Every entrepreneur and small business owner is looking for a sure-fire way to reach their audience in order to communicate the benefits of their product and, ultimately, sell it.
Horizon scanning for the latest bandwagon and on-trend marketing tool is a full-time job in some bigger companies, but if you’re a small business owner with a limited budget, it’s difficult to know where to put your money, resources and time.
Take for example, TikTok, which launched in 2016 and was the latest must-have platform that forward-thinking companies jumped on.
Six years later and it has more than 1 billion users “sharing their passion through video”. It separates itself as more of an “entertainment” channel, compared to Twitter’s “hobbyist” approach and Facebook’s “lifestyle/it’s all about me” approach.
So is TikTok the right social channel to help your small business? The answer is: “It depends.”
First of all, the best advice is to stop looking at any social media platform, web advertising or print advertising as a panacea for poor sales and get back to basics.
Double down on your business strategy and assess previous presumptions in your plan about who your target audience is, where they are, what they like and need, how much actual cash they have to spend and how many of them you need to acquire to meet your income targets.
Put it this way, if your target audience is over 60s, former UK citizens living in a small corner of Spain who don’t like or use social media – then every penny spent on social media is wasted money. Equally, if you have no money, all the time spent generating interesting content is also a waste of your time and energy.
To target those people, you should be checking out local print, advertising on Google Ads or setting up a shop there!Â
Equally, if you’re looking to promote your new online casino, you’re in the wrong virtual space. TikTok has some big “no-nos” when it comes to advertising and promoting certain themes, including gambling, cigarettes and adult content.
TikTok’s Advertising Policy prohibits in most countries – “Promotion, sale, solicitation of, or facilitation of access to casinos, gambling activities, sports betting, fantasy sports, lotteries, whether it is an online website or a physical establishment, where there is money cashing-in or cashing-out.”
However sports betting is allowed in several countries with special permission (e.g. North America).
Whereas on Facebook, gambling ads are allowed for countries where gambling is legal.
Perhaps the reason for that is that TikTok has a high proportion of younger people on its platform. More than half of users (around 60%) are Gen Z, in other words, people born between 1996 and 2015.
Other notable Tik Tok Stats include:
- 60% are female, 40% are male.
- It’s the 7th most popular social media platform globally.
- The average user opens TikTok 19 times a day.
- Ages 50+ account for the lowest users at just 11% of customers.
- The USA has the most TikTok users aged 18+.
After reviewing your business strategy, and target audience, you’ve committed to using social media, and you know beyond doubt that the best place to reach your customers is via TikTok.Â
However, you face one big problem as a new small business; you don’t have any money to advertise.
How do you go about building an audience and selling your products organically?
You start with your brand! Forget the notion that a brand is the colour of your logo and the font you use.Â
Your brand is the sum of the words you use, the customer experience you have in place, the manifestation of your company values and the products that you sell. It is, literally, everything about your business.
If your brand has been developed totally, with your target audience in mind, then you’re starting in a great place; if it hasn’t, then time to head back to the drawing board before you start on TikTok.
By re-evaluating your brand in line with your target audience, you will make life a whole lot easier when it comes to an understanding how your customer expects you to behave and what type of approach, words, images, videos etc will resonate more with a potential customer on TikTok.
Take, for example, your personal thoughts on climate change and how they may conflict (or not) with your target audience. If your target audience is younger, they’re much more likely to be environmentally conscious, which means your brand needs to take that into account!
Once you’re satisfied that your Business Strategy and Brand are as well thought through as they can be, then you’re ready to sign-up to TikTok.
When it comes to organic promotion on TikTok, there are some key approaches that apply to all social media platforms.
Numero Uno is this; don’t post your products continually down people’s throats. If all you have is product promos to post, you need to pay for advertising because that won’t attract a following.
Be imaginative; create posts that entertain and educate but do this in a way that helps to tell the story of your brand and your products.
Watch for trends as soon as they happen, and jump on board with your own video. Take part in challenges and use appropriate hashtags.
You should also research the best times to post in your given areas.
Most importantly, don’t make videos more than 60s long; the reality is people will make a decision to watch a video within 1-2 seconds and even if they do, they don’t stay for long.
The algorithm behind TikTok uses captions, hashtags, interactions and sounds to rank and tailor videos for lookalike users.Â
Sounds is a great way to make gains quickly. When you create a video, you can create a sound from your original video audio for others to use. It’s hard to get your sound to trend but using other people’s sounds is a good way to reach a new audience.
Everyone wants to know how to trend on social media, whatever the platform is. The truth is that as a small business, it will be incredibly hard.Â
What’s much more important is to develop content that is relevant, genuine, unique and resonates with your audience. Every creation should personify the brand and values of your company in some shape or form.
And always, always spend the time to do some analysis using the data available. Ask yourself why this post did so badly and this one did so well. How can I create another good one?
Data has been King for an incredibly long time now. But it always surprises me how smaller to medium-sized companies don’t pay enough attention to it.Â
Always use it to inform your improvement online and offline.
Lastly, remember to harness your personal passion for your product/business. You believe in it above all else, so how do you make your customer feel the same?
