How to Market On Tik Tok

“How do I market on Tik Tok?”

It’s a question more and more businesses are asking themselves. Just a couple of years ago, hardly anyone knew what Tik Tok was, let alone how to market on the platform. Now, Tik Tok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world, with over 1 BILLION installs. That’s a reason to pay attention to Tik Tok! 

If you’re a business owner interested in video marketing, Tik Tok is a great choice to reach your audience, particularly if that audience is younger! However, that can be easier said than done. Tik Tok is a new platform, which comes with its own challenges. You’re probably not as familiar with Tik Tok as Facebook or traditional email marketing either.

So, how do you effectively use this platform?

If you’re interested in learning how to market on Tik Tok, you’re in the right place! Our team of social media and video marketing professionals has assembled their best recommendations to help you become a Tik Tok marketing wizard! 

What is Tik Tok?

Tik Tok, like its earlier predecessor Vine, relies on short-form, user-generated content. If you remember Vine, then Tik Tok will look relatively familiar. Tik Toks can be up a minute long or longer and are typically quick little videos of the user’s surroundings. (We’ll talk about that later!)

Who Uses Tik Tok?

Tik Tok’s audience skews female with most being under the age of 35. However, the app is relatively new and if past social media app adoption is any indication, other genders and age groups will become more prevalent on Tik Tok in the next few years. (Remember when Facebook was mostly college kids? Oh, how times have changed.)

The actual content on Tik Tok is varied. Remember, it’s user-generated content, so you can find all types of videos on Tik Tok. Common themes include dancing, lip-syncing, art production, and cute animals. The visual and dynamic nature of Tik Tok’s short-form videos lends itself well to product or creative brands. Think of a gym demonstrating a Workout of the Day or an artist showcasing a painting via Tik Tok. 

However, don’t think that Tik Tok is only for makeup, artists, and fitness-related product brands! Other industries and service-based businesses can still utilize Tik Tok. They’ll just need to find the right way to showcase that service. It will be a little less intuitive than incorporating a product into Tik Toks, but it can still happen!

How Do I Make a Tik Tok Video?

You don’t need to be a world-class videographer to make great Tik Toks. The platform is known for its user-generated content, so slick and overly produced videos can come across as inauthentic to users. The right camera phone and good lighting should suffice. 

Just be mindful of the length of your videos. While the theoretical limit is 60 seconds or even longer for videos recorded outside of Tik Tok and then uploaded, don’t feel the need to record content that long. Plenty of Tik Toks are 15 seconds or shorter and plenty of research suggests that grabbing a user’s attention in the first few seconds of a Tik Tok is crucial. 

After all, why take 30 seconds to say what you could in 10? Keep your Tik Toks short and punchy for best results!

What Should I Record on Tik Tok?

Anything! That’s the beauty of the platform. It’s entirely up to you. While that freedom is great, keep in mind what others are recording on Tik Tok. They’re probably a good way to brainstorm what else you could record. 

Two great places to begin are Tik Tok Challenges and hashtags. Challenges are viral Tik Tok videos, usually around a dance or interpersonal dynamic. This will be entirely dependent on the business and industry, but challenges are a great way to plug into what is currently happening on Tik Tok. Hashtags are another useful way to tag your content or find related videos. 

Be careful with hashtags; they’re like sugars in coffee. 1 or 2 is great; 10 is probably too many. (No offense to those who like it sweet!) Add a few well-placed hashtags, but keep it manageable. 

Should I Market on Tik Tok?

Now that you understand the basics of Tik Tok, you’re probably wondering, “Should I market on Tik Tok?” That’s a valid question!

Since Tik Tok is such a new medium, most advertisers aren’t as familiar with it as they are with social media or email marketing. They are understandably unsure about how to proceed. 

First, we would recommend evaluating if Tik Tok is truly the right marketing channel for your business. There are myriad ways to reach your perfect audience via digital and internet marketing. Tik Tok might not be the best one for your unique business needs! 

We’d suggest evaluating the following before you launch into the wide world of Tik Tok Marketing.

  • Age: Who are your perfect customers? If your business gets most of its revenue from people over 50, then Tik Tok, with most of its monthly users under the age of 35, might not be the best tactic. Now, if you’ve learned that your brand awareness is low among 20-somethings, then Tik Tok is a great option.  Still, evaluate this facet before your start recording.
  • Industry: Some brands just aren’t built for Tik Tok. Law firms, certain types of doctors, and tax professionals are three great examples of businesses that might suffer a reputation hit if they use Tik Tok. It’s not a hard stop rule. These types of businesses could manage a business Tik Tok if desired, but they shouldn’t be putting too much effort or expenditure into Tik Tok. 

How Do I Market on Tik Tok?

Now that you understand the basics of the platform, you’re probably wondering HOW to actually use Tik Tok.  There are basically three options.

  • A Tik Tok Business Account: This is the easiest way to enter the Tik Tok Marketing World. Regularly posting business-related content on your Tik Tok is an engaging, low-cost, and effective way of engaging with your followers. For example, an interior designer could record and post videos of complete projects to showcase the Before and After. 
  • Tik Tok Influencer Marketing: Paying an influencer on Tik Tok to incorporate your product into their Tik Toks is one option. It’s a great way to get a large number of eyes on your product in an environment they’re more likely to remember than a generic ad. This route can be cost-prohibitive to smaller brands, less relevant to certain industries, or not immediately impactful, depending on the influencer. It’s a great option for some, but don’t feel like hiring an influencer is the ONLY way to utilize Tik Tok in your marketing strategy.
  • Tik Tok Ads: Consider Tik Tok Ads a compromise between the control of a Tik Tok business account and the wide reach of a Tik Tok influencer. This tactic lets you target the perfect content and audience for your brand while still scaling. If you’re familiar with the audience capabilities of Facebook targeting, then Tik Tok should be familiar. Again, this will require ad spend. Currently, a $500 campaign budget minimum is required.  

Call JSL Marketing For Tik Tok Marketing

Tik Tok marketing, like other social media marketing, can be a dynamic and confusing tactic. If you need a dedicated team of social media marketing experts to help guide you through the marketing world, call JSL Marketing & Web Design at 855.869.4764!

Our team can help you with…

  • Audience Identification
  • Video Production
  • Campaign Set-Up
  • Brand Development 
  • Budget Recommendations
  • Creative A/B Testing
  • And More!

Call JSL to begin amazing Tik Tok campaigns today!

Capitalize Your Social Media Marketing Plans in 2021 with JSL Marketing

Few inventions have been as consequential for small businesses as the rise of social media. The advent of platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter lets small businesses communicate with their customers, reach more people, promote new products, and inform their followers without breaking the bank.

You probably know that your brand should be on social media at this point in 2021. After all, nearly three quarters of Americans have (at least) one social media profile! By avoiding social media marketing and social media advertising, you’re missing a huge opportunity to connect with your potential customers!

However, the decision to advertise and market on social media platforms comes with its own questions. 

  • Which platform should your business operate on?
  • How different are user bases between social media platforms?
  • Should you be using paid ads or will organic social media work?

The JSL Marketing & Web Design team is here to talk through these questions and more with our discussion of social media marketing!

Contact us Today to Learn More!

Social Media Marketing Terms 101

Before we jump into some bigger topics around social media marketing, it’s helpful to define some terms that are common in the digital marketing space.

  • PPC: Pay-Per-Click advertising. A payment model where advertisers pay platforms for every click received on their ads on sites like Facebook and Instagram. 
  • CTR: click-through-rate. A metric that measures the amount of clicks an ad receives. To find CTR, take the amount of impressions and divide by the number of clicks received. 
  • Engagement Rate: a measure of the amount of engagement a post or piece of content receives from your audience, in shares, likes, clicks, and other forms of engagement. 
  • KPI: Key Performance Indicator. The main goal of a social media campaign, be it to be seen by 10,000 people, gain 1,000 new sales, or get 2,000 people to complete a video.
  • Organic: non-paid content, created by individual profiles and then shared on that profile. Essentially, any content shared on a social media platform that isn’t a paid ad!  We’ll discuss the differences between organic and paid media shortly!
  • Viral: a term used to describe a shareable piece of content that is shared from profile to profile, almost like a contagious disease. 

Social Media Marketing on Different Social Media Platforms

When you’re beginning social media marketing, it’s important to choose the correct platform to reach your audience. Every social media platform has a different audience that uses their services and different businesses will find different advantages in using certain platforms. 

We’ve put together a brief run through of the different social media companies.

  • Facebook: The dominant social media platform, Facebook has over 2.5 billion monthly users! This platform has users across all demographics and classes, but this platform is probably best for advertisers or marketers looking to reach adults over the age of 40. Facebook is a diverse platform content wise and we’d recommend sharing a combination of videos, photos, and written content with your followers.
  • Twitter: This platform is best for quick, sudden “tweets” of written words. The real-time use of hashtags and ongoing conversations make Twitter a great platform for those working in news, politics, and current events. 
  • Instagram: Instagram, at 1 billion monthly users, is smaller than Facebook. However, this platform’s emphasis on visual content makes it the perfect platform for promoting products or for reaching adults under the age of 30. We’d recommend well-shot product photography and videography to drive the best results on Instagram. 
  • TikTok: With 800 million monthly users, TikTok is a small, but fast-growing platform. Tik Tok relies on user-recorded videos for social sharing. We’d recommend this social media platform for brands trying to reach teens and young adults, particularly women. (60% of U.S TikTok users are female!)

Follow this link to learn more about social media marketing!

Organic Social Media Marketing Vs Paid Social Media Advertising

As you’re familiarizing yourself with the different types of social media platforms and terms, take the time to think through if your business should use paid media. Paid social media advertising and organic social media marketing are both methods of using social media to promote your brand, but they offer unique advantages that are better suited for certain types of businesses. (Ideally, your brand will use both paid and organic social media to reach your customers for best results.)

Organic Social Media Marketing

  • Organic Social Media is Lower Cost: When you post content directly to your business Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you’re doing so free-of-charge. That’s a huge benefit for young brands!
  • Organic Social Media Allows You to Engage Current Customers: You can, of course, use paid social media to reach current customers, but it’s not always the most cost-effective way of doing so. For small businesses especially, this can be cost-prohibitive. Sharing content on your business’s Facebook and Twitter profiles directly to your followers, however, is a great way to have a great, two-way conversation with existing customers without breaking the bank. 
  • Organic Social Media is Authentic: Organic social media is genuine and no matter how great your Instagram ads copy is, it can be difficult to make a lasting impression on a customer with a paid ad. After all, the average American typically sees over 2,000 ads in a day! Customers follow organic social media profiles, on the other hand, because these profiles are sharing relevant information and are interesting to follow! That authenticity and genuine brand loyalty is hard to get through paid ads. 

Paid Social Media Advertising

  • Paid Social Media Lets You Grow Quicker: If you’re trying to grow quickly, you need to invest in paid social media ads. It is possible to grow your social media presence via organic social media, but it does take some time to really start seeing results and it can be an arduous process. Paid ads, on the other hand, allow you to reach multitudes of people ASAP and often for a fraction of the cost of television ads or print media.
  • Paid Social Media is Targeted: If you’re a vegan ice cream supplier, you have a specific niche audience you’re trying to reach. Organic social media might be a great way to let your followers know about new flavors or company news, but it’s not a great way to bring new customers in. After all, who follows a company they’ve never purchased from? Social media advertising lets businesses select the demographics and geographic areas they’d like to target. So, our vegan ice cream supplier can decide that “Vegans 18-40 in Austin, Portland & Seattle” are the perfect people to show Facebooks and Instagram ads to! 
  • Paid Social Media Helps You Drive Sales: It’s hard to get a current follower to purchase from your brand via an organic social media post. Social media users don’t follow pages on Facebook or Instagram to see non-stop promotional posts; they follow these profiles because they share fun and relevant content. Because of that, we’d avoid the “sales” social media bit on organic social media. You should still alert your organic followers of new products and promotions, but leave the 100% sales-focus for paid media. Use social media ads to drive sales and organic social media to tell stories. 

Contact us Today to Learn More!

Social Media Marketing With Real Results

While all of this is good context for social media marketing, it’s no replacement for a social media marketing strategy. We’ve seen far too many businesses leap headlong into social media marketing with a great sense of the tactics they’d like to use, but no clue about the strategy behind what they’re using their social media presence to achieve. 

Remember, social media is a tool, not an end goal.

Let’s return to our vegan ice cream supplier example. By using paid ads to reach new and specific audiences, this brand can grow their customer base. However, this needs to be done strategically.

For example, this brand could drive traffic from their paid ads to a landing page that includes an option to follow the company on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Ideally, this brand is now driving new customers to their info with paid social media but is also using those ads to promote their organic social media as well.

By thinking strategically beyond short term sales, our brand is simultaneously growing the number of new customers and returning customers.

Contact JSL Marketing & Web Design for Your Social Media Marketing Plan in 2021!

Growing a business is difficult. Let JSL Marketing & Web Design help your social media presence grow.

Our team has years of experience in social media marketing and over thirty 5-star Google reviews! We would love to give your business that same level of customer support!

Read Some of Our Client Testimonials!

Call us today at 855.562.5208 to start your next project!

Social Media Marketing for 2020

Having a social media presence – through social media marketing – is critical for online success and is a vital component in telling your brand’s unique story. Quite often social media is the first time an individual will come into contact with your brand, and you can’t afford not to make a good impression!

So, whether you are new to the whole social media world, need a little help setting up and integrating your online social platforms, or are interested in developing a social media strategy, we can help through our cornerstone service – social media marketing and management.

Why Does Social Media Matter?

  • 63% of local searches on social media are more likely to use a business with info on a social media site
  • 91% of local searchers say they use Facebook to find local businesses online
  • 71% of social media users say they are more likely to buy from a brand they follow online
  • Social networks and blogs now account for nearly a quarter of all time Americans spend online

Social Media Copywriting:

After you get all of your social accounts set up and connected to your website, you’re going to need to write your posts. That’s where social media copywriting comes in. Working within your brand’s unique and quirky voice, you will need to craft compelling, shareable, retweetable, likable, and actionable posts.

Social Media Advertising:

Social Media advertising is the future of paid media and ads. Advertising started out as flyers, then radio advertisement, then television, and then banners online, but the new ads are on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more. And the new advertisers aren’t just stars and actors, they’re influencers.

Social Media Strategies:

Creating engaging social media posts is super important, but developing a social media marketing strategy is almost equally as important to your success. Besides fitting into your overall content marketing strategy, social media marketing can also include things like:

  • Facebook Ads
  • Twitter Ads
  • LinkedIn Ads

All of these will help to drive highly targeted potential customers back to your social media page or website, which generates more leads and increased engagement for you. Social media is a powerful storytelling tool. And when you use it correctly within your business, it can really take your brand to the next level.

Social Media Videos:

If you want to go beyond mere photos on your social media profiles, then understand that video is the future, and that future is fast approaching!

We are a full-service company, which means there is little within the digital arena that we cannot do. If you need a video to spice up your social media feed, or if you want to make a splash on YouTube, then consider video as the perfect next step in your social media strategy. Whether you want a short, 15-second animated video or a 60-second live-action review or promo video, we can help plan, produce, and polish your social media videos.

Check out our additional video production services here.

Ready To Get Started with Your Social Media Plan in 2020?

At JSL Marketing & Web Design, we offer full social media marketing and management packages to help bring your business up to speed and really stand out in the sea of social media accounts.

Ready to start building your brand’s social presence through social media marketing and management? Contact us and we’ll get back to you ASAP!

Where is Social Media Going? [The 6 Platform Giants + Trends]

Social Media is just as important now as it was 3 years ago, but it sure looks different! One of the beautiful things about working with online sources like social platforms or digital marketing in general, is that there is a constant flux and the feeling of change is always in the air.

Unfortunately, it also means that sometimes you bet all your marbles on Myspace and get into some trouble.

So, instead of taking that gamble, let’s do the research, look at the trends, and see where social media is going according to the current giants (here’s looking at your, Facebook).

#1: Facebook, Of Course

Facebook is currently the largest social media platform in the world. With over 2.4 billion monthly active users. Essentially, if your business is online – it better be on Facebook. Because of this, Facebook is a great social media platform to market from – even with the saturation rates.

Since you have a massive audience at the end of your mouse and surely your target audience can be found on Facebook as well, it’s a superior platform for brands to promote or market their services and products to a huge audience – the only downside? The prices of Facebook can often match their user-ship.

#2: Instagram – Do It for the Gram

Instagram reached over 1 billion monthly active users in 2018. And though it might not be as large as Facebook (yet), it is the fastest-growing social platform, especially in the app-world. However, the marketing and uses for Instagram are considerably different than its super-giant of a relative.

Instagram is a fully-visual platform, and though there are captions, the main event are the pictures, videos, and visual material. Instagram is also considered to be more personal, especially with the addition of their live videos and stories.

Instagram is most popular among the younger generations – Gen Z and Millennials. So popular, in fact, that 32% of users are between 18 and 24 (Gen Z) and 33% are aged between 25 and 34 (Millennials).

#3: Twitter – From Presidents to Pop Culture

Twitter has over 326 million monthly active users, almost all of which are highly engaging – meaning they actually get on, post tweets, and interact with others on the platforms.

In fact, Twitter is so engaging that its users send out about 500 million (half a billion) tweets every day! That’s a lot of potential engagement, replies, and retweets.

So, if you plan on being very active online with your brand, Twitter might just be a great place to make a splash without overwhelming your followers with too many posts.

#4: Tumblr, 168 Billion Posts & Growing

Tumblr is great for fandoms (i.e. groups of people who all like the same show, music, pop culture icon, etc). This means that marketing a themed product can be great on Tumblr. Additionally, humor, witty banter, quirky style, and short-chain replies are popular on the site.

Tumblr Joke screenshot

So far in 2019, there are over 450 million Tumblr accounts – but get this – they’ve posted over 168 billion times! And about 1/3rd of Tumblr users hail from America

#5: LinkedIn, the Social App Built for Work, Not Play

LinkedIn is for professionals and the B2B audience – not like the above (and below) social media platforms which are usually more for play.

Luckily, this gives marketers a unique advantage as you gain access to a usually hard-to-find group – working professionals looking for industry connections. Also, LinkedIn users on average have a much higher income than the users of other social media platforms, which often means more disposable income. Of course, for B2B allows for much larger budgets than individuals, which makes LinkedIn a great option for business services.

#6: Snapchat – Like Instagram, but Less Permanent

Snapchat is visual, similar to Instagram, but where Instagram is meant to be permanent, Snapchat is transient. And, like Instagram, Snapchat is most popular with the younger generations, especially Generation Z who have grown up with it.

Snapchatters can send ‘snaps’ to each other or on their 24-hour Statuses much like WhatsApp or Instagram – but Snapchat did it first.

Snapchat currently has over 186 million daily active users, not monthly, daily. And they are highly, highly active. As of mid-2018, Snapchatters were sending out more than 2 million snaps per minute. And their daily videos often get over 10 billion views!

Got All That? Ready to Tackle Your Ideal Social Media Platform? If Not, Contact JSL Marketing & Web Design for Some Help!

We love social media, social media marketing, and social media research! Let us help you create the perfect strategy for your online goals!

Contact us at 817.435.1350 or fill out a form here! Want to learn more first? Check out our other articles on Social Media (and our Infographic)!