All businesses around the world are thinking of ways to get rid of the financial losses of the COVID-19 pandemic.
They should find new outreach channels to save their brand identity.
TikTok is one of those brand-new social networks with the potential for marketing and advertising.
Compared to the top social media platforms like Facebook (2.23 billion), YouTube (1.9 billion), and Instagram (1 billion) TikTok is the newest. With more than a whopping 800 million monthly active users, TikTok is a fresh space for marketing.
So it’s good for you to start building your brand on this platform to get ahead of the competition. Actually, the sooner, the better.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is owned by another tech company, ByteDance, located in China. After its initial release in 2016, it soon became viral all over the world, especially in the US.
It’s now one of the most installed apps and the fastest growing social network on the planet. You can see a new cool feature on this platform every day most of which are great for marketing.
As a multimedia platform, TikTok is competing with giants like YouTube and Instagram. However, it has its own specifications and requirements you should know as a marketer.
For example:
- Max video file size: up to 287.6 MB (iOS) and 72 MB (Android)
- Max video length: 15 seconds
- Video dimensions: 1080 x 1920
- Video margins: 150px (top and bottom) and 64px margin (each side)
- Video aspect ratio: 9:16
- File type: MP4 or MOV
- Video encoded: H.264
Source: tiktok.com
Social media marketing on TikTok
Apart from socializing aspects, every social platform has its own marketing features. Considering the type of audience on each service, marketers should choose their priorities.
TikTok is well-known for its popularity among Gen Z. Social Tradia claims the sooner you build your niche community on this social service, the less time you’ll need to succeed.
In fact, you’ll probably get acceptable results sooner on a new platform like TikTok compared to Instagram. As a result, buying Instagram accounts becomes trendy for small businesses and e-commerce because starting a new account and reaching success is difficult on Instagram.
Also, another difference between TikTok and other platforms is that it lets your content to be seen without having any followers. This can be very useful for startups, especially those that are related to Gen Z.
TikTok is including many other marketing features like the link in bio or advertisement that are available on other platforms. So it’s a unique opportunity for your business to create an account on this platform and gain followers.
How to use TikTok for business
TikTok is very easy to use, but using it for business might be difficult. A specific marketing strategy is a must when you want to use it for your brand awareness.
A successful strategy is usually defined as:
- Competition research
- SMART Goal definition
- Audience targeting
- Choosing the right platform
- Niche content generation
- Well engagement
- Well promotion
- Performance analysis
To do these stages correctly on TikTok, you’d better pay attention to the following suggestions:
Step 1: Create a channel for brand storytelling
The first step in using TikTok is to create a channel for your own brand. Remember that we’re living in a world that trust and transparency are a must.
So you need to personify your channel as much as you to gain the trust of your audience. You need to show behind the scene so that your followers feel like you’re one of them.
Try to do competition research to find the best niche relevant channel and learn their strengths and weaknesses.
Step 2: Post funny and informative content
You know, entertainment is central to TikTok. In fact, you’re facing a different kind of generation on this platform who don’t want to obey any rules.
Almost all posts on TikTok are entertaining, funny, and cool. You can’t expect to be successful on TikTok just by repeating wooden advertisements that are common in traditional methods.
So if you want to reach a high ROI, you need to be creative and let your audience enjoy their moments.
Of course, you have to insert some informative content about your niche, products/services, and your brand. In sum, combining fun and information is key to reaching out to TikTok users.
However, it’s important to be completely natural because many users don’t like promotional content at all.
Source: tiktok.com
Step 3: Collaborate with influencers
You can’t reach out to all niche audiences on TikTok simply by posting content. Influencer marketing is now a must to promote social posts and increase brand awareness.
You need to partner with niche audiences to broadcast your message. Influencers are usually highly-engaged and if they post about your brand or share your content, you’ll get a high engagement rate.
Try to set aside a considerable budget for influencer marketing on TikTok. Fortunately, many TikTok influencers have reduced their prices as a result of the coronavirus crisis. So it’s a good time to help your brand to grow.
Step 4: Use in-feed advertisements properly
Just like Instagram and Snapchat, TikTok has offered users something similar to story ads. In-feed content advertisements are short ads videos that will appear among other videos.
Some other video sharing platforms like YouTube are also using similar techniques. In fact, users should see a very short ad video to be able to continue watching their desired clips.
Step 5: Take advantage of hashtag challenges
Hashtag challenge is a brand-new feature that TikTok has offered to enable users to build their own trend. This is particularly useful for marketers to get maximum exposure.
Videos that participate in the hashtag challenge will be shown in the search result of that hashtag. You can also create a sponsored hashtag challenge to promote it on TikTok.
You can ask influencers to promote your hashtag challenge, and as a result, you get higher impression rates.
Step 6: Use brand takeovers
You can also use a full-screen commercial to appear on the feed of all users when they first open TikTok. This is called brand takeovers which is a unique marketing feature on TikTok and is only for one day.
Brand takeovers comprise photos, GIFs in 3-5 seconds, and videos in 3 seconds. It’s good to know that the ad can be linked to your webpage or even to your hashtag challenge.
Final words
TikTok is a great platform for beginners, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building a new sales funnel on this platform can provide you with a significant audience reach. So try to start using this service to grow your business in the year to come.
