TikTok

The sheer scale of TikTok and the relative ease of producing content makes this an exciting arena for both brand awareness and product promotion. Success isn’t limited to the brands with big budgets and flashy visuals, this is a space where the smaller guys can equally shine.

As in all aspects of marketing, much comes down to having an intelligent, crafted strategy paired with some left field creative thinking and keeping a finger on the pulse of what’s trending.  To make a success out of any TikTok marketing campaign, you need agility and a capacity for impromptu activity to capitalise on what’s taking over the feeds.

Like any marketing strategy, your TikTok plan should include the following steps:

1. Establish your goals

Clearly define what you want to achieve from your TikTok activity.  Is it an overall increase in global brand awareness? Do you want to connect with a new audience? Are you launching a product and need to generate sales?

2. Define and target your audience

With 75% of users aged under 35, TikTok is predominantly used by Gen Z and Millennials.

But the platform is growing in popularity with older audiences with around 20% aged 40-49 as they show their interest in parenting, #foodtok and meal prep content.

TikTok’s advertising platform allows you to target your ads based on factors like age, gender, location, interests and behaviours.

Immerse yourself in the platform and see if similarly positioned businesses or brands you aspire to emulate are already on there. What kind of content are they producing and how successfully have they flexed their messaging to the platform?  In terms of targeting, TikTok has a unique algorithm in the form of the ‘For You’ feed which is curated for each individual user, so even more obscure videos still have the chance of being seen. A major advantage of TikTok over other platforms is that the majority of time is spent on the ‘For You’ feed, rather than the ‘Following’ feed, making it easier for your content to infiltrate the scrolls of your target audience. They don’t need to be following you to be served your videos.

3. Add a pinch of personality

There’s a greater sense of authenticity and off-the-cuff content when it comes to TikTok. Users value brands that are organic, relatable and show off their personality. It’s a place where many unexpected brands are letting their hair down – creating fresh and fast-paced content, jumping on trends and giving a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes – all while staying true to themselves.

4. Engage with your followers

Run polls to start a conversation; respond to comments; share and comment on other accounts; applaud challenge attempts. The more you interact with your followers, the more traction and trust you’ll gain. TikTok makes this even easier with the Duet and Stitch Tools. Duets allow users to post their video side-by-side with a video from another creator, split-screen style. TikTok Stitch is an editing feature that allows users to trim and edit other creators’ videos and incorporate them into their own content. The more you can take advantage of these interactions, the better as it brings you content to a whole new audience.

In this sense, TikTok is no different to other social networks – you want to build an active community which embraces your brand.

5. Evaluate your results

TikTok makes it easy to measure the effectiveness of your campaign with its free analytics tool. This offers a general overview; performance stats around individual video engagement levels; and intel around audience demographics. At Lane, we’ll handle all this for you, mapping out a clear and concise report of how well your TikTok activity is working.

TikTok is entirely formed of video clips with music as a key driver of trends. Its short and snappy clips, influenced by the previous presence of time limits means that there is a need to grab attention within the first few seconds. Now, with recent updates, videos can be up to 10 minutes long. This gives more opportunities to those brands who want to share expertise or tutorial-style content.

The style and subject obviously all depend on your brand and business. Popular formats include behind the scenes footage (great for hospitality and restaurants); tutorial videos (make up, hair care, DIY and life hack type products all benefit from this type of content); production processes (think mesmerising biscuit factory machinery at work) and the more interactive video challenges, where users create their own content in response to yours by filming themselves doing an activity initiated by the brand, with a given hashtag. This last example, known as user generated content (UGC) or ‘organic content’, is perhaps TikTok at its best, when followers indirectly become disciples of your brand, and the viral chain of activity gains its own momentum across the platform.

TikTok is growingly becoming a replacement for Google by its users. They’re searching on the platform for products and reviews, looking for recommendations from people they trust, and actively looking for the answers to everyday challenges. If you can position your product or service as the answer and harness the social proof of your audience, you’re onto a winner. Social recognition can have a much more significant impact on a brand than a commercial ad and people are more likely to respond to people who look and act like them.

Part of the fun of TikTok is using the myriad of features that allow you to create engaging content quickly with editing tools, AR effects, transitions, filters and even a royalty-free music library. The home-spun element of videos is all part of TikTok’s appeal, but for your business it’s worth spending a bit of time looking at things like lighting and audio to ensure you’re not diluting any aspect of your brand’s key qualities with poor presentation.

Arguably, the best content is not your content at all, but that of your fans. UGC adds both credibility and credence to your brand and messaging.  It’s a powerful social currency which when handled right can put your business or product in front of millions.

Just as with Instagram, influencers can be valuable partners, but only when carefully selected with essential criteria established, such as:

• Are they consistently active in your sector or industry?
• How often do they engage with their followers?
• Have they gained the trust and loyalty of their fans?

Once you’ve identified an influencer and negotiated either a fee or in-kind payment, you want them to create content involving your brand or product.  The idea is that this then filters down to their followers, encouraging them to do the same, and so the pattern, ideally, repeats itself.

Setting up a business account on TikTok is completely free, so it’s a good idea to try it out, get a feel for the platform and see what is possible with the numerous tools and features. Then, if you want to get involved in some paid activity, there are a range of ad format options available, such as in-feed ads that appear as users scroll and top-view ads that appear when users first open the app. You can create an unskippable brand takeover or spark ads to boost your existing posts. You could even choose a branded hashtag challenge which is perfect for gaining UGC, or create your own branded effects like stickers, lenses and special effect filters.

We can help you find the best ad formats and targeting strategy to achieve your business goals. Get in touch and find out more about how we can help you.