TikTok marketing has rapidly become the hotspot for social media marketing. Since its rise to prominence in 2020, brands have been experimenting with TikTok’s digital marketing force. The reception among both small brands and global corporations has been incredible. Today, the top best brands on TikTok include businesses across many industries, including food and drink, finance, gaming, finance, beauty, fashion, fitness, community apps and more.
That aside, a study by Invideo showed brands (50% of the world’s top brands) have been slow at escalating their social marketing machines on this video-sharing platform. While this is the case, it also points out an explored territory, a fertile ground for businesses and brands to grow.
What is your TikTok strategy for 2023? TikTok offers you a huge opportunity to grow your brand exponentially. And that is why we have compiled a list of the best 17 brands on TikTok to inspire your next TikTok marketing strategy.
Best App-based Brands on TikTok
1. CapCut tactics that will inspire your creativity on TikTok
TikTok opened a unique marketing opportunity for brands to the users from the most engaged social media app at a lesser cost. That said, the team behind the CapCut app definitely took advantage of this.
CapCut, an all-in-one video editing app, has amassed over 2.2 million followers on TikTok. Thanks to suburb functionalities and features that allow users to create incredible videos for TikTok. The app enables you to reverse, cut, change speed or even add stickers to your videos.
The brand’s success formula is simple but works excellently. They mainly share video editing tips, as well as funny and inspirational content, while ensuring that they increase apps downloads throughout all of their content.
2. Roblox’s Recognisable Comics
Roblox uses TikTok to grow its brand and promote and expand its audience base. The brand is a storefront where players play games online. Roblox’s uniqueness is that it allows users to program games, and other users can then play these games.
Its gaming universe includes a vast collection of children’s and teenagers’ games. Because their products span across a range of niches and audiences, their principle of inclusivity also informs their strategy on TikTok, whereby they go onto target a multitude of audiences within different niches.
For instance, they keep their followers engaged with recognisable comic book content from upcoming games.
3. Subway Surfers’ Surging Popularity on TikTok
Subway Surfers is one of the most downloaded games in the world today. On TikTok, the game has more than 2.1 million followers, indicating a massive success and good reception. The company mainly relies on top creators like @subways_stories06, @subwaysurfer_stortime, @_ghost6669, Subway Surfers enthusiasts,= and micro-influencers to tell their story.
The gaming app mainly utilises the uniqueness of TikTok to attract its primary target audience; children, teenagers, and millennials. AS Bianca Sarafian, the community manager at Mediatonic, explains, TikTok, “unlike other platforms, it’s not so much a broadcasting tool as it is a genuine way to create content and connect with people.” Subway Surfers understands this working principle.
As a result, their campaigns aim to build communities through broadcasting relatable and organic content to their audience. The content includes everything from brand-themed skits to jaw-dropping stunts that incorporates humor.
Best Finance Brands on TikTok
It is common to view TikTok as unsuitable for finance brands. But in reality, finance brands need to know that TikTok offers more than entertainment. Here’s three of the best finance brands on TikTok. They clearly illustrate that TikTok works for finance and fintech brands.
4. Planet Money on TikTok
Planet money, an American podcast and blog produced by the National Public Radio, launched operations in 2008. The brand uses a creative and entertaining narrative to explain finance matters. This is reflected in their TikTok strategy and indeed a lot of their social media content features innovation, as well as humor.
The brand came to TikTok and made their first post in 2020. Their arrival was motivated by the fact that they “realised the growing cultural influence that was coming from the TikTok community, so (they) began paying attention to it.” – Alex Goldmark, the senior supervising producer at NPR. Interestingly, the brand now has over 300,000 followers and over 5.6 million likes.
They use a short video series to portray their narrative, and TikTok offers them the platform to effectively do so.
5. UK Fintech company, Plum
@frugal_spender #ad sting made easy #ad #plumapp #investing #invest #stockmarket #moneytok #moneyfyp #fyp #ukfinance #personalfinance #stocksandshares
COVID-19 and the ensuing restrictions of movement that followed resulted in everyone spending relatively more time on social media to maintain their social connections. In due time, Plum, a UK-based savings and fintech agency, saw this rising opportunity and came to TikTok to grow its brand awareness and reach out to new clients.
The brand has since recorded growth in the 25-34 age bracket, which is a strong score since its target was mainly people in this age bracket.
Plum’s TikTok primary strategy on TikTok has been working with influencers to tell their brand’s story. The brand partnered with TikTok creators like @mrtradingrobot to run a 52-week challenge. It involved saving £1 for the first week and £2 in the following week from a user’s linked bank account. They steadily increased the savings each upcoming week. In the end, users were able to save up to £1300 without feeling as much impact mentally.
Interestingly while their audience target was Gen-Z’s and millennials, Plum managed to get customers of all ages; many people in their 50s and 60s even signed up. So TikTok was able to give them a new market they hadn’t considered targeting.
6. AIB on TikTok
AIB, one of the leading Ireland banks, joined TikTok to promote its ‘Future Spark’ series product and drive its online account opening campaign. Generally speaking, the bank is famous among the younger generation Ireland and gets massive support from college students.
The company partnered with Ireland’s major communication companies to reach out to students in large numbers. Meanwhile, on TikTok, AIB relied on a mix of in-feed ads and top view ads to promote their new product and account registration. The ads featured a 30 seconds video with an embedded CTA that directed visitors to the bank’s opening landing page.
The results were amazing. The ads amassed an incredible 2.13 million views, a recorded 40,000 clicks, and 94,000 engagements for the Future Spark series. The Top View ads that focused on the account opening campaign resulted in more than 3.3 million views, a whooping 647,000 clicks, and an additional 688,000 engagements.
Top Luxury Brands on TikTok
How do successful luxury brands perform on TikTok? Unlike their finance counterparts, luxury brands are a lot more trendy on TikTok. In brief, here are the top three brands that have cracked the code in TikTok.
7. Louis Vuitton seizes the opportunity to connect with its target audience
Louis Vuitton is the second most famous luxury brand on TikTok. The brand joined TikTok in 2020 as its collective strategy to target Gen-Zers. As the founder Bernard Arnault says, “catering for the Gen -Z was important for the future.” thus necessitating their entry on TikTok.
The brand mainly deals in luxury products, including but not limited to leather goods, handbags, shoes, accessories, watches, and trunks. Interestingly, in less than a year after launching their channel on TikTok, the brand surpassed 1 million followers. Today, their channel has over 1.4 million followers, and the videos on their brand profile often receive more than 1 million views each.
What is their strategy? Like most high luxury brands, Louis Vuitton focus on creating unique content that resonates with the TikTok community. As you might expect, their content is engaging and eye-catching. Knowing that they are working with Gen-Zers, the company builds upon what is popular, to create awareness as it draws the younger generation’s attention that way.
8. Gucci – the leading luxury brand on TikTok
The Italian-based high luxury brand, Gucci is by far the most popular brand on TikTok – with over 1.6 million followers, it means Gucci’s approach to TikTok marketing resonates with the TikTok community. What are Gucci’s secrets for the massive success on TikTok?
Gucci joined TikTok especially to exploit TikTok’s potential to connect them to their ideal audience- Gen-Zers and millennials. They are responding to the rising demand for diversity by Generation Z and millennials, and that is what the brand offers them.
Their approach is simple. As a matter of fact, it includes running authentic creative and community-driven campaigns. Their channel is full of short videos of fashion models from all shapes, looks, and colours. It allows their audience to see themselves and connect with the brand no matter their background.
@gucci An ode to the pursuit of what lies beyond. #TheNorthFacexGucci @thenorthface #AlessandroMichele
9. Dior and the essential shift to TikTok
Dior is also one of the most highly followed fashion brands on TikTok.
Dior today boasts of more than 1.5 million followers on TikTok, outstanding audience engagements, and likes for their content. At the core of Dior’s TikTok strategy is creativity and storytelling. As a result, their range includes everything from TikTok puppet shows, short films and shows-in-a-box pieces.
The brand also runs TikTok fashion shows and live streams to show its commitment to fashion and reinforce its position as a leader in the industry.
The Best Sports and Fitness Brands on TikTok
If consumers want to find out the best viral gaming, sports, and fitness trends, TikTok is the place. If you run a business in this niche, these incredible sports and fitness brands on TikTok will inspire your next move.
10. Gymshark shakes up the codes of fitness and sportswear
Surprisingly coming on the top of our list is Gymshark, a sports and fitness brand that has risen to become a household name. Gymshark now competes with long-established brands like Nike and Adidas for sales and popularity, in general.
How? Gymshark was an early adapter of TikTok; for this reason, the company gained massively leveraging the rise and popularity of TikTok. With more than 3.5 million followers on TikTok, it is clear that shoppers love the brand.
Part of the explanation for of Gymshark’s blowout on TikTok is their impressive user-generated content strategy. The brand heavily relies on TikTok creators and its regular fans to create and spread its branding message. The tactic helps the brand collect quality content from its users alongside contributing to the virality of their content.
You can learn more about Gymshark’s incredible content strategy here.
11. Adidas uses TikTok to reinvent social media marketing
Adidas is getting creative with its influencer partnerships. Their TikTok channel is filled with short videos from influencers and micro-influencers. Adidas relies on these creators to do the talking for them.
The brand also runs branded hashtags campaigns; the goal is to increase brand awareness, cultivate and engage with TikTok creators, as well as invite sports and fitness enthusiasts to participate in their creative campaigns.
As a result, the brand has achieved 855.5K followers, and their branded hashtag #Adidas has over 4.6 billion views on TikTok.
12. Puma – The critical takeaways from their campaigns on TikTok
Puma, like Gymshark, adopted TikTok very early. They have been consistently posting on the platform as back as 2019. The brand has been on TikTok to specifically build compelling content, connect with millennials and Gen-Z, and above all, achieve a higher engagement rate with the content.
Puma runs a mix of TikTok challenges, participates in TikTok live stream events, and collaborates with creators in building authentic content for their audiences. Most notable was their partnership with Sports Direct, one of the leading sports retailers in the UK.
Sports Direct wanted to celebrate the hype of the new Puma football boot to inspire more sales. To achieve the objective, Sports Direct collaborated with Puma and a TikTok sports team to launch their #Flashofuture challenge campaign.
The campaign ran a mix of Brand Takeover ads, In-feed ads, and a combination of branded banners that featured the #Flashofuture hashtag. In the end, the campaign drove engagements beyond expectations. By and large, they achieved over 154 million video views and over 1.46 million challenge page views.
Best Food & Drink Brands on TikTok
13. Starbucks demystifies the opportunity to order bespoke beverages
Starbucks, a popular coffee house brand, hit the road running with a campaign to show users how easy it is to order their custom-made drinks from their app.
The brand employed Spark ads paired with offline activities to push their bespoke content to their followers. With over 11.5 million impressions, 31.5 new followers, and over 220k likes for their content, the campaign managed to cause a considerable impact showing how well users received it.
14. Oreo, the largest snacks brand on TikTok
Mondelez Oreo’s arrival on TikTok included launching a multichannel campaign to infuse personalities with its familiar products and remind its fans about the favourite snacks they enjoyed since childhood.
Their TikTok strategy includes rewarded online contests, limited-edition product offers TikTok challenges, and ‘retainment’ activations. The campaigns gained traction on TikTok, and the brand is behind the most popular candies and snacks challenges on TikTok.
15. Dunkin uses TikTok Influencers to build its brand reputation
Dunkin is one of the most followed food and drinks brands and is partners with Charli D’Amelio, the most followed TikTok creator. The brand infuses influencer partnerships where contributors create bite-based videos offering recipe and cooking shortcuts. They then link them with foods trends and post them on their timelines for more exposure and visibility. Dunkin has over 3 million followers on TikTok and a whopping 6.8 billion views for their leading hashtag #Dunkin.
Best Community-based Brands on TikTok
16. Discord takes cues from TikTok
Since its launch in 2015, Discord has been the number one destination for gamers. However, it has recently evolved, bringing together more like-minded but diverse communities. Most precisely, brands are now using Discord to forge a sense of community and belonging amongst their fans. Why would they not use TikTok to do so with their diverse communities?
TikTok created a Discord server to enable their followers to extend their communication on Discord. On the TikTok-Discord server, users can now chat with strangers on any Topic and in any way they want to chat with them. What are the results? Discord has grown its user base to over 2.8 million with an impressive 7.5 billion views for the hashtag #discord.
17. TikTok meets the Tinder dating app
2020 gave social platforms a major shakeup, and in particular, dating apps got more popular in the wake of the Coronavirus. Tinder had a lot of success during this period, hitting over 75 million active users and over 6.2 million active subscribers.
Their TikTok content strategy ranges from dating tips and fun dating-themed games, to point-of-view videos that include skits.
Ultimately, their TikTok strategy outshines competition because they actively engage their community.
Conclusion – The Best Brands on TikTok
Although TikTok may sound like a hub of strange posts, teen skits, and funny choreography vids, its popularity and viral capability are something any brand can’t ignore. So, we have looked at 17 of the best brands using TikTok to create a buzz around their brand, engage audiences and tell the lighter side of themselves via short TikTok videos and challenges.
Considering the simplistic nature of the platform, however, it is clear that brands need to be very creative to truly gain popularity. If you are ready to elevate your brand with TikTok marketing, don’t hesitate to contact our team of TikTok experts.
House of Marketers (HOM) is a leading TikTok Marketing Agency. Our global agency was built by early TikTok Employees & TikTok Partners, which gives us the insider knowledge to help leading brands, like Redbull, Playtika, Badoo, and HelloFresh win on TikTok. Want us to convert more of Gen Z and Millennials with TikTok? Get in touch with our friendly team, here.