Why your marketing probably shouldn't be on TikTok (even though everyone says it should)

There's this persistent hum in marketing circles that sounds a bit like a worried parent: "Are you on TikTok yet? You really should be on TikTok. Everyone's on TikTok." It's like a version of "you need a Facebook page" from 2010, except louder and with more dancing.

The trouble is, platform anxiety has become so pervasive that businesses are making decisions based on fear rather than sense. And whilst TikTok is genuinely brilliant for some companies, it's thoroughly useless for many others. The difference between these two groups has almost nothing to do with how "creative" you are, and everything to do with what you're actually selling and who's buying it.

The expensive myth of being everywhere

Let's address the elephant wearing a ring light: creating proper content for any platform is time-consuming and therefore expensive. Even if you're doing it yourself rather than paying an agency, your time has a cost. That cost needs to generate a return, or you're essentially setting money on fire whilst filming yourself doing it.

When someone tells you to "just repurpose content across platforms," they're either selling you a social media management tool or they've never actually tried it. A LinkedIn post is not a TikTok video with different dimensions. An Instagram caption is not a tweet that got lost. Each platform has its own language, format expectations, and audience behaviour. Pretending otherwise produces the social media equivalent of serving leftovers on a different plate and calling it a new meal.

Being on every platform properly requires different content for each one. That means writing, filming, editing, responding to comments, and staying current with whatever algorithmic nonsense each platform is currently prioritizing. For a small business or a lean marketing team, this is the difference between doing three things well and seven things poorly.

What you're selling matters more than you think

If you're selling artisanal candles, vintage clothing, or anything that photographs well and appeals to people under 35, TikTok might be perfect. The platform's algorithm is genuinely good at surfacing content to interested people, even if they don't follow you yet. That's valuable.

But if you're selling enterprise software, industrial equipment, or financial services to risk-averse professionals, TikTok is probably a waste of your time. Not because these things can't be made interesting—everything can be made interesting if you try hard enough—but because your potential customers aren't there looking for solutions to their problems. They're there watching someone renovate a house in 60-second increments or learning that their star sign means they're bad at texting back.

There's a particular strain of marketing advice that suggests every product can be sold everywhere if you're just "authentic" and "engaging" enough. This is rubbish. A 55-year-old procurement manager looking for supply chain management software is not scrolling TikTok hoping to stumble across your cheeky explainer video. They're on LinkedIn, they're reading industry publications, and they're asking colleagues for recommendations.

Where your actual customers actually are

This should be obvious, but it apparently needs saying: go where your customers already spend time, not where marketing Twitter says you should be. This requires actually knowing who buys from you and what their day looks like, which is less exciting than jumping on the latest platform but considerably more useful.

If you sell to other businesses, LinkedIn is boring but effective. If you sell to hobbyists, niche forums and Facebook groups probably outperform everything else. If you sell to design-conscious consumers, Instagram still works. If you're trying to reach Gen Z about something they actually care about, then yes, TikTok might be your place.

The question isn't "Should we be on TikTok?" It's "Where do our customers go when they're thinking about problems our product solves?" Sometimes that's a social media platform. Often it's not. It might be Google. It might be a subreddit. It might be their mate down the pub.

The problem with case studies from enormous brands

Much of the "you must be on TikTok" pressure comes from case studies about brands like Ryanair or Duolingo absolutely smashing it on the platform. These are great stories. They're also completely irrelevant to most businesses.

Ryanair can afford to have someone whose entire job is being snarky on TikTok. They have brand recognition that means a video can perform well even if it's only tangentially related to booking flights. They also benefit from not really needing to convert viewers into customers immediately—brand awareness has value for them because they're already the first company people think of when they need a cheap flight.

Your business is probably not Ryanair. You probably need your marketing to do more immediate, measurable work. Spending three hours making a video that gets 50,000 views from people who will never buy from you is not a success, regardless of what the vanity metrics suggest.

What actually matters: return on effort

Every marketing channel should be evaluated on the same basic question: does the effort we put in generate enough value to justify itself? This value might be sales, might be qualified leads, might be support queries you no longer have to answer because you've made a good FAQ video. But it needs to be something concrete, not just "engagement" or "brand awareness."

For some businesses, TikTok passes this test easily. For many others, that same effort would generate far better results on less fashionable platforms, or even—brace yourself—offline entirely. Direct mail is deeply unsexy and costs actual money to send, but for some audiences it outperforms every digital channel combined.

The uncomfortable truth is that good marketing is often boring. It's doing the same thing consistently well on platforms that already work, rather than chasing novelty. It's writing helpful content that ranks on Google. It's maintaining an email list and actually sending useful things to it. It's having a functioning website that loads quickly and makes sense. None of this gets you excited reactions at marketing conferences, but it does get you customers.

Permission to ignore the noise

If you've read this far hoping for permission to skip TikTok, consider it granted. You don't need to be everywhere. You need to be where it makes commercial sense to be, doing work that generates returns proportionate to the effort involved.

This doesn't mean never trying new platforms. It means trying them strategically, with clear ideas about what success looks like and a willingness to bin them off if they don't deliver. It means being honest about your capacity and choosing depth over breadth.

Platform anxiety is real, and it's expensive. The cure isn't forcing yourself onto TikTok or any other platform. It's being clear about who you're trying to reach, where they actually are, and what you're realistically able to do well. Sometimes that includes TikTok. Often it doesn't. Both are fine, as long as you're making the choice based on your business rather than someone else's case study.

The best marketing channel is the one that connects you with people who need what you're selling, in a format you can sustain, generating results that justify the effort. If that's TikTok, excellent. If it's not, also excellent. Just stop feeling guilty about it.

If Social Media Isn't Your Thing

Did you know that we can do it all for you if we build your website and you use us for your ongoing management service? Not only can we fill your website with content, we can also take care of your social media posts for you. All original, all aimed at different platforms and all scheduled so as not to bore your followers with the same content on each platform. To see how we do this then take a look at our app RiCreate:

RiCreate - Our Content Creator

And we don't stop there. We have lots of other useful apps in the RiCollection. All designed for one purpose - to make your life easier!

View The RiCollection

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