Social media marketing has been one of the most effective methods of reaching millennials and Gen-Z. Businesses that have used this marketing strategy have meaningfully engaged with far more customers. Within the social media spectrum, new channels are being added regularly and one of the most recent additions is TikTok.
The social media channel looks like a very casual platform so can it be used for business purposes? Yes, you can use it for professional purposes if you research your target audience well enough. Here is how it can practically be implemented as part of a social media marketing strategy.
Understanding how it all works
Before delving deeper into the subject of using TikTok for business purposes, it is fitting for you to understand this social media platform a little better. TikTok is full of features to produce videos with amazing audio effects and share them with the targeted audience or followers.
You can choose an audio effect from musical.ly that can play as the background music for the video. The platform is perfect for businesses trying to reach customers aged between 16 to 24 years old. The reason being is that 41% of TikTok active users are aged between that age group,
You can download the platform and play around with its features to get the hang of things but how does it relate to your business? The platform can be used to promote brand visibility and customer engagement with the content you create. There are different ways that are currently available for you to market a business on this channel.
Those methods include paid marketing and organic methods that can help reach more customers on this platform. You may have a few concerns about ruining the TikTok campaign. In that case, bring in an expert to offer advice throughout the whole process. That will propel the TikTok campaign to great heights because of the high brand visibility and advanced customer engagement.
Using hashtag challenges
One of the most successful ways of marketing a business through TikTok is using hashtag challenges. This social media marketing technique is very effective in getting more brand visibility, hence reaching the business goal. Launching a hashtag entails soliciting buy-in from customers by asking them to recreate or create from scratch content for TikTok.
When posting that content, they can include your brand’s hashtag on it. The highest performing TikTok campaigns include a solid hashtag challenge running. Launching a hashtag campaign can also help you organize and engage with user-generated content far much better. If you have launched a challenge and would like to promote some of the content created by users, it will be easier to get it by simply searching a hashtag.
These content amplifiers are not a foreign subject to social media users because other platforms like Twitter and Instagram have this feature. Hashtag challenges should be at the heart of your TikTok strategies because a large number of customers can be derived from this aspect only.
Also, hashtag challenges can be leveraged further by sponsoring them, which will contribute to the challenge appearing on discover. Thus, customers will easily gain access to the hashtag and see what kind of content has been posted under that hashtag. Afterward, the challenge might grow exponentially because the targeted audience might want to join in the trend as soon as possible.
Promoting customer interaction
TikTok allows brands to reach a wide audience but it also helps them meaningfully engage with customers. You can monitor how customers are engaging with your content to determine whether the business is really connecting with the audience. Negative statistics indicate that the health of the marketing strategy you are implementing is not good.
You should then review the marketing strategy you are using to suit customers a little better. The most common mistake most brands make in this regard is that they become too professional in occasions where they should not. TikTok can help you determine whether your social media marketing strategy is effective.
You can identify the rate customers engage with your content and then use that insight to redevelop the strategy. Moreover, TikTok engages customers at a rate unimaginable because by launching a hashtag challenge, more users will post their content. That can also give you an idea of what kind of content users expect from the business.
Apart from that, thousands of TikTok users can be your brand advocates and even share the content created on other platforms. The time spent by customers creating content and sharing it on TikTok and other platforms makes clients more invested in the brand. They will be more prone to spending more money on the brand and all of it can start with engaging customers meaningfully on TikTok.
TikTok content creation plan
When unrolling any type of marketing strategy, you need to have a content creation plan and that is exactly what should be done on TikTok. The platform has some unique characteristics that make it stand out from other social media channels. TikTok is structured to be more of a free-spirited social media channel that does not require much professionalism or any at all.
Thus, do not consider bringing suit and ties to this platform but consider posting humorous content that will engage customers. In most cases, TikTok videos have background music or a certain audio file where the audience can just mime, dance, or act. You can create a theme song for your brand and share videos of other individuals miming to the song or dancing.
The challenge might go viral and reach other viewers who will also follow the format of other videos posted under the same hashtag. Alternatively, you can record a video with funny voice audio and allow customers to act out the video.
The bottom line is that TikTok is a platform that allows creative thinking instead of more structured and professional decisions. TikTok is where your creative juices should flourish and work on creating content that the targeted audience will engage with.
Paid advertising on TikTok
If you would like to kickstart your TikTok strategy, using paid advertising methods can benefit the business greatly. There are different types of paid ads you can run on this social media platform. Those ads include brand takeovers, branded lenses, infeed native content, and hashtag challenge takeovers. These advertising techniques work depending on the occasion and the intention of using them.
Therefore, you need to understand each one of them in detail. Brand takeovers allow a business to completely take over the social media platform for a day and that involved adding links to the landing page and dominating hashtag challenges. Whereas, infeed native content is similar to Instagram sponsored stories that appear in full-screen mode and can be skipped by tapping the screen.
The latter ad can only run for fewer than 15 seconds which is the generally acceptable length on this platform. You can also use what is called branded lenses that are similar to Instagram or Snapchat filters. Branded lenses can offer customers a great opportunity to connect with the brand, inspiring them to further research the business.
Who knows where that might lead the business? The results might be getting a higher conversion rate of the products or services you are selling. Businesses can also promote their business using hashtag challenge takeovers allowing marketers to pay for their hashtags to appear under discover.
The audience will access the hashtag challenge easier when it falls right on to their laps. All these paid TikTok ads can help improve the brand’s visibility exponentially, introducing your business at a global stage.
Collaborating with influencers
One of the easiest ways out of social media marketing strategies is collaborating with influencers and letting them do the heavy lifting. TikTok is not any different because this platform has well-established influencers with a heavy following. Using these influencers to get the brand good visibility can have so many benefits for the business.
Therefore, you should include an influencer marketing strategy when planning a TikTok campaign. You should conduct the standard due diligence before committing to using a certain influencer even on TikTok. The most important aspect to look out for is if the influencer does have the keys to the relevant target audience you are seeking.
If the influencer is not followed by the audience you are targeting, what is the point of paying hundreds and even thousands of dollars? Thus, it is important to conduct due diligence before making it official with any influencer. You can ask for influencers to create content that they feel resonates best with his audience specifically.
The Return on Investment (RoI) of influencer marketing, for now, is quite significant because there aren’t as many businesses competing for influencers right now. That reduces the price of getting such services making the best time to enter the market right now. Approach influencers that are relevant to your brand image and start developing a working relationship with each one of them.
How are other brands using TikTok
Large brands are having A great time on TikTok and engaging millions of users in the process using hashtag challenges mostly. For example, Nike launched a branded hashtag with this brand’s name only which is quite simple and easy to remember. The hashtag challenge only has incited millions of users to post their content customizing their sneakers or wearing and running with them.
Chipotle also solicited great customer engagement by incentivizing their hashtag challenge called #boorito. The users had to wear the spookiest outfit and post the content on TikTok to get a discount when buying food during Halloween.
Mucinex also participated in TikTok hashtag challenges by launching its #TooSickToBeSick challenge. It was a first for pharmaceutical companies to use this platform to promote their medicinal products making this strategy a very effective method to connect with the audience and increase brand visibility as well as customer engagement.
Kool-aid also incentivized its hashtag challenge by offering participants an opportunity of winning $10,000. To stand a chance to win this cash, users had to post content of themselves enjoying Christmas under the hashtag #OhYEAHChristmas. One of the influencers used on this campaign, Lil Jon manages to get over 1.3 million views on his own.
Final thoughts
TikTok can be used for business marketing purposes successfully and the examples of other brands indicate that this is absolutely possible. You can use this platform to let your creative juices run free to create content that actually speaks to the hearts of the audience. You can incentivize the business’s hashtag challenge to get it to go viral and reach a wider audience by maybe including a cash prize or other incentive customers will love.
About the author
Tobias Foster is a writer and editor with more than 5 years of work experience with the best dissertations services and essay writing services. His current job is with Assignment Help UK where he assists students with term papers, essays, thesis and dissertation writing. His in-depth research ability, combined with impeccable writing skills, makes him a top-rank writer in the academic industry.
Alina Wilson says
I don’t know much about Tiktok, but I understand a lot from this post.
Elaina M says
Tiktok is a fun social media and it has gained popularity rather quickly, especially in the younger audience. Aside from it being entertaining, it can be an amazing platform to promote your business.
Matthew Wall says
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