As of 2024, the typical TikTok user spends about 95 minutes daily on the app. Chances are, you’re part of the 19.3% of the global population using the app for personal enjoyment. But should you start a TikTok for your business?
In this blog, Senior Social Media Strategist, Josh Rohr, will walk you through 8 reasons you should try it.
What You’ll Learn:
My Expert Insight on TikTok for Business
TikTok has one of the highest engagement rates among social media platforms, clearly identifying it as a user favorite. A high engagement rate indicates that brands are creating content that resonates with users, building brand visibility and brand loyalty.
Action Item: Get online and browse around. See what type of content your competitors are creating. Look through their comments and see if the brand sentiment is positive or negative. The more research you can do about trending audio, challenges, dances, etc., the more content ideas you’ll ha
8 Reasons to Try TikTok For Your Business
1. Businesses Can Use TikTok Shop
If you plan on selling products via TikTok, the TikTok Shop ecommerce platform allows for a more seamless buying experience that benefits shoppers. Customers can complete the checkout process from within the app, keeping the buyer’s journey smooth and painless.
At the same time, you can use TikTok Shop’s various promotional tools and campaigns to promote all types of products.
Another benefit of TikTok Shop is the ability to collaborate with many creators on the platform, enabling you to develop relationships with influencers and the greater TikTok community who can help you sell products.
2. Brands Can Get Creative
The majority of TikTok’s content is light, whimsical, and entertaining.
It’s real people expressing themselves in creative – and often silly – ways. Even if you’re a serious B2B or SaaS company selling serious products or services, using TikTok for business to showcase your brand has some serious benefits.
Social media users are hungry for human connection and authenticity. While there’s surely a place for educational value on TikTok, positioning your company as conversational and easy to connect with will make customers feel more comfortable entering into a long-term partnership with you.
Of course, there is a time and place for certain things, but every business can lean into creativity and design to create short-form videos to help drive brand awareness.
@duolingo a wittle treat for later #duolingo #languagelearning ♬ Little Life – Cordelia
3. Reach More People, Faster
Despite launching the app in 2016, TikTok has been downloaded over 4.7 billion times on the App Store and Google Play.
This puts the platform ahead of others who have been around longer like Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter. That’s no surprise as video content is king in 2024 and if there’s anything that TikTok excels at, it’s video.
Here are some other stats that illustrate just how crucial it is to use TikTok for businesses:
- US adults spend 4.43 billion minutes per year on TikTok.
- TikTok users are 1.4x more likely to buy a new tech product in the next 6 months.
- 40% of Americans use TikTok as a search engine, a majority of them being Gen Z.
- In 2023, TikTok was the 5th most downloaded app on the Apple App Store.
4. TikTok for Business: Endless Influencers
One of the most appealing aspects of TikTok is that anyone can go viral. It’s not entirely far-fetched that a person with 0 followers and 0 views can post a TikTok video one night with a million views the next morning.
This ability to provide anyone with a massive following means TikTok has a limitless pool of influencers to choose from. If your brand is looking to target a particular group of people in a specific location, there is likely a perfectly suited individual who fits the criteria and already has a big following.
According to recent data, 1 in 4 marketers have used influencer marketing to generate sales or increase brand awareness.
However, sifting through influencers on TikTok can be an arduous process, and it’s unclear to determine whether a certain influencer is right for your product or service.
To address these concerns, TikTok created the TikTok Creator Marketplace, an analytics tool that helps brands find TikTok users to partner with. It lets you access the influencers’ engagement, reach, demographics, views, and much more.
If you want to get the most from influencer marketing when using TikTok for business, there are different types of influencers to consider and the benefits they offer for businesses:
Mega Influencers
These influencers have over one million followers and tend to be celebrities. Generally, if marketers want to get a celebrity endorsement, they would pay for these influencers.
However, it’s important to remember that these influencers are more famous than they are influential, and they don’t tend to have the same trusted expertise in niche areas as smaller influencers.
@kimkardashian @Jay Shetty ♬ original sound – Kim Kardashian
Macro Influencers
These are also big influencers, but many haven’t quite reached celebrity status, with these profiles tending to attract around 100,000 to one million followers. Typically, these TikTok influencers will have developed a name for themselves via social media more than any other channel.
If you’re working with a large budget to use TikTok for businesses, you may opt to maximize your reach with these influencers.
@avani
Micro-Influencers
These smaller influencers generate about 1,000 to 100,000 followers and are often in a niche category. They focus on a particular topic that interests a highly specific audience. If you want to connect with audiences who are within your target niche, micro-influencers can be the right partners.
People tend to trust endorsements and reviews that come from them over larger and less focused influencers.
@iamlonni7
Nano Influencers
A nano influencer may have less than 1,000 followers, but that following is especially loyal in many cases. These influencers are often influential within a specific community, such as a town or neighborhood.
If you want to use influencers to boost local marketing efforts, nano influencers might just be your go-to.
5. Opportunity for Repurposing Content
TikTok videos are capped at 10 minutes, but they don’t tend to get this long. They’re generally short, customizable, and can be repurposed across all of your social media channels.
Here are some use cases for repurposing TikToks:
- Adding one of your TikTok videos to an email would spruce things up for your customers and amplify their curiosity about your future emails.
- Or, if you’re still trying to build your community across multiple platforms, you can send TikTok videos directly to your Instagram Stories.
- Publish it on your website or use it in presentations or onboarding videos.
The more creative you get, the more brownie points you’ll earn with users. However, you want to convey the same message on each channel. While TikTok may be ideal for lighthearted content, having images and messaging that differ completely may be confusing when someone encounters you on another platform or visits your company website.
In any case, try to keep your videos short and to the point. In learning how to use TikTok for business, you’ll find that short-form video tends to be best for connecting with people on TikTok and other social media platforms.
Using short-form videos that are a minute long or shorter, you can attract more viewers, give product demos, describe your services, give people a glimpse behind the scenes of your business, and more. Short-form videos also boost rankings in TikTok.
6. Great User Engagement
When it comes to using TikTok for business, you simply cannot overlook the engagement rate. The average TikTok users are increasing the time they spend on the app per day, and this increased screen time means that there’s ample opportunity for advertisers to reach their consumers.
With the sheer variety of content on TikTok, this isn’t unexpected. Whether you’re a clothing brand, restaurant, or transportation company, there’s space for anyone to increase visibility for their products or services.
And due to TikTok’s unique delivery algorithms, you’re able to get higher engagement on your videos with much less effort.
7. TikTok for Business: Budget-Friendly
Many brands are still apprehensive about investing time and money in advertising on TikTok, thinking it will be too difficult to set up campaigns and keep track of yet another app’s data. But perhaps the most attractive part of TikTok for business is that it can garner success within any sized budget.
Plus, compared to more established platforms, it’s still relatively easy for lesser-known brands to achieve organic reach without breaking the bank.
If you’re not sure how much to spend on TikTok for business, some experts recommend starting with $500 per campaign, which is the minimum seeing as TikTok ad costs begin at $10 per CPM, or cost per 1,000 views. Over time, you can grow this budget as you scale your campaigns.
8. Versatile Ad Formats
If you want to learn how to use TikTok for business, the good news is that there are a variety of ad formats to choose from, including:
- Top View Ads
- In-Feed Ads
- Brand-Takeovers
- Branded Hashtag Ads
- Branded Effects Ads
- TikTok Collection Ads
- Spark Ads
The app’s algorithm is designed to promote high levels of engagement, helping capture audience attention. It’s a chance for brands to reach new fans in a way that’s really authentic and engaging.
FAQs About TikTok for Businesses
1. How does TikTok’s algorithm work for businesses?
How does TikTok help businesses through its algorithm, exactly? The algorithm on TikTok works much like those on other social media platforms, prioritizing four main factors to rank content:
- Engagement — These metrics include everything from likes and comments to saves and shares, with videos ranking better on the platform if they generate high engagement.
- User interactions — The people your target audience interacts with could also affect what appears in their feed.
- Video details — The information you include for videos could factor into the algorithm, such as captions, the original source of the video, and other details.
- Device and account settings — The type of device, location of users, and the language settings they use can impact the content that people see.
2. What role does user-generated content play on TikTok?
How can TikTok help your business through user-generated content (UGC)? This is content that people create on the platform, often featuring a specific product or brand to help promote the user and the brand together.
With the help of UGC, you can expand your reach and connect with people in fun and exciting ways. For example, you could create a contest with a giveaway or discount to users who post the best videos showing creative ways to use your products. These videos would get your brand out there while also providing you with content you can repurpose for other campaigns.
3. How effective are TikTok challenges in boosting brand visibility?
One way to use TikTok for business and UGC is to engage in TikTok challenges, which entail encouraging people to create content where they perform a particular task.
For instance, users can create videos where they showcase a talent, perform a routine, showcase a unique product use, or apply a unique filter.
Using hashtags and highly engaging content connected to your brand, you can maximize brand visibility with these challenges.
4. How do you navigate TikTok’s ecommerce features for business?
TikTok offers ecommerce businesses different features to help them grow. So, is TikTok good for business in the ecommerce industry? Yes, and here’s why:
- You can drive sales with product links that direct users to your website.
- Connect people with your products with video shopping ads.
- Answer questions about your brand and offerings with the Q&A feature.
- Use promoted posts to reach more potential customers.
5. What are the key metrics to track for TikTok marketing success?
There are many metrics you can track to gauge success on TikTok. The specific metrics you choose will depend on your goals, whether you want to boost awareness, engagement or sales.
Some examples of metrics include:
- Engagement rate
- Hashtag performance
- Follower growth
- Likes
- Comments
- Video views
- Average playback time
- Impressions
6. How do you incorporate TikTok into a multi-channel marketing strategy?
You can easily integrate TikTok business marketing efforts into a comprehensive marketing strategy that uses other channels.
For example, you could direct people on your website to follow you on TikTok, with a button in your site’s footer. You could also connect your TikTok to your website, encouraging people to visit specific product pages or other landing pages right from TikTok.
You could also convert longer YouTube videos into shorter, bite-sized content for TikTok, encouraging users to watch the full video on your YouTube channel.
7. What is TikTok for Business’s creative solutions and how do you leverage them?
To get the most from TikTok and produce top-quality videos, the platform gives you access to a Creative Center for content creation.
Using the Creative Center, you can produce videos based on the latest insights, trends, and more. The platform also enables you to connect with creators for influencer marketing campaigns based on which creators have the best match.
Meanwhile, the Creative Exchange allows you to connect with a professional creative service provider to develop your video ads to your specifications.
8. How can small businesses specifically benefit from TikTok marketing?
Why use TikTok for a business that’s smaller in size? Well, there are multiple reasons why TikTok is good for business advertising regardless of business size.
Even if you’re working with a tight budget and can’t harness the power of macro influencers, you can still connect with nano and micro-influencers who have loyal followings and potentially even more effective influence.
Also, you can launch campaigns that create user-generated content, potentially going viral on TikTok and drawing more attention to your brand. Hashtag use can also go a long way in building awareness.
9. What are the best practices for collaborating with TikTok influencers?
The following are some specific steps to take when connecting with TikTok influencers:
- Identify the right influencer based on your target niche and location
- Reach out to the prospective influencer, introducing yourself, detailing your campaign and goals, discussing your budget, and requesting information about the influencer’s audience and other insights.
- Develop a statement of work that details your campaign goals, theme, payment, content deliverables, and deadlines on both ends.
- Allow the creator to do what they do best and promote your brand in a way that’s organic for them, which will help you resonate better with audiences.
10. How do you ensure your TikTok content aligns with your brand voice?
When using TikTok for business, ensure your content on the platform matches your brand voice.
You can do so by using the same language in your videos as you do in other content, expressing the same values and overarching message, and incorporating color schemes, logos, and other design elements that are uniquely yours.
11. What steps can you take in developing a TikTok marketing strategy?
As you learn more about how to use TikTok for business, you can take the following steps to begin developing a strategy:
-
- Take a look at existing trends to see what other brands in your niche are doing.
- Figure out your specific target audience and what they’re all about—what kinds of content appeal to them most?
- See what your competitors are doing on the platform, including what’s working for them and what isn’t driving as much engagement.
- Establish clear goals for your campaigns, whether they revolve around reach, sales, or other end goals.
- Develop high-quality content that reflects the quality of your brand and offerings.
- Connect with other users to integrate into the TikTok community.
- Measure the results of your campaigns and make any necessary improvements.
Take TikTok for Business to a New Level
What does the future of TikTok and business hold? With the platform continuing to gain more traction, businesses big and small should be experimenting, optimizing, and showcasing their content in hopes of converting avid TikTokers into loyal customers.
Ignite Visibility has you covered, ensuring you get the most out of TikTok for your business. We’ll help you:
- Manage your social media
- Design eye-catching creative assets
- Create short-form video
- Run social media ads
- And more
Let us help you ignite your social media strategy today. Let’s chat about TikTok for your business.
