How Can Kiwi Businesses Leverage TikTok for Growth?
Gone are the days when TikTok was known merely as a platform for dance challenges and viral trends. Today, TikTok is a powerful tool that businesses can leverage to drive growth. As New Zealand’s digital landscape evolves, Kiwi businesses have a unique opportunity to tap into TikTok’s dynamic and engaging environment to reach a broader audience and achieve their business goals.
According to a report by Hootsuite, TikTok’s popularity as a marketing tool has been growing, with businesses increasingly harnessing its unique platform for engagement and brand building. The NZ Digital Marketing Report by the NZ Marketing Association also highlights a growing allocation of marketing budgets to social media platforms, including TikTok, due to their effectiveness in reaching target audiences. In this article, we will provide practical tips on how your business can utilise TikTok for growth.
Create a TikTok Business Account
The first step is to create a TikTok business account. Opening a business account will grant your marketing or admin team access to a range of features tailored for brands, such as in-depth analytics, advertising options, and promotional tools. With these tools, marketers can easily track performance, analyse audience behaviour, and adjust content strategies in real time. This data-driven approach is crucial for optimising content and ensuring it resonates with the target audience, paving the way for more effective marketing campaigns.
Understand Your Customer’s Online Behaviour
In the marketing world, knowing your audience is crucial as it helps you cater to their needs and develop a customer-centric content strategy on TikTok. As a business, you can use TikTok to understand your customers and competitors, observe what content resonates with your audience and drives engagement, and discover how you can stand out amidst the noise.
For example, suppose you run a local café based in Auckland. In that case, you can leverage TikTok by checking out what café enthusiasts are watching online—whether it’s a day-in-the-life video of café owners or ASMR videos of coffee recipes. You can share the story behind your café and start building a personal brand through TikTok.
Likewise, if you operate a startup veterinary clinic in Christchurch, you can explore popular videos about pets, such as funny or inspiring stories, and create educational videos or marketing videos on pet care or share personal stories about how your clinic was established. This approach helps you connect with pet lovers in your target audience.
Through audience insights available on a TikTok business account, brands can learn about their followers’ active times and content preferences. This knowledge enables businesses to craft videos that are more likely to be liked, shared, and commented on, creating a ripple effect that extends their reach organically.
Create a Fun yet Customer-centric Content Calendar
Once your marketing team has researched what content to publish to increase brand awareness or sales, creating a customer-tailored content calendar is crucial for maintaining a consistent presence on TikTok. This planning tool helps businesses align their content with marketing goals, capitalise on trends, and ensure regular posting. By mapping out content in advance, businesses can create a cohesive strategy that keeps them relevant and engaging on the platform.
Publish Entertaining or Valuable TikTok Content
TikTok is a platform where creativity and entertainment reign supreme. Businesses need to focus on producing high-quality, engaging videos that capture viewers’ attention. Whether through humorous skits, informative content, or visually stunning displays, the key is to make the content shareable and memorable.
For instance, Kiwi.com, a travel company, creates a series of entertaining videos highlighting must-see destinations around the world, not just in New Zealand. Their content, which includes travel tips, hacks, and hidden gems, serves as a go-to for those seeking travel inspiration and new getaways.
Engage with TikTok Trends and Challenges
Participating in TikTok trends and challenges is a highly effective way for businesses to gain visibility. Take Whittaker’s, a well-known chocolate brand in New Zealand, which publishes creative yet on-brand trending videos on TikTok. From behind-the-scenes content to using trending sounds to promote their products in a fun way, Whittaker’s effectively connects with its audience.
Trending content is prioritised by TikTok’s algorithm, allowing brands to reach a broader audience. By creatively incorporating trending sounds, hashtags, and challenges into their content, businesses can appear more relatable and current, enhancing brand recognition.
Utilise User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is one of the most impactful forms of social proof on TikTok. Encouraging customers to create content featuring their products fosters a sense of community and authenticity. New Zealand-based beauty brand Essano excels at using user-generated content to advocate for their customers and promote their products. This approach makes their brand appear trustworthy, friendly, and engaging! Sharing UGC is an excellent way for businesses to humanise their brand and build a stronger connection with their audience.
UGC demonstrates to potential customers that real people are using and enjoying the brand. Kiwi businesses can incentivise UGC by creating campaigns where customers share videos with branded hashtags or participate in contests. This not only boosts engagement but also creates a library of authentic content that can be reshared for further reach.
Tap Influencers for TikTok Collaborations
Collaborating with TikTok influencers can significantly expand a brand’s reach. Influencers have dedicated followers who trust their recommendations, making their endorsement highly valuable. Kiwi businesses should seek local influencers aligning with their brand values and target audience. By partnering with these influencers, companies can gain exposure to new customer segments and drive higher engagement.
For example, Boohoo, an e-commerce brand selling clothes, accessories, and shoes, has amplified its brand awareness by collaborating with influencers, blending its content strategy with UGC and personal branding to engage fashion-forward audiences effectively.
Consider Targeted Advertising
Targeted advertising can be a game-changer for businesses looking to elevate their TikTok strategy. TikTok offers various ad formats, including in-feed ads, branded hashtags, and top-view ads, which can target specific demographics. Kiwi businesses can use these ads to drive website traffic or promote particular products or services, converting TikTok viewers into customers.
Conclusion
For Kiwi businesses, TikTok offers a dynamic platform full of growth opportunities. By understanding the audience, engaging with trends, leveraging user-generated content, and creating engaging and creative videos, businesses can build a strong presence on TikTok and achieve their marketing goals.
Numerous Kiwi brands, such as Kiwi.com, Essano, and Whittaker’s Chocolate, have already utilised TikTok to put their brands on the map. Now is the time for New Zealand businesses to embrace TikTok’s potential and transform their digital strategies.