related.
Hashtags Used
From the hashtags that are used in the video we can see that he uses #fitness #airwalkin #foryou.
These 3 hashtags gives us further information about the niche he is in, what type of exercise he is doing in the video and also that the video is meant to be featured in the “For You” section of the app.
If you are unfamiliar with the “For You” section of the app, it’s basically a section of the app in which the TikTok algorithm filters popular and trending videos to feature for users based on popularity and interaction.
Song Name
We can also see that the video features a popular song in the title “Tootsie Slide” by Drake.
All of these factors are clearly working to drive massive amounts of traffic to the video. We can see that there are over 393k likes, 3,446 comments and 22k video shares.
The video itself is extremely impressive, but the use of the relevant channel name, hashtags, along with the song have helped to boost its exposure.
Using these basic strategies inside your TikTok channel can help you get your content discovered and help you to acquire a nice follower base.
Partner Up With Established influencers and Create Sponsorship Deals
If you are a brand owner and want to expand your brands reach, TikTok sponsorship deals may be a great method for you to tap into an established audience.
The advantage to partnering up with influencers who have an established audience on TikTok saves you time and allows you to grow your brand with an audience that already trusts that influencer.
In order to find influencers that align with your brand and image, you have to do a little bit of digging on the platform.
Checkout the following article below which details how brands are partnering up with influencers and getting exposure to their products and services.
8 Examples of Influencer Marketing on TikTok
An app that can help you get in touch with influencers that are in your niche and have an interest in partnering up with brands is TinySponsor.com
The app has different sponsorship options and niches which you can explore in order to find an influencer that aligns with your brand and vision. The great thing about the app is that it’s open for both creators and brands.
Automation tip: See here TikTok Tools you can use for automation
Sign Up For TikTok Ads
Although quite new, TikTok has an official advertising system which allows brands and media buying companies to tap into its massive user base.
TikTok offers three major types of digital ads.
1. Native In Feeds Ads – These are essentially like Instagram in feed ads. TikTok gives you the ability to skip the ads and use them in different ways to target users.
2. Hashtag Challenge Ads – Hashtag ads allow you to serve a user a banner ad that takes the user to a page which features the rules of the challenge. Hashtag ads allow you to target specific users which have an interest into a target category.
3. Brand Ads – Brand style ads allow registered brands to use different types of styles of ads in order to drive traffic to a product page or landing page. These are the most preferred if you want direct traffic to your landing page or product.
Click Here for the Full Guess Ad Case Study
With the massive growth that TikTok has experienced the last year, there is no question that brands and media channels are beginning to explore options of using the platform for paid advertising.
If you are interested in finding out more about TikTok ads, click the link below.
Conclusion
After reading this article you should have a better idea as to how you can use TikTok to create an effective marketing strategy and tap into a different demographic that is growing at an astonishing pace.
If you are new to social media, and want to learn how to monetize your social media accounts, watch Hashtag Mastery Summit.
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