TikTok may be where trends are born, but increasingly it’s also where customers are found—especially for local businesses trying to stay relevant in a video-first internet. Scorpion, a major digital marketing and technology provider for local and SMB-focused brands, is making a direct play into that shift. The company announced it has joined the TikTok Marketing Partners Program as an officially badged Marketing Technology Partner, deepening its integration with the platform and expanding what its customers can do on TikTok.

The move positions Scorpion as a conduit between TikTok’s fast-moving ad ecosystem and the small and mid-sized businesses that often lack the time, expertise, or internal teams to manage it effectively. For TikTok, it’s another step toward making its ad platform more accessible beyond large brands and agencies.

Why TikTok Matters for Local Businesses Now

With more than 1 billion monthly active users globally, TikTok has evolved from an entertainment app into a full-fledged discovery and commerce engine. For local businesses—law firms, home services, healthcare providers, franchises, and regional brands—TikTok offers something other platforms increasingly struggle to deliver: attention.

But attention alone isn’t enough. TikTok advertising requires constant iteration, creative testing, and performance monitoring, all of which can be daunting for SMBs already stretched thin.

“It’s no secret that TikTok is a very unique space. It’s where culture often happens and is being created. And local businesses should be a part of that,” said Ashlie Kim, Senior Vice President of Advertising at Scorpion. “This partnership gives our customers the ability to easily show up, reach more of their audience, and improve their performance.”

The subtext is clear: TikTok is no longer optional, but it needs to be simplified if local businesses are going to use it consistently and effectively.

What the TikTok Marketing Partners Badge Signals

TikTok’s Marketing Partners Program is designed to connect advertisers with vetted technology providers that meet the platform’s standards for integration quality, scale, and innovation. For Scorpion, earning the Marketing Technology Partner badge signals TikTok’s confidence in the company’s ability to help businesses activate, manage, and optimize campaigns without unnecessary friction.

Rather than forcing SMBs to learn TikTok Ads Manager from scratch, Scorpion enables them to advertise through tools and workflows they already use. This “meet businesses where they are” approach mirrors a broader trend in martech: platforms win adoption not by adding features, but by reducing complexity.

For TikTok, partners like Scorpion extend the reach of its ad solutions into local and regional markets that are difficult to serve directly at scale.

What Scorpion Brings to TikTok Advertising

As a TikTok Marketing Technology Partner, Scorpion now offers a tighter, more automated connection between its marketing platform and TikTok’s ad infrastructure. The focus is on operational efficiency and performance, rather than flashy features.

Key capabilities include:

• Streamlined campaign creation and management, reducing setup time and technical barriers

• Optimization tools tailored for SMB performance, not enterprise-only use cases

• Integrated reporting and insights, enabling faster, data-driven decisions

• Automated workflows that minimize manual effort and operational overhead

• Scaled support for local and multi-location businesses, a core Scorpion audience

For SMBs that typically juggle marketing alongside daily operations, automation and simplification can be the difference between running TikTok ads sporadically—or not at all—and making them a repeatable growth channel.

TikTok’s Push to Broaden Its Advertiser Base

TikTok has been steadily investing in partnerships to lower the barrier to entry for advertisers. While major brands have already embraced the platform, the next phase of growth depends on attracting and retaining SMBs at scale.

“Businesses of every size are looking for trusted, efficient ways to activate on TikTok,” said Lorry Destainville, Head of Product Partnerships at TikTok. “Our Channel Sales Partners bring the technology, automation, and expertise needed to meet that demand.”

This reflects a familiar strategy seen at Google, Meta, and Amazon: partner ecosystems do the heavy lifting of onboarding and servicing smaller advertisers, while the platform focuses on reach, formats, and measurement.

How This Fits Into the Broader MarTech Landscape

Scorpion’s TikTok partnership highlights a larger shift in marketing technology. SMB-focused platforms are no longer just managing search, display, or social ads in isolation—they’re becoming centralized operating systems for customer acquisition.

At the same time, TikTok is evolving from a standalone channel into a must-have line item in local marketing mixes. The challenge is execution. Unlike search ads, TikTok requires creative experimentation, cultural awareness, and frequent optimization.

By embedding TikTok more deeply into its platform, Scorpion is effectively abstracting that complexity away from its customers. That approach aligns with where martech is heading: fewer dashboards, more automation, and tighter integrations between platforms and execution tools.

The Bottom Line

Scorpion joining TikTok’s Marketing Partners Program isn’t just a badge—it’s a signal that TikTok advertising is entering a more mature, SMB-friendly phase. For local businesses, it means easier access to one of the most influential platforms in digital culture today. For TikTok, it means broader adoption through trusted intermediaries that understand the realities of small and mid-sized teams.

As short-form video continues to shape how consumers discover brands, partnerships like this may determine which businesses show up—and which ones get left scrolling past.

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