Intuit serves the small business community and a lot of the time, they have a very limited marketing budget. We want to use our channel to help out our small businesses by driving awareness to their brand. Applying this lens to TikTok, there have been many trending habits and there’s a huge pool for potential consumers who are wanting to discover the story behind the small businesses they support. Small Biz Finds encourages the larger TikTok community to support small businesses. By helping our customers, we want to build familiarity for QuickBooks. We want to be centered at serving our customers who are small business owners. QuickBooks backs small businesses, no matter what industry they operate in.
TikTok is a channel where relatability and authenticity are key to the success of the content itself. We wanted the content to come from the point of view of a typical consumer who would support the small business. Who is better to tell that real and raw story other than our employee ambassadors?
We gathered employees who have a passion for supporting small businesses. Those who felt compelled to love and support these businesses were asked to take part in this project.
We needed to make sure every step of the planning was authentic. Each employee ambassador knows about the business, knows the story, and has purchased products and/or services from the business. Creating organic and real stories from small businesses was our main goal. Employees were able to recommend the product in their own style, making it more authentic. The story was being told in a way they’d describe it to their best friend.
We wanted to make sure we touched on a couple points. First, a background story about the business owner and what about their community is unique. Second, elevating and surfacing details about the small business owner to make the content more compelling and deserving of love from the community. Third, incorporating a product or service that the small business highlights. Finally, showing the experience. What do you see when you walk in? Are you relaxed? Are you being guided by friendly staff? What is the ambiance? What is the product? All the TikToks have these elements.
Challenge: A simple video required complete cross-org collaboration. Businesses needed to be okay with mentioning their brands on social media. One big challenge was hesitancy in making sure the businesses were okay with the standard protocol and legal process. We went back to our legal partner and asked them to simplify the process. Once that was done, we received the approval to allow shoutouts on social media. By optimizing our process, we continued to serve our customers by creating a system that works for them.
This campaign is a resounding success. In total, we have featured 12 businesses in the spirit of recognizing seasonality matters. Because of this, it is important to highlight businesses serving all kinds of different communities and events. Doing so completely maximizes our impact. For example, in Autumn, we featured Lit & Co. Candles and a Pumpkin Farm. For Black History Month, we made sure to feature two Black-owned businesses. With every tentpole moment we celebrate, we strive to showcase more communities, our bold diversity, and different business owners’ passions.
#SmallBizFinds is the most successful channel on our TikTok.
KPIs:
#SmallBizFinds overall: 194K TikTok views.
#SmallBizFinds overall: 17% ER, 31% higher than our highest performing market influencer content, 2X higher than FY22 benchmark. (This one is impressive because we’re comparing top influencers whose full-time job is being a content creator.)
A Succulent Day, 8.6% ER.
Lit & Co, 24% ER. (This is outperforming the standard paid marketing content by 10%. Our average sits at 14%.)
