TikTok Marketing – A Breakthrough In Product Promotion!

Despite being in its infancy, TikTok has become one of the most downloaded social media platforms with the fastest-growing rates. 

While Facebook allows users to make posts with texts and Instagram is ideal for pictures and images; TikTok enables them to make appealing content videos, contributing to a successful TikTok marketing strategy.

Easier said than done, utilizing TikTok for marketing your brands is not always a piece of cake, especially if you are a stranger to this social platform. 

There are various aspects you need to consider before marketing, including data privacy. So let’s follow us to find out the best ways to create a TikTok marketing trend!

What Is TikTok?

TikTok – A Video-Sharing App

TikTok is a short form of a video-sharing app, enabling users to create and share their videos with the longest duration of 15 seconds. 

This mobile app was originally designed in China and still maintains a separate app in the Chinese market. In short, its logo is a combination of Musical.ly and Duyin apps’ logos. 

Its video-sharing features are based on the Musical.ly app but show a broader scope. What makes this app outstanding from its counterparts is its variety of content rather than focusing on lip-syncing to music.

Instead, TikTok allows users to choose from a wide range of sounds and song snippets with various special effects and filters. Thanks to those impressive features, you are more likely to create higher-quality videos and better sound systems.

Since its first days, TikTok has integrated  numerous outstanding functions to aid users in creating content videos. One of the most impressive ones is its reaction feature. This exclusive duet enables users to record their reactions to any videos and share them on their accounts.

One more user-friendly characteristic of this app is its digital well-being alert, notifying users of spending over two hours on it. Challenges, dance cover videos, magic tricks, or even daily blogs are just a few domains you can create in TikTok’s broad scope. 

Why Is It Popular?

According to Tiktok statistics, TikTok has successfully amassed over 500 million active users per month, becoming the most downloaded online forum. Besides its overwhelming features over other social media, two hidden factors are contributing to its overall popularity.

The first one is celebrity endorsement. Allowing a closer approach to the audience, TikTok has attracted most celebrities of all nations to immerse in this forum. 

By creating a hashtag challenge and adding other popular trends, those famous people have appealed their huge fandom to TikTok and make them potential TikTokers when involved in interesting challenges.

Another driving factor in TikTok’s popularity is its strong focus on localized content. Unlike other social media, which only concentrate on users’ activities, TikTok has run various local contests and challenges and voted for the winner through localized hashtags. 

TikTok administrators give participants themes and topics to create videos in each contest and choose the top video creators. This method has helped this app gain recognition and a huge following.

How Does TikTok Work?

Before exploiting this app as a marketing tool, let’s see how it becomes fun, entertaining, and addictive? 

Most TikTok videos are around 15 seconds long, but those short videos can be combined for up to one minute. Viewers can interact with videos by scrolling down through their feeds and react to their favorite videos by double-tapping on the screen.

Liking, commenting, or sharing videos are also accessible on TikTok, allowing users to interact with others through direct message and SMS as well as link to other social media platforms.

People can follow and set up notifications for those with appealing and interesting content. TikTok will announce them whenever their following users post a new video.

One outstanding feature of TikTok is its great feeling. This app is specially designed to recognize your favorite themes, genres, and topics and then suggest similar content videos. 

Thus, if you love a particular video and watch it till the end, the following ones will show the same quality, music, or genre.

Each video comes with various hashtags, which is a great measuring tool for the video’s popularity. Those hashtags will make the TikTok algorithm rank your videos on top search results.

How To Use TikTok For Marketing

We are sure that this is the most welcoming part for you. Leave no time to waste, let’s see how you can exploit this excellent social app to market your business and brand.

Create TikTok Content Videos 

TikTok Business Account

First thing first, start your marketing journey by converting to a business account. By setting up this account, TikTok will offer you special features geared to promote your brands.

Creating a new TikTok account should not cause you any trouble or difficulty, as all you need to do is register with your email, Google, Twitter, or Facebook account. 

No matter which platforms you connect with, they should be credible and authentic enough to effectively build your community later on.

To switch the account for marketing purposes, you need to opt for a pro account in the “Manage my account” section and select Business or Creator on your preference. 

Now you are free to add a website or contact email to your profile so that potential customers can contact you easily.

Make A Content Sketch

Now that you have successfully created an account, get ready to make your videos viral. Succeeding in marketing on TikTok closely matches to creating exciting and appealing content. 

The first step is to consider which type of video is best suited for your products or services. Blogs, reviews, ads, or “About” videos are just a few to name.

Then, it is time to make a plan for your videos, including dialogues, scenes, circumstances, and shooting locations. To choose the best things, it is vital to consult other trending videos and a famous TikTok influencer to see how they have drawn people’s attention. 

It would be better to perform a competitive audit to learn from other similar brands or organizations popular on the app. This way can help you identify each competitor’s SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). 

Now decide what you want to include in your video and prepare various scenarios and plans. There is no fixed formula to go viral on TikTok, so don’t feel let down if your video flops.

Overall, if Plan A fails to work, learn from it and move on to Plan B. Unable to develop good video content to engage your target audience? 

There are various ways to get new ideas: common questions on popular forums related to your niche, the “Autosuggest” feature of Google Search, or an SEO tool with ideal keywords. 

No matter which topic or ideas you choose, bear in mind that your audience desires humorous and entertaining content, aside from informative one.

Shoot And Upload Videos

All plans prepared; let’s get your hands dirty with making a video. High-quality videos will surely be more eye-catching and whet users’ appetites. 

Therefore, it is vital to choose a shooting location with enough light, great views, and little disturbance. All shooting factors should come along with your promoted products and services.

If you are ignorant about video editing, TikTok is certainly your savor, allowing you to pick the most suitable filters and sound effects. So, creating great marketing videos is much easier with TikTok than other social media without a shade of doubt.

TikTok Influencer Marketing

With premium-quality videos, you will need TikTok influencer marketing to take over competitors and become viral ones. 

To put it in simpler terms, TikTok influencers are successful and famous TikTok users who have successfully built a reputation by sharing their knowledge or expertise in certain fields.

They tend to create videos on a schedule about relevant topics, generating a desirable viewing number and engagement rates. When it comes to marketing, TikTok influencers deliver a call-to-action impact on their followers to buy a product or service.

There are four types of TikTok influencers: Mega Macro, micro, and nano influencers. The first ones are usually singers, sportspeople, actors with huge offline fame. They should have more than one million followers and work for major brands or large-scale campaigns to raise community awareness.

Macro TikTok influencers have hundreds of thousands of followers, thus more suitable for marketing than the former category. Those users have a better rapport with others and can establish confidence about your products in your potential customers.

On the other hand, micro-influencers are the most accessible marketers on TikTok. They are segment creators who tend to reach consumers more authentically and closely with the following number of around 5000 to 40000 followers.

Nano influencers are the latest type with under 5000 followers. Although they are not as popular as other categories, they are more likely to have a loyal and keen following rate.

Those influencers gain recognition as true experts in highly specialized or obscure topics, so they are a great option for niche products and services.

Finding ways to make your video widespread? It’s time to cooperate with those influencers and set an innovative marketing approach. This method must encourage their viewers and cultivate a great interest in your sponsored products and services.

Like other influencer marketing platforms such as Instagram or Facebook, when implementing a TikTok marketing campaign, you need to consider metrics expressing the level of brand awareness to ensure optimal efficiency.

Overall, TikTok influencer marketing is the most effective tool, allowing your account to achieve larger awareness with limited effort. This marketing strategy is also impressively friendly towards users. 

Most users have great confidence in their influencers and are more likely to believe in what those individuals review. We bet that you want to show professionalism in creating and marketing. 

And that’s why you need TikTok influencer marketing. By giving influencers enough freedom for creativity, they will ensure you a professional digital job.

TikTok Advertising

TikTok ads are another great marketing suggestion to make your business viral on this platform. One of the most attractive benefits of TikTok ads is its time-saving feature. By creating a marketing ad, you can reach your target audience within only 24 hours. 

In general, there are five main types of marketing ads that you can choose from: in-feed ads, branded hashtags, top view ads, branded effects, and brand takeover. 

Among those types, in-feed ads are the closest to the traditional TikTok ads and prove to get the best results. Other ad products are only open to companies with huge advertising budgets.

Creating an in-feed ad is so straightforward if you follow our guide:

• Click on the “Create an Ad” section. This step can only be accomplished when TikTok gives your account access, so you will not create an ad account right away.
• Create videos with the same rules as normal content: You need to keep your content within the longest duration of 60 seconds.
• Select advertising objectives: there are two main options, interest targeting, and behavioral targeting. Like Facebook ads, the first one enables your ads to appear to those showing an interest in your product. On the other hand, the latter targets the audience based on their TikTok behaviors during the past seven or fifteen days.
• Choose between “custom audience” and “lookable audience”: Once again, you can aim at those already interacting with your brand with the first targeting. At the same time, its counterpart enables you to reach potential customers similar to your existing audience.

In-feed ads are also preferred among viewers, as they can like, comment, and share those advertisements like a normal content video. Plus, this ad type is full-screen and skippable so that users don’t feel irritated or annoyed when coming across one.

For marketers, this ad can also come with a call-to-action button linking to a landing page. Such a beneficial feature will surely help you increase website traffic, drive conversion, and boost sales.

If you still cannot create an ad, let’s visit the “Inspiration” section on the TikTok website to see some of the great TikTok marketing examples. Those ads here have produced excellent results and will help you create a winning campaign on your own.

Tips For An Effective TikTok Marketing Strategy

Now that you have a business TikTok account and feel ready for the campaign! But before rushing into branding your business, spare some time to follow our tips for an effective marketing strategy.

Finding TikTok Marketing Trends

If you are a beginner and not confident to become a trend-setter, it’s time to find other TikTok marketing trends for suggestions. All the most viral videos and content can be easily found on the top trending tab, so you only need to search on this tab with straightforward keywords.

A trendy video should receive a huge number of reactions and comments; thus, don’t forget to keep an eye on those criteria. Most TikTok trends also come with various popular hashtags that you can employ. 

Therefore, look for hashtags in viral videos and the top search results, then add them to yours. Trending hashtags should go well with your content videos, so you will have to create and share videos relating to them.

Trends are always fast-moving, and no one wants to be left behind. If you fail to keep up with the trend, you will risk wasting your time, money, and effort invested in your videos. 

Therefore, keep yourself in the loop of TikTok trends and always get ready to change your content to catch up with the craze.

However, following the trend doesn’t mean making a copy of others’ videos. As most followers tend to stick to the viral videos and remake a similar one, you need to find a new way to breathe a new life into it to set yours apart.

Furthermore, finding other marketing trends also enables you to create a new trend on your own. This method will lead you to the right trending path and suggest viewers’ preferences to win their hearts.

Use Hashtags For Videos

As mentioned above, one of the most crucial factors behind a trending marketing strategy is hashtags. Like SEO optimization, those hashtags work in the same way as keywords in making your content on the top search results. 

If you add relevant hashtags in your video, there is no doubt that other users will easily visit your channel. Click on the “Discover” glass at the bottom screen, and you will see a long list of videos sorted by trending hashtags. 

Now let’s pick the most suitable ones for your videos to amplify the content’s reach, identify other potential competitors, and get more followers. However, it is worth noting that TikTok captions should be no more than 100 characters, including hashtags. 

Thus, it would help if you were strategic with what you tend to use. We highly advise you to combine broad and niche hashtags together to increase your engagement. 

It is best to avoid the most popular generic hashtags. With the most trending keywords, your content videos are more likely to be overwhelmed in the sea of content and fail to grab users’ attention.

Sometimes, your videos should better be outstanding in other less popular categories. This case is especially true for marketing, as you should not focus on some hashtags due to their virality. Instead, use those that make your videos visible for potential relevant viewers to your campaigns.

Collaborate With Other Content Creators

As the old saying goes: “ Together we can change the world,” collaborating with other creators is one of the best strategies to bring your content into vogue and market your service to a larger audience reach.

Most influencers on the social network are likely to have a rapport with other viewers and build up a great reputation for their quality of content. 

Therefore, if you are struggling to get attention or gain trust from users, it is worth your investment to build productive working relationships with other popular content creators.

Those collaborators should not necessarily be movie stars; instead, they should be those having more clout with today’s generations to fully undertake your TikTok marketing strategy.

Finding and making contact with those people is just a piece of cake as you can search for them in relevant content on TikTok. Individuals suitable for your project and likely to promote your videos can be found in your similar video category.

When coming across a good fit, let’s send them a friendly message to let them know you are interested in partnering.

Do you want to become an influencer yourself? If yes, it’s time to interact with others, especially those engaged with your content. You can build a good relationship with them by reacting to their videos.

Never underrate the power of comments, as they can make your content viral with more users.

Post Videos On The Best Time

Like other social platforms, TikTok should reward frequent posting. The more content videos you upload and share to your TikTok account, the higher your follower rate will be. 

It is mainly because if you frequently post your videos, people will find it easier to come across and visit your account and decide to follow you. 

However, posting on the best times is a completely different story.

Each creator, influencer, and brand has different prime times to post, so there is no fixed solution.

More importantly, your target audience’s location, interests, age, and gender are other factors to consider when posting videos. So how can you decide the best posting times?

The hidden beauty is TikTok analytics, which shows detailed information on your audience’s activities. Here, you can figure out when your audience is most active, and this information helps you choose the best times for your videos.

The Final Thought

Long story short, TikTok is such a fun, entertaining, and widely popular forum to make you relaxed and your brands viral. This app can help you save plenty of budgets and time to popularize your brands and business from the beginning.

However, easier said than done; you need to prepare enough information about this app and its data privacy issues before creating an effective TikTok marketing strategy. And now, let TikTok help you with your marketing.!