Small Business Marketing on TikTok: The Ultimate How-to Guide
If you're running a small business and want to sell more products/services and expand your audience, you've come to the right place. With a hyper-engaged community of shoppers, trendsetters and word-of-mouth advocates, TikTok is the perfect place to reach new customers and grow your business. There's something here for everyone—whether you're looking to reach Gen Z, Millennials, parents or grandparents, every generation has flocked here to join the fun, learn about new businesses, and create authentic and engaging content.
Organic content + Paid ads = Always Engaged
An always-engaged approach is the winning formula for businesses who want to grow their TikTok presence. It helps ensure you're always staying dynamic and connected to our community that's constantly discovering and participating in trends. A great way to start on your journey is by using our new TikTok for Business Starter Guide.
What do we mean by always-engaged? It's what we call a combination of organic posts and paid campaigns, supplemented with something unique to TikTok—partnerships with creators. With these three key components in the mix, you'll supercharge your campaigns and get the most out of your marketing spend.
1. Test and learn with organic content
There are a million ways to tell your story on TikTok and there are no limits to the amount of organic content businesses can post. Experiment with different ways to tell your brand's story, then access performance analytics at your fingertips through your TikTok Business Account.
Organic content analytics will help you understand what’s resonating well with audiences. You can then use those insights strategically to inform your paid campaigns. Paid campaigns provide businesses with in-depth metrics to amplify that success and dig deeper into why.
2. Connect with creators to tell your story
TikTok creators are natural storytellers and brand advocates, and the TikTok community trusts the opinions of their peers. You can find the right creator for your budget or campaign in the TikTok Creator Marketplace, or transform organic content from creators into paid advertising using Spark Ads on TikTok Ads Manager. Additionally, you can engage directly with the community through organic content and encourage them to post their own videos around a given theme.
American video editing app BIGVU did exactly that. Through community engagement and performance campaigns, BIGVU leveraged the power of creators that resonate with their target audience by posting their content organically and promoting it via Spark Ads on TikTok Ads Manager.
BIGVU's strategy led to truly incredible results. They reached a 566% increase in conversion rate (SKAN), a 50% decrease in cost-per-install (CPI) and an 85% decrease in cost per trial started. In addition, they improved their engagement rate on TikTok by 30%.
3. Grow your reach with paid ads
TikTok’s reach is global, which means a huge potential audience for your business to capture followers, fans and customers. Amplifying your content with paid allows your campaign to extend to even more new audiences. Then, leverage our targeting tools to ensure you’re amplifying to the right audience. We understand that with some small to midsize businesses, it is not just about reach, but reaching the right audience. Our tools allow you to target and convert audiences into customers.
A great example of this: American auto service company Gills Point recently ran a campaign where they used TikTok to promote sales on tires. To build excitement and engagement ahead of Black Friday, they used an always-on approach during the month leading up to the sale. First, Gills Point created quality organic content using TikTok trends and audio that would resonate with their target audiences. Then, they leveraged high-performing organic posts as Spark Ads to optimize reach and used Interactive Add-Ons to drive website traffic and sales within TikTok Ads Manager.
Gills Point's campaign generated great results, stating it was the "best online tire sales" they've ever experienced. With an ad spend of around $3K over 3 months, they drove over 509K impressions and 3K+ website clicks - more than doubling their click-through rate (CTR) as a result of following best creative practices. As a result of these campaign efforts, the business's cost-per-click (CPC) dropped by 2.5X (from $1.90 to $0.76) and cost-per-action (CPA) dropped by 4.8X ($15.18 to $3.14).
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How to use TikTok to promote your business
It all starts with a TikTok Ads Manager account. Not sure what to post? Try browsing top-performing content in the dedicated TikTok Creative Center for inspiration.
Continue to follow these simple principles to set and refine a strategy that works with your business. Pair an always-engaged drumbeat of organic content to test and learn, and invest in paid campaigns to attract new users to your profile page, build up your fan base, direct customers to your website, increase your views, and more. Consider amplifying with paid during key commerce moments, where shopping and services are top of mind for customers. Finally, build your word-of-mouth awareness and brand love throughout by partnering with TikTok creators.
Ready to get started now? Start here.