Leveraging TikTok Marketing in 2025 to Outshine Brands

Gone are the days when TikTok was just a short-video entertainment platform. With reaching over 1 billion users worldwide and outpacing YouTube in watch time statistics, TikTok has come into the limelight for marketers and advertisers. Gigantic brands like Zara, Guess, The Washington Post, San Diego Zoo and more have nailed it right when it comes to leveraging TikTok ads and marketing to enhance business reach and engage target audiences. 

If your business is still away from TikTok marketing, 2025 is the right year to begin with! This new year, benefit from an updated marketing strategy. Drive astounding results from TikTok ads. Here is a complete guide for the beginners.  

TikTok: The Latest Key Statistics for Digital Marketers in the UK 

Humans are curious by nature. They aspire to know the ‘reason’ before starting a task. Certainly, they must also aspire to know the ‘reason’ behind embracing TikTok marketing in 2025. Digital Marketers in the UK can leverage a lot from TikTok marketing. Looking at the TikTok key stats can reveal how beneficial it can be to start a TikTok marketing campaign:

• Presently, TikTok boasts of having over 1.5 billion users worldwide, paving the way for a ready-to-exploit large business reach. 
• TikTok is broadly popular in densely populated countries like the USA and China with nearly 150 million and 752 million monthly users respectively. Such numbers must not be ignored by any business eying for growth. 
• Among the Gen Z, TikTok is astonishingly more popular than Instagram. 
• By 2027, TikTok is expected to double its user base from 1.5 to 3 billion users worldwide. 
• Individual users spend about 23 hours a month on TikTok, equivalent to a day.
• About 30% of TikTok users have used TikTok Shops to buy a product, while 33% are lined up to use the same. 
• Surprisingly, 72% of TikTok users bought a product advertised on TikTok, of which 45% were inspired by some influencer. 
• Currently, only 26% of marketers are using TikTok for marketing. 

When the competition is small with 26% marketers alone, and the tendency to purchase a product from TikTok Ads is as high as 72%, then why are you not among those 26 % of the marketers? 

Do not worry! It's never too late though. You can still benefit from TikTok advertisements and start a new year with a new marketing campaign. 

Understanding TikTok Audience 

The audience of TikTok is quite different from social media platforms like Instagram and X (Twitter). TikTok audience is also different from the audience of YouTube. The like counts and view time metrics on TikTok indicate that audiences prefer more ‘user-generated’ content. Content that revolves around real-life experiences, simplicity, parody, and originality gets more watch time on TikTok. 

Especially, for brand marketing TikTok is a boon. Researchers have found that the TikTok audience is tolerant towards TikTok ads. They prefer to watch ads in lieu of access to certain services. Also, Gen Z prefers to buy branded products and tag the brand on TikTok inviting organic and free-of-cost traffic and engagement. This way, the audience of TikTok prefers more ‘authentic’ and ‘user-generated’ content. Rather than highly polished content. 

Analysing Your Target Audience 

So, based on the above TikTok Stats and audience analysis, clearly, a brand must consider TikTok as a crucial part of its social media strategy. Especially, if you are a Clothing, Fashion, Jewelry, E-Commerce, Footwear, Luxury, accessories, or DIY brand, TikTok must be your primary social media marketing platform. 

Study your target audience well and find out what kind of content they prefer more. TikTok has a built-in feature of adding videos to its pre-defined playlist. Start posting relevant, engaging, and subtly promotional content in different playlist genres. See where more engagement is coming from. And here you are done with your Target Audience Analysis on TikTok. Now let’s find out some tips that will help your brand emerge as a leader on the TikTok platform. 

Tip No. 1: Using a Blend of Organic and Paid Content for Your TikTok Marketing Campaign

As stated earlier, TikTok audiences prefer more ‘user-generated’ and ‘original’ content than highly professional videos. TikTok audience likes to see ‘real-life’ and ‘behind-the-scenes’. Eventually, bombarding a TikTok account with paid ad campaigns as soon as it is created is not the right practice. 

But, blending organic and paid content is the right strategy to capture people’s attention. If a TikTok account showcases only ads, then the audience might repel from it considering that this account only ‘sells’. Therefore, incorporate more user-friendly and user-generated content. 

For instance, The  #InMyDenim campaign from Guess featured TikTok audiences. Guess invited the TikTok audience to buy Guess outfits and make transition videos of changing from raggy clothes to Guess Denims. This campaign perfectly killed two birds with one stone. At on hand, it brought tremendous engagement for the TikTok account of Guess. On the other hand, the sales of Guess Denims gained momentum. 

Similarly, Elf Cosmetics’ #EyesLipsFace campaign. Elf created its ‘original audio’ and ‘original hashtags’. As per TikTok algorithms, original audio and hashtags get more traffic. Resultantly, Elf could reach and engage a wide range of audiences while also enjoying great sales. 

Pro-Tip

Maintain a balance between TikTok Ad content and organic content. Posting One or Two ads on 10-15 unpaid TikTok videos can prove a best practice. Engage your Target Audience the way Guess and Elf did. Rather than ‘selling’ your product through ads ‘aggressively’.

Tip No. 2: Set TikTok Marketing Campaign Objectives with Wisedom

TikTok Spark Ads is an amazing feature of TikTok that allows its users to run ads on already live content. This way, a brand may start by posting original video content on TikTok and wait for organic growth. Later on, the post may be boosted with Spark Ads. 

While using a live Tiktok video for Spartk Ads, the brand needs to set Campaign Objectives. TikTok offers 3 kinds of Ads Objectives namely

Awareness 

A new brand which is less popularly known must aim at creating brand awareness. Therefore, the TikTok video ad content must be such that it creates brand awareness. While creating brand awareness, the objective option ‘awareness’ is what to choose. 

One of the finest examples of creating brand awareness through TikTok videos in the UK, is Brand Pierre, a ring-making business. During the lockdown period, Brand Pierre posted many Tiktok videos of ‘manufacturing’ rings out of used steel spoons.

This strategy brought massive ‘recognition’ to the brand and users were hooked to such videos. By providing ‘original’ content in the ‘behind the scenes’ genre, Brand Pierre nailed it right on TikTok. 

Consideration 

If a brand wishes to drive traffic towards its website or E-commerce store, then the ‘Consideration’ objective will do! The best example of satiating the ‘consideration’ objective through ‘user-generated’ content is Zara’s ‘Zara Models Be Like’ trend. 

However, it is not clear whether this trend was initiated by Zara itself, still, this campaign indirectly made Zara noticed. In this trend, people parodied the poses of Zara models in digital ads by exaggerating the ways they prose. This trend made people laugh and check out more ‘poses’ by coming to the Zara website and searching for Zara products on E-Commerce platforms. 

Certainly, humans are vulnerable by nature in terms of shopping. While mocking fun of Zara models, if some product impressed them, they bought it. 

Not only this, but Zara also started the ‘haul’ trend and it showcased its different clothes and accessories by collaborating with influencers. This too made people visit their websites to ‘see more’. 

Conversion

If a brand needs its target audience to ‘take an action’ such as ‘buying’ a product or service, then the ‘Conversion’ objective has to be chosen. Similarly, Ad campaigns that encourage users to ‘install’ an application must also use ‘conversion’ as a campaign objective. Brands using Conversion as its campaign objectives need to add encouraging ‘Call to Action’ text for the TikTok users. 

The best example in this category was the #Gymshark66 campaign by the UK’s leading Fitness brand Gymshark. Gymshark is popular for its fitness apparel and accessories in addition to its fitness training programs in the UK. 

This brand launched a campaign in which they encouraged their audience to get fit in 66 days by installing Gymshark’s fitness app and sharing their transition with TikTok videos. 

Millions of people installed the application and tagged Gymshark using #Gymshark66 hashtag. This brought engagement not only on the TikTok account of the brand but also an astounding number of app downloads. 

Indirectly, the sale of gymming clothes by Gymshark also gained momentum during this campaign. 

Tip No. 3: Taking Advantage of Creator’s Face Value

Certainly, a brand might have its own ‘brand value’. But, when it comes to leveraging TikTok for content marketing, the creator’s face value adds hype to the brand. It helps the brand reach a possibly ‘untouched’ audience. Influencer marketing on TikTok is an amazing technique to expand business reach. As a result, a brand must choose a creator very judiciously when going for influencer marketing. 

Say, for example, Gucci has set an impressive example through its #MadeYouLook campaign. It tied up with the renowned American singer and performer Meghan Trainor for her popular song Made You Look. Then, collaborated with influencers from varying countries to capture global attention. 

Saira Mirror, a Thailand-based influencer, Ty Lê, A Vietnamese TikTok Star and Make Up Artist, Gianna Stardust, a famous YouTuber and Social Media star from South Korea, Embla Wigum, a Tiktok Influencer and Makeup artist based in London all were part of this campaign. 

Resultantly, in spite of being an Italian Brand already famous and much demanded worldwide, Gucci could secure the trust and capture the interest of Chinese, US-based, and UK-based audience simultaneously. Therefore, in TikTok marekting strategy, leveraging creator’s face value helps generating original content and subtly marketing products simultaneously. 

Tip No. 4: Marketing Like ‘Not Marketing’

If TikTok content appears to be ‘selling’ aggressively, soon people would start repelling from it. Users come to TikTok for consuming ‘entertaining’ content. As a result, ‘advertorial’, ‘highly promotional’, and ‘marketing’ content is not preferable. Even if a brand collaborates with an influencer who robustly markets the former’s products, it will harm the face value of the influencer as well. 

Therefore, marketing on TikTok must be subtle. In place of asking people to buy your products or services, a brand must focus on showcasing the ‘quality’, ‘value’, and ‘usefulness’ of the products in an engaging manner. 

Consider the ‘unboxing’ and ‘hauls’ by various brands. They just don’t ask people to make a purchase. Rather, they collaborate with famous TikTok creators. These creators show all these branded products by wearing or using them the best way, like in the afore-mentioned example of #MadeYouLook campaign by Gucci. 

Influencers made transition reels and showcased their makeup and styling up skills with Gucci products. This genre of content tends to ‘inspire’ the TikTok users to ‘try’ these looks. So, marketing without marketing is the key!

Tip No. 5: Targeting Visual & Musical Intelligence of the Audience

According to Howard Gardener, a renowned Developmental Psychologist humans have 8 types of intelligence of which Musical and Visual-Spatial are two types. The theory suggest that humans ‘understand by’ and ‘demonstrate’ different types of intelligence. 

So, suppose an individual is not good at ‘drawing and painting’, but is a great singer. Then, it means that this individual is ‘musically intelligent’. 

It is due to musical intelligence that students in the early years of education learn values, alphabets and names of fruits, vegetables, flowers etc. through rhymes. 

Similarly, visually appealing and musically spell-bindign content trends more on TikTok. Visual appeal and musical symphony are the core aspects of ‘entertainment’, the aim of TikTok users. 

So, make sure that your TikTok video is visually appealing and couple the video with a good music. These will make your target audience hooked to your content.

Zara’s TikTok advertisements in which it combines virtual reality and product display are another perfect example from Zara. 

Some Technical Tips to Grow TikTok Marketing Compaign Fast

Hopfully, you are well-trained in TikTok video content generation if you have read the blog till here. Now here are 3 technical tips that will help your TikTok videos reach a wider audience and perform better. 

Tip No. 6: Add TikTok Pixel Code to Your Website 

Only posting videos on TikTok just for fun is not good for your brand. You are on TikTok for gaining sales and revenue through TikTok ads. Therefore, measuring success of your TikTok campaigns is more important than TikTok views. But how will you measure the that? 

Add a JavaScript code called TikTok Pixel to your website. This will help you collect information on traffic coming to your website through TikTok content and tracks events a website visitor from TikTok performs on your website. Follow these steps to do that: 

Setting Up TikTok Pixel

• Login to Your Brand’s TikTok Account
• Go Ads Manager
• Navigate like: Assets > Event > Manage > Create Pixel

This way, you will receive a JavaScript Code customised and personlised for your website. Collaborate with your IT team and let them incorporate TikTok Pixel to your website. Soon, you will start getting data insights on your TikTok campaigns. 

Tip No. 7: Measuring the Metrics

TikTok Pixel is just the primary step. Note that you will need certain metrics to measure success of your campaign. These will include: 

CTR 

Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is a metric that lets the TikTok Ad Campaign owner know the percentage of ‘clicks’ on an ad CTA in comparison to total number of views. 

For an instance, if views on your TikTok ad video are 1 million, and 0.5 million have clicked on your ad to visit your website or product link on an E-Commerce platform or to install your app. Then CTR is 50%.  

This metric helps you understand the engagement level and effectivity of your content. The higher the CTR, the better is your performance. 

CPC

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is the metric that reveals the ad spend. How much are you spending to get one click is the CPC. Suppose, you spent £10 to run TikTok Ads on a video content and received 10,000 views with 100 clicks. Then, CPC is calculated as:

CPC = Total Ad Spend / Total Number of Clicks

Thus, CPC in case above = £10 / 100 clicks = £0.1 CPC

CPV 

The average of cost per view (CPV) is called the CPV metric. For an instance, re-consider the example above. If you have spent  £10 on one TikTok ad, and got 10,000 views. Then, CPV will be £0.001. 

Both CPC and CPV metric will help you find whether your Ad budget is optimum or needs optimisation. 

ROI

The most important metric is Return on Investment (ROI). How much did you earn after spending on TikTok ads is the key metric to know. Let’s understand this metric with an example.

Consider you spent £10 on a TikTok Ads and got 10,000 views of which you got 100 clicks. Out of these 100 Clicks, 10 people bought your product of worth £50. So, the total revenue generated gets 10 X 50. This way, you generated £500 by investing only £10. 

Now let’s calculate the ROI: 

ROI = Net Profit / Investment Amount X 100

ROI in the Case Above = (£3,750 - £10) / £10 = 37,400%

However, the figure above is quite big and its is just for the explanation purpose. You might get an ROI in smaller figures like 50-300% or more. Always calculate ROI to figure out whether the campaign has been successful. 

Tip No. 8: Let The TikTok Ad Grow Organically, Limit Changes

Digital Marketing Experts say that a TikTok video content must be posted after thorough planning. Unlike Instagram and other platforms, TikTok does not value ‘quantity’ but prefers ‘quality’ over ‘quantity. 

Eventually, posting one video a day or posting once in two days will also help your brand grow. However, when posting the video, make sure that you are fully satisfied with the right hashtags, captions and video edits. You need to let your brand grow organically. Do not edit the TikTok video every one or two days. Let the video grow. 

Even TikTok does not like the content creators to keep on editing their ‘original’ content. So, it allows only 7 days to the creators to make changes. But, according to our digital marketing team, edits must be avoided as they harm the reach of the content. 

Final Verdict 

Utilising TikTok for digital marketing is budget-friendly marketing technique that generates astonishing results in small investments. Generating user-friendly, entertaining, and original content can bring your brand tremendous awareness, consideration and conversions. By using a mixed form of content, organic with paid ads in your TikTok marketing strategy can leverage the best campaign results for your brand. From pioneering brands such as Zara, Gucci and guess to emerging brands like Brand Pierre, everyone is taking advantage of TikTok ads and TikTok marketing to obtain views, clicks and ultimately sales. So, create a TikTok ad today and become part of the league. You can also connect with us if you need a more detailed digital marketing strategy for your business. Till then, enjoy TikTok and our blogs too!

FAQs

1. What are the pros and cons of TikTok marketing? 

TikTok is not just for entertainment. Rather, it is a precious marketing tool for brands. Using TikTok marketing has multiple pros and a few cons. These include: 

TikTok Marketing Pros 

• A wide reach with billions of users.
• Very pocket-friendly marketing strategy.
• Options of paid and organic marketing (depends upon the user).
• Trending hashtags and challenges to participate in and get noticed.
• High tendency of TikTok users to watch an ad and buy product from it. 
• Very simple to use interface.
• Connect with your website with TikTok pixel code and track metrics.
• Existence of influencers from large to emerging level that resonate with the public.
• Focus on originality.
• Prefers quality over quantity.

TikTok Marketing Cons

• Not available in countries like India.
• Requires acting, dancing, singing or any form of entertaining skills.
• Some influencers might charge high fees.

2. What are the benefits of TikTok ads? 

TikTok ads or TikTok Spark Ads let the TikTok creator ‘boost’ a live video content with a small budget. Simply put, they are like commercials of a brand. The benefits of TikTok Ads feature include the following: 

• The ad budget totally depends upon the marketer. There is no minimum or maximum limit.
• TikTok users are more tolerant towards ads and they are 72% more likely to buy a product they see in the ads. 
• Super easy to use. TikTok ads require no ‘technical knowledge’ as such. Just create video content for the ad and set the campaign goals. 
• Get noticed faster with TikTok ads. 

3. How much does it cost to create a TikTok Marketing campaign? 

The budget of TikTok marketing campaign is highly flexible. Any marketer can start a marketing campaign free of cost as well. The option of growing brand awareness organically without investing in ads is always open. Additionally, it depends upon the marketer’s choice of TikTok marketing strategy. For example: 

• Organic Content: The user can use product ‘hauls’, ‘unboxing’, ‘hashtag challenge’ etc to get noticed free of cost. Let the content grow organically. However, the results will be slow. But this method is great during the establishment phase of a brand. 
• TikTok Ad Video: Paid ads are good option for emerging brands, that are somewhat established. To grow fast, TikTok ads can be run by a marketer. It will cost hardly between £8 and £100 for one ad. The more number of days you run an ad, the higher you will pay and the higher will get views. 
• Influencer Marketing: If the marketer tends to hire TikTok influencers, then the final cost depends upon the choice of influencer. It may range between £1,000 and £50,000 depending upon the follower counts and popularity of the chosen influencer. 

4. What are some great TikTok video content ideas in small budget?

Product hauls, unboxing, following hashtag challenges, following the trends etc. are some great TikTok marketing ideas in small budget. You may not need an ‘influencer’ in these cases. Also, it is totally your choice whether to use TikTok ads for these genres. 

5. Which is the best example of TikTok marketing in Hashtag challenge? 

There are many brands who have started hashtag challenges to engage their audience. Some anecdotal examples include: 

• #WhatsYourPower Challenge by Netfilx: Netflix started this hashtag challenge to promote its original series named Project Power. They introduced a random filter on TikTok that let the users know their unique super power. Then, users had to showcase their power in a creative way tagging Netflix and using hashtag named #WhatsYourPower. It engaged audience to a great extent and promoted the series naturally. 

Likewise, #RedBullDanceYourStyle Challenge  was also a great example. 

 

6. What is the best TikTok marketing by following TikTok Trends?

Following or setting trends on TikTok is also a great way to market your products and services. ‘Memes’ is the most trending content category on TikTok platform.  Some brands have leveraged Meme creation trend the best way for their business. Some example include: 

• RYANAIR Airlines: Parodies passenger problems like not having enough leg room, demanding hefty fee for extra luggage etc in Meme style. Their airplane with eyes, face, and lips is a very popular trend on TikTok.  This meme creation on TikTok washed the image of RYANAIR and now people see the problems lightly. Also, the airline has witnessed improved sales with this TikTok image. 

Nando’s Food Chain: Similarly, food chain Nando’s has leveraged memes to engage its audience. Additionally, it also showcases ‘behind the scenes’ of its food chains in addion to beautiful interiors of its outlets. This brings in-store traffic to the food chain.