TikTok is the fastest-growing social media platform and has become a force in digital marketing. The huge audience of the platform has compelled many brands to make their presence visible on it. TikTok is not just a procrastination tool for teens anymore, it has gathered audiences from all walks of life that belong to diverse age groups. Brands that are not on the platform are missing out on the opportunity to capitalize on the platform’s popularity which can be used for effective marketing.
Most of TikTok’s success stories are accidental. All it takes is one video to go viral and the account experiences massive growth. But waiting for a video to go viral is not an effective technique. You need to devise a proper strategy to establish a significant presence on the platform. Having a systematic approach to the platform would increase the chances of going viral and consequently increase the reach of marketing campaigns.
So, let’s dive a little deeper and understand what it takes to build a successful marketing strategy on TikTok. This discussion will examine whether purchasing TikTok followers and engaging Social Followers UK Services can contribute to your success.
What Exactly Is TikTok Marketing?
TikTok marketing is the use of TikTok, a short-form video platform, to promote a brand, product, or service. It leverages the unique features and trends of TikTok to create engaging content that reaches a large audience. Here are some key aspects of TikTok marketing:
- Short-form video content: Videos are typically 15 seconds to a few minutes long, requiring a concise and creative approach.
- Engagement: The platform thrives on user interaction. Likes, comments, shares, and participation in trends and challenges are crucial.
- Influencer marketing: Partnering with popular TikTok creators can significantly boost brand awareness and reach.
- Organic reach: The algorithm prioritizes showing users content they'll enjoy, regardless of follower count. This offers opportunities for organic growth.
- Paid advertising: TikTok offers paid advertising options to target specific demographics and interests.
Overall, TikTok marketing is a powerful tool for reaching a young, engaged audience and promoting your brand in a fun and interactive way.
Types of Marketing On TikTok
Like other platforms, several methods can be used for marketing on TikTok. No single technique works for all brands but it is important to understand the available options. Some of the most successful means of marketing on TikTok are:
1. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is not exclusive to TikTok; it’s a strategy that resonates across various social media platforms. However, TikTok’s unique features and engaged user base make it an effective channel for brand promotion. Here are some key points to consider:
- Choosing the Right Influencer: Brands must carefully select influencers who align with their niche and target audience. Trust is crucial—users rely on influencers they follow, and their endorsement can significantly impact brand perception.
- Audience Relevance: Hiring the right influencer involves understanding your target audience. For instance, marketing childcare products through a teenage influencer might not be the best fit. Tailor your influencer selection to match your brand’s audience demographics.
- Promotional Strategies: Brands can collaborate with influencers in different ways:
- Product Promotion: Sending products to influencers for them to showcase on their accounts.
- Paid Promotions: Some influencers charge a fee for promoting products.
- Authentic Reviews: Others provide honest reviews without additional compensation.
- Balancing Authenticity: Striking a balance between paid promotions and genuine content is essential. Audiences appreciate authenticity, so campaigns should feel organic rather than overly commercial.
- Platform Dynamics: Unlike targeted ads (where brands pay for visibility), influencer marketing operates directly between influencers and brands. TikTok itself doesn’t directly benefit financially from these collaborations.
2. Brand Takeover
Brand Takeover is a form of advertisement that appears in the form of video, images, or GIFs. All of the content can be linked with the landing page of the brand to convert traffic. These advertisements appear in between the user-generated content. Users cannot skip these ads which is the window brands should utilize to make their messages heard.
Furthermore, TikTok has categorized brands based on their types and just one slot is available per day. You must invest in quality graphics and content writing to appeal to the audience. The content in these ads should be a representation of the quality that the brand offers. It should be comprehensive, concise, relevant, and entertaining to make the audience click on the landing page.
3. Native Video Ads
Native video ads are 9 to 15 seconds long video clips that appear in the feed of users between different videos. You have a very short window to make a statement that warrants investment in quality video editing tools, cinematography, and copywriting. Unlike Brand Takeover, these ads can be skipped and most users will skip unless the first two-three seconds are compelling enough to listen to the entire message.
You can also link these ads with the landing pages and multiple other call-to-actions.
4. Hashtag Challenges
Challenges are the main reason for the exceptional success of TikTok and remain the most effective method of marketing on the platform. It allows brands to engage with their audience and start a chain reaction that keeps propagating on its own. You have to hire some influencers and ask them to do a challenge for you. The influencers can then challenge their followers to do the same and it will start a chain.
You can challenge the audience to do tricks, dance, or act based on what is most appropriate for the marketing campaign. Sponsoring a Hashtag lands the brand on the discover page which drives the audience to the challenges that are created for you.
You can measure the success of Hashtag challenges with the number of engagements and views on the banner.
5. Branded Lenses
TikTok offers several filters that can be used to make videos look more fun and entertaining. Some of these are built by the platform itself while others are designed by users themselves. It works similarly to Snapchat’s filters. Brands can design their lenses to increase awareness about them.
The lenses go live for 10 days at a time and compel the users to use them to make their videos more fun and engaging.
Tips to Make Successful Marketing on TikTok
TikTok is considered a rather casual platform and the success of the accounts that generate laid-back content without putting much effort validate it to some extent. But not every account can get successful in delivering casual content especially when it represents a brand. You have to put a certain level of effort into creating videos to build a loyal following. Here is how you can do it:
1. Create Relevant and Relatable Content
Brands can only build a successful marketing campaign if they deliver content that is relatable and relevant to their target audience. You have to understand what the target audience needs and the content of their liking. Let’s take an example. A nutraceutical company that wants to promote a product that is supposed to help bone health. It needs to develop an ad that shows the problems that are associated with fragile bone health and then shows the audience solutions.
You can hire an aged influencer or a doctor to spread the message to let the audience know about the effectiveness of the product. Taking relevant on board for the campaign is just as important as investing in quality creativity and cinematography.
2. Use Suitable Hashtags
Using suitable hashtags in the captions of videos is extremely important. TikTok categorizes the videos in them which makes it easy for users to find the content they are looking for. The hashtags help the brands understand their competition, amplify their reach, and increase followers. You should use both generic and specific hashtags to boost the message even further.
Search for the trending hashtags relevant to the content and note them down. Most of them would already have a swamp of videos in them but using them still helps. Also, note down the hashtags that have relatively lesser videos to make the content stand out.
That said, do not use irrelevant hashtags as it will decrease the watch time and bring the video down in the ranking.
3. Engage With Followers
Engagement with followers creates a loyal following and keeps them connected with the brand. You should come up with quirky replies to the comments of the followers. It would encourage them to comment more which will increase the reach of the account. You can also comment on the videos of the followers and content that is produced by other users within the same niche.
4. Upload Content Consistently
TikTok ranks those accounts higher that upload content consistently. Being consistent does not mean dropping tons of content after irregular intervals. You have to drop content after regular intervals. It can be one day, two days, or even a week but it should be consistent. Try to upload a couple of videos each day to increase the engagement and followers of the account.
5. Capitalize On Trends
Trends are a common occurrence on TikTok. Regional and Worldwide trends are categorized separately which makes things simpler. You should take benefit of the trend and make a video on it. Even if it is a trend launched by the competitors you can take a quirky dig at them with your content.
6. Use Effects In Videos
Millions of videos are posted on TikTok every day which makes it difficult to stand out. You can make the content unique by adding effects or filters from the library. TikTok also allows users to create their filter which can be used by other users as well. Use these effects to bring more creativity to the video and make the message stand out.
7. Keep The Video Interesting
TikTok allows users to post a one-minute-long video but most videos typically have a shorter duration. While marketing, every second of the message is important and should be utilized accordingly. You must keep the video entertaining and engaging, especially in the first few seconds to invite the viewers to watch the full video.
Writing a creative description for the video also helps in igniting the interest of the viewers. It is also necessary for SEO. Search for the relevant keywords and incorporate them into descriptions to improve the ranking of the videos. While crafting the description take the window of the screen into account. It should not be too long as that will make the readers lose interest.
8. Use TikTok Ads
TikTok’s advertising platform offer brands the ability to precisely target their desired audience by age, location, and interests. Utilizing these ads, brands can craft content specifically tailored to their audience, which remains a highly effective method for enhancing reach and increasing follower counts. While investing in TikTok likes was once a strategy, it’s now recommended to allocate budgets towards these targeted ads for more impactful marketing. However, if the cost of ads is prohibitive, alternative strategies may be considered for brand promotion.
9. Create Videos Tailored For TikTok
TikTok videos have their separate dimensions which must be taken into account while uploading content. Do not post videos that are made for YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram directly onto TikTok. The Internet offers several free tools that can be used to make videos suitable for TikTok. But after converting the video via those platforms ensure that it has not cropped out what you want to show the audience.
How to Develop a TikTok Marketing Strategy
Now that you understand the tools that are available for marketing on TikTok, let’s discuss how these can be used to build a formidable marketing strategy.
Step 1: Understand How the Platform Works
TikTok does not work like other mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. It has a unique algorithm that must be understood to increase the reach of content. TikTok has laid out criteria and the most important of them are the watch time and the number of interactions on the videos. Content that receives a higher number of engagements gets ranked higher.
Hence, brands must strategize to increase likes and comments on videos. You can Buy TikTok Followers UK to artificially boost engagement when the account is just starting. But if you do not want to buy likes or followers other techniques have been discussed earlier to increase the number of followers.
The goal of the Tiktokers should be to land in the “For You” Category as it is considered the holy grail of the platform.
Step 2: Switch To Professional Account
TikTok offers two accounts, Basic and Pro. Brands should switch to Pro because it offers more features that can be used to make camping effective. It unlocks analytics which shows the performance of content that you are posting which can be used to improve or modify content. Furthermore, it is also important to get verified because TikTok only offers verification to Pro accounts.
Step 3: Understand The Demographics Of the Audience
Understanding the demographics of the audience is extremely important for all types of marketing campaigns. You must realize what you are dealing with to make the content accordingly. Take into account the age groups, locations, and interests of the audience to develop tailor-made content for them.
You can learn the demographics by accessing the analytics from the settings of the platform.
Step 4: Hire Professionals
Creating video content is not easy and cannot be left to rookies especially when the image of the brand is at stake. You must invest in quality gear and hire professionals for videography, copywriting, and the management of the account. The combination of the right professionals will create unique and appealing content which will increase the reach of the message. You should also hire professional product photographers when the brand is promoting a product.
The professionals should understand what it takes to build a solid presence on the platform. You can take ideas about content from the competitors that are already established on the platform.
Step 5: Creative Relevant Content
When followers subscribe to the account, certain expectations are attached to it. Your followers are expecting the account to deliver a specific type of content. And if the account fails to provide so, it can discourage the follower, and decrease their activity on brands’ accounts. Once you have found the niche that works for you, stick with it and keep improving it to bring more followers.
Do not jump into challenges if they are not relevant to your niche because that might bring some followers but would not help in the long run.
Step 6: Find The Best Time To Post Videos
You must find out the best time to post videos on TikTok. Uploading content when the audience is inactive would decrease the watch time and pull the video down in the stream. You can find out the best time by tweaking with analytics. Understand where most of the audience lives and post at the time when they are active. TikTok maintains logs of 7 days which can be used to identify the best time to post videos.
Step 7: Target The Right Audience With Ads
When the brand is just starting must understand the audience it wants to target. TikTok lets you target specific age groups and regions. You must know which age group and region would like your services or products the most. Enter the right credentials while posting the ads to get the relevant audience to the brand.
Step 8: Hire Right Influencers
Hiring the right influencers is key to making a marketing campaign successful. You must find out the users who are established in the niche and have a loyal following. When the audience hears them say good things about the brand it builds trust which leads to the growth of the account.
Step 9: Try To Get a Verification
Getting verified on any social media platform brings a certain level of credibility to the account. It also increases followers and widens the reach of the posts. Unlike other platforms, TikTok does not require users to initiate an application process. It selects the users and verifies them on its own. However, it has laid out the criteria to bring the account closer to verification. You have to be consistent, relevant, and unique to get verified.
The best way to get verification is to hire a PR company and assign them to publish information about brands on other platforms. TikTok screens the internet to establish relevance to the content that the account is uploading before allocating the blue badge.
Step 10: Engage With Followers
Engagement with followers creates a loyalty and sense of connection in them. By the time you have followed all the steps, there would be a significant audience for your account. You must engage with followers by replying to their comments and solving their queries. A special representative must be available to reply to queries that are received in DMs. You do not have to reply to all followers. Just set a criterion that the first 20 or 30 followers to comment would receive a reply.
If the replies from the team are quirky, it will create competition between followers to get that reply. Hence, it will increase engagement with an account which will push the video up in the stream and you might get suggested in the “For You”.
Key Takeaway
TikTok is a rapidly-growing platform but to establish a presence there, users must come up with a strategy. Brands must understand how the platform works and the demographics of their audience to make content accordingly. Managing a TikTok account for a brand is not an easy task and should not be left to one individual only. It requires help from different professionals to create and post content that appeals to the audience. We hope this will help you to create the best marketing strategy for TikTok in 2024.
