TikTok Untangled: Your TikTok Videos are Only the Start

There are nearly five billion social media accounts worldwide; launched in 2016 by Chinese internet technology company ByteDance, TikTok already has more than a billion and a half active users, 90% of whom report never getting bored on the app and nearly a third of whom open the app every single day. Now available in 150-plus markets and more than 35 languages, TikTok burst onto the social media scene virtually out of nowhere, with innovative experiential opportunities like trending audio and user collaboration (e.g., duetting or stitching). Last year, amid a mass of imitators (I’m talking about you, Instagram and Snapchat), TikTok was the second most downloaded app in the world — and the most downloaded from the Apple App Store. 

Although Tik Tok may (rightfully) have a reputation for being just a little more than teenager friendly, a full 42% of the app’s global audience is aged 18-24. Plus, not every user is a “Tik Tok girl.” On the TikTok app, there are communities for everyone, from BookTok, CarTok and MovieTok to Small Business TikTok, Sustainability TikTok and now STEM TikTok. And that’s not all: Nearly 20% of teenagers are on TikTok “almost constantly,” while 40% of Gen Z TikTokers use the Tik Tok app — instead of Google — to search, and nearly a third of all TikTok users rely on TikTok videos to get their news. 

In other words, TikTok has become a destination across demographics for more than funny or entertaining content. For one, “people love to spend money on TikTok.” 

• In 2022, TikTok was the top app for consumer spending
• The TikTok hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has nearly 60 billion lifetime views — and counting, quickly
• More than 35% of Tik Tok users use the app to follow or research brands
• Two in three consumers say they get inspired to buy something on TikTok — even when they’re not actively shopping

Millennial TikTokers, in particular, love brands; they are 230% more likely to create a post and tag a brand than users of any other platform — and they’re also the parents of the next generation of shoppers: Gen Alpha. This is, of course, why: 

• TikTok is the social media platform with the highest ad spend growth
• 75% of marketers are increasing their TikTok ad spend

And with all that, today’s TV commercials are perhaps the best indicator of TikTok’s takeover: Brands are spending millions of dollars to run traditional television ads that mimic TikTok influencer videos.

Point blank: Social media is the best place for brands to connect with their target audiences, build brand awareness, boost online engagement and generate leads — and TikTok represents the greatest social media marketing opportunity for B2C brands.

What is TikTok?

Wondering how to use TikTok? Makes sense, even today — unless you’re a Gen-Zer or cool Millennial; a mere four years ago, The New York Times published an exposé on “how TikTok is rewriting the world,” arguing that while the social media platform “may look and feel like its friend-feed-centric peers, and you can follow and be followed… the various aesthetic and functional similarities to Vine or Snapchat or Instagram belie a core difference: TikTok is more machine than man.” Indeed, though every social app has faced scrutiny over security lapses or supposed political allegiances, TikTok was unique in its focus on its creator community — with employees also engaging in “heating,” sidestepping the TikTok algorithm to cultivate their own stars.

As John Herrman, who now covers tech and media for The New York Times-owned magazines, wrote back in 2019, TikTok isn’t entirely dissimilar from other visually oriented apps targeted to younger audiences, but when TikTok first appeared it was the only one designed exclusively for short, vertical videos with extensive in-app editing capabilities. 

While TikTok calls itself “the leading destination for short-form mobile videos” with a mission to “inspire creativity and bring joy,” no one in TikTok management or development could’ve predicted the app’s organic virality — or hitmaking — potential; Lil Nas X, for instance, was a little-known 19-year-old Atlantian who’d been promoting his song across social media, with minimal success, when he uploaded “Old Town Road” to TikTok, ‘blew up,’ accrued 67 million plays on TikTok alone, and proceeded to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a record-setting 17 weeks. 

I, personally, know a singer who went to bed one night with only a few local fans and woke up famous all over the country. But TikTok is not only home to innumerable influencers and wannabe influencers, TikTok is where everyone 18-24 scrolls for hours and engages directly with brand and influencer content — in ways never previously possible anywhere else. 

On TikTok, users can: 

• Discover content, brands and products through the For You Page, served by the Tik Tok algorithm, which learns and adapts based on user actions and behaviors
• Create or upload video content, with an extensive library of music, video trimming, audio editing, visual filters, special effects, split screens, green screens, slow-mo, transitions, text overlays, captions, stickers, gifs and emojis
• Add music or remix existing audio
• Live stream — and earn money
• Collaborate, using stitching and TikTok Duets to create genuine collabs, remixes, spoofs or commentary
• Participate in trends, with TikTok Challenges and trending hashtags and audio
• Interact with hearts, gifts, comments or shares
• Shop their favorite brands directly from the app

With a professional account, brands can take advantage of all these opportunities.

How do I use TikTok for marketing?

Ninety-two percent of the nearly four billion TikTok users have been inspired to take action after watching a TikTok video, whether by making a purchase, visiting a brand’s website or participating in a challenge. That, alone, is reason enough to invest a significant chunk of your social media marketing budget to TikTok marketing and advertising. And then there’s the 67% of all consumers who say they get inspired to buy something on TikTok even when they’re not looking to shop. 

TikTok marketing is another term for TikTok for Business; it includes all the social media marketing strategies and tactics your brand employs specifically on TikTok to connect with your target audiences, build brand awareness, boost online engagement and generate leads. 

Marketing on TikTok can (and usually should) include: 

• Organic content, including original, remixed or collaborative videos
• Paid content, including In-Feed Ads, TopView, Branded Mission, Branded Effect, Spark Ads, and boosted posts
• Creative solutions, including the Creative Center, with the latest trend data, music and insights; Creator Marketplace, for finding the best brand and influencer collaborators; Creative Exchange, to get paired with a professional creative service provider; and Creative Tools such as Video Editor, Video Templates and Shake Surprise
• eCommerce solutions, including shopping video ads and the TikTok Shop
• Measurement solutions, including ad verification and fraud detection, web and app attribution, the Brand Lift Study, and the TikTok Pixel
• Influencer marketing and user-generated content 
• Messaging

If you’re wondering how to optimize your marketing on TikTok, follow my top tips.

What is a TikTok marketing strategy?

A TikTok marketing strategy includes your target audience(s), goals, KPIs, editorial plan, content calendar and content development and distribution processes and procedures, as well as the campaigns you’ll run and the AI and other martech you’ll use to achieve your goals. There are seven steps to developing and optimizing a TikTok marketing strategy that works. 

7 Steps to Developing Your TikTok Marketing Strategy

1. Define Your Audience(s)

Here’s how to find yours:

• Use your zero-, first- and third-party data to learn as much as you can about your existing customers, subscribers, website users and TikTok followers
• Use any feedback your TikTok marketing managers and coordinators may have logged to identify gaps and opportunities
• Use surveys and focus groups to learn more about what customers, prospects and the general public think of your brand, products/services, and TikTok presence
• Develop user personas, including personal background, professional background, user environment, preferred content types, preferred devices, preferred communication methods, attitudes, interests, motivations, needs, goals and pain points, buying motivation(s), and buying scenarios
• Map out the customer journey, identifying all the different paths a TikTok user might take toward making a purchase; the thoughts, feelings and actions of your prospects and customers at each stage of the customer lifecycle; and how you’ve been using TikTok to recruit, retain, upsell and/or partner with customers
• Use a CDP and/or DXP to organize and manage all your customers and prospects, segment audiences based on your user personas, and improve the empathy and personalization exhibited in your marketing on TikTok

2. Establish Your TikTok Marketing Goals

To ensure clear direction for your TikTok marketing strategy:

• Define goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based (SMART)
• Start with your overall business goals, proceed to your long-term strategic marketing goals, move on to your social media marketing goals, and conclude with your TikTok- and campaign-specific goals
• Identify the social media marketing KPIs against which you’ll measure your TikTok campaign performance — found exclusively in the full report, The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing
• Outline your expectations for each stage of the customer journey

3. Conduct a Competitive Analysis

To understand what your competitors are doing well or poorly on TikTok, and identify successful tactics you can incorporate into your social media strategy:

• Use your SEO tool, apps like Glassdoor and the various social media platforms to identify your key competitors
• Confirm the social media platforms used by your key competitors
• Search your competitors’ names, account handles and relevant keywords on TikTok to determine what they’re sharing and how their audience and the public are responding (social listening)
• Track your competitors’ TikTok performance, using your predefined KPIs
• Track characteristics of your competitors’ behaviors on TikTok, including what, when and how often they post
• Focus on your top five competitors, and audit their most popular and most engaged followers, as well as any influencers or users who generate content for their brand
• Benchmark your TikTok marketing performance against the competition
• Perform a SWOT analysis, determining your TikTok strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
• Identify gaps in your existing TikTok strategy
• Strategize methods for addressing any gaps, weaknesses, threats or opportunities

4. Audit Your TikTok Account, Content and Campaigns

Once you’ve clarified who you’re targeting and what you hope to achieve with your marketing on TikTok, look back at what you’ve already created — and how it performed — to identify trends and determine what can and should be repurposed. 

Start by asking yourself:

• Which types of TikTok content have and have not worked?
• Which types of TikTok campaigns have and have not worked?
• Which of our user personas have been most and least engaged?
• Which of our user personas have been most likely and least likely to convert to customers?
• Who are our most and least valuable business and influencer partners? (Learn more about influencer marketing.)
• How does our TikTok presence compare to that of our competitors?

Then, perform a Keep, Kill, Refresh on your TikTok content marketing and paid and organic campaigns, as follows:

Content

• Delete any off-brand, inaccurate, stale or erroneous content (Kill)
• Properly name, file and store any content that can be reused as is (Keep)
• Optimize any content that could provide added value if updated and enhanced (Refresh)

Campaigns

• Replicate any campaigns that performed particularly well (Keep)
• Optimize any campaigns that could perform even better with behaviorally informed edits and enhancements (Refresh)
• Archive any past campaigns that underperformed (Kill)

5. Outline Your TikTok Content Development and Distribution Responsibilities, Processes and Procedures

Before you begin planning and then creating custom content for TikTok, you need to secure buy-in from all parties on how your content will be produced and disseminated. Specifically:

• Who are our TikTok content marketing strategists?
• Who are our TikTok content creators? Writers? Graphic designers? Video editors?
• Who are our partner content creators, including TikTok influencers, other brands, members of the TikTok creator community and customers who provide user-generated content?
• Who are our TikTok content reviewers?
• Who are our TikTok marketing managers?
• Who are our TikTok marketing coordinators?
• Who are our TikTok data and performance analysts?
• How are the content themes and subjects determined?
• What types of content are being created? And what unique step(s) does each type require?
• How are deadlines determined?
• At what cadence is the content released?
• How is content posted? Do we use a social media marketing platform or other third-party AI-powered social media app? (I list my preferred social media martech solutions in The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing.)
• What type of project management style are we adopting (e.g., agile)?
• What project management software are we using (e.g., JIRA, for agile)?

6. Develop Your TikTok Editorial Plan and Content Calendar

Finally, you can flesh out your TikTok marketing ideas, based on your findings from each of the preceding steps.

Be sure to supplement what the customer data and platform and web analytics tell you by:

• Interviewing internal stakeholders on trends, topics and techniques they think most appeal to your TikTok audience
• Asking your TikTok followers — and, in particular, your most engaged followers — what inspired them to follow you and engage with or share your content
• Asking your customers what, if anything, you’ve done on TikTok that has contributed to them making a decision to purchase your product or service
• Asking your partner TikTok influencers what it is about your brand, products/services, values or TikTok presence that inspired them to work with you
• Asking past TikTok followers and customers what it is about your brand, products/services, values or social media presence that inspired them to unfollow you or stop spending

Once you’ve finalized your editorial plan, you can create your TikTok content calendar. 

Use the project management software you selected earlier to build out a master calendar, as well as the timeline for each campaign, project and assignment, assigning all roles from development to approval and from distribution to monitoring, analysis, iteration and optimization.

^{An example of an optimized and strategically focused brand TikTok profile}

@ryanair Ok Timmy but just this once 🥵😫 #airline ♬ original sound - twotwofunny

The Top 12 TikTok Tips for Marketers

1. TikTok is a visual platform, specifically for short-form video content, so leverage the Tik Tok creator community or your own designers and video editors to ensure your videos are custom made for optimal success on TikTok
2. Create your business account to add a website link to your profile, run ads, access analytics, create an eCommerce storefront, and integrate with third-party scheduling and management tools
3. Optimize your branded profile page, including your profile photo/video/animation, bio, email, industry category, and other social media accounts
4. Post often (one to four times per day)
5. Get verified (unlike on Twitter, it still helps)
6. Monitor and use (as appropriate) trending hashtags and sounds — which are more important here than on any other platform
7. Take cues from the most popular TikTok accounts and emulate the best practices of your top competitors, testing a variety of video formats and techniques to determine what most resonates with your audience(s)
8. Keep all your videos between 21 and 34 seconds long
9. Go live, often but with purpose and enthusiasm
10. Edit in the app (for algorithmic preference), and leverage the app’s extensive suite of content creation tools
11. Create and promote your TikTok Shop
12. Run ads, and ensure they don’t look like traditional ads (remember, the biggest brands are copying TikTok-style videos for mainstream cable TV ads)

7. Monitor, Analyze, Report, Iterate, and Optimize

Based on the KPIs you’ve identified as being most appropriate for your organic and paid efforts, your analysts should be constantly monitoring your TikTok campaign performance and providing reporting to your TikTok marketing strategists, managers and coordinators to inform ongoing iterations and optimizations. 

The truth is: You can always split-test something else. And you can always optimize further.

Before you get started, be sure you’re set up to measure performance against the most important metrics — available now, if you download the full report, The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing.

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Image Credits (in order of appearance) 

1. Photo by Unsplash+ in collaboration with Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/KWok4DRSTTY
2. Photo by Mariia Shalabaieva on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/5NZJLNuBYyA
3. Photo by Unsplash+ in collaboration with Oleg Ivanov on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/EhUEJhwPxHE
4. Photo by Colynary Media on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/f2QtwRDYads
5. Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/8IhR5aunsko
6. Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/cK2UBBg4JI4
7. Photo by Unsplash+ in collaboration with Getty Images on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/VbVJy_IQrBE