TikTok for Retailers

Tobacconists are always looking for new ways to promote their business. As the world continues to lean more into digital marketing as a means of promotion, tobacconists feel pressured to keep up with the latest tools and social media platforms that will help them stay engaged with their customers and reach new consumers. There is one platform, however, that few tobacconists have yet to embrace fully: TikTok.

Many tobacconists feel TikTok is not for them. It is a platform known for its appeal to younger users, for its dance videos, for seven-second clips. These, however, are not good reasons to forego a presence on the app. The following statistics show that TikTok just might be worth persuing if you are looking for a new way to reach customers:

According to reporting from TikTok itself, the social media platform has more than 1.1 billion active users every month. Of that number, the United States had the most TikTok users in 2023. There’s an even gender split in the site’s demographics: Statista reports that 49.2 percent of the users are female, with males accounting for 50.8 percent of the user base. TikTok users spend an average of 1.5 hours on the site each day, and more than a billion videos are viewed daily.

TikTok for Retailers

Renegade’s TikTok Experience
One retailer who has embraced TikTok is Brandon Hayes of Renegade Cigars (renegadecigars.com). Like many, Hayes says he initially thought TikTok was for a younger audience. What changed his mind was his customers, who he noticed were talking more about their time on the platform.

“I want to be where my customers are, so we started experimenting with the platform,” Hayes explains. “After hearing a college professor and attorney sit in the lounge and talk about how they spend a lot of time on TikTok, I decided to give it a look from a business perspective. I didn’t know how well it would work, but sometimes being early to a platform has its advantages. I thought it was worth a little investment in time and resources.”

Hayes and his team at Renegade Cigars have used social media to educate their customers and reach cigar enthusiasts outside of their city of Richardson, Texas. When creating content for TikTok, they have produced content that appeals to a wide range of cigar smokers to build trust and create value. This is similar to how they have approached content for Facebook and Instagram. With TikTok, Renegade has mixed in a lot more content that is geared toward customers with whom they already have a relationship.

“The engagement has been all over the place,” Hayes reports. “We had some early success, but I feel like the algorithm quickly learned that we were discussing cigars and penalized us somewhat. With that being said, we publish consistently, and occasionally we have a video that pops for us.”

The biggest challenge Renegade has faced with its TikTok account is one that most tobacco businesses face on all social media platforms today: The platform does not like to promote tobacco-related products. “I’ve heard from some early engineers that they do not favor ‘adult’ or ‘sin industries,’ which I think is wild considering some of the other content that performs well. But it’s their platform, their rules,” he says.

Hayes doesn’t let this challenge stop him from building Renegade Cigars’ presence on the site. Success on the platform for Hayes is different. He views TikTok as a way to introduce his brand to a wide range of cigar smokers. “While I wish their algorithm was more cigar-friendly, I will say that I’ve been able to reach a completely different audience than I have on other platforms.”

Defining Your TikTok Strategy
So, how can other retailers start building an audience on TikTok? First, understand that this is likely to be a team effort. Renegade Cigars hires someone to shoot a month’s worth of content for the store. Renegade’s marketing manager selects the edits to feature and uploads them. Hayes and his team then develop branding ideas for the overall page.

TikTok is a social media platform that embraces video, and Hayes and his team have planned their content accordingly. For TikTok, Renegade has primarily focused on quick 60-second educational content. “I have heard that longer-format content is doing well on TikTok now, but that hasn’t been our strategy. It is something we will probably start playing with in the future,” he shares.

Though Hayes and his team began their TikTok content creation by researching what was being searched for on the site, they ditched this strategy after realizing it was already being done at scale, the information they were releasing was readily available elsewhere, and the content they produced didn’t feel natural. Now, they brainstorm content topics and make videos that feel more natural and interesting to those watching.

In terms of engagement, Hayes says it almost mirrors that of Instagram. Renegade has had the occasional TikTok video get what he calls a significant amount of views, something hard to achieve on some of the older social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

After all of these efforts, is it worth it? When considering TikTok’s impact on Renegade Cigars’ business, Hayes admits it is too early to tell the actual impact. “With it getting harder to reach customers through other channels, we wanted to be there [TikTok]. We think the platform is growing, and we want to be there as our customers continue to show up. We have yet to find any one thing that works by itself, but making an attempt to be everywhere our customers are hasn’t failed us yet.”

Hayes offers three actionable steps other retailers can take as they begin their TikTok journey:

1. Don’t strive for perfection immediately; just get started.

2. Don’t just look for sales; add value.

3. Don’t wait until the platform has matured and all of your competitors are succeeding to start experimenting. It’s better to be there early, make your mistakes, and have it dialed in when everyone else shows up. 

Story by Antoine D. Reid.

This story first appeared in PCA The Magazine, Volume 1, 2024. To receive a copy of this magazine you must be a current member of PCA. Join or renew today at premiumcigars.org/membership