TikTok for Small Business: How To Grow Your Brand on TikTok

In the digital age, TikTok marketing has quickly become one of the best ways to showcase a variety of businesses. If you know your audience is part of the approximately two billion active users worldwide, it’s worth considering as part of your marketing strategy. 

According to The Washington Post, “light users” spend an average of 30 minutes a day on the app, while “power users” spend an average of four hours or more per day. TikTok is known for memes, dance challenges, and viral moments, and it’s attracted top brands and small businesses for its extensive reach. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find top sellers who aren’t at least experimenting with content on the app.

As with any social platform, TikTok has its unique quirks, filters, and trends to navigate. 

But fear not—this article provides help from small-business TikTok pros and ideas to get started. And if you’re already on TikTok, you might pick up some inspiration.

Why small businesses should be posting on TikTok

TikTok is a powerful tool for building brand awareness beyond your existing audience. The app’s homepage, known as the For You page, or FYP, serves users a never-ending stream of content its sophisticated algorithm determines they’ll like. This means potential high value customers can find your videos without directly seeking out your brand.

TikTok primes users to discover new brands directly in the app. According to Capital One research, “49% of users say that TikTok creators inspire them to explore the products and brands they promote.” Additionally, it notes that Americans spend an estimated $32 million per day on the app. This unique take on discoverability has allowed accounts of all sizes to become overnight viral sensations. 

Erin Dubs, owner of fitness clothing brand Azur Fit, has amassed 120,000 followers on her TikTok account. 

“TikTok is not something that can be ignored,” Erin says. “It definitely gives you a step up if you do have it.” 

She says that when she has a popular TikTok post, the effect is immediate: “When that happens, there’s consistently always 300 people on the website all day long. It’ll bring in 60,000 views over the course of just a few days.” 

The first time Erin went viral on TikTok, her inventory was wiped out.

Even TikToks with smaller view counts are valuable, she says, because they still drive traffic to her website and Instagram. Other founders have seen similar results, using TikTok for business as a way to bring awareness to their shops. 

“It’s eyes on your website, and it works really well,” Erin says.” Sometimes I just need that reminder, like, ‘Oh yeah, make a TikTok today.’”

Best practices for using TikTok for your small business

• Draft a comprehensive TikTok marketing strategy
• Set up a TikTok Shop and connect it to your ecommerce store
• Use TikTok Analytics

Learning how to use TikTok can help you find viral success and connect with a target audience that’s obsessed with your product. To make the most of the platform, consider these best practices:

Draft a comprehensive TikTok marketing strategy

Before you get up and running on TikTok, draft a TikTok marketing strategy for reaching and engaging your primary audience. 

Outline the types of content you want to create: What aligns with your brand values? What is your intended audience interested in? How much content do you have the capacity to produce, given your budget and resources? 

Consider opportunities for TikTok affiliate marketing and TikTok influencer marketing as part of your marketing plan. Both of these tactics reduce the burden of content creation and help you reach a much larger audience.

Although TikTok is famous as a platform where brands achieve staggering organic reach, it also offers a variety of paid ad types. TikTok ads can take different forms, such as in-feed ads, branded hashtag challenges, or sponsored effects. 

To start TikTok advertising, create a TikTok Ads Manager account. From there, choose between ad types and goals, select an audience, set your budget, and upload ad creative.

Set up a TikTok Shop and connect it to your ecommerce store

TikTok Shop is a set of features that lets users with TikTok for Business accounts sell directly and make money on TikTok. It allows you to transform your account into a digital storefront, creating shoppable video posts and live shopping experiences. Your audience can purchase products from your shop without leaving the app.

The most straightforward way to sell on TikTok Shop is through Shopify. The TikTok for Shopify integration allows you to connect your ecommerce store directly to TikTok to manage inventory, sales, and advertising in one place.

Use TikTok analytics

The TikTok analytics dashboard allows you to access data about your content’s performance and audience. Useful metrics include post views, likes, comments, shares, and traffic source. You also see which of your videos attracted new viewers and contributed to TikTok follower growth. The app breaks down audience demographic information, including age, gender, location, most active times, and other accounts and posts they’ve viewed. 

Use the TikTok analytics tool to assess the success of your content strategy. This helps you create content that reaches new followers while engaging your current following.

7 TikTok ideas you can use for your small business

1. Give a peek behind the scenes
2. Help other small business owners
3. Show how your products are used
4. Give the backstory of your new product launch
5. Put your employees center-stage
6. Interact with customers
7. Jump on a trend

Among TikTok’s popular formats, there are endless ways to engage with users authentically. Explore what works most naturally with your business operations, and use the following ideas to develop a TikTok content strategy:

1. Give a peek behind the scenes

You don’t have to get into the nitty-gritty details or edit long videos, but showing how you run your own business brings a human touch and satisfies curiosity. Packing an order in a video is a fun way to show the care you put into each order.

“I always tell people to be transparent on TikTok,” Erin says. “People want to see proof of what you’re doing, whether you’re shipping out your very first order or you’re talking about your sales on a launch day.”

Even a simple carousel of photos can provide intrigue. You’d be surprised what people find interesting that you may just see as part of your day. 

“You always have something to talk about, no matter what stage you’re at,” Erin says.

 You can also try filming a TikTok of:

• Organizing your products or office space
• Celebrating milestones like your 100th sale or an anniversary
• Preparing for a new product launch
• Showing how you design and select products

2. Help other small business owners

There are other small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs on TikTok who love to hear advice, and you can provide that. Your advice can draw in not just other business owners but also potential customers, creating a virtuous cycle of awareness and engagement.

For Erin, sharing advice started when a commenter asked her about running her business. She began posting TikToks about her business and giving advice, which opened her up to a whole new target audience.

Since then, she’s had multiple viral TikToks, gained followers, and seen an increase in sales.

“It was really cool. I wasn’t talking directly about my product, I was giving business tips, and that was turning into sales,” she says. 

She realized that taking a more human approach, as opposed to simply pushing product, is what actually sells her clothes.

Read: Fashion Marketing: 6 Ways to Stand Out in the Industry

3. Show how your products are used

By mixing in entertaining, educational, and inspirational elements, you can feature your products in every TikTok without looking overtly promotional. 

Hannah Perry, the owner of Floof Cotton Candy, found success on TikTok organically. Because her cotton candy cakes were so novel, she found herself using the platform as a tool for education. 

“I was sick of explaining how to care for your cake, so I put together this little instructional video,” Hannah says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “The video wasn’t meant for everyone—it was meant for the people who ordered a cake. So it was a huge surprise when it went viral on TikTok. The amount of comments and emails from people wanting one was insane.”

Keep instructional content interesting and aim for a wide range of situations, like: 

• Product in action. Rather than tell viewers how your product works, show them. For example, a shoe brand could show someone running a 5K in their shoes. Another video could explain the engineering that went into making the shoes comfortable.
• Unexpected product use. If your product has more than one use case, show that in action. When you repurpose a handmade ceramic cereal bowl to hold matchbooks, for example, you not only show its utility but potentially reach an entirely new audience. 
• Daily routine. Show how your product fits into a daily routine, even if it has a small role to play. It helps put your product in context and lets viewers picture using it themselves. 
• ASMR. The crackling of a lit candle, the scratch of a pen against paper, and the clinking of champagne glasses—all reflect the lovely sounds and textures of lived experiences. Zooming in on your product in this way can highlight its quality, uniqueness, or beauty without directly calling out those features. 

Beauty brand Fluff, for instance, creates ASMR TikToks featuring its refillable compact.

4. Give the backstory of your new product launch

You can build up hype for new products before even launching them by teasing them on TikTok. This gets customers ready to buy when the product is available and also shows that you’re able to grow your brand. Tinned fish brand Fishwife does this to great effect, showing off products in action to build excitement. 

Alternatively, you can lead with the backstory when launching your new product on TikTok. For example, when Fluff launched its refillable glass bottle made in partnership with Heven, it gave its audience a peek into the design product. This showed just how much time and care went into the new product, building excitement and appreciation. 

Use launches to showcase what makes your products unique, build demand for them, and talk about how you’re responding to what your customers want. You could even post these in a countdown series coming up to launch day, building excitement.

5. Put your employees center-stage

TikTok is an app driven by people and personalities. TikToks of people simply talking to the camera are the bread and butter of the app, but you don’t need to have the sparkling charisma of a full-time influencer to make this format work for you.

Activewear brand Set Active has a “behind the brand” series that showcases employees and gives a healthy dose of personality. In talking about how Set Active links up with other brands, the brand partnerships lead gives viewers insight into the brand’s core values. It’s humanizing in part because she answers questions on a couch with her laptop open, as if viewers are getting a chance to swing by the office.

Your employees are some of your best spokespeople because they know your brand inside and out. Experiment with letting them talk directly to the camera about what they’re working on and why, so customers can feel invested in the journey. 

6. Interact with customers

TikTok’s tools lend themselves to interaction in a few ways.

The first is duets. If this option is on, you can create a TikTok that includes someone else’s video beside it. This is a fun way to react to customers who create videos showing off their orders or reviewing your products.

The other option is creating a video from a comment. If a customer asks a question or gives you a compliment, you can click Reply and film a video that includes an overlay of their comment. Fishwife does this regularly, using follower comments to keep the conversation going about new product launches, recipes, and merch. 

Either way, interacting with customers makes them feel seen and appreciated, and gives you another option for posting content.

7. Jump on a trend

TikTok is never short on trending sounds, stickers, memes, or challenges. Show off your product to a trending sound, song, or lip sync to an audio clip with a caption that ties it back to your brand, as Set Active does in this TikTok:

Set aside time to scroll through TikTok and see what’s trending at the moment with an eye for opportunities to make short videos quickly. Following other businesses and seeing what they’re posting is a good way to get inspiration.

“If I’m gonna have some downtime on my own, I’ll just scroll TikTok for an hour,” Erin says. “I’ll just listen to the sounds and think: How can I apply this to my office? How can we put together a skit or apply it to something funny that happened the other day, even if it’s not necessarily business-related?”

Hopping on a TikTok trend is also a good way to get traction for a video, because people will be looking for that particular sound or meme. “They get a lot of views if you can get on them early,” Erin says. “You can definitely pop off with those.”

Read: How to Find TikTok Sound and Song Trends

Get out there and make some TikTok magic

By now, you should have a few business ideas for getting started on TikTok, or for reviving your account. Each format can be used in different ways, so even just using these eight ideas, you’re well on your way to posting regularly.

TikTok can be fickle, and knowing the best time to post on TikTok is important. Some videos will become success stories, and some won’t. Just keep trying new ideas and experimenting. You never know when you’ll make it big. 

Erin says there’s always a chance something simple and unassuming will go viral. “It’s amazing. It’s free advertising that would otherwise be literally hundreds or thousands of dollars to get that kind of exposure. So why not take a chance?”