Does TikTok make sense for a B2B company?
I definitely think there are strong arguments to be made that a B2B company should be spending a lot of time posting on TikTok, but it has to be done the right way. In fact, I may even venture as far to say that you should be creating TikTok-first content and then repurpose that content across other platforms.
In this post, I’ll walk you through a B2B TikTok strategy that discusses why your business needs to be on TikTok, and what are the best practices for doing it successfully.
If you don't plant seeds, there will be nothing to harvest
If you’ve read a few of my other blogs on branding, or watched some of my videos on TikTok, then you know how much I love the following phrase. If we don’t plant seeds, there will be nothing to harvest. I used this phrase to describe taking important and necessary actions at the top of the funnel, to make future sales at the bottom of the funnel easier. Another phrase I use often is, content is not king, video content is king.
A large percentage of potential buyers (let’s call it 95%) aren’t in a buying state. One tactic is to go after the bottom of funnel, the 5%, as they are in a buying state. However, we are competing with other companies who are also going after these same buyers, and acquiring them can be costly as they are spread out all over the world. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack. Any tactic to sell or convert is likely to miss. People love to buy, they hate to be sold.
What many successful brands do is to also focus on the other 95%, or the ‘top of the funnel’.
We primarily do this at scale by ‘brand building’ through social media and content marketing.
Either we convince these potential customers to enter a buying state and buy our product, or when they eventually do enter a buying state, they seek us out – they don’t even consider alternatives. This approach allows us to scale back on costly ad spend and allow our brand to do the work for us. When I look to buy a pair of shoes, I don’t go to Google and type, “Comfortable running shoes for men.” Instead, I go to Nike.com. I don’t even consider any alternatives. That’s the power of brand.
What Makes TikTok's Algorithm So Different
If you’re like many small to medium-sized B2B companies, then you don’t have a lot of bandwidth to manage yet another social media platform. But TikTok is not like any other social platform.
Traditionally, social media platforms have been follower based. The more followers you have, the better (e.g. Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, The Rock…). Every time they post, it shows up in the feeds of their millions of followers. For the longest time, it was a race to acquire the most followers.
TikTok completely changed the game. Unlike many other follower-based platforms, TikTok is an interest-based platform. People watch videos of people they don’t even know, but who are talking about or showing things that are aligned with their interests (sports, politics, movies, business…). The algorithm learns what types of videos you spend the most time watching and engaging with and serves you more of that. This ‘discoverability’ algorithm allows the average person to potentially go viral provided they make good content, consistently, overtime. This is important.
TikTok rewards good content, that is posted consistently, over time. So posting twice on a brand new account will not be enough to test this experiment.
Drawbacks to this approach:
- It’s a long-term strategy – we may not see results for many months
- There may not be a direct and measurable ROI
- It requires a commitment of time, effort, and money
In short, we would have to commit to doing this for a long time without a clear way to prove whether or not it’s working. With that said, we can track the following KPIs:
- Social engagement (videos, watch-through rate, likes, comments, shares)
- Site traffic
- Demo requests
- Trial requests
In some cases we may be able to tie this back to our TikTok, either through Google Analytics or self-reported attribution, but it may not be so clear cut.
Developing a TikTok Strategy for your B2B Company
If you’re just starting out on TikTok, you need to figure out the amount of resources (time, effort, money, etc.) you can reasonably dedicate to this. Here are some guidelines you may want to follow:
- The founder (or some other individual – real or fictitious) creates a TikTok account. People like following people, not companies.
- We can showcase the product, or mention what it does, but we’re not here to sell. Let people in the comments ask what we’re using and only then can we say. Indirect selling is a powerful form of sales. Sell without selling!
- 3 videos per week for 12 weeks (36 videos)
- Posting Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Post as much and as often as you can.
- Batch record / edit to save you time
- Must be optimized for engagement (editing, lighting, sound, framing, hashtags, description
Here are some examples of video series you can do, but there are many others.
Video Series | Concept |
Founder Insights | Have the founder talk about industry challenges, trends, anecdotes, greenscreen, topical news stories, stitched response videos, etc. |
Product Showcase Series | Show how fast, efficient, cost-effective your solution is, highlighting the different features or use cases of the product, but we don’t need to sell or even mention the product. The voice over doesn’t need to describe every step in the video, it can be added in post. It doesn’t need to be live since it’ll be edited down anyway. These are not demos, they are intended for entertainment, so the voice over and script needs to be the main thing, the product showcase is just used as a background visual. We can have a text overlay at the beginning and end which states the problem we are trying to solve. |
Question and Answer Series | Address common questions or misconceptions about the product or industry. There are a number of ways to get Q&As – answerthepublic.com, Ask Socrates, TikTok Creator Insights… |
Podcast / Interview series | Post short clips from interviews from industry experts. |
Live | You can do this after you build up a following – there’s a separate strategy for going live. |
You can use a Linktree to take users to the site, or a demo page, or free trial, or a VSL… and measure these.
- Related post:
How Patek Philippe Could Use Storytelling Marketing
Be Social
Social media is equal parts creating and consuming. Too often brands just post and ghost. This is the equivalent to having a one-way conversation. It’s okay to be social. Spend some time in the comments, reply, ask questions, listen, build some relationships, slide in some DMs.
This way, you will understand the nuances and context of each platform, be aware of the trends, get inspiration, etc.
If you need help with your social strategy, let’s talk.
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