TikTok’s footprint just got bigger. The company has formed a partnership with marketing automation and CRM platform HubSpot, which puts TikTok marketing tools directly in front of marketers. This should help TikTok as a customer acquisition channel, while helping HubSpot expand its functionality.
But before going into the strategic implications, what will this integration entail? HubSpot users will be able to manage TikTok campaigns from within their HubSpot environment. Living within HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, it will let users sync, manage, and measure TikTok ad campaigns all in one place.
Marketers can also schedule and publish TikToks directly within HubSpot’s social tool. Once published, users can monitor and manage things like TikTok comments. This importantly applies HubSpot’s developing capabilities when it comes to AI-generated replies to user reviews and social comments.
Lastly, the TikTok integration taps into HubSpot functions such as targeting content and campaigns. For example, users can build lookalike audiences that sync their first-party CRM contacts in HubSpot with TikTok audience segments. This lets them target campaigns deliberately to intended personas.
HubSpot says that these targeting parameters can include TikTok users’ lifecycle stage, deal history, and purchase behavior. Together, those factors can triangulate TikTok users and help segment them into target groups that can be matched with HubSpot users’ existing and desired customers.
Higher Stakes
To be clear, any of the HubSpot users that benefit from this integration had every ability to simply go to TikTok and build campaigns. But this deal brings TikTok into a familiar territory for the 268,000 marketers on HubSpot’s platform. There’s certain degree of one-stop-shop appeal that the integration acheives.
Beyond one-stop-shop convenience, there’s the elevated ability to integrate TikTok campaign data with other elements of a business’s marketing mix. This unlocks the ability to compare and contrast, as well as get a holistic picture of marketing performance, and sync CRM with targeting parameters, as noted.
But a more meaningful driver of integrated marketing platforms is being driven by the rise of AI. In other words, these one-stop-shop propositions were previously all about ease of use and integrated analytics. But now, they increasingly unlock another point of value: federated data, pursuant to AI training.
The more that data is federated – customer data, transaction data, campaign data, first-party audience syncing, etc. – the better that AI can act on a business’s behalf. In HubSpot’s case, its AI capabilities will continue to develop. So the more data and integrations it has to work with, the more powerful it can be.
To that end, expect more “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” integrations in HubSpot, and other marketing platforms. Integrating systems always had benefits – such as creating lookalike audiences – but now the stakes are higher, including federating data silos… and the opportunity costs of not doing so.
Hear more about this topic of AI-driven platform integrations at Localogy’s L26, April 20-21 in Houston, TX , as SOCi’s Monica Ho and Yelp’s Jim Chapelle take the stage.
