How To Use TikTok For Business: A Beginners Guide to TikTok Advertising

TikTok has established itself as a game-changer in the constantly evolving social media landscape, driving audiences from across the globe. Initially introduced as a platform for artistic self-expression, it has quickly turned into a major marketing tool through which businesses can reach out to a young user base to get tangible returns.

This article discusses why TikTok is important for business, introduces it as an advertising medium with a number of possibilities, and answers the pressing question: How can TikTok be used for business?

Getting Started with TikTok For Business

TikTok has experienced nothing less than a meteoric rise. The platform’s still in its early days, only 8 years old at the time of writing. Since 2016, TikTok has grown to have more than a billion active users globally, making it one of the fastest-growing social media sites ever invented.

What makes TikTok special is its ability to cut across household age groups, offering immersive content for everyone of every age, hence offering an ethereal experience like no other social media platform.

TikTok is particularly popular among Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012. In the UK alone, a whopping 63% of users on TikTok fall within these demographics, making it a highly great marketing tool if your brand wants to reach a younger audience.

One of the factors that has contributed to TikTok’s growth is its ability to create viral trends and challenges that capture the attention of its global audience. Whether it’s the Renegade dance challenge or the Baked Feta Pasta cooking sensation, Tiktok has managed to capture a worldwide audience. These viral trends first foster an environment of entertainment and engagement but also give businesses a chance to latch onto such sensations to show their ads in a more creative way.

Today, this highly engaged audience can be reached through the power of TikTok advertising via TikTok business also known as TikTok for business.

The Versatility of TikTok Advertising – Beyond The Dance Challenges

TikTok is predominantly associated with viral dance challenges and entertaining videos; however, it offers so much more than these popular trends when it comes to its marketing versatility. It allows companies across different industries to supercharge their marketing efforts while establishing themselves as a trusted name in their particular niche.

Some TikTok ideas for businesses looking to run ads include product tutorials, user-generated content, collaborations with influencers, and behind-the-scenes videos. Creativity and authentic engagement can make this platform an effective marketing tool for any business. So, let’s have a look at how to use TikTok advertising to promote your business using these types of content.

Showcase Products & Services

Businesses can use TikTok’s short format video to illustrate their products and offerings in a creative yet engaging way. By producing visually compelling material that resonates with their target market, companies can assert themselves in the minds of their potential customers and build up brand recognition.

Share Behind-the-Scenes Glimpses

One of the most crucial benefits of using TikTok for businesses looking to show off their operations, work culture, or team members, is that it provides a great platform for behind-the-scenes peeks. Such authentic and cosmetic-free posts humanise your brand, thereby giving you a personal connection with your audience.

Influencer Collaboration & Co-Created Campaigns

Another answer for how can businesses use TikTok is to collaborate with influencers who share a similar target audience and have similar values to your business. This is an effective way of reaching new markets and connecting with existing communities on TikTok.

By using someone else’s audience, you already have a level of trust that is passed onto your marketing video from the influencer you partner with. These influencer collaborations can take diverse forms, such as sponsored content, product placements, reviews, or even co-created campaigns.

Advertising on In-Feed Videos

TikTok’s in-feed video ads allow businesses to position their advertisements directly into users’ “For You” feeds. These ads are designed to reach users based on factors such as location, interests, or behaviour, ensuring that they are visible to as many people as possible.

What separates TikTok ads from other platforms is the accuracy of its algorithms. These algorithms are so precise that you can even run your ads without specifying an audience. The software will automatically analyse your ads and show them to the most relevant users, giving you the highest possible ROI.

Branded TikTok Ads Hashtag Challenges for User Engagement

Creating your own branded hashtag campaigns on TikTok is just one way that you can use TikTok ads to build your brand, companies can encourage users to engage with the brand to grab an organic audience. These challenges can be amplified through paid promotion and influencer collaborations, increasing brand awareness and user-generated content.

Branded Effects & AR Filters

Using TikTok for business can provide an opportunity to create branded effects and augmented reality (AR) filters. These immersive experiences can be incorporated into the users’ own content, thus helping brands foster brand recognition and engagement in a whole new way.

How to run TikTok ads?

To create TikTok ads you first need to create a business account and complete the initial setup by providing information about your business.

At present, if you were doing this on your own without the help of a TikTok ads agency, then you would need to select one of the two available modes, which are simplified and custom.

As the name suggests, the simplified mode will help to guide you through the setup process and empower TikTok’s algorithm to do the bulk of the work for you.

In contrast, the custom mode will provide you with complete control and include advanced audience targeting, along with the ability to A/B test.

Like Facebook ads, the following campaign objectives can also be selected before creating your ads:

• Traffic: send your target audience to your website or app.
• Conversion: optimsie for conversions including leads and sales.
• App Installs: encourage your audience to install your mobile app.
• Reach: increase your reach to get in front of your target audience.
• Video Views: increase the number of times your video is watched

When you create your ad, remember to adhere to TikTok’s image ad specifications. Finally, consider that the review process for new ad submissions can take up to 24 hours.

Algorithmic-Specific Targeting

The heart of TikTok is its powerful AI-backed algorithm. This makes TikTok’s “For You” page a personalised content browser, which ensures that the ads will reach your most inclined users only. It’s this precision targeting that enables TikTok ads to outperform traditional social media advertising channels in terms of their relevance and user receptivity.

The algorithm takes an extensive list of different elements into consideration such as user interactions, video information, and device settings to deliver content that is most likely to resonate with individuals. This personalisation ensures your ads only reach users who are genuinely interested in your product or services, thus increasing the quality of traffic to your landing pages along with hightened conversation rates.

Diverse Ad Formats for Strategic Campaigns

TikTok brings many ad formats to the table, each fulfilling separate marketing purposes. In feed ads, where the native-style ads are accommodated perfectly within the user’s feed.

• TopView Ads: High-impact, full-screen videos that begin immediately upon app launch.
• Branded Hashtag Challenges: viral user-generated content campaigns.
• Branded Effects: Custom augmented reality filters and stickers for engaging brand experiences.

This diversity allows marketers to develop multi-dimensional campaigns that can be adapted across multiple TikTok demographics. So, for example, a brand could run an in-feed ad campaign to spark interest and awareness, boost engagement via a branded hashtag challenge, and launch branded effects to encourage user-generated content.

How To Advertise My Business On TikTok?

To get started with TikTok for business, begin with creating a TikTok business account and optimising it to advertise your business. Use the right hashtags, engage with your followers through comments and likes, plus make sure you regularly post. Currently, anywhere from 1-4 posts per day will yield the best results.

If you need to target a wider audience, you may want to consider using some paid TikTok ads, such as in-feed videos or brand takeovers.

However, you need to be careful of the disadvantages of TikTok for business. These may include the young demographics on the platform and sudden, unwanted viral content. Yes, it sounds weird, but too much hype can actually cause you to sell too many products and, therefore, not be able to keep up with demand, ultimately giving your company a bad name.

How Effective is TikTok Advertising for Businesses?

Even though the platform boasts a huge user base and engagement rate, it’s worth drilling down on what the benefits are and what results you can expect. Realistically, is it worth advertising on TikTok?

Here are some benefits of TikTok advertising for businesses.

• Access to a large and engaged viewership, especially among younger demographics.
• Variety of ads, i.e., in-feed videos, branded effects and hashtags, top view and top feed ads, and many more.
• Precise targeting options such as geographic location, interests, and behaviours.
• An affordable ad channel with provable ROI metrics.
• A place for creating brand recognition and identity through engaging video content.
• Early adoption of emerging influential social media sites.
• Availability of comprehensive campaign analytics and optimisation tools.
• Facilitation of user-generated content and community interactions around the brand.
• Ability to exploit viral trends and challenges for marketing purposes.
• Ability to generate measurable impacts in terms of conversion rates.

The following two real-world examples from Disturb Digital’s clients further demonstrate the remarkable effectiveness of TikTok advertising campaigns.

TikTok Ads Case Study 1: Michelin Restaurant, London

By strategically blending TikTok advertising with other channels like search engine marketing (SEM) and using paid search as well as social media engagement, Disturb Digital managed to increase table bookings by 465% at 1947 London, a new Michelin-experience restaurant.

This campaign featured feed advertisements, branded effects, and influencer collaborations that were specifically tailored to the eatery’s target audience. The campaign derived exceptional results, achieving non-branded bookings at just £4.70 per acquisition, demonstrating the effectiveness of TikTok.

TikTok Ads Case Study 2: Private Health Clinic, London

Disturb Digital enabled Proback, a leading private back pain clinic, to achieve a +25% rise in monthly appointments through renewed TikTok advertising efforts. With a precise targeting approach coupled with compelling creative, we achieved a 63% lower cost per lead, thus improving value for money in terms of campaign budgeting efficiencies.

Both of these cases show how TikTok campaigns, when done by a specialist TikTok ads agency like Disturb Digital, can produce meaningful results.

Closing Down

In the fast-moving field of digital marketing, TikTok has become an industry game changer, promising unmatched opportunities for businesses to reach their audience, build connections, and achieve quantifiable results.

Do you want to taste what TikTok can offer your business?

Together, we put together a plan that will be in sync with your ultimate business goals and help you tap into the unlimited potential of TikTok for businesses. Get ahead of your competition and bring sustainable growth through the art of short-form video marketing with the best TikTok advertising agency in town.