With millions of active and engaging users around the globe, the power of TikTok is not to be underestimated. Brands that know how to leverage a strong TikTok presence to their advantage can put themselves in the best position to thrive for years ahead.
A strategy that includes the use of all TikTok key marketing features is the quickest way to get there. Today, we will be taking a closer look at hashtag targeting on TikTok, explaining why you need to implement this feature as a part of your strategy.
First, let’s take a quick look at what targeting means in advertising and marketing, and how it can apply to TikTok.
Ad targeting and TikTok
Targeting is an advertising technique in which the advertiser identifies a group towards which to direct the ads, based on a number of traits. These can include demographic features, behavior, interests, previous interactions with the brand, and so on.
Targeting is important because you don’t want to serve all your ads to all of the audience, since some of them will be less likely to engage with them, and some of them will be more likely to. With targeting, you can fine-tune your campaigns to get the maximum out of them.
In TikTok, there are several targeting dimensions that are supported in the app’s Ad Manager:
- Audience (Lookalike and Custom audiences)
- Demographics (Gender, Age, Location, Language)
- Interests and Behaviors (Interests, PurAdcoom Intent, Behaviors, Hashtags)
- Device (Connection Type, Device OS and OS Version, Model, Price, Carrier)
- Smart Targeting (Targeting Expansion, Automatic Targeting, Targeting Recommendations)
Hashtag targeting falls into the Behavior Targeting dimension. This specific type of targeting is based on the user behavior inside the app, with a particular focus on recent behavior – video-related actions (completions, likes, comments, shares) and creator following actions (follows and homepage views).
Behavior targeting can be used for target audience testing, for helping the campaign out of a plateau phase (by identifying new users), and to get valuable post-campaign audience insights.
Hashtag targeting as a form of behavior targeting
As we saw, hashtags are one of the criteria based on which a brand can perform behavior targeting in TikTok. Specifically, with this method, you target users who watched or interacted with videos with certain hashtags.
You define these hashtags by yourself, based on careful research of your audience personas. There are other methods for identifying hashtags to target and to figure out which ones will work the best for your goals. Remember that you are not limited to the hashtags that are specific to your industry, but they do need to be in one way or another relevant to what you’re advertising.
We will discuss how you can make the most out of hashtag targeting later in this article, but first let’s see how to set it up.
Setting Up Hashtag Targeting on TikTok
Like with everything else that has to do with TikTok advertising, to set up hashtag targeting you will need to head over to your TikTok Ad Manager.
Once in your account dashboard, go to Add Group and select Targeting.
Under Interests & Behaviors, click on Add Behavior: Hashtag interactions.
Search for hashtags you want to target by typing in the search bar and selecting the hashtag from the dropdown menu. Simply select the desired hashtag, and that’s it.
You will be able to browse all hashtags, not just industry-specific ones. Note that, at the moment, TikTok does not offer reporting by hashtag.
Find the latest trends and capitalize while they are still fresh
Between thousands of new #hashtags that gain traction on TikTok every day, it can be overwhelming to keep track of the latest trends and decide which has the potential to work with your brand. However, if you just take a step back and analyze some of your competitors, as well as category trends, you will eventually be able to generate a list of useful hashtags that will match your brand’s audience.
Another great tactic you can employ is to combine popular #hashtags with those that are less competitive. By doing that, you give your content the chance to reach wide audiences through popular hashtags, but also the more niche groups where you can engage with a specific audience. Just make sure to combine hashtags that are relevant to your message and brand, as randomly pasting a bunch of tags will serve no real purpose.
How to choose hashtags on TikTok to gain views
Building a steady base of the target audience that follows your content is great, but if you ever plan to reach wider audiences, you need to utilize popular and trending hashtags from your industry. When you learn how to do that, you can then focus on pursuing your goals, which might be achieving better conversion rates, higher engagement or improved sales figures.
To gain inspiration when feeling stuck, you can visit the TikTok creative center, a platform that contains all sorts of useful tips and tools, such as royalty-free music, available templates and new trends that have the potential to go viral. By following some of these examples and guidelines, you should be able to increase your following quickly and easily.
Reach engaging users from your target audience
The most difficult job in marketing is to turn cold leads into warm audiences, or simply to engage with users who are not interested in your content, and turn them into customers and clients. With that in mind, it’s not a surprise why a feature that allows brands access to already interested and engaging audiences would be so useful.
With hashtag targeting, brands have a chance to promote their content to audiences who are actively searching for a specific type of content. In that way, brands can lean into certain trends and create a strategy that will be aimed toward promotional services, new product releases, or intended to reach increased sales figures.
In the TikTok Ads platform you can target TikTok user audiences based on their #hashtag behavior. This means you want to take your list of #hashtags that represent that interests that best represent you audience and enter those #hashtags into our advertising campaign. This means that anyone that has watched videos with those #hashtags will be targeted with your ads.
Create different audience personas and test your strategy accordingly
Every audience is characteristic, and depending on their interests, they will respond differently to your campaign. Although experts tend to know the current market trends well and can create a good strategy based on their experience, going by gut feel is not always an ideal solution.
The thing is, no matter how long and hard you try to predict the outcome, sometimes testing your content with different #hashtag audiences remain the best option. With hashtag targeting, you can add additional hashtags and interests and create complete personas. By doing that, you will be able to test your strategy on real people and the data you gather at the end will be a lot more precise and reliable.
How can you start using hashtag targeting today?
With all the advantages of TikTok hashtag targeting, it’s not a question of whether you should use this feature, it’s how fast you can set it up. For those who are eager to utilize all of the advantages of TikTok marketing to benefit their brand, Adcoom is there to speed up the entire process.
Contact us today and our team of experts will guide you through all the details about hashtag targeting, helping you to set up a killer campaign that will increase the strength of your brand and allow you to reach your goals faster.
