Leveraging TikTok for Brand and Sales Success

The objective of this white paper is to equip the international fashion, luxury and beauty industries with strategic insight on executing effective TikTok strategies. From brand identity and community engagement to organic and paid campaigns, creator collaborations, commerce solutions, user-generated content (UGC) and a host of other commercial considerations, BoF has analysed and investigated best practices from across the industry and interviewed independent experts, brand executives and TikTok leaders.

Best Practices to Acquire and Engage Audiences

TikTok’s success in connecting with audiences and driving sales has inspired more brands to activate strategies on the platform. In the first half of 2023, luxury brands grew their media impact value (MIV), a measure of engagement, on TikTok by 11 percent, according to data and insights provider Launchmetrics. Dior, Gucci and Prada generated nearly as much MIV in the period from January to May 2023 as they did in all of 2022.

To make the most of engaging TikTok’s audience, businesses have transformed their approach to marketing.

“We learned how to be a music producer, how to be a movie producer, how to be an entertainment brand,” says Kory Marchisotto, chief marketing officer at E.l.f. Beauty. “Initially, it was short-form content: how do you do all this in 15 seconds? Now, it’s long-form content: how do you create these incredibly engaging pieces of branded content that don’t feel like commercials or commercialisation tactics?”

In order to meet the expectations of audiences, Matt Cleary, TikTok’s head of retail, recommends brands “TikTok-ify” their content, such as by adding native overlays or tapping into trending sounds and content formats — as detailed in TikTok’s brand toolkits, like the Creative Centre and Creator Portal, which offers how to’s on the basics like aspect ratio, duet demos, green screen and stitch tutorials. These production tactics allow brands across price points to create content that will help them find their creative voice and style.

For instance, brands might engage the “lo-fi” nature of content popularised by TikTok, which “makes your content and your brand messaging infinitely more accessible,” says Jordan Mitchell, co-founder and co-CEO of Good Culture, a cultural marketing agency working with brands like Marc Jacobs, Good American, Speedo, Barbour, Alo Yoga and Creed. “It democratises that brand conversation.”

Some brands are achieving this approach by remixing polished campaign imagery within a lo-fi format. For example, one Burberry post of an office printer producing high-quality printouts from their Winter 2024 campaign generated 14.6 million views. Prada also mixed high-quality runway footage with videos their models film backstage before walking the show, while Gucci had models and content creators Kit Price and Calum Harper interview other models backstage before shows. The content is lightly edited but seeped in brand references and product placement.

“It’s not about reinventing the wheel, but it’s just leaning into the current cultural conversation and reimagining it through your brand’s lens. That’s when you find your version of that cultural zeitgeist,” says Mitchell.

Savvier Product Placement

Many brands are exploring savvier product placement due to audiences disengaging with traditional advertising, preferring instead more subtle branded storytelling. This places the onus on brands to deliver crafted, relatable narratives, whether through their own platforms or the creators with whom they partner.

Content creator Alix Earle has leveraged this approach: she has built a following of 7 million on TikTok, not with any viral hit but with her apparent relatability and willingness to be herself. Leaning into TikTok audiences’ behavioural interest in discovery, a “link in bio” directing customers to product is rare. Instead, Earle unlocks curiosity and enables the opportunity for product sleuthing and hunting online.

Including an engaging narrative arc can help engage viewers — ads intended to make users curious keep them watching 1.4x longer, according to a study by Metrixlab for TikTok in 2023.

However, when favouring more subtle means of product placement, brands should not fool themselves into thinking they are outsmarting viewers.

“The consumer is super savvy on social,” says Tyla Grant, a senior creative strategist at creative strategy studio Mørning, which works with brands such as Nike, Calvin Klein, Coty, Meta and more. “If [you] try to outsmart the consumer and make [ads which] appear to be subtle, it’s a waste of time. It’s evolving [ads] to become more integrated into the creative and make more sense — it’s less jarring.”

Grant cites the Alexis Bittar mocumentary series on TikTok, starring “Margeaux Goldrich”, played by American actor Patricia Black and featuring cameos from Mel Ottenberg, Amanda Lepore, Coco Rocha and Susan Sarandon. The characters partake in an over-dramatised bite-size series while wearing Alexis Bittar jewellery — speaking to camera about their fictional jobs, suffering police interrogations or confronting an ex- husband’s mistress.

The content is clearly drawing attention to the jewellery, but its format is narrative-rich, original and engaging, demonstrating the kind of scope and opportunity TikTok can offer.

“It’s exciting to see these brands [operating on TikTok],” says Vanessa Craft, global head of content partnerships at TikTok. “They already have done the hard work of building a brand: we know who you are. We know what you stand for. Now, are you going to play to type or play against type?”

Brand Identity and Ascertaining Your On-Platform Purpose

To make the most of posting on TikTok, businesses need to begin with a holistic assessment of their brand, to ensure alignment on what they stand for and how that will translate on the platform.

“Are you a trend leader or should you be creating these things? Do you claim to create and shape culture, or do you need to be plugged into it?” says Grant.

Brands should consider their purpose, mission and values, but also brand reputation, areas of expertise and the communities in which they are already established. This approach will help brands assess where and how to show up on TikTok.

Craft says, when working with brand partners, she will ask: “What’s your brand like after a glass of champagne? Who would that brand be? Would you be more sarcastic? Would you be witty? Would you be more serious and more reserved? […] [Content] doesn’t have to be perfectly polished — it should be perfectly real and true to that brand’s DNA.”

For instance, at Coach, the vice president of marketing in North America, Kimberly Wallengren, says, “There’s always something a little kitschy, a little cheeky with our brand. So, I think that we have had that room to grow into those areas.”

Referencing Coach’s Find Your Courage campaign, which explores fluidity between real and virtual worlds, Wallengren describes it as “visually incredibly impactful, so leaning into some filters and visual effects has been really fun.” These filters are also native to the platform, allowing for an easy-lift, platform-relevant edge to the content.

It’s not about reinventing the wheel, but leaning into the current cultural conversation and reimagining it through your brand’s lens. That’s when you find your version of that cultural zeitgeist.

—  Jordan Mitchell, co-founder and co-CEO of Good Culture.

For E.l.f., their CMO says the business’s overarching approach to TikTok reflects the brand’s authentic identity. “The fearless nature of our brand was fundamental to our success,” says Marchisotto. “When TikTok busted onto the scene, very few brands were willing to plunge into the deep end. […] ‘What are people doing here? How could a brandfit in? What’s going to be the ROI? What are the KPIs?’ While they were asking themselves all those questions from the sidelines, we were already flailing at the deep end. […] The key component is: we’re a test-and-learn brand.”

Identifying the most pertinent metrics to track your goals is critical. For example, Coach has “purchase intent” as its North Star. “There’s obviously other indicators of purchase intent — our native brand awareness, search volume on-platform, search volume off-platform,” says Wallengren. But the overarching goal allows different teams in the marketing division to “galvanise behind one thing”.

For E.l.f., it is “building a community. Period. Full stop. That’s the most important KPI. What is this community that we are developing? What is our relationship with them? How do we foster a two-way dialogue?” says Marchisotto. E.l.f.’s approach has not always immediately translated into sales, but a consistency of output and engagement eventually showed strong results and conversion.

Mitchell adds, “Social sentiment and conversation, being able to have that brand talked about, is valuable, even if you didn’t necessarily get all the sales.”

Another key aspect to consider is the “quality of the view,” according to Grant, as numbers don’t necessarily correlate to consumers with money to spend. Brands need to make the distinction behind when you are speaking to an audience versus a consumer, due to engaging across generations with varying discretionary spending power.

Making the distinction behind audience versus consumer might not change the tone of voice or content formats you are using, but it might influence the tools you leverage, like adding a shoppable product link through TikTok Shop or engaging specific content creators. However, continuing to build brand awareness and cultural clout more generally also reinstates brand desirability with current and prospective consumers, leading to long-term gain.

Brand Marketing and Building Relatable, Trustworthy Narratives

TikTok can help brands improve audiences’ general awareness of their business, leveraging brand heritage and creativity to connect to audiences seeking to educate themselves.

“Content that resonates truly is credible, relatable and follows a story arc. […] Being able to tell the brand’s history is a credible story that the brand should be able to tell,” says Cleary.

Indeed, brands can repurpose archive footage and historical marketing materials, perhaps share behind-the-scenes content on creation processes, past and present. Denim brand Levi’s, for example, features their brand historian who details Levi’s adjacency to Western culture in the US while the trend was experiencing a resurgence when Beyoncé released her album, Cowboy Carter.

The use of light-hearted entertainment and humour is another key pillar in content preferences that fashion, beauty and luxury brands are tapping into, as audiences look to content platforms for escapism.

“Give us something that is either a safe place to have a laugh or to relax, or just feel entertained or supported, so there’s more to this than engagement, than just a transactional experience,” says Craft.

“When we lean into entertaining or more humorous content, it actually performs much better for us,” adds Wallengren. “This goes back to capturing behind-the-scenes content, having our ambassadors make jokes — they’re more relaxed and capturing a moment that’s quite real and authentic.”

Luxury brand Loewe, often cited as exemplary for its use of the platform, leans into light-hearted content, which allows audiences to see a new side to the brand universe — or “what makes Loewe lol,” according to Grant.

The fashion house creates playful content that uses cultural moments to amplify its products and brand narrative, like utilising audio recorded by Sofia Richie Grainge of her husband’s comment on a pair of Loewe boots: “Looks like a very rich duck would wear that.” The brand also posted a video of a Loewe bag being made, labelled “Nara Smith when her kids want a Loewe bag” — referencing Smith’s wildly popular videos that capture her creating elaborate meals from scratch over a matter of hours.

Marketers might consider showing the brand universe through the workplace itself, personalising the brand through its employees. Grant references posts by fitness brands Alo Yoga and Tala, where the “social media manager clearly runs the account, is trying to hit the metrics, running around the office showing you this part of the lifestyle. That works.”

Alternatively, at E.l.f., makeup artists through to the C-suite “get directly and intimately involved with the community” via TikTok Lives, says Marchisotto. “That’s showing our brand inside out.”

These Lives typically draw thousands of viewers. “Find me another C-suite of a billion-dollar brand that’s spending this kind of time with [their] community,” she adds.

The team behind the scenes is also critical to consider when generating effective strategies — as Good Culture’s Mitchell explains, prioritising diversity of thought in your workplace will broaden creative ideas and cultural references that can benefit the success of campaigns.

“If you have a diverse work team in terms of age, gender, sexuality, race […] you then have a melting pot of ideas [from] people who are authentically absorbing information,” she says.

Product Marketing and Experimenting With Content Formats

Perhaps the most novel influence TikTok has had on the fashion, beauty and luxury industries is its influence on product marketing. Short-form video requires much more than static imagery to connect. As a result, brands have rushed to develop a sense of purpose and personality behind their representative content.

Loewe pushes its product in internet-culture-coded campaigns — in 2024, the brand released a lo-fi animation of four alternative ways its Puzzle bag could walk. Through this simple concept, Loewe demonstrates an innate perception of what audiences on TikTok enjoy — humorous, tongue-in-cheek and unconventional entertainment.

Marc Jacobs and Burberry have also leaned into Gen-Z-coded cultural amplification by working with satirical account @sylvaniandrama. Its creator has gained 2.5 million followers by crafting darkly humorous scenarios with the collectible figurines. The product marketing ad placements have creatively woven the Marc Jacobs’ Tote Bag and Burberry Lola bag into story arcs while retaining the account’s tone of voice.

E.l.f. has seen success with content that offers a “steady drumbeat of education and artistry”, according to Marchisotto.

The audience can learn “how to get maximum payoff from the products, how to best utilise them, what type of makeup or skincare trends are happening and then how we help them achieve that through our products.”

Engagement metrics on TikTok demonstrate audiences’ preference for educational content — viewers seek tangible, actionable insights. After all, 50 percent of TikTok luxury lovers follow a luxury brand to keep up with industry trends, 40 percent follow for outfit or style inspiration and 33 percent follow a brand for creative inspiration, according to TikTok Marketing Science FR Luxury Insights Survey in 2022.

Educational content also resonates strongly with TikTok’s older demographic, with the 45+ user cohort 1.6x more likely to search for information about the craftsmanship of a product, according to the AYTM survey in 2024.

Levi’s has its tailors and in-store stylists showcase the latest designs, offering styling tips for viewers. Alternatively, Loewe details and celebrates the craftsmanship behind specific items, like Taylor Russell’s 2024 Met Gala 3D-moulded bodice.

Different video content will resonate with different audiences, so brands should test out a variety of formats — 64 percent of TikTok users prefer brands that have a variety of content and 51 percent of users agree seeing a variety of content keeps things entertaining, according to a study conducted by Alter Agents, commissioned by TikTok in 2023.

Due to its lo-fi nature, TikTok also requires less production time or investment to create a piece of content: “We sometimes use an iPhone, so it feels more platform-native,” says Wallengren.

The speed at which trends move allows for brands to try their hand noncommittally at connecting with the zeitgeist — even viral content loses engagement in a matter of weeks, perhaps days.

Marchisotto adds: “Your community is going to be way more forgiving than you think. They’re going to reward you in likes, comments and engagement and if you produce a piece of content that gets none of the above or hits a negative sentiment, then you know you’re on the wrong track.”

With a clear understanding of your brand and the spaces in which it should operate on-platform, brands can strategically monitor the trends and content most relevant to them. Not every trend will be pertinent, so brands should only engage with those that will truly resonate with their audience.

Sara McCorquodale, founder and CEO of social influencer intelligence platform CORQ, also recommends, rather than merely jumping on popular avenues like trending sounds, that brands should follow the news agenda for timely, lo-fi lifts on product marketing. For instance, aligning a popular red carpet look into something from the brand’s line.

“It’s this ability to identify the news that’s relevant to your target consumer base and insert your product into that [which resonates],” says McCorquodale.

This approach allows brands to engage with the zeitgeist at speed. For example, brands and content creators have been quick to align with Charli XCX’s “Brat” green — Vogue called it the “new Bottega green” while Grazia labelled it the “Prada-Approved Colour Trend”; Kate Spade New York made a “Brat Summer Starter Pack”, with its own products featured, while Coach sales associates showcased green bags on TikTok as “Brat”.

To assist brands with creativity and responsiveness, to recognise key search terms and emerging trends, TikTok offers a Search Ads Toggle that lets advertisers access insights on the unique search behaviour happening on TikTok. This year, the platform also released TikTok Symphony, providing a suite of generative AI creative solutions to help produce TikTok content faster.

Paid Marketing and a Multi-Layered Advertising Strategy

When creating effective paid marketing on TikTok, the same approach to organic content — being TikTok-first, narrative-led, emotionally attuned, entertaining and light-hearted — cuts through, resonating strongly with the audience regardless of marketing alignment.

“No longer are we advertising and speaking at [audiences], but we’re able to create opportunities to become involved with the audience and do that at quite a large reach,” says Wallengren.

Indeed, 50 percent of TikTok users agree the advertising on the platform is enjoyable. In May 2024, Adolfo Fernandez, TikTok’s global head of performance solutions, told Ad Age the enjoyment rate was approximately 1.6x more than on other platforms. He also shared that TikTok’s Retail Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is 3.5x better than other channels, according to data collated by the company.

Brands can leverage TikTok’s paid-for advertising slots for a multifaceted strategy. Coach, for example, optimises ad placements by positioning paid-for and organic content side-by-side. “Often, we [create] some of this more bespoke, behind-the-scenes, raw content [and] we run our campaigns alongside it, so there’s a larger share of voice,” says Wallengren.

“We’re always looking at first-to-market,” she adds. “For new ad placements — how do we become an alpha or beta when it comes to things like TikTok Pulse Premiere [which allows advertisers to place ads next to trending and brand-safe content]. We were able to utilise [TikTok Pulse] for the current Find Your Courage campaign, which allowed the brand to align contextually with premium content.”

Spark Ads on TikTok are a native format that enables you to collaborate with creators and share inspirational shop-and-tell stories, product reviews and more. It also ensures that all views, comments, shares, likes and follows gained from boosting the video during the promotion are attributed to the brand’s organic posts. In-Feed Ads are another format that allows you to hype up the latest offers, products and styles, which appears in TikTok audiences’ feeds and lets them visit your brand’s landing page in just one click.

These own-brand, paid-for ads can also leverage creators, with viewers trusting brands 67 percent more with creator-focused ads on TikTok, according to a study in 2022 commissioned by TikTok and executed by Edelman Data and Intelligence. Indeed, a sense of community and creativity are respectively 1.8x and 1.6x more likely to motivate TikTok users to purchase a luxury product than non-TikTok users, according to a study via AYTM in 2024.

Other advertising options to help brands reach audiences through ad placement include Top View, which gives the advertiser the most visible placement, serving as the very first video people can see when they visit TikTok. Available later this year, TikTok One will offer everything required to make an effective creative advertisement in one place, with access to creators, production partners and insights.

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