How To Use TikTok For B2B MarketingBy Sophie

Is TikTok Good For B2B Brands?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock with no signal for the last 2 years - you’ll know that TikTok is one of the fastest growing platforms in the world and the place for all brands to be. At the end of 2021, it had reached over 3 billion global downloads - beating both Facebook and Instagram and firmly securing its place as one of the top dogs in social media.

But it’s not all just dancing and filters - TikTok is an excellent space for B2B companies to be a part of. The platform tends to retain users better than all competitors - which means they’ll come back to your channel for more. Another benefit for brands is that TikTok is great for cross-platform promotion. Users are frequently sharing their favourite TikTok’s to Twitter and Instagram - increasing the rise of viral creators and helping trends to migrate onto other platforms and drive new users to the app.

If you are ready to reach new audiences and engage on a more personal level, then read our top tips for B2B companies on TikTok below.

The Power of the Individual

The most successful brands on TikTok are producing content that doesn’t feel like a sales pitch. Users want to see real people, creativity, and content that’s entertaining, informational and personal. Popular brand content on TikTok has included marketing managers, employees and CEO’s getting in front of the camera and getting personal. Try introducing your audience to the people behind your business!

User Generated Content

Interacting with user generated content is a great way to expand your audience on TikTok. Similarly, encouraging followers to engage with your content and create their own by sharing their own experiences or thoughts is a great way to open the lines of communication. For example, in order to engage in conversations that are already happening in your niche, why not try using the TikTok ‘stitching’ feature? You can do this to add your opinion or insights from your business/department showcasing your expertise in your industry. Another approach to take would be to train key stakeholders / key opinion leaders in your team so that they’re able to post from their own professional TikTok accounts. That way you can interact with them from your business account, and start to build a community on the platform that is specific to your niche. This will attract those interested in similar topics. The new ‘repost’ feature also means you’ll be able to reshare any of their most relevant and engaging content to your business account.

Adjust Brand Voice

An important thing to remember when joining the world of TikTok as a B2B company is that TikTok sets the tone. It’s not a newsletter, website or a boardroom - it’s a whole other ball game. 20.3% of TikTok users are aged 40-49 and 11% are over 50 so if that’s your target audience, you’re looking in the right place. However when it comes to your content delivery, adjust your tone to fit the environment

Here’s a few things to keep in mind:

• Hook that immediately draws in the viewer
• Think snappy, sound bites
• Be authentic
• You can afford to be more informal/casual
• Look to other popular TikTok creators and identify trends in their style

Equally captions are much shorter and snappier than on Instagram where longer captions are more engaging. This is not the case on TikTok - the shorter the better!

Trends and Challenges on TikTok

By far the easiest and arguably most fun way to create on TikTok is by jumping on trends and challenges whenever you can. Applying them to your business and your industry will help you target your audience no matter how niche. Doing this is also likely to help boost your reach and engagement as TikTok’s that use trending sounds, filters and relevant challenge hashtags are more likely to get more views and go viral.

Industry News

Some niche B2B companies may find it more difficult than others to engage with UGC, trends and challenges. For these brands, creating videos off the back of industry news in a ‘TikTok friendly’ way will help educate audiences and showcase your expertise. A good example of a B2B company doing this is Shopify. They’ve got a unique and creative way of sharing informative content relevant to their industry while fitting the app style and audience consuming it.

Interested in a TikTok training session for your team? Email us at hello@weswwim.com and we can share some information on our training packages.