Intro To TikTok Marketing: 12 Tactics You Should Try In 2021

If you’re trying to make a name for yourself in the digital world, or you own a business and want to make it stand out online, TikTok marketing could be an excellent tool for your brand.

TikTok has quickly earned its position as one of the most popular social media marketing platforms around. Loved by younger audiences and visually-driven consumers, TikTok has around 1 billion people using the app each month.

Building the right TikTok marketing strategy means you can connect with a highly engaged following of customers keen to interact with you.

So, where do you begin? What does it take to be a success with TikTok for business? Here are some helpful hints to get you started.

What is TikTok Marketing?

TikTok marketing is the art of using TikTok to advertise products or services. The idea is to generate attention and engagement for your personal or corporate brand so that you can gain a following of potential buyers. As a result of its high levels of interaction, TikTok is one of the most valuable content marketing channels for companies and is one powerful platform for social media marketing.

The average customer spends around 52 minutes per day on the app, and younger audiences spend up to 80 minutes a day checking out content. This gives brands a great opportunity to connect regularly with their community. Compared to YouTube Shorts, TikTok offers a far more engaging experience for video sharing, where customers can easily scroll through content on their phone, looking for videos based on the music they like, or trending terms. Moreover, if you use additional creative solutions such as logo animation, music visualizer, logo design or using popping brand colors, the results will be even better.

Facebook and Instagram also have similar tools to TikTok, but TikTok is widely regarded to be the ultimate choice for video content. With the right social media marketing proposal, businesses can tap into TikTok’s immense potential to drive growth and success. From increased visibility to greater customer engagement, having a successful plan in place provides countless benefits for brands on this dynamic platform.

TikTok is about building a unified community of people sharing ideas and creating entertainment. Instagram Reels and similar solutions are just trying to keep up. With TikTok, you can:

·         Reach a wide selection of followers: Though TikTok is most popular among younger people, the variety of users is growing. Around 38% of users in the US are over the age of 30.

·         Achieve exceptional engagement: TikTok beats all other platforms for engagement levels, so you can really interact with customers on a new level.

·         Achieve brand humanization: TikTok makes it easier to show your customers the values and humanity behind your brand.

How To Achieve Success Through TikTok Marketing: 12 Tactics

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to success on TikTok, but there are a series of efforts that do seem to make a positive difference.

Here are some great tips for your TikTok Marketing Strategy.

1. Be Smart In Using A Mix Of Trending And Niche Hashtags

TikTok hashtags are one of the most important parts of your TikTok social media strategy. Similar to other social platforms, hashtags on TikTok are a kind of SEO solution, designed to help people find your content. Like other social platforms, you also need to use the right combination of hashtags to ensure people can find your content. If you want to strengthen your SEO position on Google or YouTube, hiring an SEO agency is the way to go.

Using a combination of TikTok hashtags, which includes both trending tags and niche alternatives, is a great way to improve your visibility. Additionally, you can use a rank tracker to check on hashtag rankings. Trending tags like #FYP can help to boost your chances of reaching a wider audience, while niche tags bring you face-to-face with the right customers.

To find hashtags, you can check out your competitors and see what kind of terms they’re using. It’s also worth checking the discovery page for insights into what’s trending and using the search bar to find tags related to the ones you want to rank for.

@ColdCandyUK uses a combination of branded hashtags #coldcandy and trending ones #smallbusiness, to connect to their audience:

@coldcandyuk

Our #REDGANG mix with a little extra sauce 🤯 #coldcandy #sweets #picknmix #candy #fizzy #satisfying #colourmix #smallbusiness

♬ More Than Friends x Show Me Love – Jay Thomas (DJ)

2. Use Trending Filters

Filters on TikTok are essential layers or effects you can apply to videos to modify their appearance. Through the use of filters, people can enhance their image, capture attention from followers, and make more appealing videos. You can easily apply a filter during the editing process after making your video, just click the “filters” button on the side of the screen.

Notably, as well as making your videos look more engaging and professional, filters can also help customers to find you. If you search something like “Cat Filter” on TikTok, you can find people using that type of filter in the app. The filter applications become possible thanks to AI-powered technologies and machine learning and thanks to object detection.

3. Try Branded Hashtag Challenges

Branded hashtag challenges are one of the most exciting parts of being on TikTok. People love getting involved in community-style events on TikTok, and that’s exactly what a branded hashtag can offer. While hashtags help your followers to find conversations and content they care about, challenges encourage people to get involved and create videos themselves.

For instance, a user might be challenged to show off their dance moves, perform a song, or demonstrate an athletic feat. According to TikTok, the engagement level of a branded hashtag challenge is around 17.5%, compared to only 1% on other platforms.

Hashtag challenges also improve ad recall by 4 times, boost brand awareness by 4.5 times, and deliver 5 times more return on ad spend. The Pringles company used #PlayWithPringles to encourage customers to show themselves having fun with their favorite snacks:

4. Tap The Power Of TikTok Influencers/Content Creators

Influencers are valuable on just about any social platform – but they’re particularly crucial for TikTok content creation. Around 86% of marketers have leveraged influencer marketing to improve sales and brand awareness, and TikTok influencers can help to improve your reputation, too.

Working with influencers on your TikTok marketing means you choose a professional to help you create content and get it out to the right audience as quickly as possible. You can essentially leverage influencers to reach people who might never see your posts otherwise.

To work with influencers, you first need to find the right people. A good influencer should be relevant to your brand and have a connection with your target audience. In 2019, Mucinex successfully got the hashtag #TooSicktoBeSick trending after working with influencers to market an over-the-counter product. The influencer videos saw people transforming from being “ill” to being ready to celebrate.

Work with a freelance copywriter if you need content ideas for your TikTok or other social media accounts.

@bansbrigade

#stevenban #callinsick #fyp #hardflip #skateboarding #toosick #toosicktobesick #custom #caviclub #nosleep #ihatemyboss #downeyca

♬ original sound – Steven Ban

5. Find Out The Best Times To Post On TikTok

Finding the best time to post on TikTok means you can earn the attention of your target audience when they’re most likely to be online. Though the right timing for you might vary depending on the kind of customer you’re trying to reach, most experts recommend posting:

·         Sunday: 7am, 8am, 4pm

·         Monday: 6am, 10am, 10pm

·         Tuesday: 9am, 2am, 4am

·         Wednesday: 7am, 11am, 11pm

·         Thursday: 12am, 9am, 7pm

·         Friday: 5am, 1pm, 3pm

·         Saturday: 11am, 7pm, 8pm

·         Sunday: 7am, 8am, 4pm

The best times for engagement are 9am on a Tuesday, 12am on a Thursday, or 5am on a Friday. However, you can also improve your chances of posting at the right time by checking out the TikTok analytics section on your Business account and looking at “Views.” This will show you when your followers are most likely to be online, checking out your account:

6. Use Insights From Analytics

Speaking of TikTok marketing Analytics, they can give you an excellent way to determine what you should be posting on the platform to achieve the best results. Notably, you can only use TikTok analytics if you have a Pro account. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much to upgrade, you just go on “Manage Account,” then tap “Switch to Pro Account” in your settings.

You can choose to be a Creator or a Business – both will allow you to check your TikTok analytics. Once you have your new account, simply go into your profile, and tap the three dots in the upper right corner. If you click on “Analytics,” you’ll see data on your followers, content, and an “overview” page.

The Profile section of the analytics page allows you to track views and follower count for either 7 or 28 days. The “Content” section lets you examine which of your videos are trending. You can also use the Follower insights to get insights into your followers’ demographics.

Using the analytics on TikTok means you can gain a better understanding of your audience, and what you need to do to connect with your customers.

7. Include A Powerful CTA In Your Video

People visit TikTok to have fun. However, they can also be regularly encouraged to act.

TikTok marketing is a lot like any kind of marketing, in that you need to nurture leads and give them guidance on what you want them to do. Providing information on what your customers should do next increases the chances they’ll actually engage with your brand.

TikTok allows you to add CTAs to your Ads to let your customers know what they need to do next. You might use a “Shop Now” button or “Download” button to send your customers directly to the item you want them to interact with.

Adobe uses feed ads on TikTok to showcase what people can do with their Lightroom product. The “Download” CTA means if followers are inspired by the content, they have the freedom to go and download Lightroom for themselves at the tap of a button.

8. Post Consistently

A TikTok marketing strategy needs to include frequent, fresh content. While all social media strategies demand a good flow of relevant, high-quality content, TikTok is one of the most fast-paced platforms out there. Trends change constantly, and viewers can quickly lose interest in a brand they don’t see often enough.

Companies like Nike post brief pieces of content on an almost constant basis stay ahead of the curve. You’ll find a new video every day – if not more.

@nike

@Chloe Pavlech making it look easy! Who’s grabbing their rope & trying this BreakItDown?!

♬ original sound – Nike

The good news is that posting consistently is pretty easy with TikTok, as you don’t need to create a lot of long-form or highly-edited content. Plan for how frequently you want to share new videos, based on what you know about your target audience. You can even check out the frequency strategies of your competitors for extra guidance.

9. Use Promote To Grow Your Audience

TikTok “Promote” is one of the in-built advertising tools available from TikTok. While you may prefer many of your TikTok marketing efforts to be free (like creating regular high-quality content), paying to promote some videos can be helpful, too. The Promote feature helps you to get your best content in front of more customers, and even guides people towards your website.

Promote is available for all TikTok accounts, and it allows you to track basic information about your video, too. For instance, you can keep an eye on your number of video views, likes, comments, and shares. You’ll also see how many people visit your website link, and what kind of people are interacting with your content.

Notably, you can only use Promote in your TikTok marketing strategy when you’re using original or commercial sounds (no copyrighted music). To Promote a video, go to your “Me” page, tap the three-line icon, and tap “Creator tools,” then “Promote.”

You can choose a goal for promoting your video, like getting more website visitors, choose the audience you want to reach, and set a budget. n addition, you should also work on better SEO, learn how to buy a domain name, and make your website design more user-friendly.

10. Improve Your Engagement By Replying To Comments

Social media works best when companies and brands are “social” with their audience. This means replying to the comments people leave on your content. Responding to comments on TikTok couldn’t be easier, either. All you need to do is tap on the comment you want to reply to, then enter your message. You can also improve engagement and add context to your reply by using a video.

When you tap on the comment you want to reply to, you’ll see an icon of a video camera on the left-hand side. You can press and hold the comment you want to reply to, and this will create a video, too. You’ll also be able to have the comment your video responds to attached to the video.

While followers will usually appreciate any sort of response when they leave a comment on your video, a video answer is far more engaging and more likely to get eyes on your account. It’s a great way to upgrade your TikTok marketing strategy and show off your personality.

11. Switch To A Creator Or Business Account

If you want to get the most out of your TikTok marketing strategy, you need the right kind of account. As mentioned above, you won’t be able to access analytics on your video if you have a personal account. Instead, you’re going to need a Business or Creator account.

Business accounts are specifically designed to help promote your business. These accounts are great for tracking your performance, giving you new engagement solutions, and more.

A Business account is the standard Pro-level account from TikTok, offering analytics and insights. A Creator account gives you question-and-answer upgrades, and the “creator fund” features, which allows you to earn via your video.

12. Consider In-Feed Ads

In-Feed ads are the ads that appear between user videos as you’re scrolling through the “For You” page. The ads are very similar to what you might see if you were tapping on Instagram Stories. You can get creative with your In-Feed ads by implementing various call-to-action elements and making your videos between 9 to 15 seconds long.

While it’s possible for users to scroll past or skip In-Feed ads, you can improve your chances of capturing your customer’s attention with these promotions. The key to success is making sure your ads are exciting enough to earn customer attention. Of course, your product or service needs to be equally exciting to keep the attention that your ads can generate, therefore it would be wise to check every IT service company that is in a similar niche as yours so you can get ideas to improve your overall progress.

Remember to establish a problem or grab attention as quickly as you can so your customer doesn’t decide to keep scrolling. Levi’s is a great example of a company using In-Feed ads to its advantage. The Levis TikTok Marketing strategy involved working with various influencers and asking them to customize pairs of shorts.

The videos appeared as In-Feed ads, where users could click on the “Shop Now” button to buy the same design on the Levi website.

Succeeding With TikTok Marketing

TikTok has the potential to be one of the most important tools in your advertising plan. With amazing engagement levels, a huge reach, and plenty of trending content to get involved with, TikTok is taking the world by storm. Of course, just like any other promotional effort, you’ll need the right TikTok marketing strategy to achieve the right results. Using the tips above, start building your custom TikTok advertising campaigns, and keep an eye on your results to determine where you should be investing in the future.  

Frequently Asked Questions