Small and medium-sized enterprises – SMEs

SME: What is that actually? Small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs) are an important part of our national economy. They are responsible for many jobs as well as innovations and growth that make us strong. In Germany, for example, they account for more than 60 percent of all jobs subject to social insurance contributions and generate more than half of GDP. SMEs can have a more efficient, agile and adaptable structure than larger organizations due to their size and structure. TikTok Marketing is a great way for SMEs to reach new markets, promote products and attract customers.

Less expensive advertising: comparison Facebook & Co. – advantage

Since TikTok is not an expensive platform, it is easy for SMEs to launch an effective campaign with little effort. TikTok offers businesses the ability to distribute content directly through the app. This means that SMEs with a limited budget can be able to reach target audiences worldwide. The variety of tools and features makes TikTok very attractive for SMEs.

The platform offers various options such as hashtags, challenges, and company pages that businesses can use to share content quickly and effectively. There are also various analytics features in the app that allow SMEs to see exactly how well their campaigns are working and which audience they are reaching best.

TikTok Marketing is a great way for SMEs to drive their business. It is an easy to use platform with a lot of potential for success. With the right knowledge set and an appropriately adapted strategy, any SME can benefit from this platform!

1. TikTok: The social network

TikTok is a social media platform used mostly by young people. It allows users to create short videos with music, filters and effects and share them with friends. TikTok offers companies a variety of ways to promote their brand and reach a wider audience.

There are several ways businesses can use TikTok for their marketing: First, businesses can create their own TikTok account and post videos to customize content about their product or brand. These videos can be informative in an entertaining way or show how the product can be used in action.

Second, companies can place paid ads on the platform to increase the reach of their brand. And third, they can hire influencers to share content about their product to generate new customers. TikTok is a powerful platform for businesses that continues to establish itself as a major social media platform. It offers businesses the ability to reach a wide audience in an entertaining way, creating even more customer experiences and revenue potential. TikTok is easy to use and offers businesses tremendous reach and engagement rates.

TikTok: 7 concrete advantages

Let’s summarize the advantages of TikTok once again.

1. TikTok Marketing enables companies to connect with a young target group in a targeted way and position themselves as a brand
2. It offers the opportunity to try out new ideas and focus on creative content
3. Through interaction, customers see the value of a product or service from the source
4. It increases the reach and allows more people to notice the company and get in touch with it through the platform
5. Thanks to various advertising options, you can find a suitable combination of advertising content for any company
6. With the help of data analysis tools, evaluations of success can be made and campaign goals can be determined with pinpoint accuracy
7. With TikTok Marketing, increasing sales is easier than ever – both directly and indirectly by building the brand’s image among audiences over time

2. how can I do marketing with TikTok?

TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media platforms. The app is used by millions of people worldwide to share short videos. TikTok offers companies the opportunity to connect with their target audience and promote their brand.

Channel, Logo & Bio: TikTok Profile

There are several ways to use TikTok for marketing purposes. First of all, it is important for companies to create a profile on the platform. This allows them to upload their logo and other important information about their company. This way, potential customers can learn more about the company and remember the brand with the help of the logo.

Creation of exciting and interesting videos

Another important aspect of TikTok marketing is the creation of exciting and interesting videos. Users of the platform want to be entertained and informed. Therefore, it is important to create videos that offer something to the viewers. If companies regularly publish interesting videos, they can ensure that more and more people follow them. This way, the brand’s reach can be increased significantly.

In conclusion, TikTok is a great way for companies to connect with potential customers. However, to be successful, companies need to develop a solid marketing concept and produce interesting videos.

Create content step by step

Step by step:

• First of all, you should think about what kind of marketing you want to do with TikTok
• Either you can try to make your brand better known, or you can try to market your products or services
• Both are possible with TikTok, but they require different approaches.
• If you want to raise awareness of your brand, you should consider what kind of message you want to convey with your videos and who your target audience is.
• It’s also important that your videos are entertaining and interesting so people will watch and recommend them.
• If you’re marketing products or services, make it as clear as possible in your videos what you’re offering and why people should have it.
• Again, of course, it’s important that your videos are well done and that people want to watch them.
• No matter which approach you choose, remember that regular updates are important to keep people’s attention.

Tip! This is how TikTok content creation works in practice.

3. why should I start with TikTok?

TikTok is a relatively new social network that has gained a lot of popularity in recent months. It is a video platform where people can upload and watch short videos. The video images are accompanied by music and can be viewed in both normal and slow motion.

Is TikTok relevant? App Store Downloads

Here you can see the increased number of downloads of TikTok via the Apple App Store worldwide from January 2017 to January 2022 (in millions).

You can find more statistics at Statista

4. what tools do I need to be successful?

When it comes to running successful TikTok marketing campaigns, businesses should use the right tools. There are several tools that can help you better understand your audience and strategize your campaigns. Some of these tools are free, others are paid.

Insights on TikTok: Analysis and report

One of the most important and widely used tools is the TikTok Insights report. The Insights report allows businesses to track and analyze interaction with their videos to identify trends and understand what their audience wants. It also helps create better content by showing data like video views, likes, and comments.

TikTok Ads Manager: Advertise on TikTok

Another tool is the TikTok Ads Manager app. With this app, companies can place ads, set targets, and manage campaigns. It provides detailed analytics about the campaign results so that companies can optimize their ad spend.

Businesses should also use social media monitoring tools to spot trends in real time and make better decisions about their content marketing. Some popular tools for social media monitoring include Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Buffer. These tools provide an overview of all social networks and help businesses find relevant posts from other users or brand pages to include in their own marketing.

Read more here:

• Place TikTok Ads

Linking e-commerce: social selling

When it comes to increasing sales, TikTok also provides a number of e-commerce features. With shopping tags, companies can promote products directly in their videos and direct customers to the product pages. The Checkout on App feature even allows customers to make purchases directly from the video. This feature can save you time and increase your sales!

These are just a few examples of the different tools businesses can use to run successful TikTok marketing campaigns – but there are many more! Regardless of the tool you choose, however, you should always be covered: On TikTok, content will be king – so content must be at the heart of marketing!

5. where can I get my videos shared and how do I get attention?

Now that you know what TikTok is and how it works, you may be asking yourself, “Where can I get my videos shared and how do I get attention?”

The good news is that there are several ways to make your videos popular on TikTok. First of all, you can simply share them on the platform itself. All you have to do is make sure your video has the right hashtag and title to get it seen by the right people.

You can also share your videos on other social media platforms to get more exposure. For example, you can post them on Facebook or Instagram. There, they can be seen by a larger number of people. You can also advertise your TikTok videos. However, this is advisable only if you have enough budget, as advertising can be relatively expensive.

Another way to get your videos noticed is to send them to influencers. Influencers are people with many followers. If they share your video, it will be seen by many people. However, it is relatively difficult to get influencers to share your video. So you need to prepare well and be persistent.

If you follow all these tips, you should be able to successfuly promote your TikTok videos and get more exposure.

Conclusion: TikTok useful for SMEs?

In conclusion, TikTok is an interesting and promising platform to help companies reach a young and open-minded clientele. It offers brands the opportunity to present themselves creatively and innovatively, which can increase sales.

However, TikTok marketing is not without risks. When companies open an account, they need to ensure that all content is presented professionally and appropriately. Since the platform is very young, it can be difficult to predict trends and react to them in time. Therefore, companies should be careful and plan their marketing strategy carefully before investing in TikTok.

All in all, TikTok is a lucrative tool for companies to attract new customers and improve their branding. With the right strategy, businesses can benefit from it and realize its potential. With its advanced technology, TikTok offers a wide range of opportunities for businesses to strengthen their presence in the market.

What counts as an SME?

But what exactly is an SME? According to the EU definition, the limit is 250 employees, although in Germany companies with up to 500 employees are also considered SMEs. However, the decisive factor for classification as an SME is not only the number of employees, but also the turnover or annual profit. For example, a company is already considered an SME if its sales do not exceed 50 million euros or its annual profit is 10 million euros.

The typical characteristics of SMEs are a high degree of flexibility, close customer ties and strong regional roots. Many SMEs are family-run and are characterized by innovative strength and sustainability. Due to their size and structure, SMEs can react very quickly to market changes and set new trends.

SMEs are thus the perfect alternative to large corporations and, above all, offer innovative solutions to the challenges of our time.

Interesting: Returns on sales

Here is another look at the average return on sales of medium-sized companies in Germany by sector.

More statistics: Statista

More reach, leads and customers?

Example TikTok for business: 5 steps for beginners. TikTok Marketing for Business(SME) – Whether small local businesses or large international corporations, TikTok is an interesting marketing tool for all. The short video app offers a unique opportunity to interact with potential customers in a whole new way. We’ll show you how TikTok marketing works and what opportunities there are for businesses.

• TikTok for businesses: SME Marketing

Social media marketing for small and medium-sized enterprises

Why is presence on social media channels helpful for SMEs, what can they achieve?

The presence of small and medium-sized enterprises on social channels is so important because they save a lot of money! In the past, every small company had to print flyers and waste a lot of time trying to convince people to buy new products.

Today, as a small company, even in the countryside or without large financial resources, you can reach the whole world. Social networks offer 1:1 communication, as if you had a local business in every city in the world. Nuremberg, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, no distance is far and every communication is only a mouse click away.

You can contact your fans, ask questions or give us suggestions. Otherwise complex and expensive Internet sites can be considerably slimmer, since a lot of brand communication can be covered via the social networks.

Social media is not only an excellent tool for marketing, but also for PR: We often reach our customers faster than any press article could do. New products, announcements and job postings for personnel recruitment – free of charge. Social media channels bundle different marketing tools, because they are much more extensive than many might think.

As an online shop we can e.g. connect our Facebook page with Instagram. We can set up an online shop on Facebook, link the products to Instagram and our followers can shop on Instagram. As an online shop you can even work across networks.

Which platform is the best?

What small and medium-sized enterprises should pay attention to is the choice of social network. Because the support costs time and should be regular, preferably daily. New postings, comments, small and large graphics, who wants to make his social media management profitable, has to invest work every day and give the employees the necessary resources for it.

In the past you could say you were on Facebook, that’s enough. Today the right social network is no longer so easy to define. In short, however, Facebook is and remains the classic and with the largest number of users, even top dog. Conversely, on Facebook you also have to invest advertising budget, organic reach is only difficult to achieve.

Instagram is easier to achieve organic reach, but lacks some of the features you have on Facebook, the social network. This includes direct links, e.g. to our onlinee shop via https://www.onlineshop.com/xy. Without links, we can sell less. Instagram is a must for companies in the fashion and lifestyle industries in particular.

Companies with the necessary capacities and in particular sufficient interest can support a YouTube channel. However, creating content for YouTube is much more time consuming and requires good concepts that work on YouTube. Most medium-sized and large companies cover this area through their social media agency.

The investment is worthwhile! Because the reach that small and medium-sized companies are building up here is permanently available. Our business grows with each new follower by one potential visitor per day.

When assessing the quality of the reach on the individual networks, it can be said that the more time it takes to create the content, the better the number of fans. On Facebook, content is relatively easy to create, you can even share links or other websites without having to create content yourself. However, the organic range is very small. If your Facebook account has 10,000 fans, a single organic posting may reach only 100 or 200 people. Practically nothing.

On Instagram, you usually have to take much more time for interesting content, photos and videos. The content must also be interesting and always new to generate followers for your Instagram account. With a channel of 10,000 fans you can reach about 1,000 people. YouTube is currently the top class, with about 10,000 fans you can actually reach 7,000 or 8,000 people here. But the creation of the contents is very complex, because it needs not only a video production, but also the moderation, as well as a good storyboard.

How to estimate the three big social networks in 2018

YouTube and Pinterest are considered an insider tip, especially as a source for backlinks in the field of search engine optimization. YouTube is therefore also the most expensive source for influencers and bloggers on social networks in terms of overall reach. Those who can place their links in the descriptions of well-running videos, e.g. by influencer marketing or by creating their own content.

On Pinterest you create different galeries with photos. The photos then have individual titles and descriptions. But also the galeries have individual titles and descriptions. Whoever collects a large number of galeries here and meets an interesting and not too overcrowded industry can collect good links for their own project.

Twitter is only of interest to large corporations and public figures. For small and medium-sized businesses, Twitter is generally irrelevant. In relation to success and effort you should not waste time with Twitter. Unless it is a large corporation or a public figure, since tweets are often included in the media.

In short, Facebook with the right advertising budget, Instagram with a creative person and enough time and YouTube if you are a leader and have a lot of commitment of your own! YouTube costs a lot of time and, unlike Facebook and Instagram, is not so easy to check, simply because of the time-consuming content production and the resulting rare postings. But YouTube offers a strong and above all lasting tool, since good videos are placed still after years highly by the algorithm of the video search machine. So anyone who creates an evergreen in a theme, e.g. also for videos such as “How to repair your toilet seat” or “Winter tyres – making cars winterproof”, can market their product absolutely free of charge for many years. Here lies the great magic of YouTube.

How much time / manpower does a small company need if it wants to become active in social media?

When working in social media networks, a daily time window should be taken into account. A big secret trick of social media agencies is the use of online tools to plan content in advance. So a social media manager can plan the content in advance every 14 days and can concentrate on other things in everyday life, e.g. designs, shootings, interaction with the fans, depending on how big one’s own social media marketing is built up. For small companies, time can of course also be used for other work processes. Therefore, the A&O for your Social Media Manager, use an online tool to plan your postings in advance.

If you are in social media marketing, you have to leave yourself or your employee 2 hours a day. Depending on the company, one can create simple content, from everyday life or may have to have higher quality things made, e.g. through photo shootings with models and products.

Depending on this, of course, there are also a few more working hours or even days. Who can afford it, should take a full time Social Media Manager, because in the end it concerns more than only the support. There are so many other functions that a social media manager can perform in the company, only advertisements are so effective that the investment is worth the time for the first optimization.

With a full-time social media manager relationship, a medium-sized company has already done a great job. On top would come then of course still medium-size enterprises, which want more than only support and a little advertisements. This is about brand cooperations, collaboration with influencers and bloggers, but also more extensive social media campaigns that require additional budgets. In the ratio of two hours a day to full time, is the optimal time management for social media marketing in small to medium-sized companies.

What to look out for when interviewing your new Social Media Manager?

It is important to show sufficient references during the job interview and in particular to have a few details of the project explained. Your new social media manager should have channel management skills. He or she should also have looked after at least one channel with over 10,000 fans. He or she should be familiar with designs but also with the creation of creative content. He or she should master the creation of advertisements and the targeting of target groups contained therein while asleep.

You are also welcome to ask for one or the other detail, especially advertisements, as an online shop: What was the best click price and how did you reach it? This is specifically about split testing of different advertisements, so that the most effective one can be filtered out according to a certain amount of advertising budget. Who can answer all these topics in the job interview as Social Media Manager sovereign and in detail, should be able to help you!

And last but not least: Which tools do you recommend and why is it generally helpful to use which tools? (I was thinking about Hootsuite, Canva, Buffer, Pablo, Google Alerts and Fanpage Karma, but maybe you still have a great idea?)

There are many good recommendations in the area of online tools for social media activities. Definitely there should always be a tool to plan content in advance. Like hootsuite or buffer. With this you can plan your social media postings in advance. This not only helps to save time every day, because every process has to be repeated daily, but also possible sick days of the Social Media Manager as well as holidays can be cleverly avoided.

In addition, there are even more special tools for the individual social networks, e.g. monitoring tasks for Facebook YouTube or Instagram. There are several good recommendations for this, too; one of these tools should definitely be used if you want to evaluate the success of activities in social networks. For Facebook and YouTube there are programs like Radrly or Echbot, for Instagram and Influencer programs like Social Analytics One.