💬 It's been well-documented via the media and what we've seen from top brands we follow, that TikTok is a serious opportunity for scaling brand awareness and building loyal followers/communities fast - all with the goal of unlocking more revenue growth.
However, it can be a somewhat hard channel to crack to get videos into the 100k+ and million+ views consistently, whilst also making engaging content that can help drive follower counts and also help with sales (being attributed to efforts on the channel) - after all, getting lots of views is one thing, but turning views into commercial outcomes (i.e. sales) is the goal.
It's also a platform that I'm continuously learning about (as I'm sure many of you are as well) in terms of new techniques, practices, hooks to test, and lots more.
So, I'm hear to share some of the learnings I've picked up which have helped me and what I've analysed and seen from brands who are doing an epic job on the channel.
💬 These are some of the key factors/areas and opportunities that I've seen work well with brands doing an awesome job with their organic strategy, as well as taking into account what top-performing creators are doing on TikTok.
I wanted to start off with this checklist point as a strategy consideration factor - to really see success faster on TikTok as a platform, you have to have the ability to get up to a point of doing multiple posts per day - it is a bit of a volume game.
Doesn't mean you need to do a brand new video concept each time, but you'll need to be testing hooks, variations of clips, mashups - the whole thing. And to achieve video production scale and doing variants comes with having good editing capabilities and tooling in place.
A key strategic initiative you should be doing (whether just starting out on TikTok or you've been posting for a while), is having a competitor file and sheet (or whatever tool) to track content that they're posting.
This is one of the best ways to track patterns and see visibly (via views, comments and engagement) on what types of videos and what content is focused on by brands that may be working for them.
Knowing this and effectively tracking means you can optimise your video strategy around topics, and other factors like hooks, messaging, content types, etc.
Related to the above point, seeing what your competitors are doing is one part of the equation.
I highly recommend checking out TikTok's Creative Centre (which is absolutely awesome and something I regularly visit) to see what top eCommerce brands are doing when it comes to content creation within their respective niches.
Naturally, you can learn a lot in terms of styles, hooks, types of creators they work with, and numerous other things.
There have been numerous brands who have done awesome UGC competitions - you can find many on TikTok's case study pages.
As part of social proof to help with CRO (and even with AOV), embed top-performing videos for customers and influencers/creators on the homepage and key product pages.
Depending on the tool, you can even add products to cart via the video players themselves.
Something I've seen a few brands do (which is quite common for startups), is having a dedicated "wall of love" page (which is basically a page dedicated to testimonials/reviews).
You can use to promote certain product categories, and use it for the likes of marketing distribution across ads (great for remarketing), email marketing, and other flows.
The topic of influencer sourcing and management is a big one in general and can be a challenge for many eCommerce brands, but something I've been advising and telling brands is to try and focus on working with a select few, rather than just trying to find new influencers/creators to work with each time for a new campaign - even if the first couple of posts don't perform as well to the level that you're looking for, try and make it work, especially if the content quality is there.
The thing is, getting new influencers up to speed takes time - consider the approach of focusing on a select few, so that these influencers/creators can be properly 'integrated' into understanding your brand, testing variants, etc - in other words, you want them to have good buy-in to become successful in producing videos that get views (and sales), and achieving that can take a bit of time.
As low-hanging fruit, your top customers can be your influencers/creators too - all you have to do is ask and see which of your top customer segments are interested to produce a video review, unboxing (or another video type), in exchange for some sort of incentive/offer.
Decide on the top customer segment (e.g. top 20% of customers and have at least purchased 3 times), and ask them if they'd be open to producing a video.
Related to the above point, a way to get more content to post on the channel is just by simply motivating your existing customers to produce video reviews and testimonials for your brand and specific products.
Just make sure it's obvious to customers who do it that their video may be posted on social media (and not just the website).
Engagement is the aim of the game when it comes to TikTok, and interactive video format types like in-app polls and Q&A stickers can help with viewers to interact. In turn, this can be a 'signal' that people are engaging, which can help with boosting organic views.
Plus, the other key benefit is not just about engagement for getting views, but also a good initiative for data feedback/collection from visitors/customers and those who come across your profile and seeing your brand for the first time.
For instance, you can run a poll to ask for feedback on a new product "drop" that you're wanting to do, or a new product item you've just released.
Something to consider as a test is using the 'Stitch' feature within the TikTok app - and it can work both ways in terms of you using the feature, or letting users 'stitch' videos from your content.
If you're wanting to drive more followers to your TikTok account, something you can do with your customer base (and even have advertised on the website), is doing 'exclusive' content or even the likes of product drops, where visitors/customers can only access if they visit/follow the profile.
This is an effective tactic which can help focus audiences to engage with a key platform that you want them to follow - in this case it's TikTok (but same can apply for other channels you want to grow).
It's all about giving them a genuine reason to follow.
Doing live streams on TikTok is a great way to stand out against competitors, but also the social network loves users/brands that use features which focus on getting people on the platform and engaged - and this is where "live" sessions/videos come into play (and the other major social networks love it too).
The best part is when you go "live" on the network, followers get notified (if they have notifications on).
A great way to get follower growth and network-effects happening faster for your brand, is by partnering up with other complementary brands who have similar motivations to grow.
You can do collabs on complementary product bundles, a competition/giveaway, or even for the likes of a cause both brands are aligned on.
TikTok Shop is a big opportunity for brands to take advantage of - it's like Instagram shopping UX experience but for TikTok.
Now you can actually just add product links to your organic videos when you publish. And when you want to then scale the post, you can do via boosting with Spark ads.
If you're wanting to learn more about different TikTok ads types and tests/experiments you can try, I put a checklist on this which delves into more strategies/tests to try.
I put this here as a consideration as this platform can get quite deep in terms of possibilties, and to be honest, it can be hard to determine what works to get views, what doesn't, etc.
So, a recommendation I make here is actually just working with a creator/influencer directly (in addition or even over choosing a consultant). I say this because they're in the platform basically every day sharing content - so, they're very aware of latest trends, video styles, etc.
