TikTok Marketing Guide in 2022 for Dropshipping Businesses

TikTok, one of the fastest-growing brands and the most-used social platforms worldwide, enjoys over 2 billion downloads and over 1.7 billion monthly active users. Although TikTok is not totally for business, it is obviously a lucrative marketing channel due to its tremendous user traffic. What’s exciting, we found that many of our customers started running ads on TikTok and have got more sales.

 

In this article, let's dig deeper into whether TikTok marketing is suitable for dropshipping businesses and how to market on TikTok.

 

Is TikTok Marketing Suitable for Dropshipping Businesses?

 

TikTok marketing means promoting brands, products, or services on TikTok. With TikTok marketing, you are able to build your brand reputation, improve customer engagement, and boost your sales. For dropshipping businesses, there are the following benefits to market on TikTok.

 

 • Reach a Massive Audience

 

Since TikTok shopping was launched, Shopify store owners can easily run ads and sell products on TikTok. Also, it brings a wave of shopping on TikTok. For example, the tag “#tiktokmademebuyit” on TikTok has got over 7 Billion visits. Also, TikTok ranks as the second-biggest app in consumer spending. This means that if you are running an e-commerce business, whether you are selling products or services, there are massive audiences on TikTok to support your marketing.

 

 • Get More Sales

 

A TikTok Business account allows you to add your social media/ website/ store links in your bio. And TikTok shopping allows you to list your product catalog on TikTok. Besides, TikTok provides marketers with a level playing field in terms of influence and participation. Once your video goes viral on TikTok, you can get a large number of sales overnight.

 

 • Make Content Quickly & Easily

 

TikTok is known for its easy-to-engage infinitely scrolling interface with mainly 15 seconds to 3 minutes videos in length. So you only need to emphasize your main content in the video, such as your product or service, and the video itself does not need to be very perfect. So you can quickly and easily make content but get great effects.

 

 • Less Competition

 

Since TikTok is still a Creator-driven platform and a new marketing channel, many brands have not yet established a presence on TikTok. Everyone can get a fair chance to get influence and engagement on TikTok. Your TikTok account with no followers can get millions of views on a new video, and you can make the video easily get more exposure to your audience by adding hashtags relative to your product or service.

 

Therefore, before the fierce competition, building a TikTok marketing strategy can help you seize the opportunity in advance.

 

How to Market on TikTok?

 

TikTok provides marketers with an excellent opportunity to reach young audiences from all over the world in a creative and interesting environment, and a level playing field through its viral algorithms. You can easily start by the following four essential ways of marketing on TikTok.

 

 • Start a Brand Channel

 

You can easily start a TikTok channel with no budget. Your account name can be your own brand. But at the beginning, you’d better not over-promote your brand. The most proper way to start smoothly is using hot hashtags that are relative to your products or services to create content accordingly. Once your content resonates with your audience, your video will have the chance to gain great influence and engagement.

 

 • Influencer Marketing

 

TikTok influencers are those who have a large number of followers and a great influence on TikTok users. Influencer marketing means collaborating with these influencers to promote your brands or something. It is kind of like a celebrity endorsement.

 

If your product targets the audience of influencers, then your TikTok influencer campaign could be successful. Your brands can engage and collaborate in activities that use the skills and knowledge of these influencers. In most cases, you should let influencers create content because they know what’s trending on TikTok and what their followers like.

 

 

 • Hashtag Challenge

 

Hashtag challenge is one of the popular gameplay of TikTok. You can create hashtag challenges to engage your customers to create and post related videos. Since the hashtag challenge is given the #tag name, it is easy to be impressive. You can make good use of this feature to make your brand well known.

 

For example, Artists Jalaiah Harmon and Khalid led the Coca-Cola Company to make its debut on TikTok on December 8th through the #ShareTheMagic challenge. The #ShareTheMagic challenge is an opportunity for creators to express themselves through Coca-Cola’s "Real Magic" platform. This hashtag has gained 8B views on TikTok.

 

 • TikTok Advertising

 

The TikTok team announced to start TikTok ads in February 2019. Compared with Facebook and Instagram, TikTok ads have not yet become saturated. Therefore, if your ads are aimed at young people, especially women, TikTok ads are your most cost-effective choice.

 

There are three main types of TikTok ads:

 

In-feed native ads: Content and creativity are the core part of the ads. This type of ad can be 5-15 seconds with your website link or call-to-action. They are shown on the “For you” page and are skippable.

 

Brand takeover ads: This type of ad is 3-5 seconds appearing full-screen when users open TikTok. It can be a video or image that links to your website or hashtag challenges.

 

TopView ads: This is the upgraded version of brand takeover ads. They will also be displayed full-screen when users open TikTok. And then they will change into in-feed native ads for up to 60 seconds.

 

Hashtag challenge ads: By sponsoring TikTok’s challenges, your hashtag challenge will be displayed on the discovery page for six days, which gives more chances to go viral and reach more engagement.

 

 • Use Linkpop to Sell Right on TikTok

 

Linkpop is a new Shopify link in bio tool to helps create landing page with shoppable product links, store links and other links to your content. People can buy your products directly on Linkpop. Besides, a Linkpop page can be accessed to all your social media pages. By adding a Linkpop link on your TikTok bio, you can easily direct TikTok users to your store, products, and social media pages. It is a free and useful tool that you can use for selling right on your social media pages.

How to Build a TikTok Marketing Strategy?

 

 • Find Your Right Audience

 

TikTok does not cover all audiences. The majority of TikTok’s audience is young people between 16-34 years old. Currently, brands that target Gen Z and millennials can find the largest potential customer base on TikTok. Besides, TikTok is available to more than 150 countries but is restricted in India, so you cannot expand your influence in India through TikTok.

 

By searching for keywords or hashtags related to your niche, you can get a rough idea of how many users are creating videos with the hashtags related to your niche, and your audience is included in these users.

 

 • Analyze Your Competitors

 

You can find videos and accounts related to your niche. These include your audience and your competitors. Find out your competitors. They usually have promotional info and store links on their profile pages. Then all you need to do is to see what content they are creating, what hashtags they use, and how users react to their videos. You can reduce the rate of making mistakes by learning from their experience.

 

 • Start a TikTok Business Account

 

To arrange TikTok marketing smoothly, you have to start a TikTok Business Account and get familiar with the features of TikTok. Because only business accounts are able to set up ads, data analysis, and TikTok shopping features.

 

 • Create Content Regularly

 

The probability of going viral only by posting one video is very small. So you should regularly post different types of videos and use different hashtags to increase the probability of viral. And TikTok’s algorithm likes accounts that regularly post videos.

 

 • TikTok Data Analysis

 

No matter what ways of marketing you are running, you have to analyze your account data to measure marketing effects. Luckily, TikTok makes it easy to track how your content is performing with its Analytics data. You just need to upgrade your account to a Pro account. Then you’ll get every data you need in three sections: Overview, Content, and Followers.

 

You Are the Next Creator

 

As a new marketing platform, TikTok is also a great stage of e-commerce with huge potential. Since TikTok is the international version of China's Douyin. They are basically the same. There will be a big trend towards influencer marketing, live stream shopping, and TikTok shopping. All you have to do is to seize the opportunity in advance. Find your place on TikTok and you are the next creator.