So you've heard all the hype about TikTok and how it's the hottest new social platform, especially with Gen Z and Millennials. But can it actually work for B2B marketing? Surprisingly, yes. TikTok has over 800 million monthly active users and continues to grow fast. While the audience does skew younger, the platform is attracting more and more business users. The key is to be authentic, provide value, and engage your audience. If done right, TikTok can be a powerful channel for building brand awareness, educating new potential customers, and generating leads. Here are 7 proven B2B marketing strategies and ideas to try on TikTok.
Create Fun and Engaging Video Content
Creating fun and engaging video content is key to capturing attention on TikTok. This platform is all about short, entertaining videos, so you'll need to get creative.
Focus on showing your brand personality. Post behind-the-scenes footage of your office or team members, share your company's mission and values in a casual way, or create challenges and hashtag campaigns that your followers can participate in.
Don't be afraid to experiment! Try duets, reactions, and stitches to engage with your audience and other users. Come up with a branded hashtag or effect to make your videos instantly recognizable.
Keep your videos short, around 15-30 seconds. This is meant to be snackable content, so quick clips are perfect. Use text, filters, sounds, and effects to keep things interesting. Your goal should be to inspire, not just inform.
For added engagement, consider using video annotation to add informative captions or highlight key points in your videos. Video annotation can enhance the viewer's experience and make your content more accessible and memorable.
Collaborate with influencers in your industry. See if you can work together on a TikTok campaign or challenge. Their followers will discover your profile, and you'll gain valuable exposure.
Don't just repurpose content from other platforms. Create TikTok-specific videos to achieve the best results. While you can reuse some evergreen content, produce plenty of spontaneous and native video clips as well.
TikTok marketing allows B2B brands to showcase their fun, human side. Follow these tips to make real connections, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to your website.
With creativity and consistency, TikTok can become an important part of your digital marketing strategy.
Do Product Teasers and Demos
Want to give your B2B audience a taste of what your product can do? TikTok is perfect for quick product teasers and demos.
Upload short videos showing your product in action. Keep them under 15 seconds so they’re easy to watch and share. For example, if you sell accounting software, show how easy it is to log in and generate a financial report. These bite-sized clips demonstrate your product’s key features and benefits in a fun, memorable way.
You can also do live demos on TikTok. Go live while using your product and answer questions from the audience in real-time. This interactive experience is highly engaging and helps build trust in your brand. Just keep your live demos short, around 3 to 5 minutes.
TikTok product teasers and demos are ideal for:
- Generating brand awareness and interest in your offering
- Educating potential customers about what your product does
- Addressing common questions and concerns
- Showing how your product can benefit businesses
The more useful and visually interesting your content is, the more likely it is to go viral. So put some thought into filming at an exciting angle or location. Adding music, visual effects, and captions will also make your teasers and demos more impactful.
With short, snappy product videos on TikTok, you’ll capture your B2B audience’s attention and have them eager to learn more about your brand. So get creative and start teasing!
Need some inspiration? You can have a look at how these successful businesses use Tik-Tok the right way.
Share Company Culture and Behind-the-Scenes
Sharing behind-the-scenes content and glimpses into your company culture on TikTok is a great way to humanize your brand and build authentic connections with your audience.
Start by introducing your team and coworkers. Film quick clips of them working, interacting, or just saying hi to the camera. These kinds of insider peeks help to put a human face on your business. You might also share some “a day in the life” content showing what a typical day looks like for you or your team.
Show off your office space and workspace. Give viewers a virtual tour of where the magic happens. Highlight any cool features or décor that reflect your brand personality. These kinds of “behind the scenes” views make people feel like insiders.
Share videos from company events, team outings, or holiday parties. For example, post clips from your latest summer picnic, volunteer event, or company sports team. Keep things lighthearted and casual. While the events themselves may be private, sharing short snippets on TikTok allows outsiders to get a sense of your organizational culture and values.
Use humor and have fun with these kinds of posts. Get silly and poke a bit of fun at yourself. People will appreciate your willingness to not take yourself too seriously. However, do avoid sharing anything too private, controversial or that could reflect poorly on your brand. When in doubt, it’s best to keep some things behind the scenes.
With time and consistency, giving viewers a window into the more human side of your business can be an effective way to build rapport and trust with your audience on TikTok. Let people get to know the real faces behind your brand by sharing authentic glimpses of your company culture.
Run TikTok Contests and Challenges
Running contests and challenges on TikTok is an engaging way to increase brand awareness and user-generated content. Think of fun duet campaigns, or react video contests your followers would want to participate in.
Duet Campaigns
A duet campaign invites followers to duet with one of your TikToks. Duets, where users film a video split-screen reacting to your original footage, are hugely popular on TikTok. Create an interesting TikTok and ask people to duet with it using a specific hashtag for a chance to win a prize. Duet campaigns work great for reacting to product reveals, tutorials, or behind-the-scenes footage.
Reaction Video Contests
Reaction and review videos are very common on TikTok. Launch a contest asking followers to upload reaction videos of your product or service. Provide free samples or trials for people to test and react to on camera. Reaction video contests generate authentic user-generated content and word-of-mouth marketing for your brand.
Contests and challenges are an easy way to increase engagement and brand visibility on TikTok. Get creative with different challenges and campaign ideas to keep your followers engaged and active on your profile.
Partner With TikTok Influencers
Partnering with influencers on TikTok is a great way to reach new audiences and gain exposure for your B2B brand. Look for influencers in your industry or niche and see if they’re open to collaborating. Some ideas to try:
Sponsor a TikTok Takeover
Have an influencer take over your TikTok account for a day to create content featuring your product or service. This leverages their audience and creativity. Offer to promote them in return to your followers.
Duet or Stitch with Influencers
Duets and stitches are a simple way to collaborate. Have an influencer duet or stitch one of your TikToks, or vice versa. Cross-promote the duet on your other social channels. This allows you to tap into each other’s audiences in an authentic way.
Pay for Product Placements
If your budget allows, pay influencers to feature your product in their content. Be authentic about the partnership and give them creative freedom. Their followers will appreciate the transparency. Look at your influencer marketing spend as an investment, not a cost.
Host a Hashtag Challenge
Launch a branded hashtag challenge and invite influencers in your industry to participate. Encourage their followers to join in too. Hashtag challenges can go viral on TikTok, gaining you major visibility. Offer prizes or perks for the best video submissions.
Giveaways and Contests
Run a giveaway or contest on TikTok and ask influencers to help promote it. This gives them an incentive to talk about your brand in their content. When people enter to win, you gain their contact info and permission to market to them in the future. It’s a win-win for everyone!
TikTok marketing through influencers allows you to build relationships and spread brand awareness to new potential customers. Get creative with your campaigns and make sure to reciprocate the value that influencers provide. With the right influencer partnerships, your B2B brand can gain big attention on TikTok. Also, by leveraging B2B SEO tools, you can track the impact of your TikTok influencer campaigns, analyze keyword performance, and optimize content to maximize exposure and engagement with your target audience.
Start a Hashtag Challenge
Launch a hashtag challenge by coming up with an original hashtag for your contest and promoting it on your profile. Popular TikTok challenges include dance challenges, lip-syncing battles, comedy skits, and reaction videos.
A hashtag challenge invites users to create and share content around a specific hashtag. The more people who participate, the more visibility your brand and message get.
To start a successful B2B hashtag challenge on TikTok:
Choose an interesting challenge theme
Come up with a challenge theme that will resonate with your target audience and inspire them to get involved. For B2B, this could be something like #OneThingYouNeedToKnowAboutMyIndustry or #WhatGetsMeOutOfBedInTheMorning.
Promote your challenge
Promote the challenge across all of your social media channels to spread the word. Reach out to influencers and partners and ask them to participate and spread the challenge to their audiences as well.
Engage with participants
Search the hashtag and like and comment on videos from participants. This positive reinforcement will keep people engaged and encourage more participation. Respond to any questions that come up.
Extend the challenge
If the challenge is gaining good momentum, consider extending it for another week or two. This can help it continue to gain more visibility and give people more time to participate.
Analyze and follow up
Review insights and metrics around the challenge to see how people engaged with and responded to it. Take the help of content marketing or lead generation tools that help you manage your social media platforms and provide insights too. Use this information to guide your TikTok strategy going forward. Thank all participants publicly for helping to make the challenge a success.
A successful hashtag challenge is a creative way to drive brand awareness and engagement on TikTok. Come up with an idea tailored to your B2B audience and promote participation for maximum impact. Analyze the results to keep optimizing your TikTok marketing approach.
Take Advantage Of Trending Sounds And Challenges
TikTok challenges and trending sounds are a great way to hop on the latest hype and gain more visibility. People love following trending hashtags and sounds, so take advantage of them for your B2B marketing efforts.
Use Popular Sounds
Pay attention to the trending sounds on TikTok and see if you can incorporate them into your content. Even just using the sound for a few seconds can help you show up in searches for that sound. Some examples of popular sounds are the “oh no” sound or the “wiggle wiggle” sound. Get creative with how you incorporate trending sounds into content that showcases your business.
Participate in Challenges
TikTok challenges are hugely popular and a fun way to engage your audience. See if you can put a unique spin on a trending TikTok challenge that relates to your industry or products. For example, if the “wipe it down” challenge is trending, create your own version demonstrating how your product “wipes the competition.” Challenges are meant to be fun and lighthearted, so keep that spirit in your version.
Use Trending Hashtags
Hashtags on TikTok make content much more discoverable. Check what hashtags are trending each week and see if there are any you can logically use on your posts. Even using a trending hashtag for a few seconds in your video can help you gain more views and new followers. Some examples of popular B2B hashtags are:
•#b2bmarketing
•#b2bsales
•#businessgrowth
Jumping on the latest TikTok trends is a simple way to gain more visibility and connect with your audience in an authentic way. Keep your content fun and creative, even when promoting a B2B brand. The possibilities on TikTok are endless!
Key takeaways
You've got nothing to lose by giving TikTok a shot for your B2B marketing. The platform is free, the content is quick to produce, and you've got the chance to connect with new audiences in an authentic way. Start with just one of these strategies, see how it goes, and build from there. TikTok marketing doesn't have to be complicated. Keep things light and casual, focus on entertainment and education, build community, and have some fun with it! Before you know it, you'll be a TikTok pro and using the platform to spread your message to new audiences. What are you waiting for? Give TikTok a try and see where it takes your business. The opportunities are endless if you're willing to meet your audience where they're at.
Get more views on your TikTok content by embedding your TikTok feed on your website.