TikTok: A beginners’ guide for business

TikTok was the most downloaded app of 2020, with 2.6 billion downloads worldwide by the end of 2020. It had 8.5 million UK users in 2020, which is expected to rise to 10.9 million in 2021.

TikTok is already one of the most popular social media platforms ever and it is growing fast. If you get it right, it is a great way to engage with an audience and potentially reach millions of people.

If you’re wondering whether TikTok would be a good marketing tool for your business, you need to start by thinking about your target audience. If your target audience is already active on other social media channels, it is important to consider using TikTok to promote your business too.  

What is TikTok? Who uses it and what do they use it for?

Not all singing and dancing

Even if your brand isn’t well-known, you can still use TikTok for your business. But you have to make sure that you are posting quality content that doesn’t look like a sales pitch. The worst thing you can do when starting out on TikTok is just post a series of your ads or pictures of your products. Anything which looks stiff, formal or corporate is a complete no-no and will have users scrolling past without a second glance.

If your business is a small local one, that doesn’t mean you can’t use TikTok. When you post a TikTok it gets shared with people in your local area – the people it will resonate with and who are most likely to buy from you. So you don’t have to be a big business to have a big reach where you want it.

Offering answers, motivation or information can bring you TikTok success. It has worked for brands in the education and training sectors, as well as entrepreneurs and lifestyle bloggers. The one thing they have in common is that they have found a way to strike the balance between informative and fun - to create content that people want to watch.

From educational videos to recipes, ‘how-tos’ or beauty transformations, there are many ways to use TikTok for your brand. With a bit of clever editing or the use of time-lapse video on your smartphone, you can show users exactly how to use your products. This instantly makes them more appealing than your competition, because your audience is able to visualise exactly how they would use the product themselves.

TikTok doesn’t have to be polished, like Instagram or YouTube. In fact, users don’t want to see perfection – they want to see real and they want to see fun. Revealing the true personality behind your business in this way will help users to feel a connection with your brand, which builds trust.

Whether a workout transformation or a lifestyle hack, it is just as important to keep viewers intrigued by the content of your video as it is to get your marketing message across.

Maybe you already have a big audience or customer base among Generation Z (16-24 year olds) or maybe you want to reach that audience. TikTok is a great way to do it, with 40% of users aged 16-24. The remaining users are largely made up of younger teenagers or millennials in their 20s and 30s.

While they won’t work in every situation, two magic ingredients to TikTok videos are animals and children. Animals and children give just the right balance of humour, cuteness and unpredictability. So don’t be afraid to bring your pets or your kids in on the action. And don’t forget to use a relevant hashtag on your videos like #dogsoftiktok – which users search for when they’re looking for a canine pick-me-up.

Trends and hashtags

While creating your own original content is a good idea, you may find your videos get more attention if you try out some TikTok trends and add your own brand and personality to them. It doesn’t matter if your videos are imperfect – in fact, that is generally preferable on TikTok.

Throw yourself in and put your own spin on the latest TikTok trend. Your personality and your brand will help differentiate you from similar businesses and videos.

Hashtag challenges are a big part of TikTok’s appeal, so consider taking part in a few – whether that is learning a dance routine, showing off your tips for organising the office or your kitchen, or cooking up your own version of a dish from your favourite restaurant.

And once you’ve got used to joining in with others’ challenges, why not set your own hashtag challenge?

Whether or not your video is part of a hashtag challenge, it is essential to use hashtags because, without them, your videos will only reach your followers. If you use hashtags, you have the potential to reach a huge number of users.

There are broadly two types of hashtags – general and specific. General hashtags can help you reach a larger number of people who have a general interest in your subject matter. Specific hashtags will help you zone in on the people who are most likely to enjoy your content and buy your products and services. Ideally, it is a good idea to include both sorts of hashtag in your TikToks.

Some popular TikTok hashtags for business include:

• #howto (any tutorial ‘how to’ video)
• #motivationalvideo
• #fitness
• #foodrecipe
• #5mincraft
• #beautyblogger

It’s important to use the right hashtags to reach your audience because TikTok restricts captions to 150 characters, including hashtags. So don’t waste characters by using an #irrelevanthashtag.

Want to know how well your videos are reaching your audience? Make sure you have a TikTok pro account, which any user can enable. This will give you access to analytics, including insights on weekly and month views, follower growth and trending videos.

Paid advertising

So far we have talked about the organic reach of TikTok. But it is also possible to use paid advertising on TikTok, in the same way as you might do on Facebook or Instagram. If your aim is to advertise to a very young audience, TikTok might be a better option for your advertising budget than other social media.

As it is still a relatively new tool, advertising on TikTok is a good option for brands which want to build a niche community on a platform that isn’t yet overrun by competitors.

Some ways of advertising on TikTok include turning your existing hastag challenges into promoted content, so that they reach more people.

TikTok branded lenses are similar to the effects on Snapchat and Instagram and include creative face filters and animated objects. They give users a way to interact with a brand by playing with their filter, which in turns makes users more aware of the brand and its products. Using branded lenses and hashtag challenges together creates an even stronger link to your brand.

Another possibility is in-feed video advertising - videos of up to 15 seconds which appear whilst users explore posted content. This type of advertising is ideal to gain exposure and can be used to redirect people towards a specific web page or hashtag challenge.

The final option is a brand takeover, which could put your business in front of potentially millions of users. It is a full-screen ad which is displayed when the user first opens Tik Tok, so it is very hard to ignore!

If your target audience is young people and you’re not currently using TikTok for your business, you are missing a trick, because it could be your best bet for leads and conversions. Younger people often have short attention spans and are always on the go – and constantly tapping in and out of TikTok.

With TikTok’s short video format, you are more likely to have their attention for the full duration of the video, rather than them moving on before they’ve even reached your key message, as they might do with YouTube.

If you have an older demographic, but want to extend your reach to people in their teens and 20s, TikTok would also be a great tool to help your business reach that target audience.

It is very cheap and easy to use, so why not give it a go and see what TikTok can do for your business?