Is TikTok good for business?

An Auckland building company backs its marketing potential

When New Zealand Certified Builders members Timothy and Rachel Faleatua started filming their home build and adding videos to TikTok, the Build with Titus owners had no idea how good it would be for business.

Their first video, launched in December 2020, received an overwhelming response overnight. We recently caught up with the Auckland couple to hear more about their surprise success.

Why did you start doing videos on TikTok? We started adding TikTok videos to document the process of building our own home but quickly realised people were really interested! Our first video had over 750,000 views and 50,000 likes. We now have over 19,000 followers.

The main business benefit of using TikTok is brand recognition. Our target market are first home buyers and we find a lot of young people in that demographic use TikTok. It’s a great way to get our name out there while showing a younger audience some of the steps involved in building a property, which they may not have seen before.

What are the key contributors to TikTok’s success? People lead busy and fast-paced lives so quick, detailed videos are a great way to capture people’s interest as they scroll. We find our audience especially enjoys ‘before and after’ videos and time-lapses of the building process.

What are your opinions on the future of TikTok? Social media evolves so quickly and there is always something new popping up. We’re not sure what the future holds for TikTok but we will make the most of its popularity while it’s working for us.

How can you monetise TikTok? Our goal with TikTok is to get our name out there, gain brand recognition, and build a portfolio of work. We’ve had people touch base with us after seeing some of our videos to enquire about what we can offer, which proves it’s an effective marketing tool. TikTok has what it calls a ‘creator fund’ where users in approved countries can get paid if they have over 10k followers and a certain number of video views. Unfortunately, the creator fund isn’t available in New Zealand but we hope this will change sometime soon.

Is it easy to connect with an audience? If you can keep on top of the trends on TikTok and upload interesting content, it can be a great way to connect and interact with people. We certainly get the odd ‘keyboard builder’ who likes to question our process or add their advice, but we think it’s great! We get lots of questions about our designs and material choices, and we try to respond to as many comments as we can to engage with our audience. Do you repurpose your content for different channels? Yes, we generally upload short and interesting videos to TikTok that capture small parts of the building process. Some of these short videos also work well for Instagram and Facebook, although the content we post on these platforms is more photo- and detail-based.

On average, how long does it take to produce a video? Not long at all. I (Rachel) head to site and film the team building, normally in about 15-minute blocks, or Timothy will set up a timelapse and record the team. Then I edit the videos, add music, and upload the videos to TikTok – all from my phone. It’s super easy.

The Build with Titus Team.

You can find Timothy, Rachel, and the team from Build with Titus on: TikTok – www.tiktok.com/@buildwithtitus Facebook – www.facebook.com/buildwithtitus Instagram – www.instagram.com/buildwithtitus Website – www.buildwithtitus.co.nz