This month, we are celebrating Irish-owned businesses that are using TikTok advertising to promote and grow their businesses and have seen transformative results in their sales and follower numbers.

St.Patrick's Football Club, @stpatricksathleticfc is an Irish football club based in Inchicore, Dublin, that plays in the Irish Premier Division. The club had a strong organic presence and started advertising on TikTok to grow its follower numbers and ultimately drive ticket sales. Thanks to its TikTok advertising campaign, the St Pat's has increased its followers by 68% and sold more tickets than they ever had before. We caught up with Jamie Moore, the Social Media Manager at St Pats FC, to talk about the programme, and how it helped St Pats TikTok grow like it's never seen before.

Q: What first inspired you to start posting on TikTok?
A: We've been on all the other social media platforms for years, and TikTok is the newest one. With our fan base growing and more young people wanting to get involved with the club, TikTok's engaged audience was one of the main reasons we wanted to grow our account on the platform.

@stpatricksathleticfc ⚡️ #loi #stpatsfc #football #soccer #fyp #foryoupage #discover #faicup #faicupfinal #skills #skillschool ♬ original sound - St Patrick’s Athletic FC

Q: When it comes to promoting your business on TikTok, what do you think works and what do you feel doesn't work as well?
A: We're pretty fortunate that we've got lots of content to share. We've got a videographer onboard, plus a young lad on work experience who helps us. We have two side cameras at every game, and we can capture footage with a top-down view from the stands. We've got all the angles covered from goals, fans and players. The backdrops of the stadium look really good and we've been very successful as a club on the pitch. We try not to stage things too much and we've had some really good content that captures goals or shows players celebrating and running towards the fans.

Q: How has your presence on TikTok supported your business, or grown your community in real life?
A: As a club, we've had a huge increase in attendance over the last couple of years. We're sold out every week and we have had a huge increase in our fan base, especially with younger people. We have a full-time community officer who goes into local schools, youth groups and youth clubs, and he tells them about the club. The first place that they probably find the club online is TikTok so we're converting them from hearing about us in school to maybe wanting to follow us on TikTok, and then ultimately come to the games or buy a jersey. I think a lot of the videos and stuff that we've done has backed up what we're saying to them - that the club is exciting. TikTok has really helped, it has been great for us.

@stpatricksathleticfc Some buzz ❤️ #fyp #faicup #Saints2023 ♬ original sound - FormulaFuel

Q: Can you share a memorable moment that has directly resulted from your presence on TikTok? A: Where do I start? A couple of the big goals we scored on the way to the last two Cup finals stands out to me. We also broke the attendance record at the Aviva stadium twice in the last three years for Cup finals. We won both games and scored some amazing goals and the celebration footage of the fans and the players was emotional with so many tears. The most recent memorable moment was last November [when St Pat's was crowned Sports Direct FAI Cup Champions for the fifth time] and the footage was class.

Q: You were invited to take part in the pilot TikTok ADvance* programme last year aimed at supporting and celebrating small and medium businesses in Ireland through TikTok advertising. What impact has TikTok advertising had on St Pat's business?
A: The goal for the club in taking part in the ADvance programme was to increase our followers and we definitely saw an impact. We have had a 75% increase in TikTok followers over the last year. We also sold our biggest number of home jerseys ever last year and we're on course this year to do the same. As part of the club's strategy to break into the US market, launched a new green jersey for St. Patrick's Day, and we then went to Minnesota to play a game for St. Patrick's Day. Effectively, we were trying to target the American market to buy the green Jersey. We launched this because we know that we have a number of new followers, and some of the campaigns were targeted at fans in Chicago, New York and Boston.

@stpatricksathleticfc Meanwhile, in the St Patrick’s Athletic dressing room… #loi #stpatsfc #football #soccer #fyp #foryoupage #discover #faicup #faicupfinal ♬ original sound - St Patrick’s Athletic FC

Q: What advice would you give to other SMBs who are wanting to start out on TikTok?
A: The main piece of advice would be to tap into the experience and the knowledge of the team at TikTok and learn how to push on followers, reach, impressions or views. Having video and text with trending music is very unique to TikTok. If you don't know about these features, you'll not be able to use them properly.

@stpatricksathleticfc 🏆 Trying to put our cup final win into words is proving difficult so our @Bernardo Santos & his magic cameras did it for us, we dare you not to cry ❤️ #loi #stpatsfc #football #soccer #fyp #foryoupage #discover #faicup #faicupfinal #stpatricksathletic #inchicore #avivastadium ♬ original sound - St Patrick’s Athletic FC

*The TikTok ADvance programme launched as a pilot in the Summer of 2023 The goal of the programme, which ran from August-December 2023, was to learn more about, and support the SMB TikTok community in Ireland. To read more about St.Pat's participation in the TikTok ADvanced Programme, please see here.

For more information on how to get started with TikTok Advertising, please visit TikTok For Business