If you own a business, chances are you will or already use social media for marketing at some point. One of the most popular social media platforms recently exploded is TikTok. Let me show you how you can exploit TikTok for your business.
Considering the number of people that use TikTok, it is a no-brainer that it will be an excellent marketing strategy for your business. On TikTok, you can easily promote your business. You can do it by uploading video content to promote the services or products you offer. You can also respond to inquiries and receive feedback and suggestions. All these for free!
Now, see how you can do all these and where and how to start using TikTok for your business.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a popular app that permits people to make and upload short content (15-second to 10-minute videos) about anything they have in mind. So, you can use it freely to create content to promote your business. TikTok is a trendy domain; imagine 20.83% of the world’s 4.8 billion internet users use it as of 2022.
What’s good about TikTok is that you can track how many engagements your TikTok acquires. It shows how many views, comments, and likes your videos have.
Another fantastic fact about TikTok is that it also has messaging feature. When you promote on TikTok, you can say “Message our TikTok account,” and then they can reach out to you, and you can reply and transact there. It can also be a way to track how many customers you get from TikTok.
Now, there are two types of TikTok accounts, personal and business. Personal TikTok accounts are regular accounts for those users who want to watch and create content. In contrast, business accounts are the type of accounts that are well-optimized for promoting businesses.
2 Types of TikTok Accounts
- Personal Account – The only form of account on TikTok that may be made private is a personal account, though these accounts have fewer API-enabled features. With TikTok Personal Accounts, All of the popular music on TikTok is available to you if you but also often unable to access TikTok Analytics, auto-publish videos, or regulate their TikTok comments through Conversations. This account is for people who only want to watch or create content; that is the primary use of a personal TikTok account. When you have a personal account on TikTok, you get the following:
- Use notification publishing to upload videos to TikTok.
- Can make your account private (meaning only people you approve can follow you and view your videos, bio, and likes as well as your following and followers lists)
- Business Account – Due to TikTok’s API, business accounts have access to more features than personal accounts. As a result, TikTok Business Accounts have complete access to capabilities. When you have a business account, you get the following :
- Automated TikTok video publishing – Prepare videos in advance and post them to TikTok automatically or via push alerts. Only TikTok Business Accounts have access to the Auto Publish for TikTok feature. Currently, you can only schedule one video for a TikTok post. At the moment, TikTok does not support scheduling photographs. Videos can be cropped and shortened when scheduled through Later on the web.
- Get to the TikTok Analytics (paid plans only) – TikTok analytics include information on anything from the number of followers you’ve gathered to the number of views and interactions your videos have gotten. Data on TikTok trends, audience demographics, account growth, and peak usage are available.
- Manage comments on TikTok using Conversations (Advanced plans only)
- Tracking performance in real-time.
- Use analytics to identify trends in your content.
- Option of directing visitors to external websites.
- Put a professional email address on their TikTok profile. – How do I add my business email to TikTok?
- Step 1: Tap the “Edit profile” on your TikTok business.
- Step 2: Click the “Add your email.”
- Step 3: Type your desired email address—step 4: Tap “Save” in the top-right corner of the screen.
- Possibility to collaborate with TikTok influencers. – Business TikTok allows business owners to reach out to influencers for collaborations and closing deals.
How To Check What Type Of TikTok Account You Have
If you already have a TikTok account and want to check what kind of account you have, here is what you need to do:
- Go to your profile in the TikTok mobile app.
- In the upper right corner, tap the three-lined bar”☰”
- Select Privacy and Settings.
- Select Manage account.
- Look for the option “Account control.”
- You have a Personal Account if it reads “Switch to Business Account.”
- You have a business account if it reads Switch to Personal Account.
A Step-by-step Guide On Making A Business Account On Tiktok
If you do not have a TikTok account and want one, here’s how to make a business account.
Creating A Profile
- Download TikTok through the App Store or Google Play.
- Start the app.
- At the bottom right corner, tap Profile.
- Choose a signup method.
Note: Your email address and phone number must be current to recover your password and log in.
You have a TikTok account; you are at the best time to turn it into a Business account.
Transforming Your Account On TikTok Into A Business Account
- Step 1: Click the three dots in the top-right corner of your TikTok profile page.
- Step 2: Tap the three-lined bar”☰”
- Step 3: Select “Manage Account.”
- Step 3: Tap “Switch to Business Account.”
- Step 4: Select the “Business” account type and tap “Next.”
- Step 5: Choose information about your business and finish answering.
There you go! Your Personal TikTok account is officially a business account. You can now access the features mentioned above.
What Happens If I Turn My Account Into A Business Account?
More features are available to those who have professional accounts. Users of TikTok with corporate accounts get access to capabilities like the ones stated above that aren’t available to everyone. The only aspect of your account that will change is the privacy setting; personal accounts are the only ones that let owners choose how much privacy they want. If you convert your account into a business account, there is no privacy; your account will be public immediately. While converting your account, a question like this will pop up and ask if you are sure about turning your account into a business one.
In promoting your business on TikTok, you do not want privacy. You want people to see and engage with your content, more views, more customers, and more profit.
Related Questions
How Can I Grow Your Followers?
Since you already have your Business TikTok account set up, the following are tips on growing your account and having a massive following on TikTok.
Identify And Specify Your Audience/Target Market.
Depending on your business field, a target market is always specific to you. For example, if you are in the cosmetic industry and sell makeup, you have particular demography of your target market. Let’s say girls from the ages 16-25; this is a well-identified target market. Or, if you are in the food industry, you have a broader market. Let’s say moms who work 9-5 jobs that are busy and have no time to cook. When you set up your TikTok account, you know your target market. When you know your audience, you will know the appropriate approach for promoting your business.
You can’t use the toy sellers’ approach when your business offers massages. You can’t use the food seller’s approach when you sell toilet cleaners. Knowing your target market is essential; you can attend to their needs and appropriately approach them depending on their demography.
Collaborations
Collaboration, also known as “Collabs,” is one of the best things you can do to grow your followers. Interact with other creators and make sure your business gets a mention.
- Choosing influencers – Choose influencers that are in line with your business field. You should select influencers who have the same target market as you and has followers who are most likely to avail your services or products. For example, you can’t make a collab with a famous TikToker whose contents are eating videos if you sell skin bleaching cream. It would be good if your products are food because their viewers know that their content is about food and that whatever they eat is worth trying. Since you sell skin bleaching cream, you should go for an influencer whose content is about beauty and lifestyle. See how the content of the influencer and the product your business offer align and directs to the same target market. Collaborating with influencers or creators that align with your field of business is imperative.
- Terms and Conditions – Have an agreement with your collaborators. These will be the regulations inside the agreement between you and the influencer you will choose to collab with for promotion. For example, you agreed to pay 50k for them to promote your products or services. In exchange, they will also have to achieve a specific number in their engagements, for example, 200k views in 30-second video promotion. The influencer must ask for your approval before uploading the video, if the manner of promoting is exemplary with you and if you think it is effective already. You can always be open about wanting to revise just in case you think it wasn’t good enough for the amount paid. But do not worry, you can always do this for free too. You can send them products in exchange for a mention on their video. Many influencers do that kind of deal too. An X deal is an agreement between two parties who want to collaborate in exchange for a company’s goods or services. You and the influencer/collaborator should always follow this area and meet your ends to make the collaboration successful.
Ensure that your influencer is in line with your business and popular enough to make your business known. Approach those who are in the same line as your business.
Advertise on TikTok
TikTok does not place a high priority on revenue, but your business can still use the site to expand its fan base by running advertising that mixes seamlessly with the other material. You can run a number of adverts on TikTok.
Brand Takeover Ads
As immediately as users open the TikTok application, these advertisements show. Brand takeover advertisements can be 3.5-second clips or 3-second pictures and are more pricey than in-feed advertisements. A brand takeover advertisement, which commands the entire market share for that subcategory and is expensive, can only be aired by one advertiser each day per interest.
In Feed Ads
These full-screen videos appear in the middle of a user’s scrolling activity. In-feed ads are limited to 60 seconds in length and can only link to landing pages or app store listings. You can also use the Interactive Card, Voting Card, and Display Card formats to create engaging advertisements.
TopView Ads
Because they are remakes of brand takeovers, these commercials cost more money. Users can engage with all these clips by liking, commenting on, and sharing them. The length of these videos can be anywhere from 5 and 60 seconds.
TikTok ads start at $10 per CPM (cost per mile), which means the advertiser (you) will pay $10 for every one thousand views.
Quality Content
Produce quality content; ensure your content isn’t just marketing your business but also helps your viewers and is educational for them. Educate the viewers and attend to their needs. No matter how many videos you produce, it will all be in vain if it is non-sense, not relatable, and aligned for the viewers. Contents should be fun, enticing, helpful, and educational; little do they know they desire your business to provide services for them.
No one wants blurred videos; make sure you learn to manipulate video qualities before uploading your content. A video is more likely to be skipped on TikTok if it is blurred. It makes the viewers lose interest and scroll past it. High-quality videos and relatable, educational content will always benefit your TikTok account one way or another.
Make a post about your location.
Location can be a crucial driver of brand awareness, particularly for small local businesses. Discuss your location in your videos, and include it in your caption and hashtag. It will assist people in your area in finding your business. It can also be beneficial to create videos specific to your location. That will make your product or service more appealing to locals.
Use Your Edge
Assess your business’ strengths and take advantage of free marketing, showcasing them to entice more potential customers.
Flex Your Services or Products
Take videos of your products or services excellently, and clearly, and capture every detail. Showcase the good stuff, which is the quality of your business’s work or service. It needs good angles, excellent lighting, a clean environment, and everything that makes high-quality promotional video content for your business.
Flex some good reviews from your previous clients and let them vouch for you so that viewers can see that your business is legitimate and provides high-quality products or services. For example, use the green screen feature of TikTok to show a screenshot of a good customer review.
Promos
Have promos because they are investments for you as a business owner. For example, the first person who finds a hidden word or code in your video and must be following your page gets a product or service from you. Or another example is in a video asking a tricky question about your products, and the first person to answer right will be pinned on the comment section and will receive a free product. Promos like this will help gain followers and views. People who use TikTok loves participating in these type of engagements.
Capacities Of Your Business
An excellent example of showcasing the capacity of your business is, for instance, Kendall Jenner uploaded a new photo showing her nails, and your nail salon can imitate hers. Kendall Jenner is highly famous and has lots of followers on TikTok; for sure, people will be curious and desire to have nails like hers.
You may take this as an opportunity; you should make a video about your salon being able to achieve and do it for your clients. And put texts on the videos like ” Kendall Jenner Nails, message us on TikTok,” then set your username.
Something like their idols for a lower price, aren’t people going to love that? Maximize TikTok for your business and let the customers know what your business is capable of doing.
Consistency
Activity
- Post regularly – Make a clean schedule for posting content. For example, if posting is once a week, every Wednesday, there will be seven days which is a good amount for compiling and editing carefully before posting the content. And every Wednesday, no matter what happens, a video is uploaded.
- No backward steps – Your TikTok account should have consistent quality, posting schedules, interactions with viewers, and comments. If there is any change you want to happen, it only should be better, nothing else. Better quality of the videos, better content ideas, better voiceovers, better schedule of posting, and so much more as long as it’s better. Always strive to improve your content.
- Entertain the viewers – There will always be comments with remarks, such as questions or negative comments, and that’s okay. Reply with a video as soon as possible and address the concern. If it needs an explanation in the video to address the problems, do so.
- Evaluate your comments section – Check your comment section from time to time to assess what needs improvement, what you need to delete, and what you should or shouldn’t do. An account that listens to its viewers is more likely to be followed by the viewers.
What should be my TikTok Content?
There will always be endless possibilities in choosing content ideas on TikTok. But here are the following tips that will always be timely and easy to align depending on your field of business.
- Transformation videos – These kinds of videos are what people love. Who doesn’t want to see a fantastic transformation that looks impossible until you reveal it? For example, if your business is selling ice cream made from squash. Use the clip of squash in the “before” part and the ice cream product for the “after” part. Isn’t that going to be so interesting for the viewers? They will be curious and ask how in the comment section, and you can respond with another video answering their query. See how it just resulted in another engagement?
- Time Lapse – For those curious to see how the processing of your products is happening, the type of video perfect for them is timelapse. They can see it in a highly straightforward way but with enough pace to see how it works and the process of everything. Timelapse is a convenient way of showcasing how you do landscaping in a long process in a short time. For example, a timelapse of how you print the shirts you sell by hand.
- Satisfying – The kind of content fits everyone on the app, old, young, parent, kid, or whatever. Because enjoyable vids are one of the highest views on TikTok, suppose your business is cleaning carpets. In that case, you can create a video cleaning the filthy rug, which is almost black, until it turns into its original color, light pink. That would be so satisfying, and people will surely love it.
- Reels/Compilation – Reels is a term on social media that means a compilation of images, videos, and some montages. It could contain media of your products and previous services with previous clients. Like a portfolio in video form, reels will be an excellent pinned TikTok so that everyone can see what your business exactly does and how you do it.
Now that you have TikTok as your marketing tool, let me tell you that it doesn’t just revolve around uploading quality content, entertaining comments, and reaching the target market. It also comes with thorough research on what is trending, if possible, what will be a trend, and potential timeless ideas. Trend and timelessness are essential because people love viral things, and timeless ideas are sustainable.
TikTok helps businesses take the critical step in marketing to the younger generation. Meet them where they are, play by their rules, and have some fun.
Conclusion
TikTok is a great app; it is free, easy to master, and very in demand. Indeed a great strategy to leverage for marketing and promoting your business. The promises of TikTok are high customer engagement and a broader reach, which leads to higher profit. But it also has its premise: to achieve all the promises, do it right.
