Crypto TikTok Marketing: A Guide for Crypto Brands

Crypto TikTok marketing is the most cost-effective way for blockchain brands to reach retail audiences in 2025-2026. With CPMs 10x cheaper than Meta ads and 350M+ people reachable through creator-led distribution, TikTok offers crypto projects a blue ocean that most competitors are ignoring.

Crypto TikTok is a blue ocean right now and not a lot of companies are taking advantage of this.

I view TikTok as a demand generation engine. The platform has pockets of niche attention that you can place your brand in.

If you're trying to figure out if crypto tiktok is right for you, or how to launch a high volume crypto tiktok UGC campaign, this guide breaks down the math, the strategy, and the execution.

First, I want to show you that TikTok isn't just for low IQ doomscrolling content, there's demand for super technical content, like quantum mechanics and deep quantitative trading analysis.

People are curious. They want to learn.

Here's an example:

https://www.tiktok.com/@deltatrendtrading

Should your crypto brand be on TikTok?

Yes, if you have a retail-facing product, a token, or anything adjacent to consumer finance. TikTok's CPMs for crypto content are 10x cheaper than Meta ads, and the platform reaches retail audiences that Twitter/X cannot.

The question isn't "Is TikTok serious enough for crypto?" The question is: Is your specific crypto project right for TikTok?

You should be exploring this channel if:

• You have a Retail Product: Think consumer apps, gaming, or anything a regular person can use on their phone.
• You have a Token: Tokens rely on retail interest. TikTok is where retail hangs out.
• You're Adjacent to Consumer Finance: Topics like side hustles, investing, and passive income perform incredibly well. This is where you can generate demand for DeFi yield products. Below is an example of high performing whiteboard content covering DeFi on TikTok.

Crypto TikTok Strategy: Demand Generation (Building the Bridge)

The winning crypto TikTok strategy is demand generation through education, not direct product promotion. You need to "build a bridge" — start with problems your audience already understands (inflation, low interest rates) and walk them toward your crypto solution through educational content.

This is where most crypto companies fail.

They assume the audience they're targeting is similar to CT and they're dead wrong. You often have a mixed bag of people who understand what staking is, gas fees, wallets, etc... Some understand what a wallet is, and what gas fees are but not what staking is and vice versa. It's weird, I know.

The point I'm trying to make is that:

• There's a technical gap
• There's interest to learn

As such, you should view TikTok as a Demand Generation Channel and your content bridges that gap.

Below is an example of how a DeFi company like @aave should look at TikTok. This diagram can apply to any crypto company with a retail facing product.

Most of your potential users are on the left side of the cliff. They are frustrated that inflation is eating their savings, and they hate their 2% savings account interest. They want a solution, but there is a massive gap of technical complexity (wallets, slashing, volatility) standing between them and your product (the yield).

Your content needs to build the bridge across that gap, plank by plank:

1. Problem Agitation: Start with what they know. "Why is your bank interest so low?" or "Why is inflation eating your paycheck?"
2. Foundation: Explain the concept simply. What is DeFi? (Without the jargon).
3. Mindset: Shift their thinking. Teach them to "Be The Bank."
4. Analogy: Use terms they understand. Call it "Earnings" rather than "Yield Farming."
5. How-To: Now you get tactical. Show them exactly how to access those yields safely.
6. Product Intro: Only now do you introduce your product (e.g., Aave) as the vehicle to get them there.

If you try to sell the product before building the bridge, they will fall into the abyss of technical confusion. You have to educate them to create the demand.

The Math: Why Volume Wins (Trade Republic Case Study)

High-volume educational content on TikTok delivers CPMs of $0.42 — roughly 10x cheaper than Meta ads. Trade Republic proved this by posting ~1,484 videos (4 per day) using UGC and influencer content, generating 353M+ views at a fraction of traditional ad costs.

I don't just want to give you theory, I want to show you the numbers on why this educational approach works.

We looked at Trade Republic as an example. For context, Trade Republic is a European fintech offering TradFi yields. They followed a strategy of high-volume, educational content, and the results were better when compared to traditional ads. They used a mixture of influencer marketing and UGC.

Here is the breakdown:

The Strategy: ~1,484 videos were posted. That is an average of 4 videos a day.

The Content: Pure utility and education. Titles like "How to start investing with small amounts" or "How to build a diversified portfolio."

The Result: They generated 93 Million views.

The Cost Efficiency (TikTok vs. Meta):

Full disclosure, we don't have access to Trade Republic's budgets or marketing. However, we used social listening tools and our knowledge of current market rates for clipping, TikTok UGC & Influencer marketing, we've estimated costs for a campaign of this size using a lean production cost of $120 per video.

• Estimated Cost: To produce ~1,500 clips, we estimate a total spend of roughly $178,000.
• The CPM: This results in an average CPM (Cost Per 1,000 impressions) of just $1.91.
• Peak Efficiency: In their viral peak (Jan 2025), their CPM dropped as low as $0.47.
• The Comparison: If they had tried to get 93 million views on Meta (Facebook/Instagram) using paid ads, the CPM would have been roughly $20+ for this target group.
• Meta Cost: ~$1.86 Million
• TikTok UGC/Influencer Cost: ~$178,000

That means we estimated they got the same attention for 10x less money.

Here's the month-by-month breakdown of their campaign:

Analysis on Trade Republic's Approach:

• December and January show the insane leverage of viral hits where costs dropped to under $0.50 CPMs.
• Spring 2025 proves that even without viral hits high volume maintained a CPM between $3 and $5 which is still 75% cheaper than Meta ads.
• June and July indicate a drop in algorithmic efficiency where costs rose to over $10 despite maintaining a moderate posting schedule.
• August and October highlight the long tail effect where costs stabilized back down to $3 despite low posting volume due to old videos still getting views.

How to Execute: Crypto TikTok UGC vs. Influencers (KOLs)

Start with UGC (user-generated content) before investing in influencers. UGC gives you higher testing capacity at lower cost — hire multiple creators to post on fresh accounts and rely on virality for reach. Once you know what works, scale with KOL partnerships for guaranteed distribution.

So, how do you actually build this content bridge? You generally have two paths, and you can use a mix of both.

Path A: Crypto TikTok UGC

Goal: To generate demand without you having to be a video content creator 24/7. This is where you act as a content factory. You aren't paying big influencers for their distribution, you are paying creators to make videos on fresh accounts and rely on virality to get reach. I highly recommend starting with UGC, then moving on with influencer marketing. The main reason is because you have much larger testing capacity at a much lower cost than engaging with influencers. Once you've figured out what works for you on TikTok, that's when you can justify spending on influencers.

The Strategy: Turn and burn. You need volume (remember Trade Republic's 1.4k videos).

The Tactic: Hire multiple creators. Give them briefs. Test different hooks. If a video about passive income goes viral, repeat it. Have three other creators make a video with that exact same script but a different style.

Recommendation: Start with 150 videos per month across 5+ creators.

You can also explore AI UGC, but I wouldn't replace one over the other. I would do both in parallel.

AI UGC is similar to creator UGC, the only difference is you need to be a little more technical in order to make sure the accounts you're creating are being registered in the target geos, but also are not labelled as spam accounts. Essentially, with AI accounts, the key is to show TikTok you're using it like a human being.

In terms of costs, it costs a lot less to run AI accounts, but like I said, it's more technical than IRL creators.

Path B: Influencer Marketing (KOLs)

Goal: To borrow their trust and their audience. This is where you pay someone who already has a following to talk about your project on their channel. A lot of companies start here, but in my opinion this is a mistake as you have no idea how to communicate your value proposition on TikTok.

The Mistake: Most crypto companies do one-off posts. They pay an influencer for one video, it gets posted, and then... nothing. This is a waste of money.

The Fix: You need long term campaigns.

• Partner with KOLs for a month or a full quarter.
• They understand their audience better than you do. Let them explain your project in their voice.
• Repetition builds trust. Seeing your project once is noise, seeing it five times over a month is a signal.

Recommendation: Work with KOLs who often do livestreams, it's a great format for engaging with their most engaged audience.

The Funnel: Turning Views into Users

Optimize TikTok content for engagement first, conversion second. Use link-in-bio (Linktree or clean domain), pinned comments, and email capture to build a funnel. Don't mention your product directly — make viewers curious enough to ask for it in the comments.

Don't walk into TikTok expecting immediate conversions on Day 1. Your #1 Goal is Demand Gen (Education). Your #2 Goal is conversion.

However, you need to capture the demand you generate. Pro tip, optimise the content for engagement, don't even mention the app. Make people comment asking for the app name.

• Link in Bio: Keep it simple. Don't use a long, ugly URL. Use a clean domain like abc.com or a Linktree.
• Comment Automation: In your video, tell people "Comment 'MORE' and I'll DM you the info." Use automation tools to send the DM instantly. It removes friction and boosts engagement signals to the algorithm.

Should You Create a Brand Account?

Do you need a brand account to get started on TikTok?

Short answer, no.

To get started on TikTok, you really don't need a brand account, most companies using UGC as a funnel to drive business outcomes don't even have an account.

Here's my advice on having a brand account:

If you have capacity both in terms of budgets and resources, I would recommend getting a brand account. Otherwise, it's not really necessary to get started on TikTok.

But only launch it after you've found the right content creator to run the account.

Typically, you can do this by starting with UGC first, then hiring the best creator to run the brand account.

Running a brand account requires full-time management, from posting content, to engaging and consuming other content via that account.

If you stop doing the above, the account will lose its edge.

A Short Guide For Crypto TikTok UGC

Running these campaigns isn't rocket science, but it requires daily hands-on effort.

1. Understanding of goals/niche - As mentioned already, it's incredibly important to have a clear objective of what you're trying to get out of this platform and what niche/adjacent niches you fit in.
2. Finding the right creators - Our methodology for finding creators is mostly on the basis of "how comfortable they are in front of a camera / how good are they at creating content", then from there we look at secondary metrics such as their current account metrics. You can find creators on TikTok quite easily, once you've tailored your account for your niche. For a pilot campaign, you should start with 150 videos per month, then scale. Use as many creators as you want, we suggest starting with 5 or working with 5 at a time. Make sure your creators are based in a geo which you want to target.
3. Establishing tracking/analytics - Once you've outlined your funnel structure, you need to make sure you've added tracking to see how people are flowing from TikTok (tofu) to email/linktree/etc.. (mofu). You don't need to start with bulletproof tracking, but it's good practice to at least have a way of seeing how attention behaves with your brand.
4. Warming up accounts & briefing - You can do this in parallel, but warming up accounts is one of the most important parts of this process. Remember, these are fresh accounts you're starting with. Warming up the accounts means following people that are creating content in the niche or adjacent niche, engaging with their content and doing this for around 20 mins every day for 3 - 5 days. This categorises your account under TikTok's algo, it also tells you what content for that niche is performing. Once you've understood the trends of what content is performing, you can then start creating the briefs for the creators, each creator should have its own brief and should aim to tackle different experiments.
5. Content creation - Once the content is created, make sure the draft content is what you expected it to be. Don't be shy in providing feedback. Though make sure that you're efficient with your feedback. In the sense that, you can't send the content back for 5 revisions, you'll lose the creator that way. There needs to be a balance.
6. Scheduling & daily monitoring - Once the content is ready, make sure they're posting content every day and make sure they're engaging with other content within the same niche/adjacent niche every day. Then as the campaign manager, what you want to monitor for is: Reach performance, Engagement performance. If they post 7 - 10 videos, and none go viral, change the creator and spin up a new account. At the beginning, you're typically looking to go viral once every 7 to 10 videos. That then changes to once every 5 - 7 videos as you mature with the campaign. CPMs will be high at the beginning, but that's fine, the aim is to figure out how to go viral and doubling down on that. CPMs dramatically drop once you find out how to go viral. In terms of engagement, what you want to see is the comments, see what people are commenting and act upon the feedback. If people are asking how to get involved, more info, etc... that's a really good sign, but it also means you need a stronger CTA to lead people somewhere.

Summary

The Trade Republic data proves that high-volume, educational content is the most cost-effective way to get attention right now. But that attention only converts if you build the bridge.

• Don't assume they know Crypto: Start with their pain points (Inflation/Low Interest).
• Build the Bridge: Use education to walk them over the technical gap.
• Scale the Volume: Use UGC and KOLs to deliver that message 900 times, not 9 times.

Start with volume, test what sticks, and let the algorithm do the heavy lifting.