How to Develop Your Brand for Tik Tok like GymShark Have

GymShark are different when it comes to brands on Tik Tok because they don’t use the platform for attracting more customers. You won’t see videos about new clothes or even sales that are on.

GymSharks brand is all about the gym, regularly going to the gym, and working on yourself. They create clothes suitable for workouts, as well as regularly post articles on fitness, exercise plans, and motivational content. Their Tik Tok is an extension of this ethos.

GymShark Understands their Customers and What they Want

GymSharks Tik Tok is simply gym content. It’s daily posts motivating their followers to push through the pain and keep going towards their goals. They also do a lot of gym partner content which encourages viewers to send the video to their gym buddies. Both types of content get a lot of engagement but more importantly, they’re exactly what their audience is looking for.

If you’re going to the gym on a daily basis then it’s fair to assume that you have a good schedule that you stick to, meaning that you’re disciplined and that you’re busy. GymShark understands this and so their videos are short and to the point. Many of them are slides with a line of text which a viewer can very quickly scroll through. Others, which feature more going on, are often edited in ways to keep a viewer’s attention throughout. There’s not a lot of wasted time in their longer videos which is impressive to see.

I believe that GymSharks deep understanding of their customers, who they are, and what they want, is the biggest factor to their success on Tik Tok. With 4.9 million followers, which is over double what Ryanair has, and a high engagement rate with each video, they’ve certainly found their winning formula for Tik Tok.

Do you know where you're going wrong on Tik Tok?

200 views a video, low engagement, no growth? — I’m an expert on Tik Tok and have studied many brands / channels and see the same pitfalls time and time again. If you want to learn where you’re going wrong then check out the Grow your Tik Tok page

How GymShark Creates Interesting Content that their Audience will Love

GymShark has experimented with many different types of content over the years and scrolling through their Tik Tok will allow you to see the progression. They’ve tried:

Gym motivation
Gym memes (in the style of slides)
Gym Sketches
Prank videos
Impressive feats of strength / skill

Most of these videos use Influencers, actors, and GymShark staff which gives each one a different vibe. Benzema doing pranks in the shop has a different vibe to IShowSpeed sprinting in the gym, but the same people will love both videos because they revolve around the gym. Remember, GymSharks followers are gymgoers who want to see gym and fitness related content.

Regardless of who is featured in the video, there is always a sense of competitiveness or achievement throughout which is in line with their brand. Whether it’s someone successfully completing an embarrassing prank, or someone lifting heavy weights, someone is achieving something. This has a weird affect of motivating the viewer when they watch these videos which then attaches them to the brand. This is because our brains make the connection of GymSharks Tik Tok and feeling motivated and then rewards itself with dopamine for making that connection. Check out this article for more on when and why the brain releases dopamine.

A little bit about branding in general; GymShark has aligned their brand with being successful, working hard, and achieving goals. These are universally “core” values, meaning that everyone either knows or strives to fulfil them, so they’ll have a powerful effect on anyone that sees them. Social media users engage with content that has an emotional effect on them and this is why GymSharks engagement rate is so high.

GymSharks branding as a whole is genius and a great case study for how to build a brand that people love

How to Develop your Brand on Tik Tok

Changing the focus of your brand is all about picking one core element of your business and then expanding on that.

Examples of Businesses Developing their Brands on Tik Tok

GymShark makes clothes suitable for the gym, but their brand is about fitness and pushing yourself. They focused on what someone might be doing whilst wearing their clothes which lead them to the gym and achieving goals. From there, they used their influencer approach to bring different perspectives on the values of working hard and achieving goals.

Duolingo is all about making learning a language a fun activity, so their Tik Tok brand is all about being silly and having fun. Their videos centre around Duo, their mascot, being a menace to society which is often hilarious. This makes you connect learning a language with feeling good because you’ll be laughing whenever you see their brand.

Ryanair are a low budget airline that do things differently to every other airline. They focus on being different on Tik Tok too by often mocking companies and celebrities, not taking their complaints seriously, and making jokes about going on holiday. They don’t follow the same rules as everyone else and this works on Tik Tok because they tower above every other airline (and most other brands that attempt the same thing).

Life 360 is a geo-tracking service that allows parents to know where the rest of their family are, so they know that everyone’s safe. They understand that parents aren’t on Tik Tok, so focus on teenagers and their friends as they become adults. Their videos show friends watching each other through the app, watching their friends go to their ex’s house at 3am, and a variety of other situations that young adults would find themselves in.

Whilst some of these businesses have developed a different brand on Tik Tok than on other social media platforms, they started with their core values and expanded from there. They focused on the end user which allowed them to step away from their product and have a lot more freedom when it comes to topics they can talk about.