For brands, TikTok content needs to meet a variety of search demands throughout potential customers’ purchase journey.

Due to TikTok’s full-funnel nature, brands need to produce content that will appear in both passive and active searches.

The notion that Gen Z consumers, who make up the largest portion of TikTok’s users, are impulsive buyers is wrong. They will often carry out more research than consumers in other age groups before reaching a purchase decision.

As such, brands need to create, and encourage the creation of, content that enables users to discover the brand, builds brand awareness, answers questions that consumers have about a subject area, and provides the information that they need when it comes to opening their wallets.

How to optimise for both passive and active searches.

As with any search platform, forming a strategy requires awareness of how your target consumers are searching. How are they starting their journey? Where are they starting that journey?

One of the key differentiators with TikTok is that it facilitates more passive discovery than search-focused platforms.

By scrolling through the For You Page, users are taking the most passive action possible, but still giving brands the opportunity to be discovered. This is where producing quality, TikTok-native content increases discovery, as the algorithm is more likely to surface this content.

Above this, but still very much passive, are the most general searches that people will make on TikTok. These are category-level, think ‘fashion’ or ‘football’. The users are demonstrating interest in a topic area, but the search is broader than what they would Google.

This is where having topical relevance and good search optimisation comes into play more. While you don’t have a clear idea of what users desires are from this search, producing broad, discoverable content that is engaging can help users discover your brand, seeing that it is relevant to this wider topic area that they have a degree of interest in.

Then the next level of search intent comes with searches such as ‘how to…’ or ‘best…’. The user has identified an issue they want to solve, or needs further knowledge on how to solve the problem. The ‘problem’ can also be not knowing what the best product to purchase in any given category is.

These are similar searches to what we have become accustomed to seeing on YouTube, but users naturally expect TikTok-native, concise content to answer their query.

Any brand that wants to be present in this consideration stage needs to be producing search-informed content that answers questions those users have, and ideally also encouraging UGC from creators that highlights the brand as a trustworthy name in that space.

Therefore, when potential customers actively look for something related to your brands products/services, they become familiar with your brand.

They may then become even more precise with their searches as they narrow down their options prior to a purchase, looking for specific ‘brand name review’ content to help inform their final decision, or searching for further information about the brand. Again, comprehensive content to give users all of the information they need about the brand and its products is crucial here, as is having ample content and reviews from people who have used those products and can be used as social proof.

Create content for every stage of the purchase journey

While the majority of people will leave the platform at some point in their purchase journey, most commonly to Google, what makes TikTok unique is how it is essential for brands to show up at every stage of a user’s journey.

Lighter, generalised content helps brands entertain and form a relationship with users that scroll or search in a passive manner. This is where brands can build awareness by getting in front of a large group of people on the platform.

But that can’t be where brands stop. They also need to be visible when users are more active in their searches, looking for solutions to their problems and assessing which brand to buy from as they approach the end of their purchase journey.

Search activity on TikTok isn’t going anywhere, and related behaviours are only going to grow. To maximise success on the platform, especially as a small brand, content needs to cover the full funnel. This means meeting potential customers wherever they are on their journey to making that purchase.