Many B2B businesses mistakenly assume TikTok can’t drive leads for their purposes, instead taking for granted that TikTok is simply consumer-facing. In fact, TikTok’s explosive growth means it’s actually quite valuable for businesses of all types. At Fujisan, we love using TikTok for our clients because there’s just so much engagement across a surprisingly diverse group of demographics.
In other words: Even if you don’t think TikTok is right for you, there’s a pretty good chance it is.
Why TikTok can actually be an essential tool for B2B marketing
Despite its reputation as a solely consumer-facing platform, TikTok has a couple characteristics that give it B2B advantages as well.
First is the same thing that also makes it so successful in B2C marketing: Engagement.
Whether measuring this with metrics or just anecdotally, TikTok is pretty clearly the most engaging social media platform. Users spend more time per session there than on any other platform, including Instagram and Twitter, and are more likely to interact with the things they see.
For example, according to Social Fly (presenting findings from Social Insider’s 2024 benchmark study), TikTok has an engagement rate of 2.65% — a number that out of context might sound small, but is actually gigantic in comparison to other platforms: Instagram at .7% and Twitter at only .05%.
Furthermore, creators on TikTok who have cultivated a modest-but-attached following of 15,000 or fewer have an engagement rate of almost 18%. If you play that right — by collaborating with others or using your company’s own account — you can have astronomically higher results than you would on any other platform.
After TikTok’s superior engagement, comes their second advantage: Robust audience targeting.
Simply put, TikTok has a unique ability to target niche audiences that you don’t get on other platforms. We discussed more of this in a previous blog about TikTok’s custom and other audiences, but beyond the robust targeting features alone, there are really extensive interest (AKA prospective) audiences based on both standard and unique-to-TikTok categories.
You can include these to target hyper-relevant-to-you audiences — including business decision makers.
The standard basics include:
- Location
- Gender
- Age group
- Language(s)
- Income
- Operation system and OS version
- Device model
- Connection type (i.e. wifi, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G)
- Carriers
- Internet service provider
Beyond that, you can also go more specific with targeting based on interests, too, including options — and sub-options within these categories — such as the following list, which isn’t even exhaustive:
- Life services
- Sports and outdoor
- Household products or appliances
- Home improvement
- Business services
- Pets
- Beauty and personal care
- Travel
- Education
- Vehicles
- E-commerce
- Games
- Food and beverage
…and a lot more.
And that’s not counting the targeting options unique to TikTok which you can’t find on Meta’s Instagram or Facebook. Many of these also include more in-depth, granular options under them too:
- Spending power
- Purchase intention: For example business services, news, apparel, games, sports, and more
- Video interactions: For example society, performance, culture, education, and technology, nature, beauty, and more
- Creator interactions: Fashion and beauty, relationship, technology and education, motivation and advice, talent, fitness, DIY, oddly satisfying, pop culture, outdoor activities, travel, gaming, and more
- Hashtag interactions: Pretty much endless, but examples could be #cybermonday or #backtoschool, with bundles offered from there
Your Top-of-the-Funnel B2B TikTok Strategy: Awareness and Retargeting
As is probably intuitive, one of the best ways you can use TikTok for B2B is simply by driving brand awareness for broader exposure at the top of the marketing funnel. While this of course doesn’t directly drive conversions, it introduces new audiences to your brand, making them more familiar and likely to trust and/or turn to you in the future. Essentially, you’re laying a necessary foundation for future conversions.
Furthermore, you can gain more insight on your potential audience with this method, and from there can use the top-of-the-funnel data to retarget to users on other platforms like Google or Meta’s ad channels. From there, you’re now taking the “laying the foundation” and building on that, bringing potential business clients closer to converting.
How TikTok’s Specific Content Capabilities Lend Themselves to B2B
Despite its B2C-relevant reputation, TikTok’s long-form abilities actually make it extremely valuable for B2B as a place for informative, more in-depth explanations of services, products, etc. Particularly if you’re selling more complex solutions, this can be far more compelling than solely written or static-visual content trying to convey the same information, where it can sometimes be more difficult for users to process.
In this case, when it comes to ads themselves, we don’t recommend they actually be 10 minutes long — although for TikTok or YouTube organic informative content, that length can be great! — but we do generally recommend making TikTok instructional ads at least a minute. Otherwise, save the rare exception, you’re unlikely to be thorough enough to help or intrigue potential clients.
Image Source: wralnews
Under this umbrella of informative content could be:
- Product demos
- FAQs and answering questions
- Tutorials and explainers
- Behind-the-scenes looks
- General educational content
And more!
By thinking of TikTok as a legitimate storytelling platform instead of “just” a B2C space or place for more frivolous videos, you can start to see all the opportunities it has for both paid advertising and organic educational videos. This is especially valuable if your business has more complicated products or services, with TikTok’s format giving potential clients a more concrete, clear way of visualizing what you offer.
Measuring your TikTok B2B Success
Like we mentioned above, much of B2B advertising and content marketing on TikTok is more aimed at top-of-the-funnel awareness initiatives, which can make measuring campaigns a bit more complicated in some ways. After all, advertising with this purpose is about the foundation for future conversions, but present conversions are still pretty dang important too.
That said, while the overall purposes and measurements of driving awareness within the grand scheme of your business is more complex, the measurement of potential awareness itself is still pretty basic.
Before and during your campaigns, establish which key performance indicators (KPIs for short) are especially important. This can vary a bit depending on your larger strategy, current status, and other priorities, but the KPIs that are most important here tend to intuitively imply an increase in awareness — even better if they point to greater awareness and users feeling compelled to take further action by engaging with your content or even website.
Generally, these KPIs are those like video views, engagement rates, website traffic, leads generated, and similar ones. Of course, generated leads are far less likely to be a focal point for awareness campaigns, so (in the likely case your B2B campaign is focused on awareness) don’t get too hung up. Know which are your primary focuses for your needs specifically.
In the end, TikTok is growing and, despite preconceived notions many have about it, it’s a valuable tool for B2B companies. For awareness and early-stage engagement especially, TikTok is your friend (And of course, we at Fujisan love to help our clients with their TikTok work, so don’t hesitate to reach out if you could use a hand!)