TikTok for Business: how to market your brand on TikTok
Between 2018 and 2022, TikTok became the fastest-growing social media platform of all time. The video-first app has maintained a high level of cultural relevancy well into 2023, far outpacing the popularity of Instagram Reels, leaving other pandemic-borne platforms like BeReal in the dust, and even replacing Google as the first-port-of-call search engine for many people. There are more than one-billion active users on the app every month.
It’s no surprise, then, that TikTok for Business — that’s TikTok’s advertising platform — has become an essential part of every brand’s digital marketing toolkit. It boasts powerful audience segmentation, offers insightful campaign analytics, and can deliver returns on any advertising budget.
Read on for 10 ways to get the most from your TikTok for Business campaigns, and reach out to us if you’re ready to begin driving conversions and generating leads via TikTok.
1. Even simple boosting can drive fast results
When London burger restaurant chain Patty&Bun approached us for help with getting them started on TikTok, we knew their monthly stacked-high specials would be perfect for the kind of foodie content that performs well on the platform.
In just five months, from January to June 2023, we doubled their following by a. developing a streamlined video capture workflow and b. boosting a couple of videos every month with the TikTok for Business ad tools.
And these weren’t even fully-fledged campaigns — we achieved high growth and retention with simple boosting budgets for no more than five days at a time.
Regardless of your budget, if you want to get started with marketing on TikTok, you should know the app’s three main campaign objectives. I explain them below.
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2. Use ‘awareness’ campaigns to reach new people
This campaign objective is great if you want your ads to reach the maximum number of users within the audience subset(s) you want your videos to be seen by. TikTok for Business can help you drive awareness for your brand no matter how new or established your presence on the app is.
Because awareness ads can put you in front of new audiences, they’re ideal for seasonal campaigns, product launches, geographic expansions, or service diversification.
Awareness campaigns fit in somewhere around the top of a typical sales funnel.
3. Use ‘consideration’ campaigns to get people interested
Consideration campaigns serve middle-of-funnel marketing objectives, warming up audiences more and getting people thinking about your brand or business.
Use this ad objective to drive engaged users to your website (to find out more info about what you’re advertising), or to hone in on people most likely to watch and comment on your videos.
4. Use ‘conversion’ campaigns to turn viewers into customers
The third and final TikTok ad objective: ‘conversion’, which are algorithmically-optimised to prompt people to perform specific actions, e.g. buying a product on your website.
This is a bottom-of-funnel tool for encouraging your warmest, most-engaged audiences to make purchases (either through TikTok Shop or via your own online store), install apps, or sign up for services or mailing lists through in-app forms.
Conversion ads can also be used to re-engage existing customers, serving ads about new products/services to TikTok users who have previously acquired something from you.
5. TikTok ads can work for all budgets
You don’t need huge budgets to start advertising on TikTok. You could begin running a campaign with as little as £20 per day — that’s the only daily minimum TikTok for Business imposes. With the right specifications and retargeting tactics (more on retargeting below), that can go surprisingly far.
You also don’t need a particularly enormous production budget. TikTok’s most popular and engaging content has an unpolished, authentic look about it — the site is, after all, anchored around UGC (user-generated content). High-production ads can actually look very out-of-place on the app.
6. Using TikTok for Business to retarget engaged users
We mentioned ‘retargeting tactics’ above — this refers to strategically serving your brand’s ads to TikTok users who have already followed your account, or liked/favourited/commented on your videos. TikTok for Business can facilitate this, further securing the attention of partially warmed-up audiences.
7. Maintain a regular profile to get the most out of ads
One of the most highly-praised aspects of advertising on TikTok is the fact that you don’t even need a profile to run ads — you can convert straight to your website without one. However, managing even just a simple profile is recommended. It’s an easy way to maximise long-term return on your ad spend, by turning ad-driven acquisitions into organically-engaged followers.
8. Using TikTok analytics to decide when to post
What is the best time to post on TikTok? There may be peak times during the day, but the analytics offered by TikTok for Business will empower you to identify the hours when your organically-posted content scores the most engagement. This can also inform the windows of time during which you run your ads.
9. For bigger-budget campaigns, consider TopView or Brand Takeover ads
If you use TikTok yourself, you might have noticed that you’re often served ads as soon as you open the app. These premium placements at the top of the For You Page offer peak brand visibility, but they do come with a heftier price tag.
There are a couple of different formats for these placements. Both ‘TopView’ and ‘Brand Takeover’ place your videos at the top of the FYP, with the main difference being that Brand Takeover ads are unskippable for five seconds.
Making those first few seconds of your ad as captivating as possible is vital, especially considering this ad format demands a higher budget.
10. Using influencers in your TikTok ad campaigns
Putting a face to your brand is one of the best ways to make your TikTok for Business campaigns more engaging. Working with influencers is a great way to achieve this, as they’ll likely already have experience with making TikTok-optimised content, and, if their audience comprises the kinds of people you’re targeting, you could discuss running ads on their account.
Ready to include the fastest-growing social app of all time in your paid advertising strategy? Let’s talk about how to make the most of your budgets, which TikTok ad objectives to prioritise, and who to target. Contact us today.
Book a free 30-minute call with us
Let’s discuss your business needs — including how to market via TikTok for Business — and how we can help. Book now →
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