TikTok Marketing: Full guide for marketers

Source: Unsplash.

TikTok, you may think that only young people use it, and if they are not your target audience, you shouldn't be in there. Well, this is not the reality, in fact, more businesses are going to this app.

This social media platform has been downloaded 2.6 billion times according to Wallaroo statistics and has over 1.1 billion monthly users.

If you have been thinking if you should or shouldn't enter this platform, what strategies or tools should you use well you are in the right place because we will give the TikTok Marketing: Full guide for marketers.

Let's check it out!

Is TikTok Good for Marketing?

If your main goal is to reach a wide audience let us tell you that TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users from a huge range of demographics, so this platform gives you a lot of opportunities to reach your customers. 

In the beginning, we used to think that TikTok was only for Millenials and Gen-zers, that a huge amount of dance choreographies and memes didn't seem to fit with older generations. But, as always, when something gets popular all people from any age start to enter into the platform to see what is the great excitement for the platform, so now it is an excellent option for any generational market.

This platform has currently the best engagement rates out there, it is proved by the engagement rate of micro-influencers, in the case of Instagram is 3.8% while TikTok takes the first step with 17.9%.

So, now that you know that this platform is a goldmine for your, let's learn more about its benefits.

Source: YouTube.

How to create a TikTok business account

Before starting your TikTok strategy, you have to turn your account into a business one, for this follow the steps:

1. Go to your profile page.
2. Open the Settings and Privacy tab in the top right corner.
3. Tap Manage account.
4. Under Account control, choose Switch to Business Account.
5. Choose the category that best describes your account—Tiktok offers categories from Digital Marketing to Wellness to Travel 
6. From there, you can add a business website and email to your profile, and you’re ready to roll. 

How TikTok Can Work for B2B

You might think that as a B2B company your social media channels are limited to Linkedin or Facebook, but let us tell you that you are wrong.

Today more and more businesses have moved to this platform, as its fame continues to grow, the chances of getting your predetermined audience on it increase.

Also, being a 100% video social network, more people engage with it since it is the most entertaining and easy-to-consume type of content.

Now, we must agree that TikTok is a little more flexible than Linkedin since the range of creativity that video gives you allows you to share more friendly content for brands and other businesses.

Throughout the article, we will talk about types of content that you can upload to the network, but ideas such as small interviews, reviews or tutorials about your brand are pieces that people like, and as a side effect, this will make you an authority in your niche.

Benefits of TikTok marketing

The decision to invest or not in a social network depends primarily on the number of benefits it offers us, and in the case of TikTok this will not only give you the perfect platform to create content, but you will also achieve many achievements for your business.

Let's check out the benefits of TikTok.

Increase your brand awareness

With almost a billion views a day and users in 155 countries, it is the best place to expose your brand and gain brand awareness, a key metric for us.

Being one of the most popular video platforms, the only thing you will need is a good content marketing strategy, and remember that on TikTok it is better to be short but precise than long but confusing. Today TikTok videos can reach up to 3 minutes, but, if your message can be said correctly in less time, don't hesitate to shorten it.

It elevates video marketing

All platforms allow us to upload video, from Twitter to Instagram, however, TikTok is only video, and that is where its greatest potential lies. 

As networks have evolved, consumers have begun to connect less with written content and static images, to fully engage with video content, and the greatest benefit of this is that it is easy to consume and without thinking much. 

This is reinforced by a Hubspot survey, which ensures that more than half of consumers want to see video content from brands more than any other content format.

The platform allows every content creator to upload their videos without being a pro-Adobe Video Editor, their tools are easy to use and understand.

If you don’t know how to use adobe video editor, you can always use tiktok cropper to crop and resize the video according to your need.

Create a community

Having a large number of followers makes us feel great, we believe that everyone looks at us and that our brand is the most recognized in the block of social media. 

However, it is useless to have a million followers if no one interacts with us, it is like having a thousand friends on Facebook but no one inviting you to a party.

Building a community is essential to have customers loyal to our brand, strengthening relationships between customers and the brand beyond a single purchase.

Platforms like Instagram allow you to interact with the client through likes or comments, but nothing becomes more personal than interactions on TikTok.

Thanks to its video format, users will be able to quote your video for any of their creations, or better yet, make a duet to interact more directly with your users.

This spreads your message to others' followers, and if duet interactions go viral with your account, rest assured that your brand will reach countless new people.

Source: YouTube.

Better organic reach

The algorithm of any social network is usually hateful for content creators, it usually favours these people who have millions of followers and leaves those who are still trying to emerge in the purgatory of the networks.

In the case of TikTok, this is completely different, since its algorithm could be considered a more democratic one.

The infinite scrolling down the format of this social media will show you any type of account, whether it has 20k followers or only 25 because it allows greater visibility for all types of accounts.

Reaching 500 views on an Instagram video represents a great achievement, while on TikTok your video can reach 2000 views without having been the best of all.

For this reason, your content will be exposed to a wider audience without the need to pay for PPC ads, favouring the creation of organic content.

In addition to this, the platform offers the typical discovery tools such as:

• Hashtags
• Locations
• Sounds
• Effects

In addition to this, the platform offers you the Discover section, where you can get outstanding creators in your specific area.

Now, let's find out how to use TikTok for your business.

How to Use TikTok for Marketing

As we have seen, TikTok is a social media that will allow you to make way for your brand in the digital world, so without further ado, let's see what tactics you can use to use it.

Adapt trends to your niche

As we can see, TikTok has a viral nature, once a challenge or audio is virtualized everyone jumps to give it their version of it.

You may ask yourself if my brand is a little more serious, how do I get into these dance trends or phrases that are memes?

Well, there is always a way to make it yours, and for that, we have the example of the Ryanair airline.

When talking about an airline, the first thing that comes to mind is the airline explaining the safety rules or where the closest exits are, however, what this airline does with its TikTok videos is much more original and funny.

Grabbing viral audios, the airline has managed to create videos of airplanes talking and referring to types of passengers or common situations in this type of work, and although the idea sounds bizarre at a certain point, it has worked incredibly for them.

Today, Ryanair's profile has 1.4 million followers and its videos reach 40k views.

In this way, we see that the important thing is to know how to adapt our brand to trends, not simply to do the same as everyone else, or to be very predictable in our ideas.

Source: YouTube.

Run TikTok ads

Although we have clarified that TikTok allows you to be discovered organically, let's remember that investing in sponsored content will always give us a competitive advantage over others.

We get ads everywhere, and when used correctly, you can recruit a large number of new followers and customers to your brand.

TikTok has 5 types of ads that we are going to explain to you.

Source: YouTube.

Ad Type #1: In-feed ads

This is the standard format for ads, it allows you to embed your video ad on your audience's "For You" page, which means, the user's main feed.

When you do this right, users can start to share your video and it brings more brand awareness to your account.

A great tip to make it better is to add a CTA that prompts users to download your app through the app store, something that Adobe did in one of its campaigns.

If you want to show a sneak peek of how your services or app works, you can use a Playable ad, where users can experience a tiny bit of your services watching your video.

Ad Type #2: Top-view ads

To view ads allow you to acquire greater visibility since these are the first thing that will appear when users open the application. It allows you to extend the duration of the video to a minute, however, on TikTok, your videos should go straight to the point from the beginning since viewers do not like to waste a lot of time on advertisements. 

15 seconds is usually the standard duration, and in this case, the maximum can be 30 seconds. Never pester your users with too much information as this scares them away from your brand.

Ad Type #3: Brand takeover ads

These ads will appear in full screen for your users as soon as they open the ad, these are usually short since users cannot interact with them and they work to generate mass delivery and sales. If you want to change the format you can also do it in GIF format.

Ad Type #4: Branded hashtags

When you use branded hashtags you can take advantage of them to create a community of followers that create content based on your challenge or trend.

These tend to go well with influencer marketing and can promote a lot of brand awareness.

According to TikTok: “More than 50% of Branded Hashtag Challenges have >$5 ROAS for the CPG industry”.

Source: YouTube.

Ad Type  #5: Branded effects

With branded effects you allow customers to interact with your brand by using your unique customized filter or effect. This tool by itself can be a standalone campaign or be added to a hashtag challenge.

If your idea is original enough and customers fall in love with it, you will start to see your effect get viral in all TikTok generating superb brand awareness.

Here is an example of a Starbucks branded effect.

Source: YouTube.

Take Advantage of Influencer Marketing

Influencers are the new celebrities today, and it is that people seem to get more excited by stars of social networks like Bella Porch than other celebrities like Leonardo Di Caprio.

With this has come to the trend of promoting services or products through these influencers and the strategy works wonders for companies.

Make sure you get an influencer that matches the personality of your brand, that's because there's a higher that your audience type follows this social media celebrity.

Also define your objective, either to increase sales or to generate brand awareness.

Source: YouTube.

Run hashtag challenges, giveaways, and contests

Since we are talking about including more of your community with branded hashtags and effects, it is also a good idea to reward them for participating, since believing it or not, this could triple the number of followers for your account.

You can do this through giveaways that are directly linked to your hashtag or effect, encouraging more people to join your movement to win the prize.

According to surveys, these types of techniques are extremely successful and can increase the number of followers up to 70% faster in just 3 months.

Hashtags can help you get discovered, so study what are the best hashtags for you and use them properly since TikTok only allows 100 characters in your caption

How to build your Strategy?

Now that we know more about TikTok's marketing tools, we can start to create our marketing strategy.

Let's go right into it!

Define your target audience

This step is a "must" for every strategy, so first, we have to define which people do we want to reach in this social media.

Study your audience in other digital platforms and look for overlap on TikTok. When you find them get to know what type of content do they like a find a way to fix it into your branding personality.

Then start a brainstorm on types of content and add your twist so you can be different from similar brands, and talk about different brands...

Source: YouTube.

Find your competitors and analyze them

To be above the competition we must first know them deeply.

For that, the first thing we will do is check if they are on TikTok. If you do not find any of them, then do not hesitate to be a pioneer in this, you do not need them to be on the platform to validate your entry to it, instead be the first in your niche to enter it.

Now, if you get brands with similar content, the idea is to evaluate what content has worked the most for them, find where you think they are failing and thus be able to bring creations that exceed them.

Set goals that align with your business objectives

You must define what is the objective you want to achieve when entering TikTok, perhaps it is to connect with another audience, promote brand awareness or cultivate a closer relationship with your customers. Get the reasons why you want to start posting on this social media and build a plan to achieve it.

Like several social networks, TikTok gives you access to analytics to study the process of your brand, to achieve it you have to:

1. Go to your profile page and tap the three horizontal lines in the upper right.
2. Tap Creator Tools, then Analytics.
3. Explore the dashboard and find the metrics you can use to measure your goals.

Create a content calendar

Influencers do not go viral for a single video and, in fact, behind that viral video there are usually years or maybe months of publishing content, it is a matter of constancy, not just good luck.

When your company enters TikTok you must create a content calendar with the list of videos that you will upload per week, so you have a list of varied videos organized to keep your audience entertained.

Source: YouTube.

Track your progress

Every month or week it is necessary that you analyze how your company has done, for this you will go directly to the analytics to check your results.

If the goal is achieved, continue applying the same strategy, and if not, investigate and create other types of videos that excite users.

Source: YouTube.

Tools to upgrade your TikTok strategy

You have your awesome strategy and you are ready to take it all by yourself, but, having a tool by your side can be a complete boost to your marketing - you don't only have to depend on analytics -, so we are going to give you some options to use in your business.

Fanbytes

This tool focuses on marketing for Gen z and Millenials, the youngest ones, and it helps you to manage your influencer campaigns end to end by using an analytics platform.

This platform is built with machine learning and neuro-linguistic programming, which makes it easier to find the right influencer accurately.

You can find influencers that have talked about brands like yours and make the invitation to be a part of your team.

Key Features:

• You can create hashtag challenges so your influencers invite your community to participate
• Get fully-managed creative campaigns.
• Content creation to create a coordinated campaign effort.
• Customize your TikTok profile.
• Full access to analytics and a detailed campaign report so you can measure your ROI easily.

Source: YouTube.

Analisa

This is an analytics platform that allows marketers to obtain insights for TikTok profiles and hashtags, as well as research influencers to verify their authenticity.

With Analisa you can conduct a competitive analysis to find out how your competitors are performing.

Prices range from a 200$ pro plan to a completely free one. It also works for Instagram.

Key Features

• Helps you with profile and competitive analysis, follower demographics and as we said before, authenticity checks
• With its AI technology, you can get insights about followers, profiles and hashtags
• It breaks down the analysis of rates into engagement, comment and likes rate.
• It also shows posting maps if geotagged, along with audience engagement and posting activity.

Source: YouTube.

Wondershare Filmora Video editor

Not all of us go easy with video editing, that's why we recommend you this video editing tool.

This tool is used by almost every influencer since they don't usually edit their videos on TikTok's platform and use external platforms to make them stand out. The upgraded version of this video editing tool comes with new effects that can go great with your creations.

Key features

• Comes with a range of beautiful overlays and filters for exceptional editing.
• It comes with royalty-free audio and video files and also stock images for your videos. It's a handy tool for video creators.
• The platform offers 24/7 user-friendly support with helpful tips on growth and other support channels.

Source: YouTube.

Final Thoughts

Once this guide is finished, you have the necessary knowledge to start your business on TikTok, one of the most popular video platforms today, and if you know how to handle it correctly it will help you reach an even higher level of popularity.

Although its majority audience is usually young, any type of business can reach its niche here regardless of age, since when something goes so viral, people of any generation will want to get in the game to understand all the fuss around it. social media platform.

Users tend to like more video content, and TikTok will provide you with a platform in which you can create, edit and assemble videos easily and intuitively. Of course, if you want to take your game from amateur to professional, try using the tools that we recommend in this article.

Start your brainstorm and post your first video on TikTok!

If you want more support with your marketing campaign, at CodeDesign we have all the experience and the team to help you achieve your professional goals, contact us and let's do business!

Until a new article, see you!

Feel free to contact us to see the unprecedented growth of your business.

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