Stop building TikTok campaigns around the hope of going viral

For many brands, TikTok is still associated with one outcome: going viral.

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A viral video might gain millions of views, attract thousands of comments, and become part of an online trend. But once the trend moves on and the views stop compounding, everything returns back to status quo. You might get a few additional enquiries or customers, but its impact on revenue is not a sustainable one.

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The problem is not that virality is worthless, but that it is merely a way for brands to gain attention. Brands that grow on TikTok are the ones that build a connected ecosystem that supports what happens after that. Through building the right content and investing in the right media products, they create a systemic way to create momentum and capture business demand.

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At MeetSocial, we approach this through our four always-on loops model: Attention, Amplification, Action and Acceleration.

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Unlike the traditional marketing funnel, the loops model is a more accurate way to think about the customer journey. Consumers nowadays do not move in a single direction from awareness to conversion. Instead, they move back and forth between these stages. The average customer journey can look like this:

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Be recommended a product based on previous purchases → Research the new brand through a creator sharing its benefits on TikTok → Visit its website and leaves it in cart → Encounter the brand again through an advertisement → Return to TikTok for further validation → Purchase on TikTok Shop → Influence others through their own engagement.

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The loops model allows us to plan for these interconnected behaviours, and strategically use TikTok’s solutions to support each loop's objective.

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Attention: earn the right to be remembered

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Before anyone can consider your brand or make a purchase, they need to know your brand and how it is relevant to them. This means buying impressions is not enough, instead you need to build your content around introducing the customer problem, establishing relevance and making the brand distinctive enough to be recognised when the audience encounters it again.

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TikTok’s branding solutions exist to support discovery, reach and brand impact: 

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• TopView is a full-screen, sound-on video placement that appears as the first thing users see when they open their TikTok app. 
• TopReach combines TopView and Top Feed, into a single buy aimed at maximising one-day reach.
• The TikTok Pulse Suite places ads around premium and trending content. For example, Pulse Core places your advertisements next to brand-suitable user content, while Pulse Premiere places them next to selected publisher content across categories such as entertainment, sport and lifestyle.

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These are especially useful when you are launching a new product, entering a new market or driving a seasonal push.

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For its Nespresso x The Weekend “Samra Origins” collection, Nespresso combined TopView, Pulse and In-Feed Ads with global assets and local creator content. According to TikTok’s Brand Lift Study results, the campaign delivered a 12.2% lift in ad recall and a 13.3% lift in awareness.¹

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The key takeaway is that not every brand needs a premium placement, but must first create sufficient familiarity, relevance and memorability for subsequent messages to work better.

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Amplification: turn interest into deeper discovery

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Once you have attention, amplify the messages that are working and give your audience reasons to explore further. This does not mean repeatedly serving the same promotional video. Amplification involves identifying the content that is earning attention, adapting it for different needs and extending its reach through paid media, creator participation and destination campaigns.

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TikTok’s Video Views objective can optimise towards a focused-view metric, giving you a way to optimise towards audiences demonstrating stronger attention rather than measuring every video start equally. A six-second focused view is counted when a user watches an advertisement for at least six seconds or interacts with it within the relevant period. A 15-second focused-view metric is also available.

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Businesses can also use the Traffic objective to direct users towards destinations such as a website or mobile application, while using Spark Ads to promote their own organic TikTok posts or authorised creator content. Views, comments, shares, likes and follows generated through the promotion are attributed to the original organic post, so paid activity reinforces your organic and creator presence instead of sitting apart from it.

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A home-services business might open with a visually engaging renovation transformation, before amplifying supporting content on renovation costs, timelines, smart-home features, customer concerns and before-and-after experiences. The business idea remains consistent, but each piece of content helps the audience discover a different reason to engage.

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Amplification is how a brand moves from being seen to becoming relevant, useful and easier to evaluate.

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Action: convert attention into the right business outcome

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Attention and engagement only create commercial value when customers have an appropriate way to act. However, not every customer wants to take the same action. Some may be ready to purchase, while others may want to obtain a quotation, book an appointment, ask a question or speak to a representative before deciding.

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TikTok’s performance solutions cover several of these routes:

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• ‍Native Lead Generation uses a customisable Instant Form that loads within TikTok, allowing you to convert customers into leads all within the app. 
• Website Lead Generation directs prospective customers to the advertiser’s own web form, where the business can apply its existing lead-qualification logic. 
• Messaging and Call Ads enable prospective customers to initiate conversations through TikTok direct messages, supported messaging applications or telephone calls.
• TikTok also provides performance solutions for objectives including online sales, automated lead generation and app promotion.

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However, the appropriate solution should be based on the business model, sales process and action the customer is realistically prepared to take.

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Online education provider Stepful used TikTok’s Website Lead Generation option, supported by TikTok Pixel implementation, audience exclusions, lookalike audiences and Spark Ads.[11] to build a campaign that generated approximately 85,500 lead-form submissions and reduced average cost per lead by more than 40% compared with Stepful’s previous TikTok campaigns.²

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Here is the part most brands get wrong. Action should never  be measured only by the leads or purchases reported within the advertising platform. Connect TikTok data to your CRM stages lead quality, sales conversion and revenue reporting. Otherwise, campaigns may optimise towards inexpensive actions rather than the most valuable customers.

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Acceleration: make every interaction work harder

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The customer relationship does not end at a click, lead or purchase. Everyone who has watched a video, engaged with content or visited a website can provide signals for subsequent campaign activity. 

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TikTok’s Engagement Audiences lets you create audiences based on interactions including video-view duration, completed views, likes, shares and comments. Website Traffic Audiences work similarly from site visitors and on-site actions subject to the required tracking and minimum-size rules.

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That supports two moves. 

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The first is turning engaged customers, creators and communities into media to strengthen the brand’s message. Testimonials, creator demonstrations and  strong organic posts can become media assets in their own right, and through Spark Ads, engagement earned during a promotion stays attributed to the original post, creating potential value beyond the immediate paid campaign period.

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The second is using accumulated signals to improve future delivery. Brands can re-engage relevant audiences, exclude recent converters, build lookalike audiences and refine creative or bidding based on observed performance.

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RT TAX ran a comparable integrated approach, pairing narrative-led awareness content with direct lead-generation activity across several markets. Its campaigns delivered a 27% lower cost per lead across five markets compared with the company’s other paid-social platforms over six months. It also rotated creative, tested formats and messages, adjusted bidding and tracked performance over time.³

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That is the point. Acceleration is not simply about spending more. It is about using each round of activity to make the next one better informed.

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One idea, four connected roles

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A connected TikTok strategy is not four unrelated campaigns, instead it is one business idea doing four complementary roles.

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A home-services brand, for example, might:

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• Generate Attention through transformation-led videos and high-visibility placements.
• Create Amplification through educational content, creator stories, focused-view optimisation and website traffic.
• Drive Action through consultation forms, showroom appointments, messaging or telephone enquiries.
• Build Acceleration by promoting customer stories, re-engaging interested audiences and applying performance signals to future campaigns.

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Crucially, none of this needs to happen in a fixed order. A single customer testimonial can pull in new audiences, help an existing prospect decide, and persuade another customer to make an inquiry, all at once.

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The central takeaway is straightforward: do not build a TikTok strategy around the hope of virality. Build an ecosystem in which every interaction creates momentum for the next.

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When the four loops are connected through one campaign proposition, TikTok stops being a content distribution channel. It becomes a system that creates demand, capture business outcomes, and continually strengthens the effectiveness of future activity.

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1. TikTok for Business. (n.d.). Nespresso: How Nespresso drove significant awareness and ad recall for the Nespresso x The Weeknd “Samra Origins” launch using a TikTok-first strategy.

2. TikTok for Business. (n.d.). Stepful: Reaching new prospects with TikTok’s Lead Generation objective.

3. TikTok for Business. (n.d.). RT TAX: How RT TAX lowered CPL and scaled lead generation with TikTok Ads in the Baltics and Balkans.

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Unsure how to start building a full-funnel TikTok strategy? Meetsocial is an official TikTok SEA Agency Partner and our specialist teams are ready to help transform how your brand attract, entertain, educate and persuade your communities. Get started here.