Why Do Marketers Need To Know All About TikTok?

Unless you’ve been deliberately ignoring the new social media video-based app, Tiktok- which frankly a lot of us have been- you’re quite aware of the immense popularity and engagement the app and its users get. It’s easy to see why Marketers would want to utilize an app that has 500 million active users worldwide. In comparison, even Instagram has daily 500 million active users and monthly, 1 billion active users. Tiktok, a much newer app, is catching up to it, by a scary number. 

If you’re the owner of a business where you have to dropship, like most marketers, Tiktok is one of the apps you should pay attention to. In the case of Tiktok, as ads have been a recent thing on the platform and hyperlinking to a particular website isn’t possible, your aim is to increase your brand value on the platform.

 If you can get your content trending on the platform, you would be reaching out to a wider audience, who just might feel motivated to check out your site. Here are some ways you can get the best out of TikTok as a marketer. 

1 . Make A Profile

As a marketer, this is an important, if a slightly slower way to market your products on the platform. What’s more, if you have a low budget, this might be your only way. 

The theory is simple. You create a profile, make content revolving around your dropshipping business, and build your audience from the ground up. If you already have customers on your dropshipping site, you can also encourage them to follow your TikTok account to get updates on the latest items you have. 

As for what kind of content you can do regarding your dropshipping business? Tiktok is a wonderland for video content. You can create comedy shorts where you deliberately namedrop some of your items or participate in challenge videos. Challenge videos especially receive high engagement and a lot of them revolve around products like the #shoechallange, which should help you promote your items. 

Anything involving fun music is especially popular on Tiktok. Hashtags like the Gitup challenge where users dance to a pre-decided routine on the beats of the Blanco Brown received 157 million views for almost all of the videos on it. The only thing you need to do is deliberately wear some of your dropshipping products or have it visible in the video. If the product is eye-catching enough, it would make viewers curious, who would be motivated to check out your profile and then maybe, eventually, check out your website. 

Remember, you can’t make videos that look like commercials. Users aren’t there to see the commercials they see on television anyway. Instead, your content has to be just like the rest of Tiktok users, easy and fun, and something to remember. 

2. Tiktok Ads

While marketers do use this Tiktok tool, as a dropshipping business owner, you might not be too keen on it. Regardless, since this is a tool that exists at your disposal, this is something you should consider while forming your marketing tactics. 

First, the ad option is actually limited to certain countries and the price range is quite high. You have options like the pre-roll ads where an ad appears for the targeted audience the moment they open the app, in-feed ads where the users come across certain businesses while scrolling, and promoted hashtags where a special hashtag is promoted by Tiktok and encourages users to make use of it. However, all of this can range from $50k to $150k. Easy to see why these are mostly used by luxury brands or big conglomerates. 

For a small business owner or even a medium-sized one, this isn’t usually a viable option. You can keep a track of the ad options to be one of the first ones to use it when TikTok is willing to lend ad options to more countries and lowering the price range. 

3. The Influencers

As a marketer, you can never ignore the influencers. Whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, or Tiktok, they’re the ultimate rulers. If you can’t get your own content trending and ads are too expensive, they’re the perfect medium. You can pay them an amount that doesn’t necessarily make you go bankrupt and you don’t have to spend too much time coming up with Tiktok contents on your own. 

Influencers with large followings get scouted by all kind companies, from dropship business owners to the large brands. As TikTok doesn’t allow hyperlink on videos though, you will have to ask the influencers to add your website on their bio or mention it in the comments section. Of course, this reduces the amount of traffic you would have got otherwise but it’s still a good amount. 

Final Thoughts

To get a better idea of what kind of TikTok content you should make as a marketer and dropshipping business owner, invest your time by doing research on the kind of videos that are popular on the platform. Once you find a format that would suit your brand image, you can jump in. 

Tiktok is meant to let your creative side out in the form of videos. It’s fine to try out new things there. Who knows, you might end up starting a new trend. 

The one thing you need to remember is that TikTok users enjoy videos that are fun. Videos with shock values that end with viewers ultimately laughing is quite liked on the platform. So, if you manage to create the right kind of videos, it shouldn’t take long before your followers start growing at a huge rate. You might never have to employ an influencer or use TikTok ads if you can get the formula for TikTok videos down. 

You also have to be patient. You aren’t going to attract attention from the start, though some users are lucky enough to go viral at first try. It might take some creative video inputs but you will certainly start reaching more people one day soon. 

Lisa W.

Lisa is an eCommerce and digital marketing specialist with over 6 years of experience helping online businesses grow through data-driven strategy and hands-on execution.

She has worked across dropshipping and direct-to-consumer channels, focusing on product research and performance marketing. At Sell The Trend, she creates practical, research-backed content to help merchants make confident decisions.