TikTok Strategy for Brands: Expert Tips

TikTok is proving to be a major marketing heavyweight as more brands leverage the app to find and delight their audience. If you‘re a brand trying to find your footing on TikTok, you’ve come to the right blogger.

Feb 25, 2025 - 13:02

TikTok is proving to be a major marketing heavyweight as more brands leverage the app to find and delight their audience. If you‘re a brand trying to find your footing on TikTok, you’ve come to the right blogger.

I spoke with social media expert Annabelle Nyst, former senior marketing manager for HubSpot‘s brand social channels and current social media content manager G-P.

But before we get into her insight, let’s go over a few things.

Table of Contents

How TikTok Can Help Your Brand

One of TikTok's most obvious benefits for brands is its ability to boost brand awareness and discovery. As of 2025, TikTok is estimated to have over 2 billion users, which is a lot of people who can potentially see your brand.

Even better, more and more consumers are learning about brands' products and services through the platform. In one of our recent surveys, 47% of consumers prefer discovering new products via short-form videos like TikTok.

47% of consumers prefer discovering new products via short-form videos like TikTok., according to HubSpot's State of Consumer Trends Report

TikTok can also help you build a community around your brand. Take Gymshark, a fitness apparel company, for example. The England-based company gained a huge following on the platform by teaming up with micro-influencers, sharing relatable memes, and creating challenges that engaged its audience, fostering community.

The brand faced the challenge of competing with massive brands like Nike and Adidas, both of which have more brand recognition and larger budgets than Gymshark. However, by community building, Gymshark has amassed almost as many followers as both competitors.

Furthermore, if you‘re looking to tap into Gen Z, a generation with significant buying power, then there’s no question your brand should be on TikTok. According to Statista, 78% of Gen Z social media users in the U.S. use TikTok.

TikTok Marketing Strategies

I‘ve seen brands use various strategies to market themselves on TikTok. Here are a few successful strategies I’ve noticed.

Influencer Marketing

When TikTok gained major traction in 2020, brands struggled to adapt to the creator-driven platform because TikTok users value authenticity and content from real people more than brands.

So, like Gymshark, brands began collaborating with influencers, and to this day, it‘s one of the platform’s most tried-and-true strategies. Influencers can humanize and introduce your brand to their audience, thus expanding your reach.

If you‘re working on a tighter budget, consider working with micro-influencers, creators with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. They’re typically more affordable than macro-influencers and celebrities.

They also tend to have a tighter-knit community and stronger bond with their followers than influencers with larger followings, so they'll be more likely to foster community around your brand.

Tutorials

Posting tutorials is a great way to establish authority and trust in your brand. They show that your brand is knowledgeable in its industry and can highlight your products' many uses.

ColourPop, for example, often posts short tutorials showing TikTok users how to achieve unique looks using the brand‘s products.

Trending Audio

Of course, TikTok wouldn't be TikTok without its trending audio. If you didn’t know, TikTok allows users to repurpose songs, phrases, and other sounds and incorporate them into their videos. Brands often join in the fun by connecting the audio to their products or services.

Remember, not every trend fits every brand, but we'll touch on that later.

Alright, let's get into these expert tips.

1. Know where your audience hangs out.

It‘s important to know where your audience hangs out online. For some brands, this includes TikTok, but for others, it does not. For instance, if you sell retirement homes, you won’t get much traction with the platform's predominantly younger audience.

“TikTok is obviously all the rage right now, and it makes sense that brands want to jump in. But before you do so, make sure to take time to ask the right questions: Does it make sense for our brand to show up on TikTok? Is our target audience there?” advises Nyst.

If you're debating whether to promote your brand on TikTok, remember to base your decision on the most important factor: your target audience.

2. Find your “why.”

Getting started on TikTok can feel overwhelming, especially when you don't have a goal to work towards.

Think of your goal as your compass. It influences the videos you make, the topics you cover, and your overall strategy. You don't need to have a specific goal right off the bat — and it will likely change over time — but you should have an idea of the general direction you want to go.

Here are a few common goals:

Build an engaged community
Increase brand awareness
Improve brand image
Promote products
Generate website traffic
Expand your audience
Provide customer service
Educate your audience

It‘s just as important to track your progress. Look at several key performance indicators (KPIs), such as profile views, video views, video likes, and follower growth, to see if you’re inching closer to your goals.

3. Determine how you'll provide value.

The next step is determining how you want to present your brand on TikTok. For Nyst, this starts with answering a simple question: how will you provide value to users?

She told me, “Asking this question upfront will help you establish your purpose for being on TikTok and what your brand's presence might look like on the platform.”

Remember what I said about Gymshark? The brand gained serious traction by providing value and entertaining its fans with fitness-related challenges, skits, and clothing hauls.

Because TikTok is quirky by nature, it creates a misconception that “serious” brands don‘t have a place on the platform. This isn’t true. However, you may have to approach your brand from a different angle.

For example, the Washington Post has raked up over 1 million followers on TikTok. If you haven‘t seen their videos, you might expect serious content. Instead, you’ll find comedic skits about the latest breaking news.

The goal is to provide value in an engaging way. This is achievable for many brands — serious or not.

4. Save time by creating a content calendar.

TikTok has billions of active users and millions of conversations on the platform daily. Plus, trends come and go rapidly. In short, TikTok can get overwhelming. For this reason, Nyst recommends planning a content calendar.

“Things move quickly on TikTok, and gaining new followers often depends on having a bank of existing content on your profile. So, think ahead to how many videos a week you'd like to post and what kind of topics you'll focus on,” Nyst says.

That said, TikTok is a trends-driven platform, so make sure to leave space in your content calendar to jump on trends and create time-sensitive content.

You also need to decide how often you should post on TikTok. Nyst favors quality over quantity, advising brands to aim for 1-2 videos per week. In other words, consistency is key.

Another upside to posting consistently is that the more you post, the more insights you gain from your viewers. This will help you understand what topics and video styles they respond to the most.

Want to know the best day and time to publish your videos on TikTok? Check out this helpful guide.

5. Insert your voice strategically.

When you first join TikTok, it's tempting to join every conversation, hop on every trend, and participate in every challenge. However, Nyst says brands need to set guardrails and be strategic with their content.

“There are so many conversations happening at once on TikTok, and they're changing all the time. It's important to remember that your brand doesn't need to be a part of every single conversation – so try to pick the ones where it makes sense to insert your voice,” Nyst told me.

She adds, “Sure, the latest dance trend might be exciting, but can your brand actually bring something new, unique, or valuable to the table?”

Not every trend or challenge will align with your brand or its messaging. On top of that, if you can‘t add a new or unique spin, it’s better to skip it entirely. But don't worry about missing out — trends on TikTok are a dime a dozen, and another one is right around the corner.

Back To You

TikTok remains a viable (and exciting) marketing platform. Before jumping in, make sure that TikTok makes sense for your brand. Once you're on the platform, focus on consistently targeting your audience with valuable content.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in November 2022 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.