Every ad platform gives businesses the ability to target the right audience. TikTok is no different! Though it may seem harder to navigate because of how new the platform is and how it works via swiping through videos. Finding the right TikTok audience can be difficult as well, because the demographics are generally younger than other platforms. Today, Business Warrior is going to tackle that problem and walk you through how to find the right TikTok audience for your products and services. 

How to Find your Target Audience

With any platform, you have to stop and ask yourself who you want to see your ads. On TikTok, it’s even more important to think about what interests your audience may have. TikTok allows you to transcend the typical demographic information – gender, age, and income – by targeting specific interests and passions. Brands who have the ability to not only tap into these interests, but engage with them and relate to them, can elevate their status on TikTok to unseen heights. 

TikTok advertising allows you to enter all of those interests into the platform when you are creating your ad campaign as well, to ensure you’re reaching the right people. If you’re not getting the results you want, then it may be time to change those hobbies! 

Here’s how you can do just that. 

Explore and Engage with Your Subcultures

TikTok requires a genuine connection between your brand and your audience. You have to open your door and allow your audience to spend quality time with your content, and therefore your brand. Understanding what type of content your target audience engages with is the first step. 

First, take your audience avatar and make a list of things you believe they will be interested in. You can do this on TikTok by using the “Discover” tab at the bottom of the app. This tab allows you to search trends, hashtags, music, products and services, people, and more. 

By typing in an interest or keyword in the search bar, you can immediately see what hashtags are being used in that conversation and how many views it’s getting. The more views, the more popular it is, but fewer views can also mean a more passionate and niche subculture that could be a potential brand opportunity.

Let’s make an example. Say your audience demographic is the following: 

• Men
• Ages 35-60
• Top 5% of earners

Hobbies: boating, golfs, travel and tourism, business, fashion

You can search for all of those hobbies to see the top results for them. Say you find three videos: golf trick shots, travel highlights of a 5-star hotel, and tips to be a successful businessman. Of those three top videos, you decide that golf trick shots wouldn’t appeal to your audience and neither would the tips video, thus leaving travel highlights. You can take this idea and spin it to match your brand, such as how your service/product fits into the 5-star lifestyle. 

Dabble in Some Duets

TikTok’s Duets feature is a great way to capitalize on an already popular video to build your own views.

With Duets, you can share a split-screen with another user’s video to piggyback on some proven content to collect your own views and engagement. These work great for brands looking for exposure! It also helps you find out which trends and duets resonate with your target audience based on their viewer and engagement metrics. 

The Drawbacks of Advertising on TikTok

TikTok is not an ad-only platform. In fact, it’s expected to have more organic/natural videos than promotional content. The biggest challenge retailers face is that promotional content should make up no more than 20% of branded content. This is to ensure your profile is giving the viewers something with real value – it’s not all sales, it’s something they can laugh with, duet with, and generally enjoy watching. 

For example, let’s say you own a hotel. You can make funny reels about things left behind in hotel rooms, you can make customer service tip videos, you can parody the “they don’t know I know this,” trend, and then you can add in an advertisement about why people should stay with you. This creates a very strong, fun, and carefree version of your brand that would appeal to an audience that wants to have fun on their vacation. 

Content That Works Well on TikTok

The number one form of content on TikTok is trends – viral memes, dances, music, and recreations of someone else’s content to fit a unique idea. 

Trends usually encompass hashtags, songs, and TikTok challenges. You can find trending topics via the discovery area in the TikTok app. When you’ve identified a trend that matches your product and content intent, focus on the trend itself instead of marketing your company. 

Another type of content that performs well on TikTok is educational content. These are recommendation videos, insights, reviews, how-tos and things like that. Every business can utilize educational content fairly easily, such as industry insights and tips, and quick how-tos related to your industry. 

From there, do some testing with content! Based on views and engagement, you’ll be able to determine which type of content – either educational or trends – resonates more with your demographic. 

Want more TikTok content? Check out our blog on creating a killer TikTok ad here!