TikTok Marketing for Brands and Influencers

TikTok is a breakthrough app that specializes in short videos, ranging from a few seconds to a minute in length. Previously known as Musical.ly, TikTok is a platform that blew up in the past year, catching and keeping the attention of people of all ages. With this in mind, TikTok marketing is a gold mine for both influencers looking to monetize their platforms and for brands looking to reach both niche and broad audiences.

Tips For TikTok Marketing Success on TikTok: 

Where brands can be found on TikTok:

• TikTok Marketplace: Marketplace is an in-app feature that fosters an open conversation between brand and creators. This avenue is definitely advantageous for brands. Marketplace only accepts creators that have reached over 100 thousand followers, once accepted the creator is placed into a pool that brands can choose from to partner with. The creators cannot reach out to the brands, but, instead, are waiting and ready for a brand deal to be brought to them.
• Brand to Creator via Email: This is the most common outreach strategy. Most creators who have large followings don’t want to limit their opportunity for brand deals only to the TikTok Marketplace, so they tend to include emails, a more direct line of contact, somewhere in their profile bios. Some may just write their email in their bio, and others may link their email through third party social media links such as LinkTree.
• TikTok Stand-Alone Ads:This is the least used form of marketing, and often the most skipped by TikTok users. These types of ads are typically reserved for Apps or large companies, such as Apple. To buy this type of ad placement, you can reach out to TikTok directly and pay a fee to have your custom video play on TikTok as a sponsored ad, with a link to the product or app in the video’s description. 

Tips for Finding Quality Creators: 

• Consistency is key: Some creators strike gold and will have a video that performs very well. But the thing with TikTok marketing is you can be forgotten just as quickly as you got famous. Due to the randomness of the algorithm the creator can have one off success and never be shown on the “For You Page” again, therefore it is key to find creators who consistently do well the views don’t need to be astronomical just as long as they are consistent.
• Engagement is king: if you choose a creator that does well with views but not comments you will not get as many successful sales or conversions as someone who has a large comment section. The TikTok marketing algorithm favors videos with high engagement rate, meaning it values comments and shares and rewards it with more views by putting it in front of more people’s eyes. The larger the comment section, the more likely the success of the video, and the more people that will see your brand. 

Tips For Creator Success on TikTok: 

Being quality creators: 

• Always place an email in your bio, you never know when a brand may find you and want your partnership. 
• Everything you do should be aimed at getting on the “For You Page,” as this is the hub or the “Brain” of the app. Every person has a different “For You Page” that is tailored to what the viewer likes. It’s your goal to constantly show up on this page, Do not rely only on your followers. Although they are a great base, TikTok is not a follower-oriented app. TikTok’s algorithm is seemingly random and unpredictable, thus leading the viewer so stimulated in videos on their “For You Page” that tend to scroll through their “Followers” page a little less.
• Listen to your Analytics, you can find these in your creator menu in the app. Try and post content at the time when the majority of your followers are surfing the app. When in doubt, your best bet is to post early in the morning on the weekends and late at night on weekdays. Most people are spending less time on the app in the middle of the day.
• Consistency in posting time is key. The algorithm favors consistency. Plan on a buffer between uploading your video and hitting the “For You Page.” If you want to post every day at 5 pm make sure you upload the video at 4:30pm so the video can hit the “For You Page” at your desired time and drive maximum engagement. 
• Choose your niche and drive it home. With TikTok having so many creators and viewers, generic content always gets lost in the shuffle of videos. “For You Pages” are tailored for each individual viewer based on what they engage with, so the more focused your content is, the more it will be pushed consistently on viewers who consistently interact with it. Therefore driving up your engagement. 
• Lastly, focus on your engagement. TikTok bases video success on the ratios of comments, likes, and shares. If TikTok sees your video having high engagement they will push you in other markets thus increasing your potential fanbase. TikTok works on a pool system, and the minute you upload a video they instantly place it into a pool of viewers based on your hashtags and description. The first pool has a very small number of viewers and if it does well engagement-wise, TikTok will place it into a larger pool and so on. Once you have proven that you create quality content TikTok will eventually start skipping smaller pools and placing you instantly in larger pools. 

TikTok is a forever shifting entity that brings together all ages and gives people videos that keep them coming back and unknowingly scrolling for hours on end. The “For You Page” of TikTok is an extremely valuable tool for both brands and influencers when understood and used to their advantage. 

TikTok is a social media juggernaut that is quickly taking over the market. The possibilities are endless for brand deals and the structure of the app allows for great potential for success for influencers. Although no one quite understands the algorithm, there are ways to make it work for you, whether you are a brand or creator. Welcome to the wild west of entertainment, enjoy your time and make some money.