Guide on How Small Businesses Can Get Started on TikTok

By now, who hasn’t heard of TikTok. The platform has over 800 million active users and 1 million video views per day. With those numbers of users, TikTok is now the new “darling” for marketers to promote products and brands. But how can small businesses create marketing strategies on TikTok? Here is a quick guide to begin: 

1. Mapping Your Audience

Before you jump into creating the content, it is very important to know the audience first. Since TikTok has a relatively specialized and younger demographic, you might want to dig deep into the relevancy of your product and the TikTok audience that you’re targeting.

2. Understand the Types of Advertisement

Same as any other social media, TikTok supports businesses with engaging digital advertisements. The difference is, TikTok offers you several types of ads that you can choose to boost up your conversion. There are four types of ads, as follows:

• In-feed Native Content

  this one is similar to Instagram story ads. The content is skippable and is limited to 15 seconds. You can review the ads through the click rate and the impressions of the video.

• Brand Takeovers

  this type of ad is displayed on the first page when users open the TikTok mobile application. The format of this ad is still images, videos, or GIFs. This format can draw a lot of attention because only specific brands can take-over an entire mobile application screen in a day. 

• Hashtag Challenge

  many of you should be familiar with this one since TikTok is especially known for viral hashtag video competitions. Brands usually promote their product by inviting users to create viral videos and participating in assigned hashtags. This advertising method capitalizes on users’ creativity to produce user-generated-content (UGC) and amplify brands’ marketing messages. 

• Branded Lenses / Effect

  with this type of ad, TikTok lets brands create 2D, 3D or AR (Augmented Reality) content. With this ad, users can interact more with the brand as they virtually test products. 

3. Create the Content

After mapping your audiences and understanding the different formats of content ads, you are ready to get started!  In this platform, unique differentiated content is the king, so be creative with the 15 seconds you have to showcase your brand and product. It only takes one viral video to make your business explode in TikTok. Read more on reasons you should research your content strategy.

4. Work with Influencers

It is known that working with influencers helps with quick brand awareness. As they already have a huge number of followers, influencers are a great avenue to multiple pieces of creative yet personalized content to inspire followers outside your brand’s social circle. For small businesses, influencer marketing offers a quick way to build brand awareness and credibility in a short span of time. Start familiarizing yourself with top TikTok influencers to get a better feel of the different types of influencers you can collaborate with on TikTok.

And last but not the least, never forget to review the social performance from all your marketing efforts. Head to Analisa.io to get in-depth insights on your TikTok analytics (or Instagram analytics). Ready to join the TikTok wave and supercharge your brand?