TikTok Marketing Guide for Beginners: Stats, Strategy & Useful Tips

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of TikTok and are curious about how to use it for marketing. TikTok is a social media app that has taken the world by storm, with over 1 billion active users. In this guide, we’ll give you an overview of TikTok stats, marketing strategy, and tips to help you get started.

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TikTok Marketing Stats You Need To Know

TikTok has been dominating social media platforms for three consecutive years as the most downloaded app. (Forbes) It has been downloaded more than 3 billion times. All over the world, TikTok places 6th as the most used social platform. Believe it or not, every second there are eight new users joining TikTok which boils down to an average of 650,000 new users a day. 

More Gen Z users are now using TikTok instead of Instagram. From 26% to 36% of users, TikTok is even attracting more people from ages 35-54 years old. In terms of gender, female users dominate TikTok with 57%. In a month, Android users reportedly spend 19.6 hours on TikTok which was a 47% increase as compared to 2020. 

Why should people use TikTok?

Among the numerous social media app competing for people’s attention, TikTok is the most engaging which is evidently seen in the average user session of 10.85 minutes. It’s not surprising to know that TikTok consumer spending skyrocketed to 77% in 2021.

 

According to Hootsuite’s 2022 Social Trends Survey, there is a 700% increase in marketers who considered TikTok effective for reaching their business and marketing goals. This is because 67% of TikTok users say they are motivated to shop the items featured in the app. Who would have thought that the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt got a whooping 7.4 billion views in 2021?

How to get started with TikTok

If you’re unsure where to begin when making the first TikTok video, here is a step-by-step guide to help you.

  1. Open your TikTok app and tap + at the bottom of the screen.
  2. Upload photos or videos from your device’s Library or use the TikTok camera.
  3. Add Sounds, Effects, Filters, sounds, or other camera tools to either the library or people’s videos.
  4. Begin your video by hitting the record button.
  5. Make sure to record your content. You can also record your video in segments and press the check mark when you’re satisfied with the video and then the cross if you need to remove it.
  6. Edit the page for posting, for example, trimming or adding text.
  7. Share your video online, or save the video as a draft to download later. 

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How to launch your first TikTok campaign

To create the TikTok campaign, go to TikTok Ads Manager. If you’re not registered for an account on TikTok Account Manager yet, you’ll need to create one first.

 

  1. Select your goal. To start, log in to TikTok Ads Manager and click the Campaign button. TikTok offers seven ads with marketing goals broken down into three different categories.

            Awareness

           Reach: Expose your ad to the maximum amount of users (in the beta stage).  

 

           Consideration

           Traffic: Drive traffic to a certain URL.

           App Installs: Get people to download your application.

          YouTube Views: Increase the number of video ad plays (in the beta version).

          Lead generation: Utilize an Instant Form that is pre-populated to gather leads.

 

          Conversions

          Conversions: Drive particular actions through your website such as subscribe or purchase.

         Catalog Sales: Create dynamic ads based on your catalog of products (in beta and only accessible to users with a managed ad account in supported regions).  

 

  1. Create a campaign name and set the budget. Make sure your campaign has a title that is easy to identify for your group. It can be as long as 512 characters. If you have a pocket full of money or prefer setting a budget for certain ad groups instead of the entire campaign, you may choose to put No Limit on your campaign budget. If not, you can choose whether you would like to establish the Daily or a Lifetime campaign budget.
  1. Select your ad group and choose placements. Each campaign consists of one to 999 ad groups. The name of each ad group can be as long as 512 characters. You can select various placements for each ad. 

Some placements are not accessible in all locations:

  • TikTok Placement: In-feed ads found in For You feed.
  • News Feed App placement: Ads within TikTok’s other applications, such as BuzzVideo, TopBuzz, NewsRepublic, and Babe.  
  • Pangle place: This is the TikTok audience network.
  • Automated placement: This permits TikTok to optimize ad delivery automatically.  
  1. Decide if you want to utilize Automated Creative Optimization. It isn’t possible to upload your original content until you’ve reached the point where you can create individual advertisements. For now, you can allow TikTok automatically generate a combination of your photos, videos, and ad texts. The system will only show the top-performing ads. TikTok suggests that advertisers activate this setting.
  1. Target your audience. Like most social advertisements, TikTok allows you to advertise specifically to your audience. You can customize your audience and target your ads according to gender, age, location, language, interests, behaviors, and device details.  
  1. Choose your ad group budget and schedule. You’ve set an overall budget for your campaign. Establish the budget for each advertising group and decide on the date and time it will run. Choose a daily or a lifetime amount for the ad group, and then pick the start and the end time. In Dayparting, you can select to run your advertisement at certain times during the entire day (based on your account’s timezone).
  1. Choose your bidding strategy optimization. Before that, you must decide on your goal for optimization first: conversion, clicks, or reach. The goal of your campaign can help you determine the target. Choose the delivery method you prefer, standard or accelerated. Standard allocates your funds evenly across the dates scheduled for the campaign, while an accelerated delivery can spend your funds quickly.
  1. Create your ad(s). Each ad group can contain up 20 ads. Each ad’s name may be as long as 512 characters and intended for internal use only (it doesn’t appear on the ad). The first step is to select the format of your ads such as video, image, or Spark ad.

Include your pictures or video in Ads Manager using the video template or the video tools to create videos.  Choose one of the pre-selected thumbnails or upload one of your own. After that, you can enter your text and link. Preview your ad and include any relevant tracking links, and click submit. Your ad will undergo a review process before going live.

Useful Tips for TikTok Beginners

This list of TikTok guidelines for newbies ensures that your TikTok accounts succeed and assist you in navigating the TikTok world.

  1. Take a look at the current trends. Trends are the main currency on TikTok. The most popular videos can lead to hundreds of spin-off video spin-offs, and the algorithm can push the most popular videos towards more people resulting in more views and videos plus more interactions.
  1. Use the appropriate hashtags. Utilizing the most well-known hashtags on TikTok to create the content can help establish your brand’s identity and increase your visibility to the appropriate users.
  1. Boost your account authority. A video will become more viral if uploaded by a reliable and trustworthy account. That means that your brand has to prioritize regular, consistent uploads over time.  

 

  1. Make sure you are following up on your posts fast. If you’ve got a video that begins to gain traction, it’s important to respond quickly! Repost, respond, and make new videos as fast as you can. Engagement speed and variety are crucial on TikTok. Make sure to follow up promptly with new videos to increase the reach of your content and build your credibility.   

  

  1. Keep videos short and quick. Your videos should be very short – the shorter and quicker, the more enjoyable! To maximize viewing time and rate of completion, you have only 8 seconds to captivate interest (for Gen Z, it’s 12 seconds). Convey early that your video is worth watching.    

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