How To Grow Your Business on TikTok—Expert Tips

TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms ever, garnering more and more users each day ever since its 2016 launch. While its short and engaging content is the primary reason behind such popularity, people join TikTok for various motives. The most successful content creators get rewarded via TikTok’s Creator Fund, which can be life-changing for those who aim at making money on TikTok and becoming influencers. The platform is equally valuable for businesses, providing them with an opportunity to promote their brands in an interactive and playful way. If you are wondering how to grow your business on TikTok and don’t know whether it will pay off, there’s no need to overthink it.TikTok marketing is definitely worth exploring, but figuring out where to start can be confusing.

Why Is TikTok a Good Marketing Platform, and How Can You Exploit Its Full Potential?

Source: Good FacesBeing completely video-based and more fast-paced than other socials, TikTok lets you form an authentic connection with the audience, triggering reactions and driving conversations more quickly than text and images solely could. Because of the app’s unique algorithm and high engagement, going viral and reaching more people is easier on TikTok—with enough effort and a little bit of luck, anyone can become TikTok famous overnight.Here’s why businesses love using TikTok:

• It attracts the biggest consumer group of tomorrow (Gen Z-ers), but more and more millennials flock to this platform, too—TikTok has more than 1 billion users now, and some 80% of those are between 10 and 40 years old
• TikTok can be great for all sorts of industries, but it’s especially beneficial for niches like food, fashion, entertainment, fitness and sport, beauty and skincare, etc.
• This platform has a large pool of influencers with excellent engagement rates, who can increase the brand’s exposure quickly

The app also provides several user-friendly tools that help with creating better content, setting up successful organic and paid campaigns, and tracking their performance.While TikTok is fun and casual, businesses shouldn’t go into it without some careful planning. To get the most out of your TikTok account, you will need a comprehensive, multi-faceted strategy that involves everything from exploring all the nooks and crannies of the app to learning how paid advertising works on this platform.

Make Sure You Understand the Platform

Source: TikTokTo create engaging content that will appeal to the users of this app, make sure to study all of TikTok’s tools and features in detail. After you install the app, take some time to get to know the platform inside and out and browse through videos on the For You page to see what is trending and play with the available TikTok editing tools. After you’ve seen all the options the app offers, you should check what the trending posts have in common, learn what kind of content ranks well using the Discover page, and brainstorm how your brand can fit into the scheme.

Pick Your Niche and Stick to a Theme

Source: TikTokTo build your following on TikTok and drive conversions, apart from quality and authenticity, you need consistency. We recommend you opt for the themes that are relevant to your industry and that you have a good grasp of. Check out how your competition uses TikTok—you will get inspired but also find out how their content fares using a particular approach. Make sure to explore and use hashtags relevant to your brand.

Create Unrivaled Content

Source: Artem PodrezCreating content that the TikTok audience will go crazy about is the ultimate goal for both personal and business accounts. While TikTok videos do need to be catchy and entertaining, you also have to bring value to your audience and convey your brand’s message clearly to attract more followers. As TikTok extended the maximum video duration from 60 seconds to 3 minutes, you can now tackle more complex topics within a single video. Here are several ideas you can use:

• Make tutorials for using your products or services
• Share a success story about how you started your business
• Go live and share information on your future product launches, answering real-time questions from the comments
• Think of how you could incorporate the latest viral trends in your video
• Post a video showing how your products are made

Post at the Right Time

Source: Towfiqu BarbhuiyaYou should understand how your profile growth and content performance are affected by the posting time. While the best time to post on TikTok depends on your audience’s activity during the day, here is what generally works, according to Influencer Marketing Hub's analysis of over 100,000 posts:Best Times (EST) To Post on TikTokMonday6:00 a.m.10:00 a.m.10:00 p.m.Tuesday2:00 a.m.4:00 a.m.9:00 a.m.Wednesday7:00 a.m.8:00 a.m.11:00 p.m.Thursday9:00 a.m.12:00 a.m.7:00 p.m.Friday5:00 a.m.1:00 p.m.3:00 p.m.Saturday11:00 a.m.7:00 p.m.8:00 p.m.Sunday7:00 a.m.8:00 a.m.4:00 p.m.

Collaborate With Influencers

Choosing the right TikTok influencer to promote your brand can give you enormous exposure. As long as your and the influencer's target audiences overlap, you’re on the right track. You can find suitable creators by searching for specific keywords, hashtags, and trends within your industry on the Discover page or on TikTok's Creator Marketplace.Some brands partner with multiple influencers for their TikTok campaigns. For instance, Chipotle used to partner with Zach King, Zahra, and Avani, and their profile metrics testify they made the right choices.

Source: ChipotleDepending on your budget and the phase of your campaign (whether you’re the beginner who needs to get exposure or you’re already at the stage of convincing the followers to convert into customers), you’ll benefit from engaging a different influencer category. Here are the different types of influencers and their rates:TierPrice per PostNano-influencer (1–10,000 followers)$5–$25Micro-influencer (10,000–50,000 followers)$25–$125Mid-tier influencer (50,000–500,000 followers)$125–$1,250Macro-influencer (500,000–1,000,000 followers)$1,250–$2,500Mega-influencer (more than 1,000,000 followers)$2,500+

Pay for Advertising

If your efforts to draw traffic to your posts organically seem unproductive, TikTok also offers you the chance to use paid advertising. There are several approaches you can turn to—from regular paid ads to the in-app Promote tool.

Ad Types

TikTok business users can create their paid ad campaigns by choosing appropriate objectives, setting up the budget, and filming and posting ads that don’t show up as their regular content. You can select between the following types of ads:

• In-feed ads—Appear on the For You page between other suggested posts, last for 15 seconds, and aim at increasing traffic
• Top-view ads—Show up right at the top of the For You page and are aimed at making your content stand out from the competition
• Brand takeovers—Pop up as full-screen ads immediately when users open the app

Besides these video ads, brands can also promote their hashtags and effects and inspire user-generated content that can extend their reach even more.

Monitor and Assess Your Performance

If your videos are underperforming, the chances are your TikTok marketing strategy wasn’t thought out carefully and needs improvement. To figure out what you’re doing wrong, access TikTok analytics and check your content-related and follower-related metrics by following these steps:

1. Launch TikTok and tap on Profile
2. Hit the 3-line icon in the top right corner to open Settings and privacy
3. Tap on Creator tools or Business suite
4. Select Analytics

TikTok Is Easier With the Help of a Social Media Agency

Even though the concept of TikTok marketing doesn’t seem too complicated at first glance, promoting your brand on this platform without professional help most likely won’t bring the desired results. Here’s what mistakes brands tend to make when starting their TikTok campaigns, resulting in their videos not getting enough views:

• Lacking knowledge and experience—For instance, you might be aware that engaging influencers is great for your performance on TikTok, but focusing on mega-influencers only, such as Addison Rae Easterling and Charli D’Amelio, won’t necessarily work for your brand. Collaborating with influencers is a great idea, but professionals can help you figure out which ones to choose and how to approach them
• Directing resources the wrong way—Relying on one person or a small in-house team with limited capabilities won’t take your TikTok presence far. A good social media strategy requires joint efforts of various professionals, such as social media managers, content specialists, strategists, analysts, video directors, photographers, and many other experts
• Believing in a one-size-fits-all approach—The strategy that worked for one brand at one point or on a different social media platform won’t necessarily work for your campaign on TikTok. You need a customized approach to TikTok marketing that will keep the focus on your brand’s messaging while incorporating the latest TikTok trends and paying attention to the specifics of this platform

Clueless on How To Grow Your Business on TikTok? No Need To Struggle on Your Own

If you started your TikTok journey with great hopes only to see your performance metrics remain stagnant for months, it might be time to take on a different approach. Kubbco can help you transform an ill-judged strategy into a triumph. We are a social media agency that knows how to identify your target audience on TikTok, keep track of their activity, and create content that will have them come back to your profile for more. Our team of experts drives growth via organic campaigns and paid advertising, and we keep monitoring the performance of published content, always ready to bridge any possible gaps and optimize your campaign to avoid wasting any resources.

We Measure Our Success in Our Clients’ Impressive Accomplishments

We know how to grow a business on TikTok, and it’s our clients’ results that back up the claim. The success story of the haircare brand OLAPLEX is one of the most shining examples of our work. During our five-week collaboration, we created 28 videos together, with two videos earning over 1 million views each and six exceeding 100,000 views per post. The whole campaign resulted in 5.1 million views overall and attracted 22,000 new followers.Our other success stories don’t fall much behind. Here’s what Kubbco did for essence cosmetics, Matas, and NATURLI’ Foods:ClientCollaboration TimespanVideos PostedFollowers GainedTotal InteractionsTotal ViewsViral Videosessence cosmetics2 years and 2 months556386,0007.1 million73 million12Matas8 weeks2513,500209,0005.6 million8NATURLI’ Foods23 weeks1125,200179,0006.2 million20If you need professional guidance with growing your business and presence on TikTok or other socials, you’re on the right page. Sign up for our newsletter for the expert take on the latest news in the world of social media, or reach out to our team if you want a tailor-made approach and the best results.

Featured image: Christin Hume