Tiktok Sponsored Hashtags: What They Are and How to Use Them 

If you’ve subscribed to our newsletter you’ve probably seen us break down a new sponsored hashtag each month. Sponsored hashtags by brands are becoming increasingly popular with brands in an effort to amplify their campaigns in a creative way. 

What are Sponsored Hashtags

Sponsored hashtags are trending hashtags that brands pay to promote their brand or new products/services. Sponsored hashtags are featured on TikTok’s discover page. When you click on the sponsored hashtag to see related videos, at the top, there will be information about the campaign as well as a direct link to the product that is being promoted. 

Is it worth it? Well, social media marketing has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing and consumers who are influenced by social media are 4x more likely to make a purchase. Creating fun, engaging, and expansive TikTok campaigns can prove to be successful. 

How to Use Them 

One of the most successful ways to use a hashtag is to create a challenge around a hashtag, especially one that involves buying your product. The #OREOBdayStack, which was designed by Oreo to celebrate their 110th “birthday”, challenged users to stack the number of Oreos that are equivalent to their age. This was a simple challenge that anyone could participate in and encouraged people to buy Oreo products. Their call-to-action, or CTA, was a link to their special birthday limited-edition Oreo. The brand even went as far as to create their own branded sound. 

Tapping into TikTok influencers is a smart way to launch any campaign. Most users on TikTok try to jump on to trends to gain the highest number of views. Many users will use trending hashtags and audio (branded and not) on unrelated videos just to be seen. While this is frowned upon by some, any video using your branded hashtag will help to amplify your campaign and peak curiosity in users who want to see what the hashtag is related to. 

 A creative example of using influencers to help boost your campaign was by Philosophy’s #bestofhope campaign hashtag. The brand collaborated with Teresa Jack to promote their campaign. She created a video of her and her friends being the “ultimate hype crew” for people’s New Year’s Resolutions. She asked her followers to duet her video using #boostofhope. 

This allowed users to feel like they were directly involved in the campaign and allowed people to participate without having to buy their product. This is a contrast to Sony’s #linkbudsneveroff campaigns, which clearly felt like all paid influencer content. The majority of the users who participated in this campaign created high-quality videos with complex editing to feature the expensive product. This basically created a high number of mini-commercials, which is still a great way to achieve brand awareness, especially when partnered with a specific sound. 

Conclusion 

Sponsored hashtags are becoming more and more popular with brands. There’s a variety of ways to do them, but like any sponsored campaign, you want to make sure you understand your goals, target audience, and how to optimize your campaign to optimize the ROI of your campaign.