TikTok marketing: how to grow your brand

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What is TikTok marketing

TikTok marketing is the promotion of a brand, product, or service through short vertical videos. It usually has four components:

• Organic content. These are videos a brand publishes on its account. They build brand awareness, and TikTok shows videos viewers enjoy to new audiences. According to Adobe Express, people are increasingly using TikTok instead of a search engine. This means organic videos can reach viewers through search as well as recommendations.

• Advertising. These are paid campaigns in TikTok Ads Manager. The platform shows videos to audiences selected by age, interests, and location, and directs them to a website or app.

• Working with creators. TikTok creators make videos about a product. These videos look like regular content on the platform, while the brand gains access to the creator's audience.

• TikTok Shop. This is an integrated storefront where products are sold directly in videos and livestreams. However, it is not available in every country.

Note: In 2026, TikTok's recommendation algorithm is changing in the US. This is because TikTok in the US has moved to the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, which will retrain the algorithm using data from US users. Lawyers suggest that this could cause TikTok feeds in the US and other countries to diverge. So if you operate in several markets, evaluate video performance separately for each country.

How to create a TikTok business account

TikTok has two types of accounts: personal and business. A business profile displays a link to the company's website and its contact details. The account owner also gets access to TikTok analytics and advertising tools.

Here's how to switch from a personal to a business account on TikTok:

1. Open your profile, go to account settings, and tap Switch to Business Account. On the TikTok website, there is a Business Account toggle at the bottom of the page.

2. Choose the category that describes your business. For example, Beauty for a make-up brand, Education for an online school, or Retail for a shop.

3. Complete your profile with a name, description, website link, and email address. Include words in the description that people might use to find you on TikTok.

4. If necessary, verify your business. Verification is available to people aged 18 and over and requires a valid licence for the region where the company operates. Verification usually takes 1–5 business days.

Before switching, keep two things in mind. First, the TikTok editor for business accounts only offers tracks from the Commercial Music Library, a collection of music cleared for commercial use. Popular tracks from TikTok's general music library can only be used in non-commercial videos. If a company promotes itself through a personal account using those tracks, it risks infringing copyright. Second, if you decide to switch back to a personal account, the website link, contact details, and business analytics will disappear. Any violations associated with the business account, however, will remain.

How to develop a TikTok marketing strategy

Once your business account is ready, you can develop a marketing strategy. Here's how:

1. Set a goal and choose relevant metrics. Brand awareness, website traffic, and sales are measured using different metrics. Choosing a goal in advance makes it easier to see whether your content is working as it should.

2. Research trends and creators. Explore trends, popular sounds, and ads from other brands in your niche in TikTok Creative Center. If you plan to work with creators, find them through TikTok One, TikTok's platform for discovering creators and agency partners.

3. Choose content formats. Decide on 3–5 recurring video formats for presenting your business. For example, an online make-up shop could post unboxing videos, comparisons of two similar products, answers to customer questions, and footage of orders being packed in the warehouse.

4. Choose your markets. If you sell in several countries, consider whether each needs its own TikTok account. To see the TikTok feed as an audience in another country sees it, create a profile in an anti-detect browser such as Octo Browser and connect a proxy from the target location to it.

5. Balance organic content and advertising. Decide what role free posts and paid campaigns will play in your promotion. For example, use organic content to test ideas and spend your ad budget on videos that have already gained views. You can promote these videos using Spark Ads, TikTok's ad format for already existing posts.

What kind of content works on TikTok

TikTok ranks videos based on user interactions (likes, reposts, follows, and comments) and information about the video itself, including captions, sounds, and hashtags. Duplicates, videos a user has already watched, and spam are not recommended by TikTok.

This leads to the following takeaways:

• Retention matters more than follower count. If viewers watch a video to the end, comment on it, and share it, TikTok shows it to more people. According to TikTok data, videos that show a person in the first two seconds retain attention 50% better, while addressing the viewer directly makes the video 1.5 times more likely to catch their interest.

• Captions help people find your videos. Keywords in the description, on-screen text, and voice-over help TikTok understand what a video is about and show it in search results. If you want people to discover your videos through search, make tutorials, product reviews, and personal stories.

• Adapt videos for each account. TikTok does not recommend duplicate content, so posting the same video across several brand accounts may prevent it from appearing in recommendations on any of them. Adapt videos for regional accounts: translate on-screen text, add subtitles in the local language, and use local examples.

TikTok marketing tools

TikTok's built-in tools

TikTok's business tools are collected under TikTok for Business:

• TikTok Studio—upload and edit videos, and view analytics for the account and individual videos.

• TikTok Ads Manager—launch and manage advertising campaigns. It includes Search Center, which suggests keywords for TikTok search ads.

• TikTok Business Center—manage access to advertising accounts when several employees or an agency work with them.

• TikTok Creative Center—explore trends, popular sounds, hashtags, and other brands' ads for video ideas.

• TikTok One—find creators and agency partners.

• Symphony Creative Studio—AI tools for preparing scripts and video ads.

• TikTok Shop—sell products directly in videos and livestreams.

Scheduling and analytics services

If a brand or agency manages several accounts, it is easier to schedule posts and review performance in one place. Third-party services such as Later, Buffer, and Metricool can help. You can schedule TikTok videos in advance and view the results for all your accounts in a single report.

Anti-detect browsers

Scheduling tools let you publish videos to several accounts, but all those accounts still operate in the same environment. That may not be enough for a brand entering different markets or an agency working with several clients. TikTok's recommendations take into account language, country, and device type. If all accounts operate from the same device and IP address, TikTok sees the same environment for all of them and may link them together.

Anti-detect browsers address this issue by creating a separate profile for each account, making each profile look to websites like a different unique user. This offers three advantages:

• You can manage as many TikTok accounts as you need, independently of TikTok's limits.

• You can connect a proxy from the desired country to each profile and operate the account from the relevant location.

• The accounts do not share the same environment, reducing the risk that action against one account will affect the others.

TikTok is primarily a mobile platform, so we recommend creating TikTok account profiles in the Octo Browser mobile apps for Android and iOS. They launch profiles directly on your phone and provide native mobile fingerprints.

Learn more about managing multiple TikTok accounts in our article, How to create multiple TikTok accounts.

TikTok marketing examples in 2026

To see how these approaches work in practice, let's look at how popular brands promote themselves on TikTok.

Virgin Voyages: betting on creators

The cruise company invited more than 1,100 creators from different niches—not just travel bloggers—on a cruise, then used ads to promote the videos viewers liked most. Videos with the hashtag #sailingwithvirgin earned 22.7 million views, while traffic from TikTok to the website increased by 696%. The campaign likely worked because viewers saw experiences from people like themselves, and the budget was spent only on videos that had already proven successful. You can adapt this approach on a smaller scale: send your product to 10–20 small creators and promote the best videos through Spark Ads.

Duolingo: a distinctive brand universe

Duolingo's German account built its Cult Mass campaign around the brand's mascot, Duo the green owl, who persistently reminds users to complete their daily lessons. The campaign generated 34.8 million impressions with an engagement rate of 12.63% and won the top prize at the 2025 TikTok Ad Awards in the DACH region. According to Duolingo's marketing director in Germany, a distinctive visual world helps the brand stop people from scrolling. You do not need a mascot to achieve this: a regular presenter or a recognizable video style can work too.

Strava: ads in the feed and search

The sports app combined TikTok feed ads with search ads. Its CTR increased 2.56-fold, and app downloads rose by 85%. Feed ads introduce a product to new audiences, while search ads reach people who are already looking for a solution. According to TikTok tests, this combination delivers an average of 20% more conversions than feed ads alone. If you want to try this approach, note TikTok's recommendation: a search campaign should contain at least 20 keywords per ad group. You can find suitable keywords in the Search Center.

Basic-Fit: an account for a specific market

In April, the fitness club chain launched a separate TikTok account for Belgium. By December, it had grown from zero to 43,700 followers and gained 11 million organic views. A local account can speak to its audience in its own language and address its local reality. If you sell in several countries, start with an account for the market with the most potential and compare its performance with your main account.

Conclusion

TikTok promotion starts with a business account and a clear goal. Next, create videos for the feed and search, then use ads to promote the ones that perform well. If you need several accounts—e.g., for different markets—manage them in separate Octo Browser profiles. Each profile has its own fingerprint and a proxy for the desired location, so the accounts do not share the same environment. For TikTok, the most convenient way to create these profiles is through Octo's mobile apps for Android and iOS.

FAQ

What's the difference between TikTok and TikTok for Business?

TikTok is the app itself, where users can have personal or business accounts. TikTok for Business is a suite of tools for companies, including TikTok Ads Manager, TikTok Business Center, TikTok One, Creative Center, and others.

Does TikTok marketing work for B2B companies?

Yes. B2B decision-makers also use TikTok, and business content can reach them even when they are not actively looking for it. According to a study by TikTok and NewtonX, 74% of these people encounter B2B content on social media even when they are not specifically searching for it. Format matters, too: 53% of B2B buyers prefer videos shorter than 30 seconds.

What kind of content works on TikTok?

Videos that look like regular TikTok content rather than ads tend to work best. According to a study commissioned by TikTok, videos featuring real people are watched 9% longer, videos based on trends 14% longer, and story-driven videos 16% longer.

Which TikTok metrics should you track?

For organic content, track average watch time, total views, and traffic sources. TikTok's analytics provides these for each video. For ads, track CTR, CPM, conversions, and ROAS in TikTok Ads Manager.