10 TikTok Branding Strategies to Grow Your Business

On the lookout for TikTok branding strategies? New to TikTok and don’t want to waste time stabbing in the dark?

Launched in 2018, TikTok is currently one of the most popular apps on the market. It allows users to create short, looping reels with various effects and music. For some, this is no more than a confusing viral app, while others are already learning to make a profit for business out of it. Although TikTok is a relatively young platform, many brands choose it as a platform to promote their business. 60% of the TikTok audience consists of users between 16 and 25 years old, which leads us to believe that TikTok is an app for Millennials and Gen Zers.

Why is TikTok Good for Businesses and Brands?

According to Influencity, TikTok has 1.4 Billion users worldwide in 2023, and it was the most downloaded app for iOS in the first quarter of 2018. The average time people spend on TikTok is 52 minutes which is very close to the time they spend on other popular social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. So what does it mean for business? First and foremost: Engagement. TikTok is full of active young audiences who are willing to consume catchy, attention-grabbing videos, and the advertising that goes with them.

According to an annual report by SocialMediaExaminer, only 3% of marketers are currently using TikTok, and only 15% planning to use it in 2020. This makes TikTok a large marketing field with huge potential for brands. So let’s take a look at 10 TikTok branding strategies that could help your business reach a massive audience.

#1 Pick Your Niche Topic

Like any other social media app, TikTok revolves around worthy content. If you’ve chosen this platform to promote your brand, you need to create consistent branding. The possibilities to produce worthy content are endless. Pick the topic in which you have solid expertise and share your knowledge and experience. First, you should research your competitors to see what kind of content they post on TikTok. Then, try your best to produce better content in order to outrank them. Monitoring and analyzing feedback from users will help you understand whether or not you are moving in the right direction.

#2 Join a Hashtag Challenge

This TikTok trend is a powerful tool that can help your brand reach more people. Make sure to add relevant hashtags to every video, as that is the best way to grow organically.

If you don’t know what hashtags to use, type in a relevant, broad keyword within the search section on TikTok. Based on it, a system will suggest a range of hashtags on your topic.

One more way to use hashtags to promote your business is to launch a TikTok hashtag challenge. All you need to do is to upload a catchy video, come up with a branded hashtag, and encourage your audience to create similar videos. Viral marketing is what really enlarges the audience and drives users’ interaction on TikTok.

#3 Collaborate with Influencers

TikTok influencers may not be known for their large audiences like the influencers on Instagram. However, reaching target users is what will help you promote your business. Cooperate with influencers whose audience might be interested in your brand and will most likely buy from you. This is similar to how Insta advertising works.

Influencers are using the TikTok platform to produce high-quality content to get more sponsored publications. If your budget allows partnering with the influencer to promote your product then do it. Such an approach works not only for businesses selling physical products but also for business selling services like online store templates, for example. Partnering with an influencer saves the time needed for promotion and increases brand awareness. Influencers already have highly loyal followers, so just make sure that their audience matches your customer profile.

Source: medium.com

#4 Create Engaging Content

Cooperating with TikTok influencers and adding hashtags is essential for promoting your brand to a large audience, but let’s face the truth: none of these strategies will work if the content you share is bland. On TikTok, you only have 15-60 seconds to persuade the users to follow you. Don’t neglect the quality of content for the sake of being active.

Be sure to create a pleasant, comprehensible video, as this is the first thing that catches the attention of a visitor. Make sure that the correct design is applied to all of your posts. Think about the captions of your videos. They should be memorable, but not too cumbersome. Keep in mind that TikTok is a social network, so the user’s engagement is what you want to get.

#5 Pay for Advertising

Although it’s still quite new, TikTok has a specialized advertising system allowing brands and companies to tap into a massive user base. The platform offers three types of digital advertising:

• Native In-Feed Ads
• Hashtag Challenge Ads
• Brand Ads. This type of TikTok ad is the most efficient way to drive traffic to your landing page.

When it comes to targeting TikTok ads, there two options:

• Interest Targeting. Works similar to Facebook ads. You select an interest relevant to your target audience and TikTok shows ads to those people.
• Behavioral Targeting. This type of targeting helps you to advertise to people based on their behavior within the last week or two.

Source: medium.com

#6 Partner with Other Creators Through TikTok Marketing Campaigns

If you want your brand to reach a large audience but your budget can’t stretch that far, a partnership with other brands and content creators may work for you.

For example, if you work in the fashion sphere and want to promote your company, you may find other people from this field with a solid following and offer them collaboration. A short, friendly message will be enough to let them know you’re interested in working together. The mutual, potential benefits of such a collaboration are noticeable, so there are high chances someone will take up your suggestion.

#7 Follow Trends and Make Them Work for Your Business

TikTok is full of trends. This is a social network where trends vary from popular songs, video effects, challenges, and hashtags. How to identify a trend among millions of videos? Keep up to date by tracking hashtags and songs. You need to follow these trends and analyze how your business can benefit from them.

#8 Don’t Try to be Perfect

“Show your authenticity” may sound like a cliché but TikTok, unlike Instagram, doesn’t always need you to “polish” the content and come up with a perfect picture at the end. Aesthetics in every single detail is not necessary for TikTok. This is a platform where personality plays a prior role, so don’t be afraid to be yourself.

TikTok loves content and the more you feed it, the more you learn about your audience. But the “morethe-better” rule doesn’t work this way. Audiences value engaging content and stability. Posting a high-quality video once a day is better than posting 5 meaningless ones.

#9 Study the Platform

The last thing you want to do when promoting a brand on a social network is to enter it without a complete understanding of how it works. In order for this platform not to confuse you, you need to study what type of content works on TikTok, how to reach other users, and how to make your business fit the platform naturally. This is a social network where creativity matters much more than other platforms. We don’t spend time scrolling for education content, TikTok’s audience is mostly looking for enjoyment and humor, so the serious sales topics are not for them. Always remember that the majority of the TikTok audience is aged between 16 and 25 years of age, and the best way to reach them is to demonstrate creativity and authenticity.

#10 Track and Assess Your Campaign’s Results

Hashtags and creativity are all good but let’s not forget that a fundamental part of any marketing strategy is evaluating the results of a campaign’s success. Using an analytics tool will give you valuable insights into your promotional efforts and how you can improve them. If you’re not getting enough engagement, you need to think of what mistakes could have caused such an effect and how to fix them. Maybe your clips are underperforming because they’re just not funny enough? Keeping yourself updated with analytics is a powerful way to enlarge your audience and eventually generate more sales.

Conclusion

TikTok is a real breakthrough in the history of modern social media. A platform all about engagement, it has attracted millions of Gen-Z users and become one of the most promising advertising platforms out there. Now that you know these 10 branding strategies to grow your business on TikTok, you can confidently use them to introduce your product or brand to a large TikTok audience.

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