TikTok is more than just a video-sharing platform. It’s time to rethink why, and how your brand should approach TikTok for social media marketing. In this guide, I’ll walk you through using TikTok for business. Discover how to create your account, craft an effective TikTok marketing strategy, launch ads, monitor results, and more to help your brand succeed on this rapidly evolving platform.
Table of Contents
Why Should Your Business Use TikTok?
Some might argue that TikTok is primarily for teens posting dance videos, but businesses that dismiss the platform overlook a powerful marketing opportunity.
With 1.04 billion monthly active users worldwide, TikTok’s audience has expanded well beyond Gen Z, reaching diverse age groups and demographics.
Brands from retail to tech are leveraging its algorithm, which boosts visibility and viral potential for even small accounts.
In fact, research shows that 67% of TikTok users say the platform inspired them to make a purchase after seeing a product, even when they weren’t looking to do so, demonstrating its significant influence on consumer behavior and business growth.
Here are some specific benefits of using TikTok for business:
Increase brand awareness
TikTok’s algorithm is designed to amplify content, making it easier for brands to go viral, even without a large following. By joining trending challenges or creating engaging, authentic videos, businesses can gain exposure to millions of users in a short time.
Promote products
TikTok allows businesses to showcase their products in creative ways that feel less like traditional advertising. From demonstrating how products work to featuring customer reviews, the platform helps brands humanize their offerings and build trust with potential customers.
Grow your audience
With TikTok’s unique algorithm, even new or small businesses have a chance to grow a loyal following quickly. The platform’s focus on organic content means that any video has the potential to be discovered by thousands of new users, providing an unmatched opportunity for growth.
How to use TikTok for Business
In this section, we’ll guide you through nine key steps to help your business thrive on TikTok. We’ll begin by covering the platform’s fundamentals, then show you how to elevate your efforts with a solid strategy, compelling content creation, and effective ad campaigns.
There are seven basic steps for beginners to use TikTok for Business, which are:
- Sign up a new TikTok for Business account
- Plan a suitable strategy for your business on TikTok
- Optimize your profile on TikTok for Business
- Create content attracting the targeted audience
- Engage your audience and grow your following
- Look into analytics
- Optimize advertising options on TikTok
Let’s dig into the details!
#1 Sign up for a new TikTok for Business account
Step 1: Join TikTok now!
- Download the TikTok app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play store.
- Tap to open the app.
- Tap Me in the bottom menu bar
- Click Sign Up to sign up with your phone number, email address, or registered social media account.
Step 2: Start creating a Free Business Tiktok Account
- In the app, click “…” at the top right of the Me page
- Click Manage Accounts and select Switch to Business accounts (or Pro account).
- Choose the category that best suits your business to get customized content, events, and solutions.
Step 3: Create and be present in public
It’s done! Now you know how to create Tiktok account for business. You can start posting content using TikTok’s creative toolset and share information about your products and services.
#2 Plan a suitable strategy for your business on TikTok
Start learning about TikTok’s features
First of all, to build a TikTok strategy, it is important to get familiar with the TikTok platform, both inside and outside. You should spend a few hours exploring all features of the app, starting with the For You Page. Then, look over all the features such as effects, filters, and editing features.
Understand the algorithm on TikTok
Understanding how TikTok operates and distributes its content is crucial for TikTok businesses. The algorithm in this platform is evolving regularly, hence, you need to know what influences the algorithm to take advantage and improve your presence in front of the right audience. The best way to understand this is that you should research how TikTok distributes and ranks videos, including current top trends.
Another important factor affecting the success of your strategy is captions and hashtags on this platform. Appealing captions and prevailing hashtags will help your videos have a chance to reach more audiences than usual.
Therefore, nothing is more important than the content of the video. You will need to create content your potential customers like to watch and interact with. The more interactions of videos you get, the more chances your content will appear on the For You section.
Know your targeted audiences
It’s important to identify your target audiences before starting your first video production on TikTok. Though this application is completely familiar to the young generation, a wide range of demographics also likes using TikTok. Thus, to build a good content strategy, you should ask yourself where your target market can overlap with TikTok users, or whether a new or unexpected audience will interact with your content.
When deeply understanding your audiences, the message conveyed in your content can catch their attention.
Research your competitors
Find the presence of your competitors on TikTok, research all the activities about what they are doing or not doing, and evaluate if their content is effective or not. Do not forget to pay attention to which types of content that attract followers. You can use influencers or content creators as creative inspiration.
Set goals and objectives
After finishing all research market steps, you need to set objectives for your campaign. As a result, you can establish TikTok strategies to achieve the set goals.
Before setting business goals, it is important to ask yourself how TikTok will accomplish them. You can use the SMART framework to make sure your objective achieves 5 criteria: Specific; Measurable: Attainable; Relevant; Time-bound.
Prepare a specific content plan
While you can come up with creative ideas for your content accidentally, planning your content in advance is a wise decision for managing content on social media platforms, especially on TikTok. From a social media content calendar, you can not only remember important posting dates but also have enough time to prepare your content. Besides, don’t miss the special occasions of the year to develop content based on those series or themes.
What’s more, your post can go viral if your target audience on TikTok is online and craves videos with creative content.
#3 Optimize your Business profile on TikTok
To build a TikTok channel suitable for sales and marketing, it is crucial to optimize your TikTok profile. The content on TikTok may be different from other social media channels but make sure your brand identity is consistent across all platforms. What you need to do are:
- Use profile photo with color or brand representation: Ideally, you should connect your TikTok account directly to other digital platforms of your business. It is essential for you to show your customers that this account is part of your company, besides Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or website.
- Write a short and engaging biography: At just 80 characters, your bio should include an emoji that showcases your brand’s personality and a call-to-action line.
- Choose a suitable URL: Based on your strategy, it can be a landing page, an e-commerce website such as Amazon, Alibaba, other social media accounts, or an existing blog post.
>>> Read More: TikTok eCommerce: How to Get Customers & Sell More on TikTok
#4 Create content attracting the targeted audience
First, you need to know that when you open the app and surf the news feed, you will get access to a multitude of content on the TikTok platform. Thus, your content needs to be different, and unique, grabbing the attention of your audiences from the very first seconds.
In fact, to create successful TikTok videos, there is no specific formula. However, you can refer to some of the following tips:
- Blending in to stand out: TikTok is a platform for fun, lively, and amusing content; you should learn how to adapt to this ‘culture’ while maintaining your own brand voice and values.
- TikTok is a social platform, not a working space: TikTok is a platform where people can relax through its content. So, don’t make some videos that are too formal or rehearsed. You don’t need an expensive video setup to record also. Starting simply by filming videos with your phone still helps your content go viral.
- Use high-quality video and sound: Because these are factors that impact directly on your user experience. That doesn’t mean you have to buy expensive equipment, but you should try to film in well-lit areas with good audio. If clean audio is not attainable, replacing the original sound with a trending track might be a good option to consider.
- Use TikTok hashtags: It will help your content get discovered through search and assist the TikTok algorithm in determining what kind of themes you’re discussing. You should find out more about the best hashtags to use to increase the number of reach and views to your page.
#5 Engage your audience and grow your following
Though TikTok’s algorithm can make a video from a new TikTok account go viral in only one night, it is often not easy to achieve. To be more certain, you should try to increase your followers and interact with your videos. This method will help you build a scientific and effective strategy for developing your TikTok channel.
Furthermore, remember that it is an extremely bad idea to buy followers. The best way to get a huge number of followers is to create great content. For any social media platform, there are several rules you need to apply with the aim of keeping those followers who are interested and interact with your channel:
- Try out polls and questions.
- Interact with the content of other TikTok accounts (like and comment)
- Record interactive live streams
- Follow top trending topics in your TikTok community
#6 Look into analytics
TikTok for Business was born to record and measure your channel performance. So, the function Tiktok Analytics will help you know if your brand health is good or not. Then, you can answer these three questions by yourself through this feature:
- How much reach and engagement do you have?
- Are those types of videos really successful?
- Who is actually your audience (viewer who follows your content)?
Source: TikTok
Analytics – The analytics tool on TikTok’s platform can show you some really interesting metrics to help you get a more accurate assessment of your current performance and provide direction for effective improvement.
#7 Optimize advertising options on TikTok
TikTok helps small businesses to compete with other big brands without spending a lot of money on advertising. Currently, Tiktok provides users with diverse forms of advertising, suitable for each purpose. Depending on your budget, advertising campaign, and audience, you can choose from 4 following advertising options to grow your company through TikTok for business marketing:
- Topview: As the first video users see when they open the app, this function is TikTok’s biggest billboard to promote at scale and close the sale.
- Branded effect: Tiktok users will add branded effects to their videos, help create showcases, and sell multiple products at once.
- Branded hashtag challenge: These are the types of advertising that businesses use to inspire TikTokers to create content around an optional brand-related hashtag. Businesses using this ad format will be allowed exclusive access to that hashtag, which is not possible on other platforms.
- In-feed ads: Easily build a visually stunning and lightweight web page on TikTok.
- Add-on features: Spark Ads, Display Card, Gift Code Sticker, and Super Like.
Wrap-up
In fact, the ultimate goal for business efforts on TikTok is conversion rate, sales, or brand engagement, all of which are closely related to credibility. To achieve this, businesses need an effective marketing strategy and it will be a process that is researched and optimized continuously.
