A Guide To TikTok Marketing For Brands

With TikTok offering the highest return on investment (ROI) and estimated to reach 2.25 billion users by 2027, it's not unusual for brands (startups or giants) to want to capitalize on the plethora of benefits the platform offers. Every brand wants to go viral and get recognized in the digital sphere, and there is no platform better than TikTok to offer that!

But to make your brand stand out in the sea of competitors and curate the best TikTok marketing strategies for 2024? If that's what your concern is, then this guide is for you. We have compiled all that you need to know to ramp up your brand’s TikTok marketing strategy and more in 2024.

What Is TikTok Marketing?

TikTok marketing is the way brands leverage the viral nature of the platform to promote brands, products, or services. Common TikTok marketing strategies may include strategic planning, participating in viral challenges, using popular hashtags, content creation, approaching TikTok influencers for promotional campaigns, and engagement tactics tailored to TikTok's unique audience and trends.

In fact, TikTok usage among social media marketers has increased 15% YoY, and marketers say that TikTok and Instagram have the biggest potential to grow in 2023, with 53% of marketers increasing their investments in the app.

With a robust marketing strategy, brands can utilize TikTok as a medium to capitalize on TikTok's user-centric approach, where organic and user-generated content often outperforms overtly promotional material, resulting in a better audience and, in turn, sales.

What Are The Benefits Of Marketing On TikTok?

Why bother looking for other social platforms when TikTok offers an array of benefits for brands seeking to establish a strong online presence and connect with their target audience in innovative ways? In fact, 35.1% of users go to TikTok to follow or research brands. Let's look at the major benefits of marketing on TikTok.

• Higher Viral Potential: TikTok's algorithm is designed to promote content virality, allowing even relatively unknown brands to gain sudden and widespread visibility. The “For You” page in TikTok lets users discover new and fresh content, providing brands with the opportunity to reach a wider audience on the platform, amplify brand awareness, and attract new followers or customers within a short period. The greater the chance of getting discovered, the greater the chances of making a sale.

• Better Influencer Marketing Opportunities: Since influencer marketing opportunities are incredible on TikTok, brands can easily collaborate with influencers or content creators to leverage their reach and credibility within specific niches to get discovered by potential customers. You can find the right influencer as per your brand's requirement, as you get plenty of options to choose from. Brands can even approach micro-influencers through TikTok to amplify their message, endorse products, or participate in challenges, effectively reaching their dedicated follower base and potentially converting them into customers.

• Highly Preferred Platform: The potential of viewers purchasing from this platform after a LIVE or product launch is higher than that of any other platform. This is true as TikTok has 50% of TikTok users have bought something after watching TikTok LIVE. Besides this, the platform is best known for offering the best business opportunities for individuals and brands alike, as only last year, TikTok rolled out multiple shopping features to empower social commerce on the platform, increasing TikTok buyers in the US by 72.3%, reaching a total of 23.7 million. It has one of the best formats to increase brand awareness and grow sales.

• Creativity at the Core: Creativity thrives on TikTok, offering brands an opportunity to experiment with innovative content formats, storytelling techniques, and trends. The platform’s editing tools, effects, music library, and challenges enable brands to leverage these to showcase their products or services in entertaining, unique, and visually appealing ways that resonate with audiences. This creative interaction is one of the reasons for TikTok’s popularity, from which brands can benefit the most.

How To Create A TikTok Business Account

If you already have a personal account, switching to a TikTok Business Account is a straightforward process. The business account on TikTok is free and enables brands to access specialized Business Suite tools like advertising, auto-messaging, analytics, and more for marketing purposes. Here's a step-by-step guide:

1. Launch the TikTok app on your device, and if you don’t have a TikTok account, sign up using your email, phone number, or social media accounts. If you already have a personal TikTok account, log in.

2. Once logged in, go to your profile by tapping the "Me" icon in the bottom right corner of the screen and tap the burger icon in the top right corner of your profile.

3. Tap Settings and Privacy.

4. Tap Account.

5. Tap Switch to Business Account.

6. Select any appropriate category that best describes your brand and tap “Next.”

7. Add an email address to your profile if you have one.

8. Add your TikTok Bio if you want to, and click on “Confirm”.

And that’s it! Your profile is now complete, and your new TikTok Business Account is now all set!

Please Note: TikTok prevents businesses from using copyrighted music, so you will be limited to the music you can use.

8 Practical Tips For Creating Your TikTok Marketing Strategy

1. Identify Your Target Audience And Goals

Identifying your target audience and defining clear goals are foundational pillars for a successful TikTok marketing strategy. Thus, you can start by delving deep into understanding who your ideal audience is—demographics, interests, behaviors, and preferences specific to TikTok to understand whom to target and what goals to set out of that.

For this, you need to curate a detailed profile of your ideal viewer on the basis of parameters like age, gender, location, interests, hobbies, preferences, and lifestyle to tailor your content to resonate authentically. To achieve that, you can either use TikTok’s built-in analytics or social media analytics tools like Statusbrew to gather data on your audience demographics, activities, and psychographics.

Once you have identified your target audience, you can set specific and measurable goals, ensuring that your efforts are purpose-driven. This will guide your content creation strategy and ensure that every video created serves a purpose and contributes meaningfully to your overarching marketing objectives. For instance, if your goal is to drive brand awareness, you must research your target audience’s preferences to understand whether they prefer short explainer videos or elaborate try-on or tutorial videos to drive better sales. Check the try-on one below!

@glow_girls23 massagem para lábios perfeitos #lips #massagemfacial #labiosgrandes #labiosbonitos #koreanlips #glowup #girltips #viral #foryou #fy ♬ Supershy_speedup - 치즈

2. Create High-Quality Short Video Content

The quality of your TikTok videos can make or break your engagement on the platform. Hence, crafting high-quality short video content on TikTok can help you captivate and engage your audience effectively within a brief timeframe. When your videos are short and captivating, consistently offering value, viewers are more likely to follow, share, and engage with your content, leading to increased visibility, growth, and even sales.

Your videos just need to satisfy the following parameters:

• Visual appeal within the short format.
• Storytelling or narratives like hooks, relatable scenarios, or emotional triggers.
• Creative editing like effects, filters, text overlays, transitions, speed variations, and music to enhance the overall impact.
• Call-to-Action (CTA)to engage further.

Besides this, you must also ensure that your videos have preferred resolutions like the 9:16 vertical aspect ratio for maximum reach and visibility. For instance, check out how Burger King has garnered almost 7.3 million views on this short demo video by using texts, transition shots, filters, speed variations, and a 9:16 aspect ratio.

@burgerking watch @cravings4candles create the most delicious candle ever #WhopperArt #WhopperWednesday ♬ original sound - Burger King

3. Curate Content Following Trends

TikTok and trends are synonymous! There is simply no TikTok without always supporting a rising trend. So, if you want to capitalize on the platform’s ability to make you go viral, it's time you start mastering the trends. Before curating or posting your content, always scan through TikTok’s Discover page and see what the most viral TikTok trends or hashtag challenge ideas of the day are to cater to TikTok’s algorithm and boost your follower numbers.

This will keep your TikTok content fresh and fun, display relevancy, and appear more human to your followers. To better suit the trends, you can incorporate trending TikTok sounds in your videos to make your content discoverability chances higher on the For You Page. For instance, take a look at the video with the viral trend “#girlfriendeffect” paired with the viral song “greedy” for better understanding.

@yzelleduran At least he gave me something to work with 🫶🏼 #glowup #girlfriendeffect ♬ greedy tate mcrae unreleased - babytatie

4. Leverage Ads In TikTok Videos

Another great and effective TikTik marketing strategy for brands in 2024 is leveraging ads within TikTok videos to amplify brand visibility. Now, this strategy requires some good financial investment as compared to the others, so it's crucial to understand which and what type of TikTok ads to leverage to attain good ROI.

For instance, you can leverage TikTok ad formats like:

• In-feed ads are image ads (which are like a billboard)
• Video ads (like a TV commercial)
• Playable Ads
• Shopping Ads
• Spark ads
• Pangle ads
• Carousel ads
• Top view ads, etc.

Depending on your requirements, you can use any of these TikTok ad formats for precise targeting, drive conversions, and the right impact on your target audience. For instance, take a look at how a spark ad looks like below.

Source: TikTok Bussiness Centre

5. Prioritize TikTok Influencer Marketing

Prioritizing influencer marketing into your TikTok marketing strategy is a must for brands that want to reach a broader and new audience in a short span. Collaborating with influencers allows brands to tap into their established follower base, leveraging their credibility and rapport to authentically endorse products or participate in challenges.

Leveraging influencer marketing enables brands to build cross-promotional opportunities and offers niche audience targeting, often yielding higher engagement rates. For instance, you can tap into their existing audience base through brand collaborations by asking them to feature or promote your product or service in a way that would resonate with their followers. As their endorsement carries weight and authenticity, your brand may be able to tap into an audience market never explored before.

Thus, to partner with micro or mega influencers best suited for your brand, it's best to conduct good research, as a brand collaboration will require investments worth $100-500 for micro-influencers, $5-$10k for macro, and $10k+ for mega influencers. For example, check out this brand collaboration between the mega influencer Meredith Duxbury and Maybelline, which has around 352.1K views.

@meredithduxbury GRWM easy cheetah Halloween makeup look! 🫶🏻 @Maybelline New York #MaybellinePartner ♬ original sound - Meredith Duxbury

6. Incorporate Live Streaming

If you want to stand out in the competition in TikTik, incorporating live streaming into your TikTok marketing strategy should be a staple for all brands in 2024. TikTok Live is one of the best ways to build a human connection with your audience directly, offering a direct, unfiltered glimpse.

TikTok is big on live streaking and heavily promotes the going-live feature. Once you are live, TikTok will push a notification to your followers that you’ve started livestreaming, and your stream will be pinned to the top of their For You page. This can not only engage your existing followers but invite new ones as well.

Just ensure that with each TikTok Live, you upgrade your questions, answer all to the best of your ability, host giveaways, Q&A sessions, behind-the-scenes videos, product launches, informal hangout streams, “work with me” sessions, tutorials, and interviews with special guests. This format works extremely well to build stronger connections and get immediate feedback.

7. Leverage TikTok's Editing Tools

How you edit your TikTok videos plays a very crucial role in capturing the audience's attention. While you can always use your preferred video editing app, leveraging TikTok's robust suite of editing tools can help you to create visually captivating and engaging content that stands out in the platform's dynamic environment.

As TikTok always pumps out new features, you can explore the extensive array of features, including filters, effects, text overlays, transitions, and music, to elevate the quality and creativity of your videos. You can also add flair and uniqueness to your content using text overlays creatively to convey messages or calls-to-action effectively and utilize transitions to keep viewers engaged throughout your content.

8. Make Use Of User-Generated Content

If you have already generated good revenue and are thinking of gathering customer ratings and reviews on your product/service, you’re on the right route.

Ratings, reviews, and testimonials in written or video format in TikTok can highly benefit a brand as they can utlize the same as user-generated content to build authenticity and connection. Customers like it when they are mentioned, recognized, or given importance by a brand. This strategy will, in turn, motivate more followers to create videos featuring your products, services, or related themes and give you access to more brand-related content.

You can share these as UGC content or offer other rewards to encourage customers to create them. For instance, recently, the Stanley brand offered to replace a woman's car after she uploaded a video showing her insulated Stanley cup surviving a car fire. This video became viral overnight and highlighted the durability of the Stanley Tumbler.

9. Monitor And Analyze To Track Performance

Finally, the success of a robust TikTok marketing plan will depend on constant optimization and upgradation, which can happen only if you take the help of analytics tools to track your performance on the platform and look for opportunities to improve.

While you can do a lot of it natively, with Statusbrew, you will be able to automate a lot of laborious tasks, reducing a lot of noise. With the clear and actionable insights we offer, you will be able to identify patterns in your brand's performance and gauge what's working and what needs to change.

Here’s a highlighted glimpse of what we offer:

Here are a few highlights of Statusbrew:

• Customizable Reporting Templates: This feature offers a beautiful dashboard with templates having metrics like First Response Times, New Conversations, Close Times, Team member leaderboard, Audience Growth, People Reached, Audience Sentiment, Share of voice, and more!

• Custom Reporting: With (200+ metrics), data-driven brands can leverage additional power and the flexibility to answer the questions that matter to their business.

• Competitor Analysis: To easily benchmark against the best brands in real time without the hassle of manual research.

• Sharing Data: To easily export and combine your data with other tools in the form of PDF & CSV, besides white-labeling and setting up a live link for your reporting dashboard to share it with your stakeholders who are not part of Statusbrew.

To know more about what we offer at what pricing point, book a demo and sign in for a 14-day FREE trial for a comprehensive walkthrough!

TikTok Marketing Brand Examples

If you want to know what great marketing looks like on TikTok, although there are many, get inspired by the below-mentioned examples of 3 brands that are absolutely killing it on TikTok with their marketing strategies and driving sales.

1. Elf Cosmetics

This American cosmetics brand has garnered some great results due to its robust marketing in TikTok, especially through several innovative advertising campaigns. It launched its first successful advertising campaign on TikTok named “Eyes, Lips, Face,” which now has 2.6 million views on YouTube. Besides this, the brand has also leveraged hashtags, user-generated content, and influencers to become more viral. The campaign on TikTok earned Elf Cosmetics a huge amount of media coverage and more than 1.5 billion impressions, including Vogue and Forbes. They have also added their online store link to their bio, which takes you to the store landing page designed to introduce you to the brand and direct you to its shop.

2. Into The Eve

Into the Eve is a British eCommerce brand specializing in selling homemade vegan soap, having one of the most successful marketing strategies in TikTok. The most unique aspect of their marketing strategy on the platform is that they have capitalized on the production aspect of the brand, that is, making detailed videos demonstrating the production process of their handmade soap. The brand’s founder, Zoe, constantly films videos on TikTok, showcasing the process of making her products as well as the orders packaging process. This unique marketing aspect of showing the manufacturing process worked amazingly and went viral really quickly. Now, the brand has almost 138.2K followers, with videos having around 11 million likes.

3. Zalora

Another fashion brand that has been able to leverage TikTok to the fullest is Zalora, an Asian eCommerce fashion brand. Their marketing strategy revolved around driving awareness for their brand through TikTok ads. The TikTok marketing strategy mainly focused on the use of virtual events aimed at connecting brands and consumers through its visual-focused technology hashtags like “#ZStyleNow” for virality and TikTok challenges, with a $200 cash prize for a huge number of user-generated videos. The brand also ran A/B tests on all its ad creatives for evaluation and optimization purposes, having almost 991,000 views on videos, new visitors to the website, new mobile app installs, and 1,100 user-generated videos.

Manage Your Brand’s TikTok Presence Easily!

TikTok’s huge potential as a marketing channel can never be denied. Brands seeking new opportunities specifically for more engagement and to sell on TikTok must capitalize on it but with the right strategy. From live shopping to interactive features to influencer marketing opportunities, brands can leverage a lot from the platform. Just be sure to follow the right trends and be relatable to the target audience so that your brand stays relevant and competitive.

As doing all these may sound a little intimidating for brands just starting out in 2024, you can definitely refer to our guide to amp up your own TikTok marketing strategy and take inspiration from what we have compiled. Hope this helps!

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

1. What marketing strategies does TikTok use?

If your goal is to make money on social media, especially TikTok, you can employ various marketing strategies, including influencer collaborations, hashtag challenges, branded content, and native advertising formats like TopView, Brand Takeovers, and In-Feed Ads to capitalize on the platform's creative nature and user engagement to promote and sell effectively.

2. Can small businesses leverage TikTok advertising?

Absolutely! Small businesses can leverage TikTok advertising through campaigns like In-Feed Ads and top-view ads, which allow precise targeting, increased visibility, and engagement. However, since these ads can be quite expensive for small businesses, costing around $10 CPM (cost per 1,000 views), brands can opt for partnerships with micro-influencers or participation in viral challenges to amplify their reach within their niche audience as an alternative.

3. How effective is affiliate marketing on TikTok?

Affiliate marketing on TikTok can be highly effective when executed authentically. Leveraging influencers to promote affiliate products in engaging, non-intrusive ways can drive conversions. By creating content that aligns with the influencer's style and resonates with their audience, affiliate marketing on TikTok can yield substantial results by leveraging the influencer's credibility and reach.