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The way Tiktok tailor fits the content you see to your interests is scary. It’s like the algorithm knows you better than yourself.
At the same time, marketers can use this to elevate brand-building. If you want to leverage TikTok to boost your marketing efforts, then stick around!
In this article, we’ll focus on
Have you ever found yourself watching one TikTok video and ended up spending over an hour on the app? If you have, you’re not alone—millions of people do.
Statistics from Demand Sage show the average TikTok user spends 1.5 hours watching short-form content. Did we mention TikTok has over 1.54 billion active monthly users?
This massive active user base provides brands with an unprecedented opportunity to promote products to a larger audience. It also provides the following benefits:
Upfluence Data conducted a study suggesting that TikTok has the highest engagement rate per post amongst top social media platforms.
But to improve your engagement rates on TikTok, you need to understand how to work with the algorithm.
The algorithm used to be as mysterious as BuzzFeed’s Unsolved videos. But that’s a thing of the past! TikTok itself highlighted the three main factors for its recommendation system:
Now that we know the basics—let’s explore how brands are leveraging TikTok and dissect how they’re using the algorithm to their advantage
Influencer Marketing – Dunkin Donuts
Dunkin Donuts collaborated with influencer @charlidamelio and had a 57% boost in app downloads during the span of the campaign.
The campaign also had a lot of engagement from users in the comment section—providing Dunkin with tons of user-generated content. Check out the positive comments on the video:
Paid Advertising – KFC
TikTok for Business offers you a better showcase of analytics. One of the most important metrics is ads performance.
TikTok did a case study on KFC and how it used reach and frequency ads to improve brand favorability and purchase intent.
The brand optimized its campaigns using ads to control the target audience reached and the number of times they were exposed to their ad content.
Even with just a six-second ad, KFC managed to boost purchase intent by 5.5% and brand preference by 6.1%.
User-Generated Content (UGC) – Old Navy
UGC is an excellent way to drive engagement from your target audience. It leverages content your fans themselves create. Old Navy is a great example of how brands use UGC.
Scrolling through Old Navy’s TikTok, you can see the brand’s love for UGC. There are thousands of different people making videos about how they use Old Navy in their everyday lives. It’s a cost-effective and sustainable marketing strategy that puts fans first.
We got to see some excellent examples of brand building on TikTok. Now it’s time for you to develop your own brand on the platform.
You can use several strategies to achieve this. But you’re going to need to do A/B testing to figure out which one works best for you.
To streamline the research process, we’ve curated a list of tested and proven strategies to help you develop TikTok brand-building.
TikTok has a younger demographic. Statistics from HootSuite show that 42% of users are between the ages of 18 and 24. So, it’s best to create content for this age group.
A great way to do so is by creating fun and light-hearted content. Showcase your products in a fun and unique way. The secret is making your videos as engaging as possible. Follow trends, create an actionable hashtag, or do a challenge!
Using the right hashtags helps your audience find your content. Remember, you can’t just spam every trending hashtag in your video. Only use relevant hashtags.
What’s more important is that you can track the performance of your hashtags through analytics. But before tracking, you need to learn how to find trending TikTok hashtags.
You can easily find hashtag trends in the Discover tab, For You Page (FYP), your follower’s viewing activities, and even your competition.
User-generated content is a powerful marketing tool in any platform—especially on TikTok. It provides brands with a sustainable marketing strategy for free!
Since this content comes from users themselves, it can be seen as more organic. Adding this content to your channel boosts your engagement and authenticity.
In fact, data from Business Wire suggest that customers are 2.4x more likely to say UGC is more authentic than brand-sponsored videos.
Pro Tip: Always tag the original content creators. This little shoutout helps build brand loyalty and encourages brand-user engagement.
Influencers bring a sense of organic authenticity. Choosing the right influencer on TikTok can bring magic to your brand.
They’re creative, engaging, and key opinion leaders in their niche. You can work with two types of influencers depending on your brand needs—micro or macro influencers.
Macro influencers have a lot of followers ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions. They’re huge but not as big as celebrities. As such, they’re sometimes called micro-celebrities.
Use them if you want to improve brand awareness or reach a wider demographic.
On the other side of the coin, you have micro-influencers. They’re not as big as macro-influencers but they typically have a more engaging following.
Use micro-influencers if you want to boost engagement.
Trend.io did a study on over 100,000 influencer profiles and found influencers with less than 1000 followers have an engagement rate of 7.2%. Meanwhile, those with over 100,000 had a 1.1% engagement rate on average.
Cross-posting is a tried and true marketing strategy that’s perfect for brand-building because it provides consistency across all your channels.
In a nutshell, cross-posting means posting the same content across multiple channels. But manually uploading content this way can be a time-consuming nightmare.
To make cross-posting easier, use social media management tools like Publer to help your brand streamline its marketing efforts.
With Publer, you can automate the scheduling across all your platforms. You can even recycle previous content if you’re low on fresh ones or if you want to do a recurring campaign.
But just because you can cross-post doesn’t mean you have to. If you want to know more, check out this guide on how to cross-post.
What’s better than jumping on a trend?—Starting your own!
Before starting your marketing campaign on TikTok, keep in mind the interests of your followers and base your campaign around it. A unique, brand-specific campaign makes you stand out from the competition. You can even use TikTok for desktop and start a live streaming session from there.
When it’s based on your audience’s interests, your campaign will give a sense of personalization for your demographic.
Done right, a brand can start its own self-sustaining subculture with copious amounts of UGC. Great examples of this are brands starting challenges based on their product, creative competitions, and more.
If you want your audience to perceive your brand as authentic—create, don’t advertise. If you want to be aggressive with your marketing, you can always use ads.
But solely relying on paid advertising can leave a sour taste on your target audience’s pallet.
Instead, find the perfect blend of ads and organic TikToks. According to statistics from TikTok, organic content is 20% more likable after watching a paid ad.
Running campaigns in tandem with data collection and analytics sets your brand up for success. Understanding key metrics such as engagement and reach helps your brand identify what strategies are working, what isn’t, and what needs work.
More importantly, this will give you insight into what type of content your audience loves to see. Remember, TikTok’s algorithm recommends users videos they have an interest in.
TikTok is the biggest short video-sharing platform in the world. If you want to leverage its massive userbase, engaging content, and eCommerce-friendly platform to develop brand awareness, consider the following:
Remember, you don’t have to be the best dancer to do well on TikTok. All you need is a good strategy and an effective social media managing platform like Publer to support your efforts. Sign up for free today and see how Publer can streamline your brand-building campaigns on TikTok!
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