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TikTok video ideas for brands in 2023

87% of marketers have said social video has helped them increase traffic to their brands’ websites. A powerhouse for engagement, TikTok has become the go-to social media channel for users to share short-form videos, but brands have been slower to enter the playing field. 

With only 3.7% of all TikTok content shared by brand accounts, it’s a great time to start generating TikTok video ideas and build an audience on the app before it becomes saturated with advertisements. Let’s dive into some community-driven video ideas eCommerce brands in any industry can take advantage of to boost brand awareness and drive sales.

1. Product review videos

Around 49% of users have said that TikTok influenced them to make a purchase. While your first instinct as a social media marketer may be to run ads on the platform, testimonials from real customers can serve as valuable content to kick off organic TikTok engagement. The app is famous for influencer marketing and user-generated content (UGC) shared by people every day, and your brand stands to benefit from resharing this type of content.

Around 79% of people have watched a video testimonial to learn more about a company’s product. People feel they can trust a review from a customer more because the reviewer has no obligation to say positive things about the company. They can also relate to and identify with other customers like themselves, and even influencers on TikTok. 

Instead of just creating your own TikTok videos for your brand’s profile, it’s worth your time to reach out to micro-influencers and scope out UGC already out there from your customers. Both options pave the way for honest, persuasive product review videos you can reshare on TikTok and/or other marketing channels like your website.

Check out the screenshot below. It shows a product review of a showerhead by Blatantreviews, a popular account with 3.6 million followers on TikTok. The high level of engagement through likes, comments, shares, and saves is proof of how much people appreciate honest reviews from third-party sources. 


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Pixlee TurnTo’s platform allows brands to manage and publish content from customers on TikTok (and other social channels) at scale. No more searching manually for brand mentions or relying on your TikTok notifications; a Social UGC platform helps you find and reuse the highest-quality content from your community. Brands can also search for influencers based on a variety of filters and launch partnerships within the Pixlee TurnTo platform.

When leveraging product review videos, you can ask your reviewers to utilize the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt. It’s a hashtag TikTok users include in their posts where they share or show off a product. 

The thing about this hashtag is that it has given even small businesses a lot of promotion. According to TikTok, the hashtag has had 6.4 billion views and counting. That can be a lot of eyeballs for your brand!

Ask your users to add popular music to their product reviews, too. If they can, they should use the sounds that popular videos under the hashtag are using. According to TikTok, this is one way TikTok users can find your video on the platform and know more about your business. You can also consider a TikTok video editor to make these posts even more polished.

2. Get to know employees

Alongside featuring more UGC in their social media posts, marketers today are also humanizing their brands by showing the faces behind the operation. No matter what industry your brand falls into, resharing your team’s own content or featuring them in a string of TikTok videos can further help users connect with your brand and feel more willing to purchase your product.

Be sure to sprinkle some value into the posts you create with your employees, whether that means answering questions about how your product works, educating viewers about how your brand has grown over the years, or simply entertaining them with a funny anecdote.

Delta is a prime example of a brand with diverse TikTok video content and a heavy focus on employees (like flight attendants, pilots, and airport employees). As the brand maintains a lighthearted voice and style on TikTok, many of these employee-led videos are humorous and utilize trending songs and filters on the app.

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Here are some more ideas to get your employees involved in your TikTok videos:

  • Showcase how they use your product in day-to-day life

  • Behind-the-scenes tour of your headquarters

  • Telling their story and why they work for your brand

  • Answering common questions from customers

  • Sharing unique ways to use your product or service

3. How-to videos 

Although TikTok is mostly known for lip-syncing videos, dance videos, and challenges, educational videos and how-to videos have also become popular on the platform. The best thing about tutorial-style videos is that your social can create them in-house, solicit them from influencer partnerships, or encourage customers to create how-to UGC.

Whether you’re just starting a business or are already an established company, how-to videos can benefit brands in almost any industry. Since your marketing goal is to promote your product and ultimately drive conversion, then the best video topic should still be related to what you’re selling. 

For instance, if you’re selling jeans, you could create an inspirational-style how-to video on how to pair the jeans with other clothing. Another option would be to create a how-to video on a service you’re offering. So, you’re essentially giving your audience a taste of what is to come if they avail of your service. 

Check out this example from The Art Room, which sells art courses. On their TikTok profile, you see videos on how to draw different elements:


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Embroidery brand DMC frequently shares tutorials and craft inspiration from the brand’s team, influencers in the knitting world, and community members. To get the most value out of these videos, DMC also uses Pixlee TurnTo to display them in a shoppable "Shop TikTok” gallery on the brand’s website.

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Search around the TikTok app to identify common questions or topics in your industry that are attracting the most traffic. To do this, type in your industry in the search bar and examine the content from the “Top” and “Hashtags” sections as shown below. This is a good way to find trending how-to videos and model your own content after popular ones. So, if the video has copy interspersed across the video and uses music, just add copy and music to your how-to video, too. The rationale behind this is simple: these little things could be some of the reasons the video is doing so well on TikTok.

4. Stitches, duets, and comment reply videos

There are a variety of ways to engage with your audience on TikTok besides responding to comments. Stitches and duets are two popular tools often used by influencers to interact with content from their communities and put their own spin on trending topics. While a stitch allows you to reshare a video and append your own content at the end of it, a duet plays the video in question alongside your post at the same time. 

Stitches and duets are both great ways to show your TikTok audience that your brand actually cares about the opinions of customers and is present in an online space they’re commonly active. For example, a TikTok user could share an unboxing video or a video about their favorite product from your brand, and you could stitch or duet that video, teasing new product releases or showing the product in different colors/styles.

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Similarly, comment reply videos refer to videos created by a user directly in response to a comment on a prior video posted by that same user. Comment reply videos appear in the comments section of the original video, and the comment that’s displayed in the new video redirects users back to the original post for context. Basically, you’re giving users more ways to discover your content and connect your videos to each other while interacting with comments from your fans.

5. Comparison videos 

Comparison videos should be on your list of great TikTok video content ideas, too. You can use comparison videos to highlight why your product is the best on the market. In the beginning, you may want to create a few of your brand’s own comparison videos and encourage your followers to follow suit. 

Below is an example of a comparison video of two moisturizers made by a TikTok user:


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You could come up with a slogan or branded hashtag, for instance, and let the users come up with the TikTok content. Using a branded hashtag also makes it easier for your team to locate and reshare videos your customers may be posting. TikTok is a hub for creativity, so users are bound to add their own spin on their comparison videos. This makes your content more diverse and authentic.

For instance, when Pizza Hut came up with the slogan “No one outpizzas the Hut” to highlight how it’s supposedly better than its competitors such as Domino’s, many TikTok users came up with funny videos that didn’t talk about benefits and features. In the videos, some users just immediately concluded Pizza Hut was the better option, and they did so in a humorous way. Check out the example below: 


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Repost the videos your followers share on your TikTok account (with permission) like Pizza Hut did in our example above. You can even use these videos on your website for social proof to level up your content strategy.

6. Unboxing videos

Unboxing videos make for great TikTok video content, too. Just look at the numbers. As of October 2020, unboxing videos have amassed 105 million views

For these unboxing videos, you can use influencer marketing to your advantage. Start by identifying the right influencers. Check out our advice on how to find influencers for your brand rather than spending the time sending out hundreds of DMs to creators who may not be the best fit for your campaign. Then send them your products so they can create the unboxing video content. Just make sure the audience of the influencers you choose consists of the people you’re looking to reach, too.

Note, too, that some TikTok users create unboxing videos without being sent a free package from the business. You can scour TikTok for these videos using tools such as Pixlee TurnTo and repost them on your TikTok or other marketing platforms.

The unboxing videos don’t necessarily need to include a verbal review. This is TikTok, so almost anything works. A literal unboxing of a new product with music overlay and TikTok filters is an easy one for your brand or influencers to create. 

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Give your influencers and brand ambassadors creative freedom to add their own flair to their unboxing videos. After all, they’re the ones who have amassed an engaged following and build content unique to that audience.

In closing

TikTok is a platform marketers can no longer ignore. Video, meanwhile, has already been proven to be an effective marketing tool. If you combine the two, then, you have a potent marketing tool you can use to promote your brand.

In this article, you learned four TikTok video content ideas for your brand. Product review videos, how-to videos, comparison videos, and unboxing videos are all great for getting your product in front of other potential customers. They’re perfect for eliciting engagement, too.

If you add these TikTok video content ideas to your content marketing strategy, you'll generate the best marketing results. Good luck!

Austin Andrukaitis (Entrepreneur Leadership Network Writer) is the CEO of ChamberofCommerce.com. He's an experienced digital marketing strategist with many years of experience in creating successful online campaigns. Austin's approach to developing, optimizing, and delivering web-based technologies has helped businesses achieve higher profit, enhance productivity, and position organizations for accelerated sustained growth.


Editor's Note: This article was originally published on pixlee.com. Any statistics or statements included in this article were current at the time of original publication.

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