Best Brands on TikTok: Tips To Optimize Your Brand Presence

The best brands on TikTok make compelling content with the potential for massive reach. TikTok is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, and it’s on track to keep growing—analysts predict it will surpass two billion users by 2027. This means there will be no shortage of engaging content in the years to come. It also signals a fast-expanding space where brands can increase visibility, reach new audiences, and drive sales.

TikTok rewards authentic, unpolished content, so you don’t need an elaborate studio to create videos that connect with potential customers. Its format also gives brands room to experiment with creative storytelling and build stronger connections.

This guide breaks down what TikTok marketing looks like today. Explore effective marketing strategies from some of the best brands on TikTok, and learn about best practices you can use to optimize your own TikTok presence.

What is TikTok marketing?

TikTok marketing is how businesses use the platform to promote brands and their products or services to viewers. It includes creating organic content for your brand’s TikTok business account, such as behind-the-scenes moments, quick tips, cultural commentary, or short product demos. Partnering with creators or running paid campaigns to reach new audiences can be highly effective.

Today, TikTok is more than just a platform for entertainment; it’s also a built-in ecommerce destination through TikTok Shop, where brands can sell products directly on the app. The combination of entertainment and shopping has fueled explosive growth, with TikTok Shop’s gross merchandise value (GMV) rising from about $1 billion in 2021 to $33 billion in 2024. 

By connecting your online store—through an ecommerce platform like Shopify, for example—your content goes beyond simply reaching audiences. This setup reduces friction by letting viewers discover, evaluate, and purchase your products without ever leaving the app.

Best brands on TikTok

• Fenty Beauty
• GymShark
• Washington Post
• Olipop
• HOKA
• Scrub Daddy

According to Social Insider benchmarks, the TikTok platform had an average engagement rate of 2.8% as of June 2025, far higher than Instagram (0.45%) and Facebook (0.2%). This makes it a great place for many brands to build a highly engaged audience and increase brand visibility. Brands that consistently create viral videos or highly shareable content can see especially strong returns.

To show what effective TikTok content looks like in practice, here are some successful brands using creative strategies and engaging videos to strengthen their presence on the platform:

Fenty Beauty

Fenty Beauty has grown a strong social media presence on TikTok by posting straightforward but high-quality product content. The brand frequently leans into trends—from ASMR (a style of video built around satisfying sounds like tapping) and popular audio tracks to vibrant, close-up product shots. This approach helps its videos feel current and visually captivating.

The brand also leans heavily on user-generated content (UGC), despite being founded by Rihanna, giving the content a community-driven aesthetic. 

It also creates seasonal promotional clips, including Black Friday–themed videos. Fenty’s approach shows how simple formats, when paired with strong visuals, can stand out and consistently engage beauty audiences on TikTok.

GymShark

GymShark has a clear TikTok strategy: Lean into fitness motivation primarily through influencer partnerships. It frequently collaborates with popular fitness creators like Sam Sulek, Annabel Lucinda, and Lean Beef Patty to deliver authentic and inspiring messages that push the audience to be their best. 

This consistent, creator-driven approach shows how partnering with voices your audience already trusts can help build credibility and keep fitness content feeling relatable and high-energy.

Washington Post

While entertainment and news don’t normally go together, The Washington Post blended the two to create consistently popular videos. It has a deep understanding of TikTok video formats, like quick cuts, a Green Screen feature, and character-driven storytelling to deliver the news in a fun and engaging way. 

The Washington Post has set an example for how to turn potentially dry information into approachable content that builds an engaged community. It also makes great use of the link-in-bio feature, which it uses to link out to its merch store, news site, and other social accounts. 

For brands, this means informational content—product sourcing stories, industry news, behind-the-scenes looks—can build engaged audiences when delivered with personality.

Olipop

When it comes to finding cultural tie-ins that work well for your brand, prebiotic soda company Olipop is a strong example. From finding clever ways to talk about Dancing with the Stars to an unexpected partnership with SpongeBob SquarePants, it consistently delivers content that garners likes, positive comments, and excitement from the TikTok community. 

One of its more successful videos, with nearly five million views, is its own version of the viral Starbucks “Bearista” teddy bear–shaped cup craze, showing how timely cultural references can spark strong engagement.

HOKA

Running shoe company HOKA may not top the charts with the most followers, but it consistently posts content with high engagement rates and views in the tens of thousands. Its content stands out with a good mix of high-production videos and more casual, phone-shot clips that keep the brand feeling authentic. 

While the videos that seem to have a small film crew behind them deliver inspirational running content, they give themselves room to make lighthearted jokes that look like they’re coming from real, everyday runners. This mix of polished and lo-fi formats helps the brand feel both aspirational and relatable.

Scrub Daddy

It’s essential to include Scrub Daddy on the list of best brands on TikTok. The smiling sponge brand is a master class in content because it leans into trends, creates content in response to user comments, and prioritizes entertainment over a hard sales pitch. 

The sponge has become a main-character mascot with a distinctly unhinged personality that perfectly suits the platform. The bright toy-like aesthetic keeps every piece of content aligned with the brand identity. Scrub Daddy even sneaks real product demos into comedic sketches.

Tips for brands on TikTok

• Optimize your profile
• Pick your niche
• Develop an authentic content strategy
• Research TikTok trends
• Consider collaborations
• Review your TikTok analytics
• Tell good stories

Success looks different for every brand on TikTok, but many of the best-performing accounts share clear creative choices—captivating stories and focused messaging that drive results. Whether you’re just getting started or refining your approach, these tips can help you build a stronger TikTok presence and support your sales goals:

Optimize your profile

If your goal is to convert viewers into paying customers, they need to understand what your TikTok account is about quickly. Here are a few key elements of an effective business profile:

• Clear username. Ideally, your business name is your username. If it’s unavailable, you can explore variations with underscores or a keyword related to your business, like “jewelry,” if that’s what you sell.

• Clear business description. Sum up what your business offers in a couple of seconds to quickly let people know why they should stay and follow you. Fishwife, for example, has a description that’s both fun and informative: “Your fav friendly tinned seafood co.”

• Website or link-in-bio tools. You can link your website or use a link-in-bio tool like Linktree. This allows you to house multiple links—like your homepage, popular product pages, and more—in one place.

• TikTok Shop activated. You can also link your TikTok Shop, so it appears within your profile alongside your external links, allowing TikTok users to navigate wherever they’d like.

Pick your niche

The TikTok algorithm works by pairing content with the right audience, so choosing a focused topic that reflects your expertise helps boost your views and lets the algorithm understand your account more clearly. 

Start by clarifying the problem you’re solving and who you’re solving it for. According to TikTok’s Creator Academy, this might mean sharing knowledge about your special skill, like how to play a song if you’re a musician. For a dog food brand, it might be sharing tips and tricks that align with your product, like how to use treats effectively for dog training.

Develop an authentic content strategy

Taking the time to create a content strategy can help you stay consistent with posting and make it easier to plan at scale. This often involves using a content calendar to map out content formats, topics you want to cover consistently, and how often you want to post. Common organic formats can include multipart series that keep your audience engaged, participating in trends that align with your account, or product drops that your followers learn to expect.

Research TikTok trends

Social media channels move quickly, and TikTok is no exception. Regularly researching everything from trends to your competition can help you understand what works on the platform and what goes into creating viral digital content, giving you ideas to test in your own content. Here are a few ways to stay on top of the latest TikTok trends:

• Use TikTok’s built-in tools. TikTok Creative Center allows you to browse songs and trending sounds that are pre-cleared for use on business accounts, look up hashtags, and view top-performing videos by region. You can also search directly within the TikTok search bar by typing keywords related to the topics you want to create content about and see the top videos, users, and hashtags.

• Industry reports. For a marketing perspective, explore expert industry reports like Sprout Social’s State of Social Media or TikTok’s trend forecast report. These can help you better understand emerging patterns among TikTok users and how consumers expect brands to show up on social media.

• Study your competition. Doing a broader competitive analysis that involves reviewing what they’re doing on social media can help you spot opportunities. See what kind of video content is getting the most engagement, the hooks they’re using, and gaps you can fill with your own distinct angles.

Consider collaborations

Influencer partnerships that align with your brand can help you increase your reach, boost social engagement, and turn viewers into customers. A SproutSocial study found that almost 90% of Gen Z prefer products recommended by influencers. To tap into the benefits of influencer marketing, you don’t need someone with a massive following to see results. In fact, nano-influencers, who typically have between 1,000 and 10,000 followers, garner higher engagement rates than larger creators—1.73% in 2024, more than double the rate of any other influencer tier.

Review your TikTok analytics

Your TikTok analytics let you see what’s working and what’s not, with a dashboard built directly into the app. Understanding these metrics helps you identify relevant content that drives sales and cut what doesn’t convert. You can access your analytics within the Business Suite section of your profile on both mobile and desktop, and they cover Overview, Video, Audience, and LIVE. 

Here’s a brief breakdown of the information in each section:

• Overview. This lets you see how your account is performing as a whole, with metrics like video views, likes, comments, and conversions. You can also see your most popular videos and follower growth.

• Video. See a list of all your videos and how they’re performing with views, likes, and comments. You can filter videos by Most Recent or Most Views.

• Audience. Explore your reach and engaged-audience metrics and take a deep dive into when your audience is most active, along with their ages and gender breakdowns. This information can help you further tailor relevant content.

• LIVE. If you ever go live, you can see how well it went with total views, total time watched, new followers, and viewer count.

Tell good stories

Whether you’re making entertaining or educational videos, people love a good story. But what makes for a good story on TikTok? A common story loop format is one where you set up a question or problem and leave room for the solution or answer. For example, you could tell a story about how you kept failing at something until you tried a new approach, and then explain what that was. This helps create intrigue and encourages people to keep watching. 

Consider this example from Fly By Jing:

The TikTok video presents a clear and captivating narrative that starts with a problem: Most instant noodles weren’t particularly tasty, and they mostly included low-quality ingredients. Fly By Jing founder Jing Gao then explains how she overcame this problem by sourcing artisanal noodles made with premium ingredients.