3 Ways to Use TikTok to Increase Brand Awareness
TikTok, the 5-year-old platform that has matured from teen dance challenges to a marketing behemoth, might be the most accessible and affordable brand awareness play on social media. The powerful (and mysterious) algorithm serves relevant content based on user behavior and has redefined what it means to go viral.
Franchises are uniquely positioned to leverage TikTok and introduce a national brand to TikTok users in a fun and engaging way.
What’s Brand Awareness Anyway?
First, a definition. Brand awareness refers to the level of familiarity of your brand in the public’s minds. Measuring brand awareness is tricky; most marketers use a mix of relevant metrics to evaluate changes in awareness over time.
Most traditional marketing tactics, like event sponsorship or print ads, focus entirely on positioning the brand and its products or services in front of the right audience. These types of campaigns pose one big challenge: measuring the impact of a newspaper ad or TV spot is inherently difficult, and the results are murky at best.
Related: Should Your Franchise Be on TikTok?
3 Ways TikTok Can Increase Awareness
Introduce your brand to new audiences and delight past customers with a dedicated TikTok strategy. Here are a few wrinkles to add to your TikTok playbook.
- Remarketing on TikTok. TikTok offers cost-effective remarketing options for advertisers. This ad option allows brands to serve paid ads to users that have already engaged with your posts with a share. You can also create a look-a-like audience based on those users to target a much broader audience without wasting budget on users with zero interest in your product or service.
- Hop on trends. Recreate videos using trending audio or concepts. Done right, your video could be served to a substantially larger audience than normal – think millions of video views on a single post. (Fun fact: the most popular TikTok video of all time has more than 2.2 billion views.)
- Tag, you’re it. Use the right hashtags to amplify video reach. Hashtags help users find relevant content and give the TikTok algorithm clues as to what your video is about, so mix in hashtags that will help a wide audience discover your content.
See how you’re doing; some common brand awareness metrics used in reporting include:
- Brand impressions on social media
- Brand impressions on the search engine results page (SERP)
- Branded search queries
Why TikTok Is the Ultimate Brand Awareness Play
TikTok serves curated content based entirely on your interests – no two users have the same experience. That level of personalization has propelled the platform to meteoric growth. It surpassed the prestigious 1 billion monthly active user threshold in September 2021 and was the most downloaded app of 2022, picking up an additional 850 million users by the year’s end.
While it is true TikTok is more popular with younger generations, regardless of your franchise’s target audience, there is a niche waiting to be capitalized on. Plus, investing in brand awareness on TikTok now better prepares your franchise to speak to the needs of the next generation.
It’s not just scale, either. TikTok users spend more time on the platform than any other social media platform – an average as high as 89 minutes per day, if a leaked TikTok report is accurate.
So, how can your franchise utilize TikTok’s size and eyes to stay top-of-mind now and for the next generation?
Why Does Brand Awareness Matter?
While it’s certainly useful for potential customers to know you exist, there’s a bit more to it. Effective brand awareness informs consumers about what you do, establishes trust in who you are and creates a generally positive association with your brand. In addition to monitoring the brand awareness metrics we’ve noted above, do your research. Use surveys and reviews to evaluate how well customers and the public know your franchise and determine how to improve your messaging across all channels.
Oneupweb is a fully integrated franchise marketing agency with a dedicated social media marketing team.
