How To Use TikTok For B2B Marketing

TikTok is the fastest-growing social media platform in the world, and it has the potential to reach over 50% of the US adult population. There are plenty of B2C companies that are doing a good job of leveraging TikTok to build up their community and drive more sales, take Duolingo’s TikTok page for example, but why don’t we see more business-to-business (B2B) marketing on TikTok?

As a B2B brand, it can be easy to justify not using TikTok as a marketing channel. After all, most people still think TikTok is an app reserved for dancing teens, but it has expanded far beyond that. Over the past few years, thousands of niche communities like cleantok and booktok have formed on TikTok.

B2B marketing on TikTok is all about finding the community that resonates with your product the most and creating valuable content for that community. This is exactly what we do on our TikTok page at Collabstr, and as a result, we’ve been able to generate thousands of dollars in new business as a B2B company.

So what are some methods of B2B marketing on TikTok?

Create Organic Content

TikTok is known for its organic reach. The platform offers far more organic exposure than traditional platforms like Facebook or Instagram. This means that you can get a good amount of eyeballs on your B2B brand simply by posting organic content to your TikTok page.

So what types of organic content can you post for your B2B brand?

• Case Studies – Case studies are a great way to attract potential customers without directly advertising to them. You can create a case study by finding success stories in your industry and showcasing the things they did right to your audience. For example, if you are a digital marketing company that makes video ads for your clients, make some case studies on the best B2B video ads and why they’re so effective. You can take ads from companies like Red Bull and tell people why they’re so effective. Naturally, you will attract people that are marketers or business owners looking for someone to make ads for them. Case studies allow you to position yourself as an expert, this is great because when your audience is ready to make a purchase, they’ll be coming to you first.
• How-To Videos – How-to style videos are a great way to attract your target audience on TikTok. By providing value through education, you will build a loyal following of potential customers. In order to create effective how-to style videos for your B2B brand, you must first understand your target customer. If your target customer is other business owners, then your content should appeal to them directly. For example, if I run a B2B graphic design agency, I might want to create a video that shows other people how they could create a free logo for their brand. By providing value, you attract an audience that trusts you.
• Behind the Scenes – The raw nature of short-video content gives businesses a chance to be more transparent. Unlike on other platforms like Instagram, it’s okay to post unpolished and raw behind the scenes content on TikTok. Posting vlogs, meetings, and discussions which showcase the day to day operations at your B2B company will build trust between your business and your target customer. At the end of the day, humans connect with humans better than they connect with companies. 

Find TikTok Influencers

If you’re unsure about how to get started with creating content for your B2B company on TikTok, consider finding influencers in your niche to get you off the ground.

TikTok influencers can help your B2B business in a variety of ways. Let’s dive into a few of the ways you can leverage influencers for your B2B marketing on TikTok.

• Sponsored Content – One great way to leverage TikTok influencers for your B2B marketing is by finding and hiring influencers in your niche to create sponsored content for you. Let’s say that you’re a cloud hosting provider and you’re trying to get more exposure to business owners through TikTok. One great way to go about this would be to find an influencer in the technology space, that has an audience of other technologists who often require cloud hosting for their products. Take this TikTok creator, for example, she’s a software developer, and her audience is most likely going to be interested in hearing about cloud hosting solutions.
• TikTok Ads – Another great method of leveraging TikTok influencers is by getting them to create content for your ads. Once you find an influencer that genuinely understands your product, you can pay them to create high-quality video ads for your B2B product or service. Upon the influencer creating the ads, you’ll be able to whitelist their content directly through TikTok, or you can simply get the original files from them and run it as ads on other platforms as well. Using influencers to create your TikTok ads can add a layer of social proof and authenticity that does not exist with traditional brand-owned content.

• Hire TikTok Content Creators – Another way to leverage TikTok influencers for your B2B brand is by simply hiring them to create content for you. TikTok influencers are extremely familiar with the platform, its algorithm, and the audience that consumes content on TikTok. Using this information, they can create captivating and exciting content that gets a large viewership. This might be something that your team is not able to do, which is fine, In that case, find an influencer that understands your B2B product or service, and pay them monthly to create content for your page. 

When looking at TikTok as a B2B marketing channel, it is important to open up your mind to the different approaches you can take as a B2B company on TikTok.

First, you should identify your target audience. Who is most likely to find your product useful? Once you have identified this audience, you need to find out who is already capturing this audience on TikTok. 

From here, you can either hire the person who is already doing a good job of capturing the audience, or you can use their content as inspiration and begin creating your own content tailored to the same audience.

Find TikTok Influencers Follow Collabstr on TikTok

Disclosure: Martech Zone is using its affiliate link for Collabstr in this article.

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