TikTok Marketing: Should Your Business Be On TikTok?

I’ve watched TikTok evolve from a dance-challenge playground into a full-blown marketing heavyweight.

With attention spans shrinking fast, those snack-size videos make scrolling addictive, visibility feels instant, and the potential reach is massive.

But I’ve also seen companies rush in, copy the latest meme, and sink their credibility faster than we can say “For You Page.”

While it’s true that 74% of TikTok users were inspired to learn about a product or brand online, your business can never rush to jump into the TikTok marketing trend.

When your content has no clear connection to your brand voice, goals, or audience, the result is confusion, not conversions.

So before you green-light a production budget to “make it go viral,” step back and ask the only question that matters: Should your business be on TikTok?

In the next few sections, I’ll help you evaluate whether TikTok is the right move for your brand, with real examples and pitfalls to avoid. 

When Should You Use TikTok Marketing?

TikTok marketing has become even more relevant today, as the platform has been downloaded 3 billion times worldwide. 

Several types of businesses and individuals have the best chance of building a following compared to others.

We’ll dive into some signs that show you it might be time to use video marketing on TikTok, which are:

• You have younger audiences as the target audience
• Your business is highly visual
• You’re on a tight marketing budget
• You rely on influencers to help you market your brand
• Short-form content is your go-to
• You want to appeal to more local audiences
• You’re focused on creating engagement

You Have Younger Audiences as Target Customers

As I mentioned slightly earlier, TikTok is dominated by younger audiences. 

TikTok is now more popular than Instagram among Gen Z (born 1997-2022) users in the US, with 37.3 million to Instagram’s 33.3 million.

The combination of visuals, catchy music, colorful filters, and entertaining type of content makes the app inherently appealing to younger generations. 

You see, the app is mostly geared toward an audience between 12 and 24 years old. 

So, if your brand is young and fun with a youthful demographic, then it could potentially be both fun and beneficial to have a presence on the platform.

You can see this in the type of content many brands produce on the platform– short and sweet videos made for instant gratification. 

These videos, then, are highly shareable and are sure to be gobbled up by younger audiences.

If your audience is much older than the typical TikTok user (Gen X: 41 to 56 years old or Boomers: 57 to 75), it may be more difficult to craft content that appeals to them, because they’re not even there.

It’s better to turn to LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram.

Your Business Is Highly Visual

Brands that sell visual products like beauty products, fashion items, and even some food and beverages (F&B) can benefit from TikTok. 

These products are generally hard to describe via text, making it hard for businesses to get their message across.

For instance, if you sell skincare products, it’s always best to demonstrate how to use them as well as provide some customer testimonials. 

If you only rely on plain text, it’s almost impossible for your audiences to trust your products, as they can’t see any testimonials as proof.

Same with the food and beverages business. You can use appealing visuals (whether it’s photos or videos) to give the audience an idea about how the food would feel, smell, and taste just by looking at the visual presentations.

This is where TikTok can be of help: it’s a highly visual platform that allows businesses to share their products through rich imagery.

This can greatly increase engagement and conversions in the long run.

You’re On a Tight Marketing Budget

The best thing about social media, in general, is that you can use them for free, though you have to spend some bucks to enjoy paid marketing features. 

By all means, you can use TikTok’s built-in features to engage with your audience without spending a dime.

You don’t have to invest in fancy equipment to craft professional videos for TikTok marketing. 

You can shoot a video with your smartphone camera and free video editing apps.

The key here has always been to pay more attention to your content quality. 

What attracts TikTok users and makes them stay is not the video quality, but authentic, one-of-a-kind content ideas.

This is a breath of fresh air if you’re a small business with a shoestring budget looking for an affordable way to get your business off the ground.

However, things are about to get tricky now.

While it’s affordable to use TikTok for an organic marketing strategy, it can be quite costly when you leverage the paid advertising feature.

Normal TikTok ad pricing starts at $10 per CPM (1000 views), and you’ll have to commit at least $500 per campaign.

Meanwhile, another popular type of TikTok ad, Brand Takeover, which allows you to create full-screen ads that immediately appear when a user opens the app, requires a flat fee of $50,000 a day.

Lastly, hashtag challenge prices start at $150,000 per week.

You Rely on Influencers to Help You Market Your Brand

TikTok is a home for influencers. 

Whether you’re in the fashion or even blockchain game industry, there are always some influencers with a massive fan base ready to give you a visibility boost on the platform.

By working with influencers, you can get your business in front of a new generation of eyes without having to invest in heavy-handed marketing techniques.

It should come as no surprise that almost 88% of marketers consider TikTok influencer marketing effective, and 54% plan to increase their budget for influencer marketing on the platform.

Short-Form Content Is Your Go-To

TikTok’s feed is basically a scrolling loop that encourages users to binge content rather than mindlessly. 

So, if you love creating short, digestible vertical videos, you might consider using the platform.

Now, TikTok allows you to upload videos for up to 10 minutes. 

But that doesn’t mean that you always have to create 10-minute videos.

TikTok users want their answers quickly, and short-form content is a great way to get a message across clearly and succinctly.

Think of TikTok as the party app–bite-sized morsels of catchy content designed to be consumed quickly.

The sweet spot for social videos should be 2 minutes or less.

Again, TikTok videos are quick and easy to create as spontaneous content produced in ordinary surroundings has just as much of a chance of cutting through.

One thing to remember, though. You also need to be consistent in creating the content.

You Want to Appeal to More Local Audiences

In marketing, localized content experiences higher engagement rates.

If your goal is to present your business to the locals, is TikTok really one of the channels that can help you with that?

TikTok started implementing the new DMA Geo Tagging strategies for business accounts.

When you invest in TikTok paid ads, the platform now offers 210 DMA local regions.

What’s that even mean?

It means that you can determine what content will be shown to users based on their location.

It would be much easier for you to reach audiences on a more granular, localized level.

You’re Focused on Creating Engagement

Some marketers focus on boosting sales, while others aim to build solid audience engagement. 

If you’re one of the second ones, TikTok might be your go-to marketing channel.

Most brands use the platform not to sell their brand but to create top-of-mind awareness among their audiences using entertaining content. 

TikTok is the place where users are introduced to new products and engage with their content.

No one on TikTok will say, “let’s see what products I need on this platform,” because eCommerce stores are a better place to do that.

That means if you decide to use TikTok for your marketing strategy, it’s always better to create content that doesn’t feel like an ad or like you’re trying to get anything from users.

Engage users with educational and valuable content to make them stick around in the first place.

How Do Brands Use TikTok to Market Themselves?

Let’s say that you see some potential from TikTok for your business. 

Then, the follow-up question would be, ‘How can you use it to their advantage?’ The quick answers would be: 

• Leaning on fun education
• Establishing emotional sparks
• Humanizing the brand
• Utilizing a unique brand voice

Leaning on Fun Education

While entertainment seems to be the main draw at the moment, there is an increase in educational content.

From creators to influencers, content that provides digestible education seems like one of the best ways to get messages out.

That works for businesses, too.

After all, the key here is always to make yourself more visible on the platform without appearing way too hard-selling. 

A lot of brands try to use it as a way to educate users about their products.

Fun educational content can be awareness videos about specific topics, tutorials, how-tos, and even expert insights.

Your educational content should teach, but it shouldn’t feel like a lecture. 

Instead, it should be fun and entertaining, helping to educate while also keeping the audience engaged. 

Most importantly, make sure you do in-depth research to ensure that the messages you deliver are reliable and trustworthy, especially if you create awareness videos.

Here’s how NatGeo captured an eye-opening video that introduces and educates us about the Chinampas, artificial gardens, or floating islands in Mexico.

Source: @natgeo

Adding Hashtags

TikTok is all about finding your niche community and joining the conversation related to that community.

You can do this by adding relevant, rising hashtags to your posts. 

By using hashtags that are rising in popularity, you are joining the conversation, but you are also making it easier for the TikTok algorithm to find your post and show it to more people. 

If you’re looking for hashtags to use, check out what brands similar to yours are using. 

This way, you can join the conversation and build your brand at the same time. 

You can also use social media monitoring tools, such as Sprout Social, to track what hashtags are being used most often on TikTok and other apps. 

Or, you can create your own branded hashtag by running a fun campaign or challenge.

Take a look at how Red Bull made a viral TikTok campaign video with #givesyouwings, inspired by their slogan “Red Bull gives you wings.”

Now, videos with the branded hashtag have over 1.1 billion views.

Establishing Emotional Sparks

You don’t have to sell your products or services to make money from TikTok.

Instead, you can use the app as a way to build your brand and establish an emotional spark with your followers.

Create posts that elicit an emotional response.

You can talk about social issues, show support for organizations like charities, or bring attention to topics that don’t get much attention.

You can also use TikTok to dole out advice. This can be related to your products and services or not.

Below is an example from 4Ocean, a company that sells bracelets made from recycled materials. 

They crafted a quick, snackable video about sea turtles on World Turtle Day.

source: @4ocean

Humanizing the Brand

Another way you can use TikTok as a marketing channel is by humanizing the brand.

You can do this by including behind-the-scenes content, showing employees and the people behind the brand, inviting customers to ask questions and participate in polls about products, and embedding TikTok videos to provide a dynamic visual element to your interactions.

Here’s how a staff member of a Dairy Queen franchise, Catherine, shares her ice cream creation on TikTok.

source: @dairyqueen_tr

Even though it’s a personal account, the content she creates can make the brand itself more human and approachable.

You can also use TikTok as a way to interact with your followers and customers, answering questions, fielding polls, and creating polls for customers.

This is a great way to humanize your brand while also building trust. 

Your followers will see that you are the real people behind the brand, rather than a faceless, robotic business. As a result, they will feel more connected to you.

With this additional trust, it will be easier to encourage followers to make purchases from you in the future.

Utilizing Unique Brand Voice

Some brands use TikTok to show how they are different from others.

With a unique brand voice, they can show the genuine side of themselves as a brand. This is a friendly way to encourage users to interact with you more comfortably.

Here’s an example from Chipotle:

source: @chipotle

The leading fast food brand is well-known for its whimsical, quirky content on TikTok. They also use a video editing style to improve brand recognition.

That’s why they stay on-trend, often making use of puns, using a slapstick style of humor, and pop culture references, and incorporating them into their videos uniquely and funnily.

Watch Out for These Pitfalls When Using TikTok for Marketing

You can’t expect smooth sailing without any pitfalls when using TikTok as your marketing channel.

We’ve listed some points to keep in mind before you start your TikTok marketing strategy, such as:

• Lack of transparency
• No control over the content
• User behavior is unpredictable
• It’s originally a platform for creators, not marketers

Lack of Transparency

Everything that goes on behind the scenes on TikTok isn’t clear.

It’s not clear how the algorithm works, which content is most popular, or how users find your content.

You can see that the exact specifics behind the viral ‘For You Page’ remain a little fuzzy.

Even when you’re a paying customer, TikTok doesn’t share any insights into the metrics that matter. 

When you try to grow your account organically, it’s hard to analyze what is working and what isn’t.

No Control Over The Content

Short and snappy videos may be the way to go. 

Still, TikTok videos can range anywhere from 15 seconds to 10 minutes in length.

If you want to make a long-form video series, though, you have to make multiple, separate videos. 

If the 10-minute duration is still too short for your content and you want to make a longer video, you have to link to it from your TikTok feed. 

Users have to click on the link to watch the video.

It’s a good way to drive traffic to another website, but it’s not effective for building a large audience base on TikTok itself in a short amount of time.

User Behavior Is Unpredictable

The TikTok user base is a bunch of people who are just there to have fun. 

It’s not a community you can engage with like you would a group of people who are interested in the same topics as you, like LinkedIn.

Not to mention the TikTok trends that come and go in the blink of an eye. 

It can be quite difficult to keep up with the current trends.

It’s Originally a Platform for Creators, Not Marketers

TikTok is a platform for creators. 

It’s the place that users love due to its creative nature and the fact that they can express themselves online and build a following.

That’s why it can be quite challenging for marketers to outshine the content that’s published by creators.

They have a huge following, and you have to play by their rules to win their attention.

And even if you manage to get a creator’s attention, you can’t control what they do with your product or service.

In other words, it’s crucial to position yourself as a content creator rather than a marketer on the platform.

Over To You: Join or Not Join?

Does TikTok make a little more sense to you now?

Looking at the stats and data, we have reasons to be optimistic about TikTok marketing, but don’t let that stop you from doing your own research.

Some businesses find out that TikTok brings them the best campaign results, while others think that Instagram is the best channel for them. 

The point is that what works for others does not always mean that it would work for you, too.

And if you see that TikTok marketing is a good fit for your business and your overall brand image, you don’t actually have to go viral and end up in every user’s #ForYouPage to find success on TikTok.

Just like any other marketing strategy, TikTok marketing needs consistency and patience so you can grow your business over time.

FAQs on TikTok Marketing

1. Should your business be on TikTok?

Yes—if your target audience spends time there. TikTok is a powerful platform for discovery and brand engagement. If your product or service can be showcased through short-form, visual, or storytelling content, TikTok is worth exploring. Especially for B2C and creative industries, the platform offers organic reach that’s hard to beat.

2. Do businesses find TikTok marketing to be cost-effective?

Yes, many do. TikTok can be more cost-effective than traditional digital ad platforms thanks to its organic reach potential. A well-crafted video can go viral without a huge ad budget. Even paid TikTok ads often deliver strong ROI because of the platform’s algorithm and engaging format. That said, success depends on creativity, consistency, and understanding your audience.

3. How to market your business on TikTok?

There are a few proven ways to market your business on TikTok, such as creating authentic and relatable content, using trending sounds,  adding hashtags, collaborating with creators or influencers, using TikTok ads, and engaging with your audience through comments. In addition, post consistently and stay active on trends. 

4. Should I use a business account on TikTok as a creator?

It depends on your goals. If you’re promoting a product or service and want access to TikTok analytics, business tools, and advertising options, a Business Account is ideal. However, it comes with limitations, like restricted access to certain trending sounds.

If you’re a personal brand or content creator who wants full creative flexibility and the chance to go viral using trending audio, a Creator Account might be the better fit. You can always switch between the two, depending on your evolving needs. 

At Breadnbeyond, we create professional videos tailored for businesses in every industry and for any platform, including TikTok. Click the banner below to instantly estimate your project budget and find the option that suits you best.