BLOG
TikTok Marketing, How Do You Do It?
As marketers we often cringe at the idea of TikTok or zoomer culture. We used to mock it and laugh at the water cooler, but it’s clear now that the trend is here to stay. More than that, TikTok is one of the best tools on the market.
TikTok has now overtaken YouTube in video watch time and has over 1 billion users. Yet, brands are struggling to keep up (even Instagram is!). I’m sure the idea of TikTok marketing has been thrown into the ring at some point. Maybe you’ve even jumped on there and have been lost in the alien world of ever changing trends, jokes that you can’t unpack with the whole team and soundbites that make your skin curl.
Fear not, we’ve pulled together a few golden rules of any TikTok marketing strategy to help you navigate foreign waters.
Educate or Entertain
Content must provide either education or entertainment – a simple b-roll video or stylised ad will not generate views or conversions on TikTok
Likes aren’t the only thing that is important on TikTok, completion rate is equally critical.
DO
✅ Trim your videos to the shortest possible time and remove anything that doesn’t provide value. You can use the below as a guide for TikTok best practices:
- 15 seconds – 100% completion
- 30 seconds – 75% completion
- 60 seconds + – 50% completion
✅ Include important information within the first 3 seconds. This can be through a text overlay or a hook from the talent within the video.
DON’T
❌ Make a hype real showcasing your product.
❌ Don’t make something unrelatable. Think about the time and place a user is on TikTok, often their bed when relaxing, and ask yourself if you would want to see your content there too?
Redbull does a fantastic job of sharing the lifestyle around the brand, you won’t see any flashy videos of the can on their page. Users who buy into this lifestyle engage and are entertained by this content. They’ve jumped on a trend too but have made it relevant to their niche.
Catching a TikTok trend
Asking yourself, how do I find trends on TikTok? The answer is that trends are really hard to predict and move fast on the platform. When you come across one, you really want to jump on the trend within 48 hours to avoid being oversatured by the market.
DO
✅ Use the audio from a video within the trend pool. Do not download, edit, and reupload. This will result in your video not falling into the catchment.
✅ Make your trend relevant to your niche, don’t just copy a trend for the sake of it. Low engagement will affect your profile rating and impact future engagement. Tip – copy someone else from your niche jumping on the bandwagon too.
DON’T
❌ Don’t use a trending sound on a video that doesn’t match the trend, this will downvote your content.
Check out TrendTok – a paid app where you can view trending sounds and look at their histogram (as well as future predictions).
McDonalds never miss. When creator @emilyzugay began to create parody logos for big businesses, McDonalds were one of the first to reach out and ask for her to redesign their logo before using it as their profile image for the week after. This is a great example of a business being on the trend at the start, making it relevant to their brand, and entertaining a general audience.
Make your TikTok content work for you
It’s disappointing when you invest significant time into content which doesn’t perform. Fear not though – your content hasn’t expired just yet.
DO
✅ Repost your content on TikTok.
✅ Repost with different hashtags a few days later – the TikTok algorithm essentially works like a casino machine, you might cut through the next time you post. Note: You don’t need to delete the previous upload either.
✅ Use the in app functionality, add your overlays and closed captions within the app. These apps favour native users so you need to adopt the tools to be included.
✅ Use hashtags wisely. Don’t use hashtags that have 1 million + videos, go for those within the 100,000 – 500,000 range so you can be listed. Choose 3 – 5 relevant tags to your niche. Using the popular ones will show it to the wrong people and affect your profile score.
DON’T
❌ Upload the same video to Instagram and expect the same results. A sound that is trending on TikTok might not be engaging on Instagram. Edit the video with the sound you have in mind and add the correct audio in each platform. A little extra work to tweak your content will go a long way.
We recommend Hashtag Expert – a paid app where you can generate hashtags and apply filters such as quantity of videos and likeliness to be ranged. Remember, TikTok moves fast so keep an eye on these tags. When they become oversaturated, move on from them.
Hashtag Expert
Make yourself familiar with these hashtag apps to help get ahead, it won’t always work but can help you get into the mindframe of seeking new hashtags to stay up to date.
Should you have a business account on TikTok?
As a business it’s pretty natural to want to set up a business account for your marketing on TikTok, however this might not always be in the best interest for your content. Viewer dynamics on TikTok are very different and there is negative sentiment around overly produced ads.
Let’s look at the pros and cons
Setting up a business account does give you access to performance and audience data at a higher level. Let me ask you though, how are you planning on using this data? With trends that move so quickly, you can easily fill your data pool with outliers that can’t inform your strategy moving forward. Simply using a creator account rather than a business account also provides you with the same real time audience data – so what are the perks of using a business account or a creator account?
Business account
- Access to certain ad types (branded AR content, hashtag challenges, brand takeovers, first video the target will see, customer influencer packages)
- Access to the Commercial Music Library (CML) with a collection of 150,000+ royalty free songs (note; these are never the trending sounds!)
- You get the ability to use the Ads Manager portal and schedule
Creator account
- The same audience and content performance data
- The ability to boost your post with either views, followers, or click through to site objectives – all of which can use trending sounds and capitlise off current culture movements
- The ability to use any sound and appear relevant and have your finger on the pulse
- Avoid annoying your followers with ad burnout
Analytic dashboard from a creator profile – you can capture the same required data without impacting your ability to jump on a trend.
Our top TikTok takeaways
Ultimately, it’s about building a community and engaging with users there. Our biggest tip? Remember – don’t make ads, make someone smile.
We’re currently roadshowing a 1 hour seminar on TikTok best practices—if you’re interested to hear more, please reach out and we would love to present to your business (and it’s free!).
contributors
