For some brands, TikTok marketing seems like a mystery. TikTok is a relatively new platform. It’s different from other social media sites. And if you’re just starting out, it’s completely understandable if TikTok is a little overwhelming.
Luckily, there’s good news: TikTok marketing really isn’t that hard! Once you know a few key tips and tricks, you can simplify the process of creating content and collecting leads on TikTok. Use these five TikTok marketing hacks to effectively market on TikTok for your brand.
Create Your Own Unique Variation Of A Popular Trend
Everyone wants to go viral on TikTok. Your brand is most likely no exception. Going viral on TikTok is an enormously effective way to gain more brand awareness and exposure. It’s also an easy marketing method because it’s non-intrusive. Instead of you directly reaching out to members of your target audience, they simply come across your great content on TikTok — making them more likely to remember you and come back later to check out your brand.
One of the best ways to go viral is to use a popular trend to get some leverage. However, use this tactic carefully: If you create a TikTok that’s the exact same thing that’s already trending, it can be difficult to go viral. Doing the same exact thing that everyone else is doing won’t help you stand out. Instead, put your own spin on a viral trend so your video is unique to your brand. Piggybacking on a popular trend and creating your own unique video is a smart recipe if you want to create viral content. Here’s what this can look like in practice. Chipotle jumped into TikTok marketing head first, and now the brand has a lot to show for it — 1.2 million followers. Chipotle has created a few different campaigns that have gone viral on TikTok. One good example is the #GuacDance challenge. Chipotle took a popular TikTok trend — dance challenges — and created its own version for National Avocado Day. According to Mobile Marketer, the result was TikTok’s highest-performing branded challenge in the U.S., with 250,000 total video submissions. The #GuacDance campaign is a great example of how brands can take a popular TikTok trend (in this case, dance challenge videos) and put their own spin on it to leverage more brand awareness.
Tap Into The Power Of TikTok Influencers
Influencer marketing is proven to be an effective method of gaining brand awareness and growing your business. TikTok influencers specifically are an excellent choice. The nature of this social media platform means that influencers can go viral practically overnight. By contrast, it takes a long time to build up followers on Instagram or other social media sites. What does this mean for brands? On Instagram, it might be difficult to get in touch with the influencer you’d like to work with. But on TikTok, it’s easy to connect with influencers.
Before you can start reaching out to influencers, though, you need to find the ones that are best for your business. Don’t email the first influencer you see — take the time to make sure each influencer’s audience and values align with your brand’s. If you work with an influencer who doesn’t have the same target audience as you, you may waste your time.
How To Find TikTok Influencers
You can find the TikTok influencer that’s best for your brand by using a search tool such as Influence Grid. Influence Grid is a helpful website that allows you to search a big database of influencers using specific parameters.
You can search for TikTok influencers using the following guidelines:
- Country
- Keyword
- Number of followers (nano influencers, micro influencers, macro influencers, and mega influencers)
- Median video views
- Engagement rate
- TikTok profile (is verified, also has Instagram, also has YouTube, has email)
You can also search by location or niche. When the list of search results comes up, it will display each influencer’s country, number of followers, average views per video, average likes per video, and engagement rate. You can export the list of results for easy viewing. Influence Grid is an excellent tool to add to your TikTok marketing arsenal — it can save you a lot of valuable time and money because you don’t have to do the searching yourself.
Working With TikTok Influencers
Many big-name brands have successfully worked with TikTok influencers. One good example is Red Bull. Red Bull decided to work with Keeoh, an influencer who has 13,000 followers on TikTok. Keeoh created a funny video using a Red Bull to do a magic trick. The sponsored video got over 152,000 likes.
Smartphone game Run Around also ran a successful influencer marketing campaign. This brand worked with Candice, a TikTok content creator who is known for posting screen-recorded videos of herself playing different games. Since Candice’s followers are obviously interested in video games, Candice was the perfect influencer for Run Around to work with.
Link In Bio
The link in your TikTok bio is an important piece of your TikTok marketing strategy. If you have access to this feature (only Android users can add a link), you can add a link to your website, product page, or whatever other URL you’d like to share. But since you’re only allowed to add one link to your TikTok bio, there’s no way to promote multiple things at the same time.
That’s where TikTok link in bio tools come in. You can use tools such as Url.bio to essentially create a landing page that includes several CTA buttons. Each button links out to a different URL, like your website, YouTube channel, online shop, or whatever you want to include.
It’s easy to create this landing page with Url.bio. Add your links of choice and then edit your landing page, re-ordering the links and prioritizing the ones that are most important to you. You can also choose the color scheme and layout of your landing page, in addition to uploading an avatar and hiding the Url.bio logo. Url.bio is completely free to use and provides analytics so you can track how your links are performing.
Don’t skip this step in your TikTok marketing strategy! A tool such as url.bio is the best way to take advantage of your bio link and drive more traffic to your website.
Get Viral With TikTok Challenges
TikTok challenges are viral videos based around specific actions. A company or individual will start a “challenge” and then encourage others to recreate the video, often sharing a specific hashtag so all of the videos can be viewed in one place.
What are the benefits of TikTok challenges? They’re a great way to gain brand awareness. Participating in a challenge can help you get more views and followers — TikTok users are familiar with challenges and enjoy viewing different takes on the same concept. And creating your own challenges can help your TikTok account gain even more traction.
Here are a few examples of popular TikTok challenges and how your brand might be able to use them.
Level Up
The popular Level Up challenge has been around for longer than you might suspect. It was introduced in 2018 by singer Ciara, and quickly became popular on TikTok. Now the challenge has evolved to include more than just dancing videos: TikTok users try to see how high they (or their pets) can jump over a stack of objects.
If you’re a pet brand, this is the perfect hashtag for you. Create a TikTok showing a dog or cat jumping over a stack of your products. Even if you aren’t in the pet industry, you can still jump on board with the #levelupchallenge. Try filming your employees dancing, or get creative with a stack of your products — if you’re a fitness brand, you could enlist an athlete to hurdle over a stack of your protein powder or dumbbells.
#LeavingMyBody
When TikTok users participate in the #LeavingMyBody challenge, they create a video that shows an animated purple flame leaving their body. Onscreen text explains what the flame is supposed to represent — often something like stress or toxic thoughts. There are several ways a brand could utilize this challenge. For example if you’re a hotel or resort, you could caption the video, “The stress leaving your body when you arrive at [your business name].”
Sounds
Even if you don’t jump on top of a viral challenge, simply using a familiar sound can encourage users to watch your video. Fenty Beauty regularly uses TikTok sounds on its videos. For example, in this clip showcasing the Killawatt Highlighter, the company used I Like Him by Princess Nokia (a popular song on TikTok) as the audio for the video. Using viral sounds can make your TikTok videos more popular.
Create Your Own Viral TikTok Challenge
You can also create your own challenge, starting from the ground up and building your own kind of TikTok content. That’s what healthcare company Kaiser Permanente did at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kaiser created its own unique hashtag, #OwnTheCurve. The hashtag was meant to encourage TikTok users to take action and stop the spread of COVID-19. It quickly became popular, garnering 7.9 billion views as people made creative TikTok videos showing how they #OwnTheCurve.
Pepsi is another brand that successfully created its own TikTok challenge. Pepsi introduced the hashtag #SettleTheTab, with instructional videos showing how Pepsi customers could flick the tab of a Pepsi can in a back-and-forth game. TikTok users could recreate the challenge at home.
Create Platform-Specific Content
The content that you’ll find on TikTok is different from content on other social media platforms, and as a brand trying to succeed with TikTok marketing, it’s essential that you create content tailor-made for TikTok.
Videos on TikTok are served up in bite-size pieces; the video clips are short, not like the 15-minute short films you might find on YouTube or Facebook. TikTok videos are also all vertical, making them ideal for mobile viewing.
Collaboration also drives TikTok content in a way that isn’t nearly as relevant on other social media platforms. “Duets,” challenges, and other popular features help TikTok users create content together. Even if you simply make a video of your own, you’re likely still collaborating with another user by using one of their sounds.
So how do you successfully create content that’s specific to this social media app? Your videos need to be short and concise — whatever message you’re trying to get across should ideally be shared in 15 seconds or less. It’s also important to film your videos vertically so they fit with the app’s structure. And exploring ways to collaborate with other users can help drive more engagement and followers to your account. Try creating your own unique challenges for your followers to attempt, or make a video that other users can “duet.” The collaboration-based nature of TikTok is something that brands can take advantage of to get more brand awareness.
TikTok Marketing Hacks
TikTok is a social media platform with a lot to offer. And by using these TikTok marketing hacks, you can fully optimize your TikTok account and gain as much brand awareness as possible. Have fun creating content for TikTok that markets your brand!