TikTok Marketing: A Complete Guide for Small Businesses

Following the 2023 launch of a dedicated in-app eCommerce platform, TikTok reported that the number of merchants selling to U.S. customers through the app had doubled to more than 500,000 in just three months. Globally, the brand boasted an increase of more than 9 million additional sellers in the back half of the year, bringing the total number of eCommerce merchants to 15 million at the end of 2023. [1]

This growth is largely driven by TikTok’s social media discovery algorithm, one of the most powerful and effective deployed by social media platforms. In the 2023 GetApp TikTok Marketing Survey*, data gathered from 364 small retailers and restaurants revealed that the TikTok algorithm outperformed Meta apps (Facebook and Instagram) in helping merchants grow organic engagement, with more than half of survey respondents realizing a positive ROI on paid TikTok advertising. 

If your small business is struggling to realize a positive return on your social media advertising across other platforms, it might be time to focus on the potential return on investment a presence on TikTok could generate. In order to profitably leverage your TikTok profile, it’s important that your marketing team understands how to properly integrate the social platform’s various marketing and sales channels, including TikTok’s eCommerce platform, into your existing marketing strategy.

TikTok is the result of a 2018 merger with a platform called Musical.ly, making it one of the largest video-sharing social media platforms. As a short-form video sharing venue, TikTok is a perfect channel for small businesses and entrepreneurs to promote a brand, product, or service.

The platform’s ad management tool allows small businesses to set their advertising objective to raise brand awareness, increase consideration during the buyer’s journey, and maximize conversions. In order to accomplish these advertising goals, TikTok sellers focus on creating organically appealing video content, securing relationships with influencer marketing partners to maximize organic traffic, establishing a presence on the emerging eCommerce platform, and taking advantage of TikTok’s advertising platform.

Having to join constantly evolving social media algorithms and restrictive privacy requirements driven by legislation has made it challenging to profit from social media marketing campaigns. 

As a marketing solution, TikTok has shown that its platform addresses many of the shortcomings other platforms introduce into an overall marketing approach, to such a degree that 71% of the GetApp survey respondents plan to increase spending on TikTok marketing.

Brand engagement is a crucial component of any social media strategy. Without eyes on your content, you can’t generate the traffic necessary to drive engagement and conversions. The GetApp TikTok survey revealed that 96% of marketers are reaping the visibility that TikTok generates with younger generations and are seeing more engagement than what they are able to achieve through at least one of Meta’s platforms (Facebook, Instagram, or both).

Reduce time to conversion and achieve positive ROI faster

The powerful automated advertising suite, available through TikTok Business accounts, contributes to 51% of survey respondents realizing a positive ROI, while an additional 45% claim that they are breaking even when it comes to ad spend and video production versus sales generated. Successful owners point to the fully automated “Smart Targeting” option in the marketing automation tools as producing the most conversions.

TikTok’s discovery algorithm is built to prioritize the social media platform’s mission to build a globally accessible platform where users can connect with authentic content created and shared by other users from around the world. The trick for success is to do all of this in a landscape that is evolving daily, and the platform is built for SMBs to be able to handle this constant change and benefit from it.

The ability to piggyback on trends

TikTok’s algorithm is built to prioritize and magnify content based on existing trends. The fact that TikTok rewards creator-generated content is why 53% of the GetApp survey respondents rely on re-envisioning existing popular content, dueting trending videos, and leveraging highly-shared memes, hashtags, and sound content. Successful brands most often combine trending sound content with creative visuals and powerful storytelling relevant to their brand in order to get the best return on their marketing efforts.

More visibility for your brand if your messaging is balanced

In order to cash in on trends, your marketing team has to first be capable of creating fun and exciting original content that is also results-focused and share-worthy. While your team’s instinct might be to only focus on creating content relevant to your brand, not every SMB understands that this doesn’t always have to be the case.

Even though it’s generally understood that TikTok content is intended to be amusing and entertaining, only 34% of SMBS surveyed are in fact prioritizing creating amusing content. To stand out from the crowded social media marketing space, SMBs need to remember that it’s  important to balance messaging so that it is both product-driven and entertaining.

Authentic engagement leads to profitable traffic

One of the biggest drivers of engagement on TikTok is authenticity. Content that is considered to be personal and vulnerable builds trust, especially in the niche-focused communities that have organized across the platform. Organic engagement is so important that 51% of surveyed SMBs say that creating content around relevant niche topics is a priority in their social media marketing strategy.

Effective niche content should help viewers see how your product or services help your target audience solve problems or help them deal with their struggles and achieve a more preferable lifestyle to the one they would be living without your brand in their lives.

• Highlight the benefits of your product to customers.

• Research the appropriate keywords and hashtags in order to gain visibility to niches most relevant to your offerings.

• Rather than only providing technical information, make your content personal and relatable, showing your audience a unique perspective on how they can make a similar journey of their own.

TikTok allows for a wide degree of interactivity

TikTok provides users with the unique ability to leverage short form video content in ways that might not be as effective across other social media platforms. It’s one of the most interactive and versatile platforms for advertisers to engage with their audiences. There are several features users can leverage to create interactive content.

Host Q&A sessions to generate relationship building opportunities

Comments or responses to your videos can be set by your audience as a Q&A question, which makes it easy for your team to answer and address their concerns. The platform also rolls up all Q&A content to a single page, allowing visitors to browse these questions as well as the original video content that prompted the feedback.

Live broadcasts create opportunities to engage with your audience

Livestreams allow you to engage with your audience in a more direct and conversational way. One method is to leverage a multi-user stream to collaborate with other creators. The platform also allows users to create promotional pages and videos to prepare potential viewers for upcoming live events. In order to expand the reach of live broadcasts, they can be categorized to be searchable and help your target audience discover your content easier.

Segment your content into a TikTok Creator video playlist

As a creator, you can make your profile more interactive by segmenting your content into categories and creating playlists that gather your popular content into easily discoverable channels.

Treat TikTok as a search engine

Younger generations are treating social media platforms, such as TikTok, much like older generations leverage search engines. Users are leveraging TikTok to discover new products, source unbiased reviews, and to find tutorials on how to get the most out of products and the services they use. Leveraging SEO tactics, 44% of surveyed SMBs advertising on TikTok say that product-research focused content generates the most views and traffic.

Leverage special features to enhance interactivity in your video content 

While the TikTok platform boasts unique filters and the ability to add voice overs and transitions to your video content, it’s the ability to add text to your videos and create embedded calls to action or invite feedback and engagement that helps add a layer of interactivity to your content that drives engagement.

As a video sharing platform, TikTok can support your overall marketing strategy by providing unique avenues of advertising and engagement that boost your brand visibility and provide new and exciting ways for customers to discover your products and services.

Content creation

Content marketing has evolved to be more than blogs and informational landing pages. Content marketing now encompasses a wide range of mediums, and TikTok is the perfect platform to leverage your marketing and messaging through short-form video content. TikTok videos allow you to engage with your audience in a variety of exciting ways and show a different side to your brand that isn’t possible through other social channels or traditional marketing formats.

One of the most powerful types of content you can feature on TikTok are product demonstrations. Even while you’re keeping your content fun and light on the platform, it’s a perfect way to drive organic traffic. More than one-third of surveyed SMB owners point to product demonstrations as generating the most traffic and engagement.

Influencer collaborations

You can expand your audience growth and reach through the usage of the TikTok duet function. The side-by-side split-screen content allows for live reactions or commentary on existing content. While the duet only appears on your profile, the collaborator or original video’s creator can promote, share, and comment on your video to push it out to a wider audience. The best strategy is to duet content created by influencers in order to take advantage of their broad reach.

Choose the advertising option(s) that works best for your business

TikTok allows your business to create six different types of ad formats:

• In-feed ads are an organic ad approach that includes your videos on the “For You” page for users. In-feed ads are ideal for building brand recognition and often leverage influencer collaborations and duets.

• TopView ads are the first in-feed video shown to users. Properly leveraging this ad position requires advertisers to create highly-effective hooks in order to make the most of the guaranteed seconds they get in front of users. 

• Brand Takeover ads are often leveraged by business-to-consumer (B2C) brands launching new products or services. The ad format allows your brand to create content that pops up and plays for five seconds as soon as a user opens the application. Ads can be in the form of video, GIF, static images, or any combination of content combined into a cohesive advertisement. Rotating different iterations of your ad messaging will keep your brand fresh and top of mind. 

• Branded effects allow companies to create their own branded versions of filters, lenses, and stickers. Getting the most out of branded effects requires coupling them with other ad formats. For example, these brand assets can be featured in ads you pay for featuring collaborators or influencers to boost visibility through their audiences.

• Hashtag challenges are one of the most impactful when presented alongside other ad types. The challenge to your audience is initiated by identifying a trending hashtag tied to users performing a specific action or dance or some other activity. You then pair the hashtag with content of you or a team member performing the challenge, and end the video with a challenge to your audience to either create their own video or duet yours and share it with their followers. Either approach allows each side of the challenge to gain visibility with the audience of the other.

• Spark ads allow users to convert their own videos or those of other creators into an ad that appears in-feed. Creating this type of ad often entails adding an alternative soundtrack or voiceover to an existing trending video. 

• Video shopping ads have emerged as a powerful eCommerce ad solution. These ads can be targeted at your audience anywhere in the purchase journey and can lead back to your official TikTok Shop.

While TikTok content is easily manageable through your phone camera and the mobile app, your business should be following the lead of 54% of surveyed SMBs who are using software and technology solutions for not only generating high quality video content and optimizing for SEO, but also to track performance of their TikTok marketing campaigns.

Profile insights

Certain tools allow you to see and track views of your profile and how users are interacting with your content. This can help you identify potential partnerships and can reveal how well you’ve defined your target audience as well as provide you with opportunities to expand your messaging if you’re seeing significant traffic from users outside of your audience metrics.

Content performance

Unlike other social media platforms, where your content and your advertising are two separate streams of engagement, your TikTok content is often doubling as your advertising collateral. While TikTok does provide engagement data and metrics, it’s important that your marketing team cross-correlate TikTok user activity against other data streams within your marketing sphere to determine how well your TikTok content is supporting your marketing initiatives and whether it’s generating sufficient ROI.

Hashtag tracking

Traffic on TikTok is largely driven by keywords, category tagging, and hashtags that help users hone in on the niches they are most interested in. Using a tool to track traffic and activity of the hashtags most relevant to your brand can help you identify and get in front of trends to drive engagement and traffic. 

Profitability can be difficult to achieve through social media marketing. However, recent changes to the TikTok merchant experience, including the creation and expansion of the social media platform’s eCommerce-focused TikTok Shop, have made the social platform a viable marketing tool for those seeking to achieve a positive ROI from their marketing efforts on the platform.