TikTok got me almost nothing. One Facebook group post got me 30-40 users.

Tried TikTok as a growth channel for a few weeks roughly 30 posts, mostly carousel-style content walking through SaaS-building lessons and product updates.

Views were consistently underwhelming: mostly in the 100-150 range, occasionally climbing to 300-400 on a better post, but nothing that translated into meaningful traffic or signups that I could actually trace back to the platform.

Around the same time, almost as a secondary effort, I posted once in a Facebook group relevant to the space.

That single post ended up bringing in 30-40 free-plan signups over about a month dramatically more than the combined output of every TikTok post, despite requiring a fraction of the time investment.

The obvious explanation is platform fit: TikTok's audience for that content format wasn't the same as the audience actively discussing the specific problem my product solves, while the Facebook group already had exactly that context built in.

Lesson I'm taking forward: don't assume more content on a platform will eventually find traction if the underlying audience-fit isn't there in the first place. Better to find the smaller number of spaces where the right people are already gathered.

Has anyone had the opposite experience TikTok or short-form video actually outperforming more "native" community channels for a niche B2B product?

Comments

tangerine-94•about 3 hours ago•2

It’s challenging. TikTok’s recommendation algorithm prioritizes watch time, so it favors serving content to users with broad, superficial interests. Many viewers only stop out of curiosity when scrolling across videos and have no genuine demand.Groups, by contrast, bring together self-selected audiences: users gather voluntarily around shared pain points, product categories or hobbies, coming with inherent demand signals, which lowers the initial barrier to conversion.

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