TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms in recent years. Despite the best efforts of Threads and Twitch, TikTok was the second most downloaded app in the world in June 2025, only pipped by ChatGPT, with over 1.59 billion global users. It’s a social media site that many businesses tend to dabble with before the Gen Z fear holds them back. So we’re here to help! While it can seem new, modern and, dare we say it, young, it’s actually a simple and fun marketing tool that you can use to grow your audience and business beyond social media. Take a look below at our tips on using TikTok as a business.
The TikTok Basics
If you don’t understand TikTok at all, here’s the premise. It’s a short-form video platform. Videos can range from one second right up to 10 minutes, but in 2024, the average video length was 42.7 seconds. You can now also create posts using photos, which the algorithms are currently favouring. The idea is it caters to the fast-paced environment of social media and shorter attention spans.
Generally, the TikTok audience is a younger demographic, with 30.2% aged between 18 and 24. This is something important to bear in mind before choosing to use TikTok for your business. Is your target audience using the platform? If your product or service is aimed at a much older audience, is it the right marketing strategy for you?
Using TikTok for your Business
1. Focus on a niche
When you first go into TikTok, it can be a little overwhelming with viral dances, comedy videos or informative content. Think about your industry and focus on a niche within that area. If you aim too broadly, your content may get lost in the sheer volume of content that fills it. For example, if you’re a brand that works in the gaming industry, you could narrow it down to a specific genre of game, or focus your videos on a specific style. Comedy is particularly popular as it’s often a form of escapism. The Xbox TikTok page, whilst it does show previews of upcoming games to inevitably increase interest and sales, heavily focuses on comedy content as it’s very popular with their audience.
@xbox Just your average day in the life of an Xbox 😅🛹 #Xbox #WhatToPlay #Skate #GamePass
2. Show your personality
Authenticity is key on this platform. Social media users value authentic, personal content over TV commercial style videos. They want relatable personalities and, ultimately, to be entertained. This helps you build trust with your audience, increasing your chances of making sales.
This doesn’t mean you have to put on a comedic personality if it doesn’t suit you. What you could do is share behind-the-scenes content, introduce your employees or your working environment, or even show simple processes that you go through day-to-day. Essentially, you’re humanising your brand.
@truffleshufflecom omorrow is the day! 🥹✨ Can you tell who the biggest Wicked fan in the office is? Hard, we know 🤔 #wicked #wickedforgood #elphaba #glinda #glindaandelphaba
3. Influencers and user-generated content
This is probably the most beneficial element of TikTok. User-generated content (UGC) is any video that is created by another person that mentions or shows your brand or products. Leveraging this is incredibly helpful for boosting your visibility, especially if you’re just starting out on the platform. You can ask people to create videos using your products, tagging you in them to help direct their audience to your account, and repost these on your own account to increase engagement.
These don’t necessarily have to be people with huge followings, which is great if you have a small budget. However, if you have got a little more budget, using influencers can really heighten your engagement. They have a much larger following and, as their job title suggests, their audience will be influenced by them and the content they create, increasing your chances of gaining more followers, interactions or sales.
You need to make sure you partner with influencers who fall into your niche. There’s no point working with someone who doesn’t have the right audience for your particular product. Take a look at Only Curls. Whilst they do post their own content, a huge part of their marketing plan is working with influencers and ordinary curly-haired users, either in paid partnerships or by gifting products. These people then create videos using their products and link back to the Only Curls brand page. This gives them original content that’s specific to them. Take a look at our blog all about influencer marketing here.
@tylajaexx Yes I have curly hair. No, it’s not low maintenance. This is a full-time job 💆♀️ Wash day routine, only using @Only Curls – never seen my hair this defined!! #curlyhairroutine #fyp #hairtok #washday #curlyhair #gifted
♬ love song (hesitations) (sped up) – Lofuu & Shiloh Dynasty & dprk
4. Hashtag challenges
Many businesses really want the opportunity to go viral. Now it’s not something that is a simple step-by-step process you can follow. It really is down to luck. But, there are some things you can do to help – getting involved in hashtag challenges.
If there’s a trending hashtag that suits your business or you can think of a creative way to use it, do it as soon as you can. They can be very fleeting, but the TikTok algorithms really push content that is trending. If there’s a hashtag that’s gaining traction, you’ll notice a sudden influx of content that uses it on your ‘For You’ page. It’s a great chance to get your brand in front of new potential customers, even if the video is nothing to do with selling your product.
If you’re feeling particularly brave, you could even create your own unique hashtag challenge. You can dare users to create original content, either as a viral trend or to win a prize. This will help with your organic reach, ideal if you have a small or no budget. For example, Lux Central created #luxuryquiz as they headed out onto the streets.
@luxcentraluk Can you name 3 brands beginning with the letter B? 🖤 #luxuryquiz #quiz #streetquiz #guessthebrand #brandchallenge
5. Use trending sounds
This is a big one! Trending sounds are picked up by the TikTok algorithms and bumped into people’s feeds every day. These can be songs, random sounds or people talking, which you can use in so many ways. Lip synching is very popular, or creating videos or photo collections related directly to the sound, but you can also just use the sounds in the background of your content. Even if the content you create isn’t related to the sound at all, the fact that you’ve used it will encourage TikTok to put your video on people’s feeds, and it will show up when people search for that sound.
6. Paid ads
If you have a little more budget to play with, you could invest in some paid advertising campaigns. It’s not exactly integral to your marketing strategy but it will give you some higher numbers if you want to promote a specific product or increase brand awareness. There are:
- In-feed ads – videos that are a minute or less that show in people’s feeds as they scroll through
- TopView ads – an auto-play video that shows when users open the TikTok app
- Branded hashtag challenge ads – hashtag challenges that you pay to show on the TikTok Explore page
- Brand takeovers – An image, GIF or 5 second full-page video that pops up when users open the app
- Branded effects – Filters, stickers or video effects created by brands that TikTok users can put on their own videos
7. TikTok Shop
If you have a physical product and have the capacity to sell beyond your website, the TikTok Shop is a great option to make use of. Purchasing items on TikTok has one of the easiest and fastest customer shopping journeys, making it great for quick-buys and shopping decisions.
It’s fairly easy to setup, and once done, you’re able to link to your shop from your profile page and create shoppable content. This includes specific video content linking to products to buy, going LIVE on TikTok, great if you have special deals for viewers, or using the affiliate programme – the easiest way to work with professional content creators and influencers to get your products in front of the right audience.
8. Don’t forget your Amazon page
Whilst setting up a TikTok Shop is a valuable idea, don’t forget about your Amazon store. Amazon loves external traffic coming to their website. You can add links to your Brand Store or to specific product listings in your videos. You can also add an external link on your TikTok profile page, which will be shown in your bio just under your profile picture. TikTok obviously prefers you encouraging people to stay in the app, however, by driving more traffic to your Amazon Store, it will improve your organic ranking within Amazon as the algorithms will boost your content from seeing high intent shoppers on your listing. You’re bringing them extra customers, making you a valuable seller.
By sending traffic to Amazon, you’ll also be able to track the effectiveness of TikTok by studying the metrics through Amazon attribution. If you’re someone who likes to see tangible insights and ‘proof in the pudding’, this is a great way to do it.
The verdict
See – TikTok isn’t that scary after all! If you approach it with an authentic strategy and focus on what you know best – your product and industry – you’ll have it mastered in no time. Even if you just post once a week, regularly creating content will increase your brand visibility and trust. It does involve investing some time and effort to create quality content, but quality over quantity is always best.
If you’d like to find out more about creating a TikTok marketing strategy, why not get in touch with our team.