July 21, 2022

Not Your Grandma’s B2B: How Businesses Can Leverage TikTok

By: Ricciardi Group

 

M to the B….Cheug Style…Charli D’Amelio…if these are part of your social media recall then you may be part of the 1 billion active users TikTok sees every month. The platform is already a critical point of engagement used by over 100 million US accounts: an advertiser’s dream. Filled with short, digestible content that keeps us snacking, TikTok creators  offer a new entry point for engagement that is fast transforming the way in which  brands connect with their customers. 

While it’s no secret that B2C brands can find their niche on TikTok, how can B2B companies make their mark on this popular and rapidly growing app? Not typically known for being “on fleek” should enterprise SaaS, rintech or regtech companies actually consider the platform as part of their social media mix?  

The short answer is: YES! Sharing creativity and connecting with new audiences is core to TikTok and should be added to any brand strategy—B2C, D2C, or B2B. According to emarketer, “69% of B2B buyers look for content that educates them on how to solve their problems and 64% prefer a more human tone than formal or academic.” Authenticity is the key ingredient to any brand’s distinction, and TikTok enables this in spades. Whether it is touting a product, building an employer brand culture, or promoting an event, the platform is versatile, agile, and impactful.

In fact, HP recently reported some notable data with regard to awareness opportunities TikTok can provide through running in-feed-ads: 3.8% growth in ad recall in 7 million TikTokers, a view completion rate that was 1.5x the benchmark; and a report that 99.4% of all impressions were brand safe, up from the 98% benchmark.

 

Mastering TikTok for B2B

Not every social media platform is created equal.  In fact, Tik Tok considers themselves an entirely different category. At the recent P&G Signal Conference Blake Chandlee, president of global business solutions remarked “We’re not a social platform. We’re an entertainment platform that’s driven by the community. And so the kind of content that you experience for your feed is going to be different.”  For Instagram you may have the stylized, filter-laden, aspirational imagery. For Twitter, succinct and compelling copy statements in 240 characters or less. On TikTok, short videos are the rule of the day. There are three general kinds of videos that tend to perform well.

  1. Inspirational (like this one: Adobe’s Lennie the Blog motivation to creatives)
  2. Educational (take a peek at What is a Controller: Netsuite)
  3. Trend-focused (check out Hedge Funds Move to Miami: Morning Brew

A natural starting point for building out your TikTok presence could be through employer brand initiatives.  Showcasing the internal culture, and using your people as brand ambassadors, is a strong recruiting tool that meets potential recruits (especially Gen Z) where they are already consuming content. In the case of Insight Global, this means integrating trending filters and audios to appeal to TikTokers looking for a job in the recruiting industry, sharing their new office, or even showing interns how they can apply for a position at their company.

If video production is not a part of your internal marketing team capabilities, a unique service TikTok offers is access to their creator bank. Tapping into this pool of experts can help marry your brand value proposition seamlessly into the immediate and concise nature of a TikTok video. These expert content creators have a unique perspective that can contribute greatly to a company’s brand reach. 

 

Key takeaways

For starters, TikTok allows for an emotional connection that is often forgotten in the B2B industry, because it’s easy to forget that businesses are composed of people with ideas, emotions, and preferences. And what do people want? To feel like they can trust before utilizing a product or service. 

Additionally, while the platform is still generally used by a younger, less enterprise-level demographic, there is a message we can all learn from TikTok: educating through entertainment allows for extreme creativity and targeted peer-to-peer interaction; and this approach has much more impact than any ad ever could.

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