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TikTok works for acquiring SaaS users

I came across this post on a SaaS growth Facebook group a few months ago:

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(btw, the name of the Chrome extension is Tactiq)

All of this got me really curious so I got in touch with Samuuel and interviewed him on Indie Hackers.

He shared some really interesting information, including a list of the TikTok videos that worked for him.

Here's another example:

Back in September, The Verge reported on a TikTok video that "crashed" a website that helps you find research participants.

The video was basically a girl telling others about a cool way to earn some extra income by filling paid surveys. Apparently, the video brought 40k new signups to the survey website (judging by what a member of the Stanford Behavioral Laboratory posted):

“We have noticed a huge leap in the number of participants on the platform in the US Pool, from 40k to 80k.

Sure, TikTok works for B2C SaaS. But what about B2B?

I've been on TikTok for several months now (spending a 20-30 minutes each week which is enough to "feel" where the platform is going). It all got started with B2C content (teens/students doing fun/interesting stuff).

Things are changing, however.

I keep seeing more and more "B2B-like" profiles, such as developer profiles with tens of thousands of followers. Same with marketing. The side hustle niche is also pretty big.

If things continue this way, I can see TikTok becoming a viable acquisition channel for an increasing number of founders who are into SaaS.

If you read through the comments below, one of them is Michael Andreuzza who got some unexpected surge (probably someone mentioning him in a video) of traffic to WickedBlocks, a website providing UI blocks for developers/non-coders:

And yup, they got paying users from the TikTok surge.

Btw, if you want to receive user acquisition insights like this one each week, feel free to sign up to my series:

Have you had any success with TikTok?

  1. 4

    We only have 2 followers on TikTok. We posted a video there this week that got 475 views, so we're really paying attention to it now.

    1. 1

      Can you link to the video? Could provide some feedback.

    1. 1

      Wow. Did any of those visitors convert?

        1. 2

          Pretty neat. Included your example in the comments.

          1. 1

            oh wow! How cool, cheers!

            To be clear, I don't even how it got there and I have googled,... I even created an account to find it but no success...

            1. 1

              Have you tried outreaching to the users who signed up via TikTok?

              1. 1

                no one has to sign up to none of our projects, wickedblocks.dev is 100% free and in wickedtemplates.com you come, buy from Gumroad and go, we do not save information at all.

  2. 2

    We also started TikTok as company profile (retail). Posted a few videos but one of them went kind of viral and now has 2.5k likes and more than 25k views.

    1. 1

      Nice! Did it bring any sales?

  3. 2

    Wow, i never tought tiktok could work for Saas businesses. Excited to see what's more to come !

    (Btw what's the name of the group or if you have any other FB groups to recommend)

    1. 2

      SaaS Growth Hacks is the name of the FB group.

  4. 2

    I've read somewhere than more and more "older" people get on TikTok. Not sure how true this is.

    1. 1

      According to Statistia, 21.7% of U.S. TikTok users are between 30-39. 20.3% are between 40-49 and 11% are older than 50. So this "only young people use TikTok" is a myth really..

      1. 1

        That's very interesting! I agree that TikTok has a lot of potential. The only thing that's holding me back right now is the fact that I read that the average age on there is 14 years and that's definitely not my target group.. Do you know if there is a way to reach a specific target group on the app?

        1. 1

          Where did you see the average-age-being-14-years-old stat? According to Statistia (and other sources), 25% of users are between 10 and 19.

          1. 1

            The New York Times published an interesting article on that topic, feel free to check it out: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-underage-users-ftc.html :)

            1. 1

              Interesting. Worth noting that TikTok started sharing that older people are signing up in increasing numbers in the past 1.5 years. You can target people by age btw: https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article?aid=9600

              Also, before working with a certain influencer, guess it's a good idea to look at the people who like/comment their posts to gauge their age.

              1. 1

                Thanks for sharing - very interesting!!

  5. 1

    If someone can share the list of creators i could reach out to with their email i am open to pay ( just do it before i do it)

  6. 1

    Does anyone know how much it tends to cost to hire influencers for marketing? Or is there a site with prices or something?

  7. 1

    Going to try this out. Well, for a B2C app, but interested in what happens!

  8. 1

    I'll be honest, I haven't paid that much attention to TikTok as a means of driving traffic to the SaaS I'm working on (which is still in the beta stage).

    I do, however, keep seeing more TikTok success stories for B2B SaaS projects.

    Will have to look into it, I think.

    Thanks for sharing!

  9. 1

    Definitely need to hit that TikTok algo

  10. 1

    Wow am loving this. Never did I think I TikTok would be a channel for B2B this fast but I can see if your target audience of users are in a certain age group. However, this is not a channel to ignore.

    I would like to explore this for https://retroteam.app/

    Does anyone know how to get started ?????

  11. 1

    Thank you for sharing! Would you mind sharing a little bit more about how to find and contact tik tok influencers/creators? To find creators in my field, I search relevant videos and filter each creator manually so it is not very productive. And I tried to contact them via direct message which is allowed on Instagram but tik tok prohibits direct message unless the creator follows me.

    1. 1

      What's your product?

      1. 1

        I am selling physical products in pet, home décor/organization niche.

  12. 1

    This is awesome. Thanks for sharing

    1. 1

      Glad you found it useful!

  13. 1

    @alexred20 - Time for LanguaTalk content on TikTok? How's your dancing? 😅

    1. 1

      He didn't answer, so my guess is he's preparing to show you how good his dancing is.

  14. 1

    Interesting. Anyone here had any experience with TikTok ads?

    1. 1

      I know a few people who used to run TikTok Ads on influencer content that got traction organically. Be careful though; if you're in Europe, you can't run ads in the US (unless you get an account manager so he/she can enable this for you).

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