TikTok for Business – Leveraging TikTok as a Marketing Platform

TikTok is known for its popularity with teenagers but now it’s being used as a marketing platform by businesses. Several brands are making use of top TikTok trends to promote their products in new and innovative ways. If you have a business, this social media app acts as a great marketing channel. Additionally, the platform has relatively low competition which means high chances of success for your brand. In only the United States, Tik Tok has around 100 million monthly active users. It was also the most downloaded app in 2018.

However, if you’re new to change, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Shifting away from conventional business methods is tough, but we’ve got you covered. Here are 6 simple tools on Tik Tok for business growth.

Hashtag Challenge

Challenges are what define Tik Tok’s image. Thus, creating these hashtag challenges is the best way to gain awareness and popularity for your brand. Today, even singers and artists use this platform for promoting their brands. Recently, Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road challenge gained a lot of attention which can be streamed easily if you have internet with your Spectrum TV.

The singer leveraged this challenge to gain fame and popularity, gaining a magnitude of fans. Similarly, Chipotle’s #ChipotleLidFlip received millions of video submissions and views. This not only created brand awareness but also enabled the brand to interact with users. Today, brands collaborate with TikTok’s marketing team to build sponsored hashtag challenges.

Influencers

TikTok marketing through influencers is the most widely used channel of brand promotion. Influencers on TikTok have millions of followers who tend to follow their idols. As their title suggests, they exist to influence followers. As a result, brands endorsed by these individuals have a higher chance of gaining popularity with consumers.

Additionally, businesses reach a target audience that trusts the influencer. Guess launched the #InMyDenim campaign where it worked together with influencers to promote its apparel. The company also collaborated with top influencers like @ourfire (2.3M fans), @madison_willow (+983K fans), and more. Eyes Lips Face (ELF), a cosmetics brand, worked with influencers too but in a different way. It created an original song for the company which gained instant viral success. It featured popular Tik Tokers singing along to the song called ‘Eyes Lips Face”. Ever since ELF went from the sixth to second-highest rated beauty brand for teens.

Similarly, world-renowned brands like Google and Coca-Cola are also known to use famous TikTok influencers to spread awareness.

TikTok Ads

Brands frequently make use of TikTok ads to promote their business on the platform. However, the social media app recommends marketers to run ads ranging from nine to fifteen seconds. When targeting TikTok ads, brands choose between Interest or Behavioral Targeting. The app offers five different types of ad products.

Branded Effects

• Branded hashtags
• Brand Takeover
• In-feed ads
• Top View ads

Small businesses usually use in-feed ads to garner brand awareness. This is because the other options work with companies that have significant advertising budgets. Infeed ads are based on three action models: CPC, CPM, and CPV.

Moreover, TikTok also presents “custom audience” and “lookalike audience” targeting. This helps brands target audiences easily and strategically. Content to be added- Additionally, with the ability to embed TikTok videos on websites, brands can further leverage their content and reach a wider audience beyond the TikTok app itself. For more information on embedding TikTok videos, refer to the TikTok developer documentation on embed videos.

Branded Lens

Marketing on TikTok is made easy through its Branded Lenses feature. The app lets companies use 3D objects or customized face filters linked to brands. Tik Tok uses AR to enable these features, which are like Snapchat’s face filters. Creating a branded lens helps brand recognition. Additionally, consumers today love quirky, unique filters. Thus, this feature increases the chances of user engagement with the brand in innovative ways.

Brand Takeover

Brand Takeover is a recent feature that was added to TikTok at the start of 2019. Takeovers are known to maximize reach and exposure for brands for 24 hours. However, they’re also one of the most expensive options available, which is why small businesses don’t use them as often. Recently, Guess launched a fashion takeover on Tik Tok, garnering millions of views and subscribers. Guess’ ‘In My Denim’ campaign had hundreds of influencers and consumers using creative ways to flaunt their Guess jeans.