How Brands Can Use TikTok Marketing to Promote Their Business and Gain Engagement

How many TikTok videos do you see everyday? One, ten, or twenty, and even if you say countless won’t be any surprise to us looking at its craze amongst Gen Z’ers. With 800 million monthly active users worldwide, TikTok has become one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Some call it funny, some call it creative, but it is surely addictive that makes it a great alternative version for online sharing and brand promotion — a reason why many businesses are adding TikTok marketing to their branding activities.

If you are over 35, you may not know much about it. However, if your audience is between 13 to 30 years, then it’s time to invest in TikTok. You might be placing video content on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, but don’t leave TikTok. So, let’s gain some basic understanding about TikTok.

What is TikTok?

Source: Gadgets.ndtv.com

TikTok is a video sharing and social networking app that allows its users to share 15 second long videos on any topic. Since it was launched, it is continuously growing to popularity in different parts of the world due to its simplified content creation and easy sharing options. Moreover, the short format doesn’t take much time and effort on the part of users to create, upload, and share their content.

As you get to explore the content on TikTok, no sooner you will find yourself lost in the wave of engaging, fun, and entertaining content. Another factor that makes TikTok favourite amongst all is its strong focus on localized content. Despite being a globally used app, it uses local trending hashtags to suggest fresh topics for content. Also, it sends personalized recommendations to every user that continuously updates the users and they never run short on content ideas.

You might wonder, why are we emphasizing TikTok so much? But, the real reason is the ability to include links and commercial URLs in your video content. It will help you drive meaningful traffic and increase your reach. Moreover, it lets you escape from the typical pressure of social media where you don’t need to be perfect all the time.

Creativity on TikTok to Take Inspiration From

As you explore the TikTok feed, you will find many brands that are active on TikTok leveraging the casual viewing experience that today’s youth is craving. One such popular brand is Red Bull, with 5.1 million fans all over the world. It has been creating digital content with trending hashtags and challenges. Interestingly a good amount of content that they share is exclusively made for the TikTok audience keeping them hooked for a long time. If you closely look at their content, you will realize that it is literally thumb-stopping that other brands should take inspiration from.

Recently, @RedBull took over TikTok with their engaging Dance Your Style Challenge between 5 November to 13 December 2020. In this challenge, thousands of dancers showed their dancing talent on TikTok, and the public was invited to pick the winner. The interesting part was the way they turned the annual competition into a virtual event on a content-sharing app like TikTok.

If you closely look at the “Dance Your Style” competition, you will realize that this TikTok Marketing content has made sense in every way from the perspective of the youth and the brand. You will see that the competition has been successful in building a community and made stars out of people, like Charli D’Amelio- a teenager whose dance video went viral with a record 97 million followers.

Following this, TikTok has come up with great features like hashtags and social media challenges.

Well, what does this mean for other brands?

Now brands can easily find trending topics on TikTok following the hashtags which the platform itself boosts and recommends on a mass scale. Moreover, it has become a virtual replacement for live events that experientially minded marketers can adjust to and urge people to participate.

Why Do You Need TikTok Marketing?

If you don’t know, then an average TikTok user spends around 52 minutes a day on the app. It gives a great face time for your brand to engage with your audience. Since you will find common people on TikTok, they will preferably go for short native video ads. This makes it affordable for brands to invest in TikTok marketing.

So, with TikTok, brands can reach a new audience with low-cost investment in video ads. Moreover, TikTok’s editing tools and features will help you tap into great creativity.

As you know, people like raw content that is engaging and useful. If you have real, informative, relatable, and bite-sized content and are looking for an avenue to show it, there’s nothing better than TikTok.

So, are you ready to take the plunge into the TikTok world?

Well, we know you are interested in a TikTok strategy to market your brand that’s why you are here. So, scroll down below to know different ways you can use it to promote your business and spread the word about it.

5 Ways You Can Use TikTok Marketing to Promote Your Brand

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Being attuned to modern usage trends and a growing range of ad options on TikTok, you can think of incorporating it into your marketing mix. Here are five ways you can use it to promote your brand on one of the most popular videos sharing app:

#1 Create Your Own Content

If you are a budding company, you can use TikTok to market your brand. But, it all starts with unique and exclusive content made for the teenage audience of TikTok. All you need to do is to follow the steps mentioned below to create your own unique content:

• Be Authentic and Build Trust

The first step is to be authentic to yourself. You don’t need to own expensive cameras to make videos. Instead, find pride in yourself and show the authentic side of your brand. Reveal your brand’s true personality, no expensive cameras, no exclusive location, but honesty. This way, users will feel connected and quickly relate to your brand.

• Tap in the Power of Entertainment

Since most of the audience is a teenager on TikTok, make content that’s entertaining as they are most interested in entertainment. Following the above example of Red Bull, you can also create engaging challenges and film them. Believe us your audience will love it.

• Add Your Creativity

As the platform is built for community engagement, you don’t need to create a fresh piece of content every day from the scratch. Instead, you can use the existing content and give a unique style spin by following the trends. For instance, you can show your morning routine if you have a brand that promotes a luxurious lifestyle.

#2 Share User-Generated Content for TikTok Marketing

Source: business-standard.com

TikTok is all about fun and casual content that needs real creativity for which brands need to plan their content to get the best return on investment. You can tap into user-generated content and post it with witty captions. You just have to put the consumers first where user-generated content comes in handy and allows brands to create content catering to the audience’s needs. All you need to do is:

Share an emotional connection with the audience by communicating a message that impacts them deeply.

• Maintain an online presence by staying active on the platform
• Share looping videos from 15 to 60 seconds
• Building hype for the product launch
• Addressing diverse engagement needs for the youth
• Mouth to Mouth marketing
• Show the light-hearted side of the brand then the audience will start relating to it
• Demonstrate how your products and services can be used by the people, film it and post it on TikTok

All these steps will help you create entertaining content for your users. Moreover, the user-generated content will help you maximize your social sales.

#3 Use Advertisement to Your Advantage

Like other social media platforms, TikTok has also monetized its platform where brands have to pay for their ads. Here are some TikTok marketing ad options you can use to reach your target audience:

• In-Feed Video

Here the ads that you create appear on the “For You” page in the native news feed of TikTok.

• Brand Takeover

Brand takeover is another option, where the ad appears when TikTok users open the app. Such ads completely take over the screen for a few seconds and later on turns on into an In-Feed video ad.

• Hashtag Challenge

Hashtags challenges are quite popular on TikTok and people generally look for such content. Thus, these ads appear on the Discovery page. Such ads encourage users to participate in more unique content creation challenges on their part. All this makes it a shoppable component for marketers who can use it to grow engagement and brand awareness.

• Custom Influencer Package

Custom influencer packages are also common after big brands have started investing in TikTok ads. Here the ad appears as part of sponsored content, which a TikTok user creates that has the potential to influence your niche market.

Here are some of the best practices you can follow to create content for TikTok advertisements:

• Review TikTok inspiration ads available on the platform
• Browse the discovery page to check what’s trending, where you will mostly find challenges and campaigns
• Also, you can use the search box at the top to find videos, sounds, and popular hashtags
• Use friendly text message and try connecting with the audience
• Use high-definition visuals to create a beautiful treat for the eyes and promote your high-value coupons, sales, and discounts
• Introduce new product imageries to target a specific audience

#4 Tap into the Power of Influencer Marketing

Source: businessinsider.in

Start an influencer marketing strategy on TikTok, for which you need to contact reputed influencers on the platform to partner with. Exercise best judgment to find the right influencer who has the potential to influence your target audience and represents your brand impressively.

However, before choosing one for your TikTok marketing campaign, you should make sure that you know your audience well and what they like. After that, you can move ahead with a clear goal and let your influencers know what you want. Give them the room to experiment and exercise their creativity. Also, don’t forget relatability and relevance when it comes to increasing your reach.

So, make sure that you don’t merely opt for any of the influencers. But, go for those who have a suitable audience close to your niche to target your ideal demographics.

#5 Cross Promotion Your TikTok Marketing Content

Once your TikTok content is out, the best way to gain massive engagement is to cross-promote it on other social media avenues like Instagram and Facebook. It will not only drive awareness and engagement to your TikTok account but will also help to boost your content performance. And, as soon as your content starts performing well on TikTok, you will see it getting viral.

If you are confused about how you are going to share it on other platforms, then let us tell you that it is quite easy. All you need to do is to save it to your camera roll for which you need to open the published video, tap Share, and click save to albums.

Moreover, the TikTok videos are just 15 seconds long, which makes it easy for you to share them on Instagram stories. You must add a clear call to action like Swipe Up or Follow Us.

TikTok Analytics

Lastly, for TikTok marketing, we would like to focus on the analytics part. It does not matter when you joined TikTok, but you must know what’s happening on your TikTok profile. Knowing it would keep things in your control. Here are two categories that will help you uncover new insights that include:

1. Profile Overview
2. Content Data

Profile Overview

It will help you know how well your TikTok profile is performing. The data includes the following:

• Video views that show the total number of times your video has been watched.
• Profile views show how many times your profile was viewed.
• Follower Count shows your total follower count that gives you important insights about your audience demographics.

Content Data

After the profile overview comes the content data that gives you the richest insights where you will know the total number of views on each post from newest to oldest. The analytics will show the following:

• Total likes on your post
• Number of comments
• Total shares
• Total video views
• Average watch time
• Total play time of each video posted
• Source of traffic
• Audience demographics and territories

How Mentionlytics Can Help in TikTok Marketing?

When you belong to any industry that demands continuous participation at your end, it could be slightly challenging to handle loads of information uploaded on social platforms like TikTok. You cannot do it manually, and it is going to be extremely time-consuming. Instead, we recommend using social media monitoring tools to track your competitors, identify the latest trends, track customer behavior, preferences, sentiments, and increase engagement. You can explore how Mentionlytics can help in social media marketing in this blog.

We know tracking key social media metrics is a challenge for most brands, so it’s best to invest in social media monitoring tools like Mentionlytics. With Mentionlytics, you can enjoy creating an optimal marketing strategy with incredibly beneficial features, such as:

• You can collect important insights,
• Look for marketing trends and strategize your campaign
• Access to mention insights,
• Find the right influencers for your personalized brand promotion,
• Grow your brand’s reputation and sales by engaging others on the platform
• Know about your competitors, products, and industry and the trends they are following on social media
• Discover what perception people hold for your brand on social media
• You will get complete media coverage, including social media, online news, blogs, and any website.

Apart from this, you can also join in forum discussions, comments, and blog posts to spread awareness about your brand with Mentionlytics.

Get started with a free version here to support your TikTok marketing goals!

Original article: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/how-brands-can-use-tiktok-marketing-to-promote-business-and-gain-engagement/