As a brand, you can’t afford to neglect TikTok in your influencer marketing strategy. TikTok has the potential to put your products and services in front of a highly-targeted, engaged audience, creating positive associations with your brand and driving purchase intent when executed correctly.
Not to mention that the app has over 3 billion downloads, and was the most downloaded app last year, so its reach is unparalleled. Users fire up the app 19 times a day on average; and young viewers spend an average of 87 minutes per day on it. Above all, the average engagement rate on TikTok is just shy of 7%, way higher than any other social media platform and still trending upwards (no pun intended).
You might be asking yourself: this all sounds great, but how can you best engage with the audience on TikTok? TikTok is unlike any other social platforms, and overly promotional content doesn’t land well there. If your end goal is to drive traffic to your brand’s site and improve sales conversions, how do you get there? There’s a lot to unpack to get this right.
Here are 7 easy steps for brands to get a head start on TikTok.
1. Create a TikTok account
- Download the application from your phone, in the Apple Store or the Google Play Store.
- Sign up with social or Google logins.
- Select your niche(s).
- You’re all set!
From here on, the TikTok algorithm works behind the scenes to serve personalized and relevant content as you use the app. It learns about your preferences over time, and pushes videos that best match them and your past history on the For You feed.
2. Identify your primary goal
As a brand, define your main objective from being TikTok. This could be to…
- Find new customers.
- Transfer your existing community from other channels on the platform.
- Generate sales organically or via paid TikTok ads.
- Drive user engagement as measured by likes, shares, and comments.
- Generate traffic to your website ahead of a new product launch.
- Establish your brand as a leader in its niche, so it’s ‘top of mind’ for your target audience.
- Expand your reach by placing your brand message, products and services in front of a wider audience.
The point is, you need to clearly define your goals before starting the content creation process.
From there, other aspects to clarify include: Will you only create content in collaboration with influencers to promote your products; or also create content internally on your own page? Will your videos focus on product features, or on how your products make users feel and what benefits it brings them? Do you want 1 or 2 creators who align very well with your brand values to become the exclusive faces of your brand on TikTok; or work with a range of influencers to tap into their audience?
2. Get to know your audience inside out
The next step before posting anything from your brand account, is to spend time researching your target audience.
You need to understand who these users are and what they’re interested in, to be able to reach them effectively with your branded content.
First off, define your target demographic – age, gender, location, and interests are all good starting points. This information will inform your content strategy; for instance, if your target audience is made of 80% male young adults between 18 to 25 years old, based in Europe, your videos will need to adjusting to appeal to those viewers.
Then, consider what type of content is likely to engage your target audience the most. You can analyze the followers of other brands, competitors and creators in your niche and dig deep: do these users seem to enjoy the latest trending songs, or dance moves? Are they more into well-presented, visual content? Are there any common themes you can gather from this to tailor your content accordingly?
3. Post authentic content
When it comes to TikTok, data shows it’s best to unapologetically be yourself. Natural content that comes across as authentic and relatable is what viewers want from the platform, and it’s one of the reasons why they prefer it over other social media apps.
As a result, TikTok itself is perceived as more “honest, authentic, and genuine” and so your brand should live up to what users expect from the app overall. There’s no need to be overly polished as you may need to be on Instagram: on TikTok, authenticity, fun and entertainment matter most.
Another insight from Nielsen research is the fact that TikTok is particularly well suited for product discovery. Whilst an impressive 1 in 3 users have already bought products after watching TikTok content (and the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag has over 32 billion views to date), brands would do well to take their time to educate consumers and help them discover their brand universe, before posting content that focuses on driving sales conversions and closing the funnel.
This comes back to having a natural approach, treating your content as a natural, two-way conversation with the audience as opposed to a sales contest.
So, even if you were to work with an influencer on an unboxing video of your products, make sure the creative brief reflects the need for the review to be genuine, and to integrate naturally on their page. This impacts the type of influencer you’ll want to work with: for product unboxing content, for instance, the ideal creator will be passionate about your brand’s products, and have already done such type of videos with high engagement from their followers in the past. This would validate the audience is receptive to this kind of content and is likely to engage with your brand as a result.
Importantly, every one of your videos should clearly reflect your brand, identity, and culture. Ultimately, it should be obvious and uniquely recognizable to the viewers who the content is from.
Quick tip: don’t simply cross-post content from your other socials on TikTok. Tailor it to the app and what viewers come for: authentic, fun, entertaining and natural content!
4. Analyze the results
After you’ve posted a few videos and started to grow a following on TikTok, take some time to review your stats. Your Analytics page will give you some insightful information here, which you can review every other week or month to shape your ongoing TikTok strategy.
Essential metrics to pay attention to include:
- Number of followers: if your content strategy is working and your brand has a pre-existing online presence, your follower count should exceed 50,000 in a short space of time. You can accelerate this if you bring over any existing Instagram following over to your TikTok page.
- Number of views (total and unique users): total views are really important, as is your reached audience (how many unique users have watched your videos). Track how this evolves over time. However, to balance out reach, you need to consider how engaging your content is – a factor of the number of interactions on your content.
- Number of interactions (engagement):
- Number of likes: by checking out how many likes every video gets, you’ll quickly spot which type of content works better than others. Try to identify common patterns amongst videos that get more likes.
- Number of comments: TikTok is famous for having large amounts of comments on videos. Analyze the tone of the comments: are they rather positive, negative, or neutral? How can you best respond to those? If the video is part of an ad, you can use TikTok’s Ad Manager to filter on positive or negative sentiment to help your analysis.
- Number of shares: shares are a great indicator of engaging content. The more your videos get shared (in the form of GIFs, posts on other social networks, or re-shares within TikTok), the more they have a chance to snowball and go viral. The TikTok algorithm loves these, as it shows users are willing to take the extra step of sharing your content with their own followers.
- Engagement rate per follower: Total number of comments + total number of likes + total number of shares (your total engagement) / Total number of followers x 100.
- Engagement rate per view: using views rather than follower count is usually a more accurate measure for the engagement rate: Total number of comments + likes + shares / Number of views on each video (or across all videos part of a given campaign).
5. Collaborate with relevant influencers
Influencers are the heart of TikTok, and they cover any niche you could think of. Whatever your niche or target audience, you can find creators to work with.
The key here is to find relevant creators to partner with: those who have the right audience, strong engagement rates, and a style of content that resonates with your brands whereby your message or products could easily integrate into the creators’ page.
Choose what type of influencer best suits your goals: nano-influencers with 5,000 followers may provide limited reach, however their audience is highly curated and more likely to engage; on the other hand of the spectrum, mega influencers with millions of fans can give your brand a bigger platform and take brand awareness to new heights, but will likely produce low engagement by the nature of their audience and content. In other words, that awareness will not likely translate into engagement, and therefore will less likely translate into purchase intent.
In short, select influencers based on the trade-off between reach and engagement, depending on what your main goal is, and who match your brand tone and values.
A successful influencer strategy on TikTok hinges on reaching a group of users who are passionate about your niche and already consume related content, from a source they know and trust. That source should the the influencer(s) you collaborate with, to put your brand in front of that audience.
Once you’ve picked your perfect match, provide a clear creative brief but don’t be too restrictive either. Give the influencers the freedom to be creative in the videos and use their own unique style. Again, the more the creators can be themselves and intuitively promote your products, the higher the engagement is likely to be. All of this is key to launch successful influencer campaigns on TikTok.
6. Take part in TikTok challenges
An effective way to carve out your own slice of the TikTok pie is to participate in trending challenges, and bring something unique to the table.
Whether it’s a dance challenge with choreographies (“why don’t you say so” for example) or a hashtag challenge (“#elclasicochallenge”, “#foodwehate”), build on these to create original content. Get inspired by what other content creators put out, and add your own touch.
After you post content for a challenge, make sure to interact with the user community. Like and respond to comments in a way that matches your brand’s tone of voice.
Finally, once you grow enough of a presence on TikTok, your brand could launch its very own challenges. Haribo, Burberry and many others did it, so why not?
To create a branded challenge, you’ll have to work directly with TikTok. You could couple your challenge with an influencing marketing campaign, and double down on reach and engagement. Bonus points if you turn your challenge into a competition with prizes to win – check out some ideas here!
7. Use TikTok Ads for paid campaigns
Aside from organic content, you have different options to run ads within TikTok:
- TopView: ad appears at the top of the For You feed when users first launch the app, giving your brand users’ undivided attention for up to 60 seconds. The spotlight’s on!
- Brand Takeover: a full-screen, short and immersive ad that takes overs when users open TikTok.
- In-feed native video: the standard TikTok ad format, where the ad autoplays as users scroll down the For You feed, with a look and feel closer to that of native content.
- Branded Hashtag Challenge: a great way to engage users on TikTok, designed for user-generated content (UGC). The process is as follows: the standard video ads appear in the in-feed placement, to nudge users to participate in the challenge. Then, a featured banner on the Discover page directs traffic to the Hashtag Challenge page. This page is the central hub of the challenge, gathering videos submitted to it in one place.
- Branded Effects: these include shareable filters, effects and stickers that reference your brand, to help users create high-quality UGC that fosters brand awareness. They could be used as part of a standalone campaign, or combined with a Branded Hashtag Challenge for an even bigger brand awareness boost!
- Boosted ads: as with in-feed ads, you can boost a creator’s video, similarly to dark posting on Instagram.
With TikTok ads, you can generate more leads and sales, maximize RoI on your marketing spend by ensuring your ads get placed in front of just the right audience, and of course track your metrics all from within the Ad’s Manager.
Wrapping up
So there you have it. Follow these 7 simple steps to get your brand started on TikTok, and engage your audience like never before. Learn from leading brands who are succeeding on the platform for inspiration, and start creating!
Sounds complicated? Not sure where to begin and how to best leverage the super powers of influencer marketing on TikTok? Not to worry – we’re here to help.
At TIKTAL, we connect brands with the most relevant TikTok influencers so brands can meet their goals with ease and trust. Get in touch!