How Small Brands Are Getting Discovered on TikTok

With over 1.5 billion active users, TikTok offers small and medium businesses (SMBs) a chance to connect with their audience organically. The platform’s algorithm is famous for presenting highly personalized content users want to see. That can help brands reach the right audience and increase their visibility. With the right strategies and tools, you too can build a thriving community for your brand on TikTok. 

The Power of TikTok for Small Brands

Small business growth on TikTok has been tremendous. In a 2022 survey by the platform, 67 percent of SMBs said they were optimistic about the growth potential the app offers. Moreover, 78 percent of these businesses indicated they would increase their investment in the platform. 

All kinds of small businesses have found success with TikTok. While some went viral with their content, others succeeded with user-generated content on TikTok. 

Peachy BB’s, a homemade slime brand from Austin, Texas, went viral on TikTok through its videos demonstrating the slime-making process. Andrea O., the business owner, already had decent viewership, but things quickly changed when Kim Kardashian discovered her slime through TikTok. Her video about her newfound customer instantly went viral. Today, the brand has over 6 million followers and a strong customer base. 

There are many other similar success stories of small brands on TikTok. Many factors are at play, including how TikTok connects users with content. The app’s algorithm is very good at targeting and showing your content to an interested audience.  

Developing a TikTok Strategy for Small Brands

While TikTok may be SMB-friendly, you still need a solid strategy to get more followers, views, and sales. From tapping into TikTok content trends for businesses to running sponsored posts, you can use a variety of tactics to build your brand on the social media platform. 

Here are TikTok marketing strategies that work:

Content Planning

You need to plan the content you want to share for your brand. The content needs to be authentic and relatable. The good news is that your content doesn’t necessarily need to be highly edited or polished. Many audiences prefer original, raw content, for instance, behind-the-scenes footage or personal stories. 

Do some homework on the kind of content relevant to your business niche already present on the platform. Get inspiration from existing videos and create your own. 

Targeting the Right Audience

There’s no secret formula for viral content creation on TikTok. You have to find and target your audience to go viral. Here are some ways:

• Use relevant TikTok hashtags for brand visibility
• Answer your audience’s questions or address their pain points
• Collaborate with influencers relevant to your brand niche
• Use TikTok analytics for small businesses to understand how people react to your content

Scaling with Advertisement

You can also reach out to a larger audience through advertisements on TikTok. The platform offers great tools for creating advertisements, including easy-to-use templates. You can target your audience with sponsored content using their interest or behavior on the app. 

Leveraging Influencer Tools for Brand Visibility

Influencers have redefined the TikTok scene. It wouldn’t be wrong to say they’ve made the platform what it is today. Consider this: over 67,000 TikTok influencers have 100k or more followers. 

Influencer marketing is a strong strategy that small brands have used since the platform’s early days. It’s essentially a testimonial for your brand and helps you connect with the right audience. 

Popflex Active, an activewear brand, was founded by fitness influencer Casey Ho. As an influencer herself, she built partnerships with content creators on TikTok to increase the brand’s reach and give the audience an unfiltered look into the products. 

Identifying the Right Influencers

Because TikTok influencer collaborations are so powerful, they can potentially turn your brand into an overnight success. However, the secret to success with influencer marketing lies in choosing the right affiliates. The creator you collaborate with must be relevant to your brand and relatable to your audience. 

Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t necessarily have to collaborate with influencers with the largest followings. The so-called micro-influencers with smaller followings but higher engagement are becoming the preferred choice for small businesses. 

Using Influencer Tools

The best way to reach out to influencers and manage collaborations is through an influencer marketing tool. These tools can help your business find and connect with TikTok content creators relevant to your niche or liked by your targeted audience. 

PopularPays is a sought-after influencer tool for engaging TikTok audiences through influencer collaborations. It makes searching, communicating, and collaborating on content with influencers easy. Compared to other influencer tools that mainly offer search and vetting, PopularPays also enables relationship management and content tracking. 

Mastering Video Editing to Enhance Engagement

Your brand’s videos on TikTok should be well-edited. That doesn’t necessarily mean top-dollar production. It only means the videos should be coherent, concise, and high-quality. While TikTok offers a variety of built-in video editing features, you can leverage other easy-to-use tools to prepare high-quality videos.

Here are some essential video editing tools for TikTok:

• Videoleap: It’s an online video editor with an intuitive user interface and several AI-powered editing capabilities, like AI infinite zoom, AI video generation, and AI voice changer. Plus, it offers features for editing videos made exclusively for TikTok. 
• CapCut: It’s developed by TikTok’s parent company and offers many different video effects. It also comes with color-grading options, which can help produce beautiful videos. 
• Magisto: It’s a video editor that automates the process to help save time. Part of Vimeo, the editor is beginner-friendly. 

Video Editing Tips for TikTok

• Use filters to set the mood of your videos, playing with brightness, saturation, and colors. 
• Tap the interactive and augmented reality (AR) effects available in TikTok editor and many other video editing apps.
• Use seamless transitions between different clips for a more cinematic effect. 
• Record videos with the phone’s camera rather than using the app and upload them to the editing platform to preserve the quality. 
• Use text overlays and stickers to convey your message. 
• Enable captions so non-native speakers and deaf audiences can engage with your videos. 
• Use custom fonts for texts on videos to make them more noticeable and legible. 
• Use trending music for your videos, but make sure it matches the theme or vibe of the video content. 
• Play with voice effects for videos with voice-overs. 

Balancing Organic and Sponsored Content

TikTok advertising for small brands offers an affordable way to reach new audiences. While it’s effective, the importance of organic outreach can’t be overstated. Moreover, many small businesses have shoestring marketing budgets and must use organic methods to increase visibility. 

You can find success with a combination of organic and sponsored TikTok content. Many brands start by organically creating a community of followers and investing in TikTok advertisements to grow their audience further. 

Which Is Better?

When it comes to organic content vs. sponsored content on TikTok, the former has greater potential. That’s because interest and engagement are typically higher when audiences find your content organically. 

Many businesses use both organic content strategy and sponsored content to engage with existing and new audiences. TikTok calls it the ‘always engaged’ strategy. 

The fast food chain Chipotle started with TikTok early, engaging its young user base with videos and challenges, such as the popular #ChipotleLidFlip challenge. Since the TikTok Ads platform launched, they’ve also started challenges with sponsored posts.

Overcoming Challenges on TikTok

Although TikTok is a great platform for small brands to find their footing, engaging TikTok audiences can be hard. Here are the common challenges brands may face on this platform:

Content Saturation

Depending on your business niche, too many competitors may already exist, resulting in too much of the same type of content. This can be tackled by creating something unique and making your brand stand out. 

Change in Algorithms

Social media platforms like TikTok regularly change algorithms to serve their audience better. Unfortunately, those changes can sometimes work against you and cut your reach. It’s important to stay on top of any changes and adapt your content strategy to them.

Fast Moving Trends

TikTok trends come and go quickly. Brands must respond to these trends immediately, which can be difficult if workflows for content ideation, creation, approval, and sharing are not refined. 

Conclusion 

TikTok is a useful platform for marketing small businesses, as it allows them to connect with audiences on a personal level. But to be successful with TikTok marketing, you need a solid strategy that includes quality content, influencers, and perhaps some advertisement. 

Your small brand can find inspiration in hundreds of companies leveraging the platform to engage with their audience and win their hearts. Utilize influencer tools to identify TikTok influencers that can help market your brand and maybe even help it go ‘viral.’

FAQ

Q: What are the best practices for hashtag use on TikTok to increase discoverability?

A: To get discovered on TikTok or YouTube, use hashtags that are relevant to your brand. Also, look out for trending hashtags and leverage them whenever possible.

Q: How can small brands track and analyze the performance of their TikTok marketing efforts?

A: TikTok offers built-in analytics for businesses to track the performance of their account and content. You can see metrics like audience growth and video views to understand your content performance better. 

Q: What strategies can small brands use to encourage user-generated content on TikTok?

A: Small brands can pose questions, ask for stories, create duets, and run challenges on TikTok to promote user content generation. They can also send giveaways to customers or influencers.