Back

Why you should be looking at TikTok when marketing your business

TikTok, formerly known as Musical.ly, is already a big deal when it comes to social media marketing. But don’t be fooled, while the platform was previously full of tweens lip syncing and dancing to pop hits, since it’s buy-out by ByteDance it’s become almost a Vine 2.0, but with a little more to get your teeth into.

So let’s dive a little deeper into this weird and wonderful video-based social network. As of August 2020, TikTok has seen over 2 billion installs, and has become among the top-ten social networks surpassing Snapchat and Twitter. Staying true to its original concept, the platform is heavily music based, with users having the ability to put trending music into their videos to give it that extra push, but now it’s less about who can do the most impressive lip sync or dance, instead you’ll find videos ranging from 15 seconds to 3 minutes featuring random thoughts, story-times, silly animal videos, and other funny musings.

Big for brands

While you’ll probably be unimpressed with that brief description, I’ll also add that TikTok can be BIG for brands. How? In a nutshell, off-the-cuff product reviews and features have often been found to go viral and absolutely sell out products pretty quickly. Here are just a few examples of products that have found virality from the social network. In fact, just search “viral TikTok products” and you’ll discover a number of big lifestyle publications writing top lists of products you must have.

That sounds pretty appealing, right? Not only do products make a big impression among TikTok’s massive 100 million active users (according to this court filing from August 2020), but they may also organically grab the attention of big publications. So surely that might answer the question as to why you should look at TikTok when marketing your business/products, but there are other reasons too.

Big on personality

Much like any marketing effort, it’s worth noting that users aren’t dumb, so you can’t just create an account and start spamming your product hoping that it’ll catch on. What you can do though, is create an account and start creating personal videos, talk about who you are, why you do what you do. Do you or your business have a story to tell? Tell it!

TikTok is absolutely bursting with personality and the stories that come with them. TikTok is the perfect platform to bring your brand, business, or company to life. Tell its story, and engage with your audience. Why did you create your product? What problems does it solve, or what solutions does it create?

Big on DIY

We’re not talking about grabbing your tools and building a spice rack from scratch, we’re talking about creating content yourself, using the tools that TikTok provides (which are quite robust). While it might seem like the ideal time to create professional-looking video content for the platform, it will most likely look out of place amongst a sea of shaky cameras and unflattering angled front-facing shots.

This is the time to just whip out your phone and tell it like it is. TikTok does have a number of features available, from the ability to record your video in parts, add transitions, add music (obviously), as well as adding stickers and images within videos and set when they appear or disappear – and that’s not even the half of it.

Big on community

Community is massive on TikTok, and has a number of ways for users (and in turn, brands and businesses) to get involved and interact with this community.

If the user allows, you can “duet” users’ videos. This allows you to react to the video in a side-by-side shot. Another is to “stitch” a video, which takes the first couple of seconds of a video and puts it ahead of whatever you’re about to record. This is generally useful for the videos that call for a response.

If you start to make waves on the platform and receive comments, you can record and post responses to the comments rather than simply replying in-thread. So if someone asks a question, you can answer it more personally than a boring text response.

Ultimately, this echoes the previous points in making your product, brand, or business more personal and engaging than simply just another brand account no one cares about.

Big on creativity

TikTok is all about being creative and it’s the perfect way to stand out among the crowd of other brands on the platform. One example is Cuvée Coffee, which has a series of “Will it espresso” where they find all sorts of things to grind and put through their espresso machine. While their content isn’t solely focused on coffee or the product they sell, it creates brand awareness through their content.

We’re well aware that thinking outside-the-box when it comes to content isn’t easy, and that’s where partnering with a creative agency such as Gallium Ventures can help as we’ve worked with various TikTok influencers on previous (and current) campaigns both creatively and with product placements. 

If you want to learn more contact us at

Aaron Richardson
Aaron Richardson
Consultant, content writer, musician, likes memes.