TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the USA. Given its popularity, many small businesses are utilizing this platform to sell products/services and reach more audiences. The hyper-engaged community of shoppers, trendsetters, and word-of-mouth advocates makes it a powerful social media platform for businesses to connect with more customers and expand their audience reach.
If you are wondering how to use TikTok for business, then you are in the right place. In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through everything you need to know to harness the power of TikTok for business, from setting up your account to creating winning content strategies and maximizing advertising opportunities.
The power of TikTok for business
TikTok is a game-changer for small business looking to reach target audience, boost brand awareness, and drive sales and conversions. With its highly engaged user base of over 1 billion active users, TikTok provides an unparalleled opportunity for brands to connect with their target audience through authentic and entertaining videos.
Last year, the platform introduced multiple shopping features for social commerce and the results were positive. The online buyers on TikTok increased by 72.3% in the US, totaling 23.7 million.
Among these features, TikTok LIVE proved particularly effective in boosting brand awareness and driving sales growth. The users enjoyed engaging with their favorite brands through live sessions. According to a TikTok study, a noteworthy 50% of its users have made purchases after watching the LIVE sessions.
Connecting with Younger Audiences
One of the most significant advantages of using TikTok for business is its ability to connect with younger audiences, specifically Gen Z and millennials. In fact, 47.4% of US TikTok users are under 30, with the majority being teens.
This creates an opportunity for small business to establish a connection with the younger generation, understand their needs, and deliver entertainment content through brand takeover ads.
A great example of this approach is Candy Funhouse, a candy store that has gained immense popularity on TikTok. Their strategy revolves around fostering a sense of community and creating content that feels real, not pushy.
Boosting Brand Awareness
Another powerful benefit of using TikTok for business is its ability to significantly increase brand awareness. Businesses can effortlessly capture potential customers’ attention and boost their platform visibility by developing visually appealing, easily digestible, and consistent content that mirrors their brand voice.
For this, you need a dedicated TikTok account for business. This platform not only boosts brand visibility but also creates a dynamic and engaging brand presence that resonates with the TikTok community.
Driving Sales and Conversions
TikTok’s creative and interactive nature offers businesses a unique opportunity to drive online sales and conversions. By showcasing products in an appealing and authentic way, businesses can reach the right audience and increase the likelihood of converting them into customers.
For example, Lala Hijabs, a hijab brand, attributes 60% of its sales to its TikTok presence. Moreover, incorporating Calls to Action (CTAs) in your TikTok video text can boost conversions by an impressive 152%.
Setting up your TikTok business account
Before immersing yourself in the world of content creation, ensure your TikTok for business account is set up correctly. A well-optimized TikTok business account serves as a digital storefront for your brand, providing access to advanced features, analytics, and advertising opportunities tailored for businesses.
The upcoming sections will walk you through the steps to create and optimize your business account on TikTok for the highest impact.
Creating a Business Account
Creating a TikTok for business account is the first step to unlocking the platform’s full potential for your brand. To create one, simply download the TikTok app, register with your phone number or email address; or you can use your existing social media account to sign up.
A business account grants you access to advanced features such as TikTok Ads Manager. This powerful tool allows you to create and manage ads in different formats, guided by user-friendly instructions.
Optimizing Your Profile
To accurately represent your brand and attract potential customers, it’s important to optimize your TikTok profile.
First, ensure that your profile photo accurately reflects your brand and maintain the same logo on your other social accounts.
Next, it’s important to craft a concise and appealing TikTok bio within the 80-character limit to capture your brand’s essence, like BUXOM Cosmetics’ description, which succinctly captures their brand as “big, bold, and sexy”.
Lastly, add a recognizable and trustworthy URL to your profile to direct new customers to your website or a specific landing page.
Developing a winning content strategy
A well-thought-out content strategy is important for a successful TikTok presence. By understanding your audience, balancing content types, and leveraging trends and challenges, you can create content that deeply resonates with your target demographic and drives engagement.
The upcoming sections will guide you through the process of developing a successful content strategy, enabling you to fully harness TikTok for business.
Understanding Your Audience
Understanding your target audiences’ preferences, interests, and behaviors is fundamental to creating content that resonates with them. According to a study, 79% of TikTok users prefer brands that know how to make content tailored to the platform.
You can gain valuable insights into the type of content your audience enjoys and expects from your brand by monitoring popular trends and analyzing the content of successful TikTok creators in your industry. For example, Dr. Azadeh Shirazi, a skincare expert, has gained over 1.5 million followers on TikTok by sharing informative and engaging content related to skincare products.
Balancing Content Types
A successful TikTok content strategy involves a well-crafted blend of educational, promotional, and entertainment content, effectively highlighting your business objectives. This mix ensures that you keep your audience engaged and interested while also showcasing different aspects of your brand.
Consider creating tutorial videos, participating in entertaining challenges, and sharing promotional content like product demos and discounts through your own videos.
Leveraging Trends and Challenges
Popular trends and challenges on TikTok offer businesses a unique opportunity to craft engaging content that aligns with their brand and resonates with their target audience. Staying updated on current trends and actively participating in relevant challenges can significantly enhance your brand’s visibility and extend its reach to a broader audience.
For example, engaging in trending dance challenge videos that reflect your brand’s personality or promoting hashtag challenges for your brand, similar to Netflix’s #WhatsYourPower campaign, can encourage user-generated content and increase your brand exposure.
Maximizing TikTok advertising opportunities
TikTok offers a diverse range of advertising opportunities for brands to connect with their target audience and achieve their marketing goals. In this section, we’ll explore three key advertising opportunities: in-feed ads on the TikTok feed, branded hashtag challenges, and influencer collaborations.
Leveraging these advertising opportunities enables you to maximize your brand’s reach, engagement, and conversions on TikTok.
In-Feed Ads
In-feed ads on TikTok allow businesses to seamlessly integrate their promotional content into users’ feeds, thereby increasing visibility and engagement. These ads come in various formats, including image ads, video ads, or spark ads, and can be conveniently created and managed through TikTok’s Ads Manager platform.
Strategically targeting your audience and creating visually appealing ads as part of your marketing strategy increase your chances of capturing users’ attention and driving them to take action.
Branded Hashtag Challenges
Branded hashtag challenges on TikTok encourage user-generated content and increase brand exposure. You can invite users to create videos and participate in a challenge directly associated with your brand. By creating popular hashtags and promoting them through influencers or paid advertising, you can reach the target audience and boost engagement.
Additionally, you can measure the success of your hashtag challenges through engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares. This will further help you optimize your campaign and maximize its impact.
Collaborating with Influencers
Collaborating with TikTok influencers offers brands a multitude of benefits, including:
- Reach new customers.
- Promote products or services through authentic and engaging content.
- Partner with influencers who match your target customer.
- Leverage their influence to boost brand awareness.
- Drive traffic and sales.
A prime example is Simmons, a mattress brand, which partnered with different TikTok influencers to spread the word about their #Snoozzzapalooza hashtag challenge. This collaboration resulted in over 2 million video submissions and a staggering 6 billion video views.
Harnessing user-generated content (UGC)
User-generated content (UGC), a pivotal element in TikTok’s ecosystem, empowers businesses to connect with their customers and showcase real-life experiences with their products or services. By featuring UGC on your profile and creating TikTok challenges, you can encourage users to actively engage with your brand and generate authentic video content that resonates with your audience.
In the upcoming sections, we’ll discuss the strategies for effectively harnessing the power of UGC to elevate and enrich your TikTok presence.
Sharing UGC on Your Profile
Sharing user-generated content on your profile can help build trust with your audience and spotlight authentic experiences with your products or services. By featuring user-generated content in your posts, reposting content from other users, and creating video content around UGC, you can actively engage with your customers and build a loyal following.
Moreover, analyzing your UGC strategy through TikTok analytics—considering metrics like engagement rate, reach, and impressions—enables you to optimize your content and maximize its impact.
Creating TikTok Challenges
Creating TikTok challenges is an effective way to encourage users to create and share organic content related to your brand, thereby increasing engagement and brand exposure. To create a successful challenge, follow these steps:
- Come up with a creative concept for your challenge.
- Design unique TikTok hashtags that represent your challenge.
- Promote your challenge on your TikTok profile, encouraging users to participate and use the popular hashtags.
By following these steps, you can create a TikTok challenge that engages your audience and promotes your brand.
Additionally, collaborating with influencers or related brands to jointly promote the challenge can further boost its reach and impact.
Lastly, engage with user-generated content by liking, commenting, and sharing videos that take part in the challenge. You can measure its success by assessing engagement metrics such as likes, comments, and shares.
Analyzing and optimizing your TikTok strategy
To ensure your TikTok strategy is effective and achieving the desired results, continuous analysis and optimization of your campaign is important. Understanding TikTok analytics and adjusting your marketing strategy based on insights can help you maximize reach and engagement on the platform.
The following segments will guide you through the process of scrutinizing and enhancing your strategy for significant impact.
Understanding TikTok Analytics
TikTok analytics tools allow businesses to track performance, measure engagement metrics, and identify influencers to optimize their content strategy. By monitoring weekly and monthly growth, total video playtime, and audience demographics, you can gain valuable insights into your content’s performance and areas for improvement.
To access Analytics on TikTok for business account:
- Log in to your business account and go to your profile by tapping on Me.
- Next, click on the three lines in the top right corner and select ‘Privacy and settings’.
- Tap on ‘Business suite’ and then, ‘Analytics’.
Adjusting Your Strategy Based on Insights
Use insights from TikTok analytics to:
- Adjust your content strategy, posting times, and advertising efforts to maximize reach and engagement on the platform.
- Tweak your messaging and tactics to align with changing attitudes or beliefs.
- Deploy A/B tests to experiment with different approaches and see what resonates with your audience.
- Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to track the success of your efforts and make informed, data-driven decisions.
- Control the change and make necessary adjustments to optimize your TikTok presence.
By staying agile and responsive to new discoveries, market trends, and changes, you can ensure your TikTok strategy remains relevant and effective in driving results for your business.
Summary
TikTok offers businesses a powerful platform to connect with younger audience, boost brand awareness, and drive sales and conversions. By setting up a TikTok business account, developing a winning content strategy, maximizing advertising opportunities, harnessing user-generated content, and consistently analyzing and optimizing your TikTok strategy, you can unlock the full potential of this social platform for your brand. So, are you ready to use TikTok for business and reach new heights?
Frequently asked questions about TikTok for business
Yes, TikTok is a great platform for businesses. It allows you to engage with your target audience in an entertaining and creative way. You can leverage additional marketing and analytics tools to enhance your strategy. To get started, consider converting your personal social account to a business account or creating a new one dedicated to your business. So, you can access and run ads to effectively reach your audience.
Yes, TikTok for business is free, and the process of upgrading from a personal to a business TikTok account takes just a few seconds. Once you’ve made the switch, you gain access to advanced features and powerful tools. When it comes to advertising on TikTok, costs are usually based on engagement, making it a flexible and potentially cost-effective option for businesses looking to reach and connect with their audience on the platform.
To view the detailed information about your audience in the Followers tab, you need 100+ followers.
To access the LIVE tab, you need 1,000+ followers.
You need 1,000+ followers for a business account on TikTok to add a website link to your profile.
Only regular users can access the Commercial Music Library and create content using it. This is because the songs have not been licensed for commercial use.
TikTok Ads typically start at $10 per CPM (cost per 1000 views). Additionally, the platform often requires a minimum campaign spend of $500.
The majority of TikTok users are Gen Z and Millennials, falling within the age range of 18 to 24 years. This demographic group is particularly prominent on this social media platform, making up a significant portion of TikTok’s global user base.
