From having visual and shareable content to making the jump to YouTube Shorts, here are 10 answers to the question, “Should you use TikTok for your business? Please share how your business has approached TikTok as a platform.”
- Yes, if You Have Visual and Highly Shareable Content
- Yes, It’s an Excellent Way to Reach Your Audience
- If You Haven’t Already Started, Look Elsewhere
- Yes, Short-Form Video Is Key for Organic Growth
- Yes, Reach out to TikTok Brand Ambassadors
- Before You Jump Into the Fray, Have a Sound Strategy
- Yes, Because It’s Not Just for the Young Generations Anymore
- Yes, if You Showcase Personality Over Products
- Yes, if Your Brand Is Fun, Humorous and Creative
- Made the Jump to YouTube Shorts
Yes, if You Have Visual and Highly Shareable Content
TikTok is a digital platform that’s become a go-to for the younger generations. It’s a highly visual platform and is perfect for promoting such content, like product photography and even live events. If you want to reach a younger audience, TikTok is a great place to build highly shareable content that can help your business thrive.
As a tech entrepreneur, I’ve had the most success with TikTok by sharing technology-related content that connects with my target audience. For example, I’ve been able to create informative videos that educate people on the latest tech trends and products. These videos have resonated well with others, which has led to an increase in my website traffic and sales.
Matthew Ramirez, CEO, Rephrasely
Yes, It’s an Excellent Way to Reach Your Audience
Start with the audience you want to reach and the marketing goals you have in mind before joining a channel. TikTok is a powerful platform for brand discovery, teaching your audience something new (#LearnedItOnTikTok), and even driving folks to buy your products and services. Thanks to measures taken during the pandemic, its users aren’t just Gen Z, but include Millennials too.
Keep in mind the following tips: leverage creators, use sound, be ready to test and learn, and most of all be ready to engage. It’s been seen that creator content outperforms brand-produced content. Sound drives up brand recall. TikTok operates on interests over following—so don’t get hung up by the age-old follower count. And how your brand engages in the comment section of others’ videos may garner more reach than your own videos.
Christy Cole, Chief Operating Officer, August United
If You Haven’t Already Started, Look Elsewhere
On the whole, TikTok is a perfectly fine platform with which to do a bit of marketing work—especially if you’re in B2C and focusing on younger consumers. That said, if you haven’t gotten into using the platform for your business already, I would suggest you look to invest your marketing budget elsewhere.
There’s been an increasingly strong view among regulators and lawmakers that TikTok comprises too much of a security risk on American markets and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was banned in the US within a few months as a bipartisan bill looking to do just that is currently making the rounds.
Kate Kandefer, CEO, SEOWind
Yes, Short-Form Video Is Key for Organic Growth
All businesses should be testing TikTok as a marketing channel. Short-form video is one of the few avenues for achieving fast organic reach right now, and TikTok is the “heart and soul” of the medium. You don’t need to dance or lip sync, just hop on there and start providing value for your target audience—because yes, even for B2B, silver surfers, local businesses, whatever your niche—your audience is on TikTok.
Jyll Saskin Gales, Marketer, Jyll.ca
Yes, Reach out to TikTok Brand Ambassadors
TikTok is great for reaching potential customers. At Lumineux Health, we use brand ambassadors to promote our products on TikTok. These ambassadors post videos showing how to use our teeth-whitening items and demonstrate the results they have received. By tapping into the followers of the brand ambassadors, you can reach large audiences who trust the recommendations provided to them. It’s a great platform for creative marketing strategies.
Caroline Duggan, Chief Brand Officer, Lumineux
Before You Jump Into the Fray, Have a Sound Strategy
We haven’t had a revving social media strategy, but we’ve started to incorporate more video content. We began on our website and on YouTube—and TikTok could very well wind up being our next frontier. But we’re not going in that direction until we figure out whether it’ll work for us and mesh with our marketing strategy. TikTok is the platform preferred mostly by Gen Z users. YouTube is more of a Gen X platform, and that’s the generation that mostly buys our products.
Our content creation needs to be aimed more at those interested in our products. Not only that, but our content mostly consists of how-to-assemble videos, which requires longer-length videos. That’s not available to us via TikTok, which is more of a quick-strike platform. But, as we look to grow our brand, we would like to make ourselves known to younger buyers, so adding TikTok to the mix is still very much in play. Before you jump into the TikTok fray, make sure you have a sound strategy.
Emily Saunders, Chief Revenue Officer, eLuxury
Yes, Because It’s Not Just for the Young Generations Anymore
Over forty-thousand people watched me dance on my GhostBed mattress and view my 65th TikTok-themed birthday cake. TikTok is an increasingly popular platform that can provide small businesses with a huge potential in terms of affordable visibility and growth. Through TikTok, businesses can reach larger audiences and increase their engagement with customers through innovative and entertaining content. Small businesses can target specific audiences and ensure that they reach the right people.
Marc Werner, CEO & Founder, GhostBed
Yes, if You Showcase Personality Over Products
TikTok is a great way to showcase your brand or business’ personality. However, to use the platform effectively, a brand must first understand its archetype and clearly define the character of its brand. Your brand personality should consist of three words that will create a framework for operating, communicating, engaging with your audience, and attracting your customers. These three words should be expressed in your actions, content, messaging, and brand behaviors.
This is how you showcase your personality on TikTok in a way that’ll resonate emotionally with your audience. The most successful TikTokers demonstrate personalities, not products or services. If a brand hasn’t clearly defined its essence and purpose, it won’t be effective on TikTok.
Amor Philip, Director of Public Relations, Apples & Oranges Public Relations
Yes, if Your Brand Is Fun, Humorous and Creative
Social media presence has become an imperative for most businesses as it helps legitimize their online presence. The real trick, however, is to build the right social media presence in order to target your ideal audience. Before a business can answer if TikTok is the right platform, it needs to understand the psychology behind TikTok users. The mindset associated with TikTok is one of fun, humor, community and creative expression. As such, a business that identifies with such a mindset will find TikTok to be an ideal platform, especially if they wish to engage with a younger audience.
As a gift card-oriented business we found TikTok to be the perfect channel to communicate and engage with our target audience, who are between the age demographics of 16 to 30. Our primary strategy has been to create fun and uplifting content that relates to TikTok’s sense of community and builds on that positive mindset.
Shawn Harris, CEO, Unique Gift Cards
Made the Jump to YouTube Shorts
We’ve been testing TikTok for our marketing strategy for the past three to five months with a month break. Our first account was hacked, and fake profiles started following us. This means our statistics and results were skewed; the followers kept increasing, but the more important engagement rate decreased.
Ratepunk is a tech product-based so, for marketing purposes, it was hard to target the right audience. We’re based in Lithuania, but our product focuses on US, UK, and Canadian markets. We found that we couldn’t get the audiences we wanted the most.
So when we created a new account, we stuck to a strict strategy, but sadly we’ve stagnated on views for a month. Because of Google’s investment in YouTube Shorts, we’ve made the jump to there. I’m not saying TikTok doesn’t work—it’s an awesome platform for businesses. I recommend, based on experience, digging more into what you’re trying to achieve before jumping.
Kamile Navikaite, Content Manager, Ratepunk
