Branded Hashtag Challenge: TikTok brings you success

In today’s world, it is important to tailor your marketing approach to your target audience in order to successfully engage them. But what about using potential customers not just as spectators, but as active participants in your brand? Isn’t it brilliant to connect people by letting them take action, make them feel like they’re part of something big, and increase your company’s reach at the same time? In this post, you’ll learn how to use the Branded Hashtag Challenge ad format on TikTok (HTC) to build a vibrant and engaged community around your brand, which is exactly what makes you successful.

Why does the Branded Hashtag Challenge make sense for your business?

With the TikTok Branded Hashtag Challenge, you can encourage your community to actively participate in spreading your brand. This can build brand loyalty, create viral reach, and allow users to give you valuable feedback in a direct way. This marketing strategy also directly kicks off user-generated content (UGC), encouraging participants to post authentic and credible content, which in turn means customer acquisition and retention for your brand.

What else can you do with the Branded Hashtag Challenge?

Another point in favor of the Branded Hashtag Challenge is the emotional connection to the brand that is created when users actively participate in a challenge, especially if it is fun. Active participants tend to be engaged people. They are willing to invest time and effort to create interesting content and specifically engage with your brand. This means higher engagement and a positive impact on the reach and visibility of your campaign. Use the Branded Hashtag Challenge on TikTok to turn your users into valuable brand ambassadors and make your marketing campaign a success.

What is a Branded Hashtag Challenge?

Hashtags are important on TikTok for finding videos, participating in discussions, and engaging with specific communities. They also increase visibility in the “For You” feed and can help posts go viral. Hashtag challenges, where users perform specific actions in videos and use the corresponding hashtag, are particularly effective. When brands endorse or sponsor these challenges, they are called Branded Hashtag Challenges. This increases brand awareness, user engagement and following on TikTok.

Why does a hashtag challenge work so well on TikTok?

The ad format works so well because it encourages and appeals to users’ need to communicate. Generation Z in particular has a very strong need to communicate, which the Branded Hashtag Challenge taps into, creating a whole new interaction between the company and its audience. Silent consumers are transformed from passive spectators to active participants. With HTC, you have the opportunity to put your brand in the spotlight and most importantly, turn your target audience into co-creators, decision makers, followers, buyers and ambassadors.

Hashtag challenges allow your brand

Attract attention where your customers already are, speak their language and become part of their culture. It’s a groundbreaking way to amplify your brand’s voice and take engagement to a whole new level. With this ad format, you get:

• Increased attention
• Massive engagement
• Widespread impact
• Organic visibility
• Increase in sales

What makes a good hashtag challenge?

Always remember what TikTok is. TikTok is meant to be fun, TikTok is meant to inspire creativity, and TikTok is meant to encourage participation. Set some parameters and direction in your HTCs, but leave plenty of room for users to get creative. Analyze your community before you get started. What do they like to watch? What do they enjoy sharing? And most importantly, what content do they enjoy interacting with the most?

And don’t forget: With TikTok, the sound makes the music.

1. Create a hashtag with your brand name

Stand out from the normal feeds and generate recognition that stands behind your brand and your TikTok community. This way you also strengthen the connection to your brand.

2. Use full tunnel

Your customers should experience your brand as an exciting journey. You want to attract attention first and then build interest continuously until a purchase is made. Branded Hashtag Challenges start with building your brand awareness and increase engagement, but also create a strong connection to your brand, which ultimately leads to more sales.

3. Create a massive engagement

Give your message and product a compelling and useful story to resonate with your audience. Use great sounds and cool effects. The great thing about the TikTok platform is that users don’t have to create posts from scratch, they can remix and edit your ideas and add their own interpretation. This makes TikTok users great storytellers for your brand. Branded hashtag challenges have seen engagement rates of up to 17.5%.

4. Work with TikTok Creators

To skillfully increase engagement as quickly as possible, work with TikTok Creators. This strengthens the bond with your community and addresses multiple niches at once.

5. Boost your HTC with Add Ons

Add Ons let you give your Branden Hashtag Challenge more exposure. Use the momentum through:

• Branded Effect: Use the unique 2D, and – 3D effects, like an animated background, which does justice to your brand.
• Hashtag emoji: Stand out from the crowd with a custom branded emoji that appears alongside the hashtag everywhere. According to TikTok, this proved a 43% increase in clicks.
• Sweepstakes: Challenge your community to a creative contest, which comes with a great prize. 
• Explore: Add an ‘Explore’ button to your official contest page that leads to your landing page within the TikTok app. This is your chance to promote your products and brand. You can also launch a survey or collect customer feedback on this page.

6. Use TopView

It has been shown that visibility could be increased by 5 times when the HTC branded product was combined with TopView.

7. Integrate QR codes

Distribute your unique QR code everywhere to increase offline traffic as well.

8. Bonus: Increased organic visibility

All these measures will increase your organic visibility, which will also improve the effectiveness of further marketing measures in the long run.

Conclusion:

Build a vibrant and engaged community around your brand with the TikTok Branded Hashtag Challenge (HTC). The HTC encourages users to actively participate in spreading your brand, which builds brand loyalty, generates viral reach and provides valuable feedback. Users become brand ambassadors, resulting in increased engagement and reach. Good HTCs encourage users to get creative and use the fun factor of TikTok. Add Ons and TopView can be used to increase awareness. A branded hashtag challenge is effective because it appeals to the user’s need to share and creates an emotional connection with the brand. Take advantage of this opportunity for your brand’s success.

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