TikTok is focused on creating short 15-second videos and combines the features of popular Snapchat, leading Instagram, and recently forgotten Vine. In mid-2018, the service broke all records and surpassed the number of Instagram downloads.
In this article, you will receive a guide to action on TikTok and will be able to choose the right promotion strategy for yourself. You can promote TikTok for business in both free and paid ways. Since this is still a young platform, you can gain a lot of followers here without investment.
There are a lot of options for paid promotion on TikTok. But before you start spending money on advertising, it is better to test free promotion methods. They will give you insight into whether your strategy is working, how customers react to content, and whether you are reaching the right audience. In this article, we will consider both free and paid methods for promotion on TikTok.
TikTok today is:
- 1 billion of video views a day;
- 5 million of active American users a month;
- $176.9 million – TikTok income in 2019;
- 52 minutes a day which the users spend on TikTok;
- 90% of TikTok users open the app more than once a day;
- 150 markets and 75 languages.
In 2018, TikTok bought out the popular music service Musical.ly, adding about 150 million users. It flourished in mid-2018. During this period, the app managed to overtake popular Instagram in terms of the number of downloads. The app has algorithms that allow beginners to gain thousands or even millions of views quickly.
TikTok features
Content virality. Almost all activity in the app is built on the principle of viral content, and therefore it extremely quickly gains popularity and develops into flash mobs. This allows for easy and fast progress.
Own database of tracks. Users get free access to a huge database of music. This opens up unlimited possibilities for the flight of imagination and the creation of creative content.
Vivid visual component. The popularity of an account depends only on the level of creativity of its owner; here, you can not even write or say anything.
Convenient video editor. You can edit videos directly in the app, which greatly simplifies the work. Masks, filters, and various visual effects are available to users. You can also use the tape splicing tools.
Freeways to promote TikTok
- Advertising on other social networks of your business. If the business already has a promoted page on Instagram or any other platform, it is the best way to gain the first loyal audience.
- Use targeted hashtags. There are large hashtags in TikTok, and if you manage to rank in at least one of the most popular, you will get a lot of free subscribers. The hashtags you choose must be relevant to your business, so check all the options before using them.
- Be on TikTok Trends. In this case, you just need to spend some days on TikTok and find out which videos are the most popular. If you closely follow trends and keep up with the times, you have a great chance to get into the TOP, and then the application algorithms will do everything for you.
- Be active. Write comments under different posts, subscribe to your potential customers on your own, and not through aggregators on potential customers’ pages. This is not the fastest way to promote, but it is free and will provide you with a small but constant influx of interested people. At the same time, you can search for them among the subscribers of your competitors.
- Launch your activities: challenges, sweepstakes, and GiveAways. Each of these options will bring great results to the business, but you can only use them after having at least a few hundred followers.
Paid promotion on TikTok
- Advertising with bloggers. It is the classics of the genre. Choose those whose audience overlaps with yours. Not all even large bloggers have high advertising costs, so do not be alarmed in advance.
- Use a target. The good old target can help here too. Run targeted advertising that will target your TikTok account.
- Do not forget about the most critical thing – TikTop tools for promotion. The young platform provides all the necessary opportunities for your account to grow and develop quickly. Meanwhile, the advertising cost is still very adequate, and the ads themselves did not have time to get bored.
TikTok advertising opportunities
Hashtag Challenge Participation
It is one of the fastest promotion options. Simultaneously, the mechanics are as simple as possible: popular bloggers regularly launch challenges, which need you to record a video for a specific track, and place it on your page with the desired hashtag. Thus, your video will be included in the recommendation feed, and a huge number of people will see it – the coverage can reach 500 thousand views.
Brand takeover
This type of ad appears in full screen immediately after launching the application. This full-screen banner can be in the format of a picture, gif, or video and, depending on this, lasts from 3 to 5 seconds. In such an advertisement, you can place your unique hashtag or a link to the site.
In-Feed Native Video
This is an ad format that is very similar to Instagram Story ads. It appears in the users’ feed and lasts 15 seconds. You can also use links, hashtags, and a call to action here.
TikTok Analytics: how to track your performance
It has become much easier to promote a business on TikTok since the service launched its analytics tool. It will help you get data about the audience and the effectiveness of your content. This information will tell you which promotion tools are more profitable and which people are your target audience.
TikTok analytics is available only to users with a PRO account. You can switch to it in your settings. There are also articles on the TikTok website on how to analyze your promotion results.