TikTok is trending! With a global mission of inspiring creativity and spreading joy, the app has accumulated over 800 million active users since it launched in September of 2016. While TikTok may be best known for its viral dance videos created by popular creators like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae, dance routines and lip synching are far from the only types of content you’ll find on the app. In fact, Tik Tok recently launched TikTok For Business to assist brands of all sizes “unleash their creative side.”
When it comes to creative content and brand storytelling, TikTok is the top platform of the moment. A simple 15-60 second video can be all it takes for your business to grow your audience and make real connections with both brand loyalists and potential new customers. 62% of TikTok users in the U.S. are under the age of 30, which also presents a unique opportunity to connect with young consumers. As the app continues to grow in popularity, it’s creators are increasingly diverse as well and include parents, teachers, politicians, high schools, universities, small businesses and major corporations. They all use the platform for the purpose of increasing engagement, sharing their ideas, products and opinions and creating content their target market can relate to and enjoy.
The app also allows for you to interact with your audience in all new ways. You can “duet” videos, comment, direct message, run contests, challenges and promotions, and use influencer marketing to spread your message.
Check out some success stories from large and small businesses that used TikTok to connect with audiences in unique and creative ways:
Success Stories
Universal Pictures – The film studio uses the platform as a way to promote upcoming movies and engage with American users. They launched a branded hashtag challenge themed #FindYourMagic,resulting in over 19K user-generated videos. The company also utilizes influencer marketing, working with 10 popular creators to post “magical stories” using magic tricks and illusions. To date this content has received over 1.3 million likes! Universal Pictures also grew more than 11K official account followers in just six days.
Clean & Clear – While launching their limited-edition face wash in India, Clean & Clear took to TikTok to help increase brand and product awareness. Their target market was female teens across India, and they started a #UnbottleApnaSwag challenge that invited girls to engage with the brand and show off their diverse personalities. They featured five bottle packaging styles that correspond with five personality traits. They enlisted five of the top female influencers to help spearhead the challenge and inspire participation. As a result, the campaign received more than 1.96 billion video views, 2.62 million user-generated videos, and Clean & Clear gained more than 10.4K followers.
Popcorn Friday – In the midst of the pandemic, small businesses felt the blow to business more than most. Owned and run by the Scrubb family, Popcorn Friday is a small popcorn shop located in Spring Branch, Texas. Natalie Scrubb, seeing her family’s business struggling, seized the opportunity to help by creating a TikTok video showing off their business and their products. The video reached 1.5 million viewers! After that online orders started flooding in from all over the country. The business had an increase in sales in the thousand-percents.
Conclusion
Regardless of the size of your business and no matter what you sell, TikTok can help your brand get noticed. All it takes is a camera and a little creativity. Not sure where to start? Contact us today for help developing your own TikTok social media strategy.
Most people look to social media to keep in touch with friends, find photo inspiration, and to stay on top of current trends and events. As a business, consumer engagement (likes, comments, shares) is likely the metric you track the most. However, it doesn’t only matter how many likes and comments you are receiving on your Instagram and Facebook posts.
An important question to ask is: Are you generating actual sales or leads? While social media is primarily a tool for building brand equity and deepening relationships with your customers, it can actually be a great way to drive new business as well. Listed below are four simple tips to optimize your social media pages for maximum impact on your brand’s bottom line:
Optimize Your Profile
Optimizing your social media profile should be one of the first things you do when creating a page – whether it is for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc. Improving your social media profile will help build brand awareness and recognition, and it’s one of the easiest ways to make your business stand out. Below are a few tactics you can use to ensure your brand’s profile attracts potential customers.
Logo
Make sure the profile picture you use is your company’s logo or a branded image. This is the first visual customers will see on social media, so it is important they immediately recognize your account when searching for updates on your profile.
Bio
Does your bio description accurately describe your company’s brand? Try to use as few words as possible, to keep it short, sweet, and relevant.
Link to Website & Other Pages
At Image Marketing, using a LinkTree in our Instagram profile is an effective way we’re able to include multiple pieces of content right in our bio. This is especially important if you want to keep a link to your website in your bio at all times, while also directing social media users to additional information like blog articles, other social media websites, or product pages.
Use Hashtags
Just as you would hashtags in a social media post to be a part of trending conversations, you can also use hashtags in your profile. This is a great way to briefly describe your company’s page in just a few key hashtags. You can also add your company’s branded hashtag in your bio to share your community and encourage others to participate in it as well.
Use Paid Advertising
There are some initial strategies to think through before creating an Instagram or Facebook ad, or boosting a social media post:
Know Your Audience
Make sure you have a specific and defined target audience. You should have a clear picture in mind of who the exact person is that you are targeting: what is their gender? Age? Hobbies? What other brands do they follow on social media? What is their profession, etc.? Facebook and Instagram allow you to define these specific demographics and characteristics about your audience when creating any ad for smarter targeting.
Look at Your Insights
Not sure where to start when it comes to defining a target audience? Facebook and Instagram make it easy with their business “Insights” page, where you’ll find analytics on the social media users visiting and interacting with your page. Staying up-to-date on your Insights page data can help give you a general idea of where most of your audience is located, their age, gender, when they’re likely to be online, and more. These key insights will not only help you come up with defined target audiences, but can also help develop your content calendar and posting schedule.
Set a Budget
Paid advertising on social media allows you to choose the budget you want to spend. With driving new business or lead generation as the goal, you’ll know your overall cost per lead (CPL), along with the bottom line revenue goal for your ad campaign. The question then becomes: “To generate $x in sales (or x new customers) this month, what budget do we need to spend on social media ads?” For example, if you spent $500 and acquired 25 new leads, your CPL is $20. Having a specific target audience will help keep your overall CPL low, and further maximize your overall campaign results.
Offer Incentives
Enter-to-win sweepstakes, product giveaways, and unique offer incentives are all great tactics for driving new leads to your social media pages, as it is standard practice to require someone to follow your page to be entered to win. At Image Marketing we typically recommend doing no more than one enter-to-win offer each month per platform, but it is a great way to incentivize potential new leads to follow your page and ultimately learn more about your business.
Analyze Metrics
Analyzing your metrics is one of the most important steps to take when managing any brand’s social media pages. Knowing what posts received the most reach and engagement, as well as the types of profiles you are attracting to your page is valuable intel. Understanding what works and what doesn’t helps as you continue to build out engaging content.
Ask yourself some of these questions:
Is my social media page’s tone of voice and aesthetic conveying the brand image I want to promote?
Am I attracting the right target audience, or do I need to change the type of the content I am generating?
Are images or videos working better?
Am I gaining or losing followers every month?
Have I generated any leads by promoting my company on social media?
Having trouble accomplishing all of this on your own? Head to Image Marketing Consultants, and let the experts help generate leads for you on social media! The team at Image Marketing Consultants includes expert social media content creators, skilled at crafting engaging content for any business.
