TikTok is one of the best platforms for businesses to target with their ad campaigns, as the platform will see around 1.8 billion monthly active users by the end of 2024, and it generated $16.1 billion in revenue last year. With the right approach to TikTok for business, you can reach new audiences, significantly boost engagement, and ultimately drive more sales.
In this blog, Senior Social Media Strategist, Josh Rohr, will walk you through 10 reasons you should try it, covering the benefits of TikTok for business, various ad strategies you can use, challenges you may face, and some tips for using TikTok for small businesses.
What You’ll Learn:
- The Benefits of TikTok for Business
- 10 Reasons to Try TikTok for Your Business
- Practical Pro-Tips on How to Use TikTok for Business
- FAQs About TikTok for Businesses
My Expert Insight on TikTok for Business
TikTok has grown into one of the most popular social media platforms among online users. By December 2023, it had grown into the second most-downloaded mobile app, with most of its users comprising Gen Zers and younger Millennials. The average user also spends around 24 hours each month on the app.
This kind of engagement shows just how effective TikTok can be in helping businesses build their brand visibility and loyalty, as companies can maximize exposure and conversions with the right strategy. However, you need to know how to implement TikTok for business and how to maximize the impact of ads to get the best results.
To get started with TikTok for business, I recommend you start by looking at your competitors. See what kind of content they create that resonates based on engagement metrics such as likes and shares. You can also look for popular influencers within your niche to give you something of a gateway to TikTok audiences, helping you reap the full benefits of TikTok for advertising.
Additionally, look for trending TikTok content types, audio, and challenges to give you some winning content ideas, which can further help you connect with target audiences.
The Benefits of TikTok for Business
There are several key advantages of using TikTok for business growth:
Increased Brand Visibility
One of the main benefits of TikTok is its ability to connect with massive and highly engaged audiences. Today, TikTok as a platform has a 2.65% engagement rate, the highest of any social media platform. It also has over 1.8 billion active monthly users, making it among the most popular platforms, especially among younger users.
This kind of overall reach and engagement makes it ideal for going viral online, especially if you create high-quality content that really connects with audiences. If you have a short-form video with the potential of reaching millions, you’ll likely get the results you want with TikTok for business.
The Ability to Engage Younger Audiences
Another one of the big advantages of TikTok for business is the chance to reach younger audiences, especially Gen Z and Millennials.
Today, one in four TikTok users are under 20, with the average creator’s age ranging from 18 to 24. The platform also has more Gen Z users than Instagram.
So, if you want to target younger audiences, you’ll benefit from knowing how to use TikTok for business along with other highly visual platforms for social media marketing.
The Potential for Wide Organic Reach
Many TikTok videos go viral and appear organically, thanks to the algorithm. If you can develop highly engaging videos that people are eager to watch and share, chances are your videos will go far on the platform. You’re also much more likely to drive engagement on this platform due to TikTok’s overall higher engagement rate compared to other top-performing platforms.
By maximizing organic reach with your videos, you’ll discover how to implement TikTok for business and how to maximize the impact of ads without exceeding your available budget.
A Great Chance to Build Your Brand Personality
People love TikTok in part because of many creators’ authenticity. TikTok’s guidelines promote the truthfulness and authenticity of content across all accounts, and there are plenty of ways to help you establish a genuine brand personality.
For example, you can humanize your brand with videos featuring:
- How-tos and other videos from specific members of your team, putting a face or multiple faces to your brand
- Behind-the-scenes footage of your employees at work
- Videos of staff attending live events
- Interviews with industry experts
- Videos telling your brand story
Affordability of Campaigns
You might wonder: How does TikTok help small businesses with smaller marketing budgets? One of the answers is the availability of more cost-effective advertising options than other channels.
The average cost-per-click (CPC) on TikTok is around $1, but you can start as low as $0.02. Meanwhile, TikTok recommends you either have a $20 daily budget in place for ad groups or a $50 campaign budget.
Of course, knowing precisely how to use TikTok for business and how to maximize the impact of ads will ensure your campaigns go far and wide to make the most of your allotted budget.
Local to Global Reach
Using TikTok ads, you can reach the right audiences in certain areas or across the globe with the platform’s geotargeting capabilities.
With a TikTok For Business account, you can reach people of all demographics, with the ability to add specific locations to your campaigns.
10 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.
Benefits to TikTok Shop
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.
TikTok Shop is also reasonably popular among users, with 30% of TikTok users in one survey stating that they’ve used it in the past.
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.
To help you reach your target audiences, you can also use TikTok’s hyper-targeting capabilities. With TikTok For Business ads, you’ll be able to target audiences based on certain demographics and interests. Additionally, you can create custom audiences based on particular segments.
Use broad or narrow targeting for your ads to reach various audiences on TikTok.
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.
In the video below, Chase Chappell breaks down an excellent low budget TikTok ads strategy. This shows how achievable and budget friendly TikTok ads are for businesses.
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: These are ads that appear in users’ For You feeds immediately after opening the app, and they can last for up to 60 seconds.
- In-Feed Ads: Users will see these ads in their feeds in the form of either carousel or video ads, with video ads lasting for up to 60 seconds.
- Brand-Takeovers: You can also launch Brand Takeover Ads that are short, full-screen three- to five-second video ads that first appear when users open their app, exposing them to your brand as their first in-app experience.
- Branded Hashtag Ads: Another option is using a TikTok challenge to attract customers in the form of branded hashtags. These hashtags encourage other creators to upload videos related to your hashtag and spread it, which can be great for brand awareness efforts.
- Branded Effects Ads: Imbue your ads with some creativity through branded effects, including certain video effects, stickers, or filters featuring your brand. They’re great for accompanying Branded Hashtag challenges to maximize your brand exposure and recognition.
- Video Shopping Ads: Shopping Ads can highlight specific products or collections while making it easy for TikTok users to instantly buy your products. Subsequently, they can be great for boosting sales with appealing product videos.
- Spark Ads: To repurpose organic content into ads, you may also use Spark Ads that can use either your existing TikTok content or other creators’ content (with their approval) in your ad campaigns, which will attribute all engagement to your boosted organic videos.
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.
9. Use TikTok Challenges to Attract Customers
TikTok challenges offer a great way to help you expose your brand, and there are a couple of primary ways to go about them.
First, you can join an existing TikTok challenge to become a part of a “conversation” on the platform, incorporating trending hashtag challenges and filming members of your team or your company as a whole taking part in them.
You can also come up with a Branded Hashtag challenge, developing a hashtag unique to your company and encouraging people to film content to get that hashtag out there.
The #suspectchallenge is one of the more recent challenges, involving one person running while another “roasts” them in the tone of a police broadcast.
10. Continually Optimize Campaigns With In-Depth Analytics
Once you know how to use TikTok for business marketing, you need to measure the results of your efforts and continue to optimize your campaigns based on the data you gather.
Make sure you measure campaigns using metrics that align with your goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, ad and post views and impressions will matter most, while a conversion goal will consider click-through rates and sales resulting from your campaigns. On the other hand, you might want to track engagement rates and view-through metrics if you want to increase overall engagement with your brand.
To maximize the impact of ads, you should also take certain steps to ensure they really resonate with your target audience. For example, you could use trending music on TikTok that appeals to audiences, or you can incorporate certain trending challenges, stickers, effects, or other elements into your videos to keep them relevant.
Practical Pro-Tips on How to Use TikTok for Business
So, how does TikTok help small businesses with the right approach? Let’s get into some of the ways you can use TikTok for business advertising most effectively:
Optimize Your Profile
One major step is to optimize your TikTok profile. Doing so will involve using a clear profile image and memorable username, including a good description and links in your bio, and pinning your most popular videos in your TikTok feed to maximize engagement.
When including links in your bio, you can use a link-in-bio tool like Linktree, which will direct your audiences to other social media profiles or specific pages on your website.
Also, try to keep your video thumbnails consistent with a recognizable theme, whether it’s a person people associate with your brand or certain colors or a logo.
Use Effective Content Strategies
Get creative and diverse with your TikTok videos. There are many types of videos you can post, such as:
- Tutorials, such as videos explaining how to use your products or perform a particular task related to your brand or industry
- Behind-the-scenes videos of your offices or your team at work or having fun
- Collaboration videos with influencers or other brands
- Duets and Stitch videos in which you expand on another creator’s existing content with a unique perspective or addition
- Inspirational videos that make people view your brand in a positive light
- Branded Hashtag challenge videos that encourage others to join the challenge
- User-generated content (UGC) from other users, such as videos wherein customers use your products in fun and unique ways
- Announcements about updates to your company or offerings
- Customer stories detailing how your offerings have helped them in a specific way
Practice Good Consistency and Timing
Another way to succeed with TikTok marketing is to maintain sufficient consistency and good timing.
Regularly posting will keep your audiences anticipating your next release and prevent your followers from falling off, especially if your content is consistently engaging and interesting.
Additionally, figure out when your audience is most active on the platform to determine when to post. For instance, during the weekday, posting in the late afternoon or early evening might work best as people get off from work around that time, while the mornings and afternoons might generate plenty of engagement on the weekends.
Engage With Followers
To give your brand even more authenticity and personality, be sure to regularly connect with followers. Reply to their comments, whether positive or negative, and interact through your video content when appropriate.
An example could be asking a question of your audience at the end of a video about their thoughts on the subject. You could then respond to each commenter’s input and show that you value it.
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 prioritizes 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
- 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:
- Use a footer button on your website with a link to your TikTok, attracting more followers
- Connect your TikTok to your website with one or more links in your videos or bio, such as product or service pages
- Convert longer YouTube videos into short-form versions for TikTok and YouTube Shorts, with a link to the full video
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:
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- 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.
