10.18.2022 Sarah Goodall
If you’re looking to attract a younger audience to your B2B business, TikTok could be exactly the platform you need. Although, the older generations are starting to get on board the TikTok train.
Over 60% of TikTok users are 16 – 24 years old and 26% of users are 25 – 44 years old.
Most importantly, the people who use TikTok are highly engaged, spending an average of 52 minutes per day on the app, and checking in an average of 8 times per day. I think of it like YouTube but with a much more engaging bite sized video clips.
According to Glassdoor, almost 80% of candidates research companies on social media. In one of my earlier blogs, I explained how social media can be used to attract talent. If you’re looking to attract younger talent, TikTok is a good place to start.
When a company someone is interested in is active on a platform they use a lot, it can speed up this research process, helping future candidates to qualify themselves before a role is even advertised.
Companies can then attract candidates who are better qualified for roles and maybe even streamline their hiring process.
But attracting new talent isn’t the only thing TikTok can be used for. There are a lot of well-established B2B brands who use it as part of their marketing mix. For example, Pandadoc Duolingo and RefineLabs.
I’d like to get into the potential use case of TikTok for B2B brands, but first I’d like to explain to you how the algorithm works as it’s important for context.
How The TikTok Algorithm Works
When we think of TikTok, most of us probably think of dancing videos, or videos with lots of jump cuts. While these are popular, that’s not the only way to be successful on TikTok.
TikTok has one of the best recommendation algorithms out there.
Much like other social media algorithms, it wants to keep you on the platform for as long as possible. It achieves this by providing you with more of the type(s) of content you engage with. So, the more B2B videos you engage with, the more you’ll see.
The same is true for your audience. If they’re looking for content about manufacturing, for example, TikTok will recommend more manufacturing content to them over time because it knows that’s how to keep them on there for longer.
Ways To Use TikTok As A Brand
Businesses don’t need to immediately switch all their marketing budget over to TikTok. It’s about experimenting to see if it’s worth the time and investment longer term.
One of the benefits of publishing on a new platform before it becomes big in an industry is that it’s easier for brands to become leaders in the space. This is because there’s less competition on the platform.
Less content creators for an industry doesn’t mean less audience, though. Especially when you look at the size of TikTok’s audience, and how long they spend on it each day.
As there are lots of different styles of video on TikTok, there are lots of ways businesses could use it as part of their B2B marketing strategy. Here are just a few examples:
Educational Videos
Educational videos are a big part of TikTok. There are educational videos and accounts which focus on everything from marketing to manufacturing and everything in between.
Some share content in the more typical TikTok style, with dancing and music in the background, while others keep it simple by recording themselves talking to the camera.
The three-minute videos give businesses or employee advocates time to share industry insights, dispel common industry myths, or introduce innovations in the industry. If you’d like to go into more depth, you could do a series of videos, or promote a longer video hosted on the company’s website.
TikTok’s ‘duet’ feature, which allows users to share someone else’s video and add their own content to it, is a unique way to respond to industry related myths, or agree with something another influencer has posted.
Product Demos
Three minutes isn’t much time, but that’s the beauty of it – it forces creators to keep things short and sweet. There’s no room for filler content.
When it comes to product demos, it’s important to get to the benefits and outcomes as quickly as possible. Otherwise, people will swipe away before getting to the meat of the video.
Not everyone will watch a whole series of videos posted by the same creator, or watch them in chronological order, so it’s important to cover the key points in a video and make sure that if you are doing a series, make it work as a standalone, but mention that it’s also part of a wider series.
Social Recruitment
TikTok is a really effective way to show off a company’s culture.
Companies could post videos of training sessions, team-building activities, or talk about the company culture and why the business does things in a certain way.
Culture is really important for younger audiences, so demonstrating brand values in this way helps people to qualify themselves as a potential cultural fit.
Showing culture in video format is much more powerful than writing a blog post about it. Audiences get to experience it for themselves, allowing them to picture what it could be like if they worked for the company, too.
Create Empathy
Videos where people can self-identify often perform well on TikTok.
Simple topics like ‘3 signs you know you’re a B2B marketer’ create a connection between the brand and the audience.
If this is the first video someone sees, it may make them want to explore other videos by the brand to see what other videos they can relate to.
For a more personal touch, you could encourage employees to set up their own accounts and use them to share advocacy content. Videos could be directly related to the business, or more to do with their personal journeys and helping others with their careers.
Content that creates a common ground between the creator and audience shows the mindset of the company, further helping potential candidates and customers to connect with the brand.
Conclusion
TikTok is officially here to stay. While the most talked about content is often aimed at consumers, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for B2B on there. It may be in its infancy when it comes to B2B, but that makes it the perfect time for businesses to start experimenting with it.
TikTok can help businesses to connect with younger decision-makers, or build relationships with them as they build their careers. Fostering those relationships now can lead to better deals later on, as those Gen Zers and younger millennials become decision makers themselves.
If you’d like more help with your B2B social media strategy, check out our social media strategy video.
