Three Australian small businesses have shared their TikTok journeys which have seen them achieve strong business growth, record-breaking sales, immense social impact and learn plenty of key lessons along the way after participating in the first TikTok for Good Launchpad SMB Kickstarter.
The program was created to support and celebrate Australian businesses that prioritise corporate social responsibility and cause-related actions.
Givewrap, Conserving Beauty and HoMie were chosen to take part and launch dedicated campaigns on TikTok in December 2023.
The social media giant has a community of more than 350,000 Australian businesses on its platform.
Sydney company Givewrap only started its TikTok account in September 2023, but the TikTok for Good Launchpad SMB Kickstarter program made the business go viral, more than once, according to founder and managing director Michelle Tirtabudi.
“Over the Christmas period, our videos reached a combined over 120 million views, 2.6 million likes and gained us over 150,000 loyal followers,” she told SmartCompany.
“Our goal was to make Givewrap famous and encourage as many people as possible to Give Twice – to someone they know, and to someone in need.
“TikTok’s program helped us push out our message and brand purpose within the Australian community, on a scale we would never have been able to achieve alone, and allowed us to donate four times more than the previous year, to our charity partners, and help them continue their vital work.”
Tirtabudi said Givewrap, which gives $1 from every roll of gift wrap sold, caught fire on TikTok quickly.
“Which meant that we had to learn how to use it fast,” she said.
“Fortunately, the platform is super intuitive, which made it easy for us to not only create our content but to edit it and upload it to our rapidly growing community, in no time at all.”
Givewrap went into November 2023 with approximately 80,000 followers, and today it has more than 150,000.
Despite only dedicating a quarter of the budget to website conversion, Givewrap increased its year-on-year sales on its website by 300%.
From the very beginning Tirtabudi said Givewrap’s strategy with TikTok was to fail fast – and learn fast.
“In the first 10 days, we posted a variety of different types of videos in an attempt to find out where the gold was,” she said.
“What we learnt pretty quickly was that educational videos, more specifically videos that equipped people with gift wrapping tips and tricks, was where the magic lay.
“By combining trending music, savvy editing techniques, and some pretty radical gift-wrapping hacks – we were able to capture the attention of literally millions of new viewers, every single day.”
As well as improving online sales, Tirtabudi said Givewrap’s new-found TikTok fame helped massively in other ways too.
“For example, Givewrap has just secured distribution through two major Australian retailers, and there was no doubt that our impressive social media numbers helped get us over the line,” she said.
“Givewrap is growing at an incredible rate, as we plan to not only expand the brand throughout Australia but also internationally within 2024.
“As well as wrapping paper, Givewrap has now also expanded into gift bags, bottle bags and greeting cards, as we continue to change the way people give gifts forever.”
Conserving Beauty marketing director Kim Slattery said the TikTok program enabled the Melbourne-based beauty brand to not only amplify and expand its reach locally, but also tap into other markets and litmus test how its brand and product was received.
“In particular the US, influencing our road map to global expansion within this financial year and next,” she said.
“As a brand with little to no awareness in the US market, our performance in the market to date has been purely organic through users finding our brand through organic content that has reached a degree of virality.
“TikTok ads enabled us to hone in and retarget these, but also scale by targeting lookalike audiences which is where we had the most success in driving immediate conversions, but also building our top of funnel which we were able to retarget.”
Conserving Beauty sales, focusing on its lookalike audiences, driven by TikTok increased by 910% and there was a 180% sales uplift in store over the campaign period.
Traffic to Conserving Beauty’s website increased by 1800% and organic follower growth was up 895%.
Slattery said Conserving Beauty originally structured full-funnel campaigns, but quickly diverted to conversion-driving campaigns.
“The ability to build out and target lookalikes was key for us to scale and where we saw the best performance,” she said.
“From a creative standpoint, we found the best results when we took what was working natively in our TikTok account and then recutting it in different ways to be more direct and sales-led.
“And then testing, testing, testing.
“We also found success in tapping into the culture of celebrity and weaving a celebrity hook into the creative, to grab attention, but also to establish credibility with new audiences.”
Slattery said the tests the brand was able to conduct highlighted that the US is a clear and necessary next step for it as a business.
“For the time being, we will continue to scale up and test the US whilst fulfilling out of our Australian hub, but the sales results we have seen through the trial have us strategising what a hard launch with domestic fulfillment would look like for us,” she said.
HoMie co-founder and creative director Marcus Crook said it had been amazing to be a part of the TikTok for Good Launchpad SMB Kickstarter program.
“Gaining additional resources — both in terms of ad spend and access to the amazing TikTok experts — has allowed us to expand our reach and engage with a completely new audience,” he said.
“We’ve been able to create more awareness about our mission to combat youth homelessness and drive more customers to our website to buy our streetwear.
“Connecting with a passionate community with shared interests has helped us to grow our impact.”
In December, the Melbourne-based social enterprise had 10 million impressions on TikTok, 13,000 website sessions, and a 9% increase in net sales, compared to December 2022.
For HoMie, December 2023 was a record-breaking month in terms of net sales; both online and in-store.
“It was our best December since starting HoMie eight years ago,” Crook said.
“This was exceptional to us during the current economic downturn where we’ve seen retail sales drop across the board.
“Online sales grew by 9% compared to the previous year.”
Crook said HoMie achieved this by first working with the TikTok team to create an ads campaign strategy — and then setting up traffic, view content, add to cart, and conversion campaigns.
“For each campaign, we adjusted spend and created something very specific to suit the purpose of the campaign.
“For example, in our brand awareness ‘traffic’ campaign, we created a combination of educational content about our social impact programs, as well as some engaging videos so people could get to know the team.
“For further down the conversion funnel, we created content hyper-focused on showing off our streetwear products.
Crook added that a key lesson for the business was just being authentic – more and more customers want to know what goes on behind the scenes.
“We found that showcasing the work we do to combat youth homelessness really cut through to consumers in a time when people are really looking to spend money on things they believe in, he said.”
After seeing the importance of the platform in connecting with new and existing communities and bringing people along on the journey, Crook said they are about to hire someone specifically for a TikTok and social media role.
