Promoting Your Brand on TikTok: Things to Consider

Have you included TikTok in your marketing strategy for 2023? With over 105 billion active monthly users, TikTok becomes a great opportunity to promote your brand. Today you'll learn how to utilize TikTok marketing for eCommerce.

There are many social media platforms to strengthen your online presence and attract potential customers. But in order to ensure a strong position in this highly competitive industry, online marketers are always searching for new mediums for brand promotion.

Considering the growing popularity of TikTok, you can use it to reach a large audience.

Don't worry, if you don't have TikTok for your business yet. You can still create a strong presence on this platform and target new customers.

In this blog, you'll learn about-

• Benefits of using TikTok
• Different ways to promote your business on TikTok
• Configuration process of TikTok shop
• Strategical approaches to promote your band on TikTok

We have a series of articles to ease your new year marketing plan. Have a quick look-

• Ultimate Guide to eCommerce Market Research
• Grow Your WooCommerce Store Using Smart Content Marketing Strategy
• Data-Driven Marketing Strategy to Increase Your E-Commerce Revenues

Why Should Your Online Business Embrace TikTok Marketing?

TikTok is a popular social media app that allows users to create, watch, and share 15-second videos. Initially, people used it to upload lip-sync videos, learn trending dances or keep up with Gen Z.

But with its growing user base, TikTok is no longer just a place of entertainment. By the end of 2022, there would be 105 billion active monthly users on this app. Many renowned brands use it to promote their brands, products, and services. And they have witnessed a significant impact on their growth.

Research on the consumer behavior of TikTok users states that-

37% of users discovered something on TikTok and immediately went to buy it. Whereas 35% of TikTok users buy something they see on the platform.

TikTok marketing can help businesses to:

• Improve brand awareness
• Sell products and services
• Build engaged communities, and
• Promote your brand to a larger audience

Inside TikTok, you can market your brand in 2 different ways-

1. From your personal account, create engaging and related content for your business. And place links to your content so that interested audiences can easily visit your eCommerce store.
   
2. Or, you can switch to a TikTok business account and build a shop to run your eCommerce business right from the platform.

Below you'll find actionable tips to promote your brand to your TikTik audience-

7 Effective TikTok Marketing Tactics to Promote Your Brand

During making a TikTok marketing strategy you should consider 2 things-

• How to get more views for your TikTok videos or ads
• How to convince viewers to take your desired actions

Usually, people find your storefront and products through videos. So, make relatable and attractive videos to easily grab your audience's attention.

A study finds 38% of TikTok users interacted with a video posted by a brand while actively doing product research.

Once you grab their attention, your target would be getting them into a sales funnel. You can add links to your content that send users to your Instagram page, eCommerce website, or directly make purchases.

Your main objective on TikTok should be getting traffic to convert.

Let's show you some effective ways to drive TikTok conversions for your eCommerce business-

1. Find Target Audience That Brings You Business

Though TikTok has over 1 billion users, everyone is not beneficial for your business. It requires categorizing your user base so you can personalize your TikTok content or campaign individually. You can learn about TikTok's demographic and find out who might be your potential customers.

These stats may help you-

• The majority of TikTok creators are aged 18 to 24
• The US has the largest TikTok audience (over 135 million)
• Almost 90% of Saudi Arabian adults use TikTok

However, your current audience may not use TikTok. But it doesn't mean you leave this marketing approach inactively. Because there may be subgroups with similar or slightly different interests available on the app.

For example, a glass manufacturer's audience could consist of investors on LinkedIn, admins & users on Instagram, and suppliers on TikTok.

Related resource: 10+ Best Marketing Channels to Increase Your eCommerce Brand Exposure.

2. Conduct a Competitor Analysis

If your competitors are already ruling over the app, check their strategy carefully. Pay good attention to their content type, promotional activities, publishing frequency, partnership with influencers, etc. It's needless to say you always have to stand out from the competition.

You can conduct a competitor analysis to evaluate your competitors' sales tactics, strengths, and weaknesses relative to your business. Follow these 4 easy steps to analyze your competitors on TikTok-

• Identify your competitors
• Collect information about them
• Do a SWOT analysis for your competitors
• Define your competitive advantage

Related Resource: How Technology Assessment Can Take Your Business to A Whole New Level.

3. Build A Loyal Fan Base on TikTok

The way of TikTok marketing is a little bit different than Instagram or Facebook marketing. TikTok follows an individual marketing approach with unique trends, functions, and user behaviors. As a beginner, you should spend some time understanding how TikTok really works and how it'll be beneficial for your business.

Find out the different features of TikTok and learn how to use them effectively. Before making any content, it's also important to know about the trendy filters, effects, and songs. So, you can easily grab people's attention and build a strong ground to pitch your brand speech.

Another important fact you should consider is the TikTok algorithm. Once you can identify how TikTok ranks and displays videos in the “For You” tab, you can craft a better strategy for your content and hashtag with a higher engagement rate.

4. Use TikTok Ads to Get More Brand Exposure

With over 1 billion active users in 2022, TikTok becomes a powerful platform to tell people about your brand. Using TikTok ads can easily reach a larger audience in a fresh and innovative way.

In order to create your first campaign, create an account on the TikTok Ads Manager. Insert all the basic information and complete the Sign Up process. Then, you need to install the TikTok Pixel. Finally, create a new campaign from your TikTok Ads Manager dashboard.

Next, select an ad group to define audiences, campaign budgets, and placements for your ads. After launching your ad, measure your performance to see how the campaign is paying off. TikTok analytics show you how your ad is doing in terms of impressions, clicks, conversions, and more.

You can even test and compare the performance of different ad copies and placements to see what works best for you.

5. Utilize Hashtags and Keywords Effectively

Hashtags and keywords explain your post to the algorithm. So, anyone searching for related topics it can show your content even if they're not following you on TikTok. Video caption is the best position to place your hashtags.

First, you need to identify related keywords that people usually use on TikTok searching for similar products or services. In order to find the keywords go to the app and type your preferred search term into the search box.

After writing the phrase you can notice a drop-down list of suggested keywords. These are the common terms people are searching for on TikTok. Note them and shortlist the items you want to include in your videos. You can add keywords to captions and text within your videos.

6. Add a Chatbot to Your Online Store

If you're sending potential customers from the TikTok app to your website, ensure someone is ready to assist them. An integrated AI chatbot guides users by giving personalized suggestions. It enhances users' experience as well as boosts sales.

The automated AI system reduces the cost of hiring new customer support employees. Also, it enables you to give quick support to your users. Chatbot becomes an integral part of your digital marketing. The sooner you can adapt to the notion of using chatbots, the better you can make connections with your leads.

7. Utilize TikTok Analytics to Upgrade Your Strategy

As we've mentioned above you can use TikTok to reach a new audience, spread your brand voice, increase brand awareness, or strengthen your relationship with customers. Engaging content helps you to serve your purpose but you need to review your content performance in order to keep all your core activities aligned with the main goal.

TikTok Business account has analytics. To check the TikTok analytics:

1. Navigate to your profile page and tap the three horizontal lines in the upper right.
2. Click on the Creator Tools, then Analytics.
3. Check the dashboard and find the metrics you can use to measure your goals.

These metrics aren't only useful to analyze your business performance, it tells you whether or not your strategies are working.

How to Keep Your Content Performance Always High on TikTok

You get your TikTok marketing strategy right and start creating unique content for your brand. But your duty is not over yet. Marketing is a continuous process. You need to monitor your performance, tune your strategy with changing landscape, and blend your content with the latest trends.

1. Follow Trends to Publish Content on Tiktok

In order to hold a better position on TikTok, you must publish trendy content. Before creating any TikTok content check the current trends of music, dance, lifestyle, viral style, and others. Use what is popular right now among people and merge the concept with your content.

According to TikTok, some of the top trends of 2021 were whipped coffee and a quick and easy skincare routine.

A TikTok trend can be music, hashtag, dance, or challenge. Sometimes even how you edit your post can become a trend. For example, this swanky transition type. When a trend starts getting attention, users “hop on” it by recreating a trending TikTok video or theme.

2. Create Short, Fun, Authentic Content Exclusively for TikTok

Your TikTok content needs to be short and to the point. Shorter clips are more likely to be rewatched and shared by viewers than longer clips. Moreover, you have to hook your audience and give them a good reason to watch the full video within the first 3 seconds.

After becoming a big brand you can occasionally post longer clips, but overall, shorter clips work better.

According to TikTok metrics, videos that fall between 21 and 34 seconds are ideal for video ads to be effective.

Another important thing you should remember, TikTok is primarily known for entertaining content. If people find your content interesting they might want to know more about you, your page, and your online business.

Peachy BBs promotes its brand on TikTok through engaging videos. They usually publish content on the slime-making process, answer followers' questions, play with slime, and experiment with new scents and textures.

They have more than 4.7 million followers and their videos are so popular that their slime drops tend to sell out in minutes.

3. Create Engaging Content that Triggers Emotion

Funny videos may not always be relatable to your business niche. In that case, you can create videos that connect your users' emotions to your brand.

For example, you can show how your products or service will solve a particular problem. Use heartwarming or nostalgic aspects to represent a scenario. The storytelling technique also goes very well with this type of video creation.

Dasha Derkach starts promoting her brand Enchanted Scrunch on TikTok through engaging videos. She got 10 orders on the first day.

4. Collaborate with Popular TikTok Influencers

You can mix the concept of celebrity endorsement and places it into a modern-day content-driven marketing campaign.

Since well-known TikTok celebrities already have an established fan base. It would be an effective way to collaborate with these popular figures and reach a large audience to promote your brand. Using his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with their audience, you can get a great boost to your profit margin.

5. Add Call-to-Action (CTAs) in Your TikTok Videos

Engaging TikTok videos can represent your brand more attractively to a larger audience. It lets you display your products and services creatively to attract the viewers’ attention. You can also encourage your viewers to take desired actions by adding call-to-actions. Such as visiting your shop, signing up, checking out, etc.

A TikTok study found that adding Calls to Action (CTAs) in TikTok video text can increase conversion by 152%.

For example, HelloFresh got a huge response from viewers after placing the coupon code right on the video

6. Publish Content with A Regular Frequency

Many businesses overlook the frequency of their content publishing. But a time schedule is essential to maintain a regular traffic flow on your TikTok shop.

The loyal audience expects a minimum quantity of posts from you within a limited time period. It's better to maintain a calendar. Your TikTok calendar should consist of different post types and individual time frames for other promotional activities.

Read more: 7 Highly Actionable Tips for Selling Products to Your Customers.

Let's give you a quick glimpse of how you can create an eCommerce shop right on your TikTok app and sell products directly.

A Few Drawbacks of TikTok Marketing You Should Check

There are a lot of benefits to promoting your business on TikTok. But you should also consider the downsides as well.

TikTok is particularly popular for funny videos. If you're trying to build trust, TikTok would not be a proper channel to promote your business.

Perhaps, many retailers avoid TikTok due to data security or privacy concern. You may hear about the discussion on the potential U.S. ban on TikTok. However, here are some more reasons you may need to know about-

1. Making random videos on TikTok may hamper your brand reputation
2. TikTok limits promotional activities allowing only videos
3. Mundane or serious products may struggle to find an audience on TikTok
4. The cost of advertising on TikTok seems expensive for small businesses

Adapting to a new technology or marketing platform is not an easy task. You have to understand how the platform actually works and how you can sync your brand with it. The same concept goes for TikTok. As a marketer, you need to be tricky and visionary to bring the most out of a new marketing tactic.

It may amaze you TikTok allows you to sell products/services right from the app. Let's show you the detailed process-

Bonus: How Does TikTok Shop Work

Creating videos from a personal account is not the only way to promote your business. You can operate an online shop as well inside TikTok.

A TikTok Shop enables eCommerce features right on your TikTok app. It allows merchants, brands, and creators to showcase and sell products directly on TikTok. Business owners can sell products through in-feed videos, LIVEs, and the product showcase tab.

TikTok launched its TikTok Business hub in the summer of 2020 and rolled out TikTok Pro a few months later.

Under this facility, you can open an online shop inside the app. TikTok Shop allows creators and merchants to build storefronts and sell their products directly from the TikTok platform.

Using TikTok Seller Center and Affiliate Center, eCommerce owners can build a marketplace model too. So, creators can sign up for Affiliate Program and earn commissions from partnered merchants.

Setting Up TikTok for Business

TikTok has merged the platform both for business owners and growth-savvy creators. By logging into TikTok Business you can add all your information and get a real-time overview of store performance and audience insights.

Follow the below steps to create your own TikTok business account:

• Sign in to your TikTok profile page
• From the top right corner, click on the three horizontal lines
• Tap Setting and Privacy
• Click on the tab Manage account
• Under Account, choose Switch to Business Account.
• Select the category that best describes your account
• In the next tab, you get the option to add a business website and email to your profile

You've successfully established your business account.

Note: Tiktok offers different categories to specify the type of your business. Such as Art & Crafts, Personal Blog, Fitness, Machinery & Equipment, etc.

FAQs on TikTok Marketing

Below you'll find the most common queries related to TikTok marketing-

Strengthen Your Online Presence with Powerful TikTok Marketing for eCommerce

Starting a business can be exciting but stressful. Having great products is not enough to secure a stable position in the market. You need to promote your brand in front of the right audience. It's a continuous process as people's demands are not static.

If you follow the trend and target modern users for your business, TikTok is an effective way to go.

Instead of using search engines, a large number of internet users switched to TikTok or Instagram search. As like-minded people gather, it's easier to find things like where to meet for brunch, which thriller movie is best to watch, where you can find Halloween dresses, etc. You can also introduce your brand on TikTok with related content.

There are several ways to promote your business on TikTok. Such as influencer marketing, TikTok advertising, and creating unique content. If you are new in this arena and feel confused about where to start, follow our above guide to start today!

Do you have further queries about TikTok marketing? Use the comment section below.