3 Tips to Develop a TikTok Marketing Strategy

Chances are you’ve seen the new app Gen Z has been raving about.

You know, that one with the silly videos and obnoxiously upbeat music.

It would be easy to write this off as another platform for “young people” but if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the last 10 years is that these platforms never stay “young” forever. Slowly but surely, the age demo gets older and older as the next generation of young people hop to what’s new and exciting.

The other lesson to note from past social media platform patterns, is those 1st to market have the best chances to dominate. So let’s talk about how you can strategize for your very adult business to claim your position and leverage TikTok.

While you were likely poo-pooing TikTok (formerly known as Musical.ly), it has become the fastest-growing app with 500 million active users – half the amount of Instagram users. According to the Research Firm Sensor Tower, the TikTok app has been downloaded more than 750 million times in the past year, which is more than Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. So how do you make this work for your organization?

1. Be Active

Like all the other social platforms, the 1st tip is to get started creating content your target will find valuable. The platform is intended to be fun and creative so consider creating short-form videos that demo your product/service or answer some FAQ’s.

Also, be sure to engage with other people including influencers and thought-leaders in your industry. Engaging with others is just as important as your own content. If you have no interest in other people on TikTok, they will have no interest in your videos.

2. Create Hashtag Challenges

Hashtag challenges are very popular in TikTok. The users love them and when used properly, your video has a high probability reaching a large portion of your target. You need to figure out a challenge that could be interesting, challenging and relevant to your business. If other users want to participate, they must publish a video with the same hashtag that includes the challenge. It looks like a game, so many users find this very entertaining.

The key here is to be creative. TikTok users don’t care for repetitive challenges, so you don’t want to copy a challenge from a competitor. Also, try to focus on one hashtag at a time. Trying too hard may look spammy and have the opposite effect.

3. Paid Advertising

Like all the other social media networks, TikTok allows for paid advertising so consider taking advantage while the costs are low (as more people join the network, the cost of advertising will go up). These are the current advertising options:

First, you can promote your hashtag challenges. When you create a new challenge, there are no guarantees that it will become viral. But you can boost the visibility of your challenges, and your chances to attract more people.

The second option is to create infeed native content. These ads are short videos that appear in full screen to your target audience. They are very similar to Instagram Stories, and the users can skip them. You have the option to choose demographics and bid for clicks, impressions, video views, and more.

Lastly, there are two more ad formats with the names Brand Takeover and Brand Lenses. The first one is available for one brand a day and can use images and videos. The second, Brand Lenses, are like Snapchat 2D and 3D lenses where branded material will be shown in key places throughout the app.

We know, we know….another platform to manage. But if your target fits the demo, you definitely want to consider testing content on this platform for a reasonable amount of time to see what type of ROI you get. It’s still a fairly new platform so the upside is you have first (or at least early) dibs on user attention.