The technology era has seen a typical pattern where the younger generation leads the way, and adults follow suit. TikTok is a prime example of this phenomenon, as it shot to fame thanks to its immense popularity among Generation Z. Within a short span of time, the social media platform witnessed over a billion downloads, and it still boasts a billion active users every month.
These impressive numbers, combined with people’s preference for micro-videos and the creativity of content creators, soon attracted the attention of businesses, marketers, and influencers. Several brands, both big and small, have already made their mark on the platform. NBA, The Washington Post, Walmart, and Chipotle are just a few examples of successful brands using TikTok to create brand awareness, connect with their target audience, and engage with them.
Despite its rapid growth and evolution, TikTok remains one of the least explored social media platforms. This makes it an ideal place for businesses of any size to attract attention through advertisements.
However, achieving success with TikTok ads requires using the right marketing strategy. If you’re new to TikTok, here’s how you can capitalize on TikTok ads to grow your business.
Start with a Strategy: How to Prepare a Solid TikTok Ads Campaign
As a social media marketer, whether you are a newbie or an experienced professional, it’s essential to have a specific plan for your TikTok Ads campaign. Like any other marketing campaign, it all begins with research and preparation of a solid strategy. To develop a strategy, consider the following steps:
Understand TikTok and its algorithm: To prepare a TikTok Ads strategy, you need to understand the unique features, effects, filters, and editing options that the platform offers. Spend time using the platform, explore different categories, watch trending videos, and analyze relevant material to learn how the TikTok algorithm is evolving.
Research the key players: TikTok is known for creating more content creators than any other social media platform, including YouTube. Therefore, you must learn about content creators in your niche and industry. Look for video post-production services that can help you create engaging micro-videos from existing footage.
Define the target audience: Identifying your ideal audience and how they use the platform is crucial for developing an effective TikTok Ads strategy. Here are three simple steps to narrow down your target audience:
(i) Your Overall Target Audience: Consider your existing audience and market research to understand who buys your product or service, where they reside, and what language they speak. Identify common pain points and interests that your product can solve to target specific TikTok categories and subcategories.
(ii) Use TikTok Analytics to Identify Your Audience: TikTok Analytics provides valuable information about your existing followers, including interests, gender, location, and demographic details. Learn when your followers are most active to develop a solid content schedule for maximum engagement.
(iii) Leverage Hashtag Search: Use related topics, interests, hobbies, and keywords in the search bar to analyze the level of activity, engagement, and conversations. This exercise helps identify your ideal target audience on TikTok.
Once you know your target audience, developing a plan for your TikTok Ads campaign will become a lot easier. Remember to have a specific plan and strategy for your campaign to achieve maximum success.
Campaign Objectives and Advertisement Formats on TikTok
To achieve success with TikTok ads, it is important to start with a solid strategy, research and preparation. Once this is in place, the next step is to choose the appropriate advertisement format and campaign objectives that align with your business goals. Here are the different advertisement formats and campaign objectives available on TikTok.
Advertisement Formats
TopView Ads: These ads are ideal for promoting products and services, and appear once a day when users open the TikTok app. They can be up to 60 seconds long, and users can engage with the content using comments, shares, and likes.
In-Feed Ads: The advertisement appears on the ‘For You’ page where videos appear based on users’ interests and previous activity. The advertisement can be up to 60 seconds long, and can feature call-to-action (CTA). Users can skip the ad, so it is important to use captivating content.
Branded Hashtags: This unique advertising feature allows businesses to create an exclusive brand hashtag for a fee. It is best suited for encouraging user-generated content to boost awareness and sales. The hashtag campaign page can be customized with brand logo, videos, and challenge description and instructions. Users will find the branded hashtag challenges on the Discovery screen.
Brand Takeovers: These video advertisements appear as soon as the user clicks a category. They are ideal for short ads, not more than 5 seconds long, and should use visually captivating videos to grab attention. This format is best suited for businesses with a limited budget.
Spark Ads: A relatively new feature that enables businesses to sponsor organic content related to their product or niche.
Campaign Objectives
After choosing the advertisement format, it is important to choose the appropriate campaign objective that aligns with your business goals. TikTok offers three options:
Awareness: The platform algorithm works to give your campaign the maximum visibility and exposure permitted by your budget.
Consideration: Ideal choice if you want the video ad to act as the hook to drive engagement, boost traffic or achieve a goal. This option is ideal to generate leads.
Conversions: If this is your objective, install and configure TikTok pixel to monitor your campaign. TikTok pixel is a short code to include in your website backend, which will monitor the visitors, their activities, etc. The main algorithm will learn from the collected data to optimize your TikTok ads campaign on the social media platform.
In summary, choosing the right advertisement format and campaign objectives is crucial to the success of your TikTok ads campaign. With the right strategy, research and preparation, and proper execution, TikTok can be a highly effective platform for promoting your products or services.
Using TikTok Ads Manager Effectively
If you’re struggling to make the most out of TikTok Ads, then it might be time to revisit the basics and utilize the TikTok Ads Manager. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is not defining their target audience. The more information you can provide about your ideal audience, such as age, gender, location, and interests, the better TikTok’s algorithm can locate them.
Start by filling out the parameters as accurately as possible. If you’re unsure, start with a broad audience and refine it later as you analyze your campaign’s performance data. TikTok’s algorithm will also learn from your choices and locate the best audience for your advertisements.
Choose the Right Ad Placement
TikTok Ads provides ad placements on partner platforms like Pangle and BuzzVideo. If you’re new to TikTok ads, it’s best to avoid risks and let the platform make decisions for you by selecting “auto-placement.”
Decide on the Delivery Type
You have two delivery types to choose from: standard and accelerated. To maximize your campaign’s success, it’s important to learn the various features quickly. We suggest starting with standard delivery, which ensures that your ads are displayed during high-traffic hours and the budget is distributed evenly throughout the advertisement delivery period.
In contrast, accelerated delivery sends your ads out to more people in the shortest possible time, without spreading out the budget. Choose the delivery type that best suits your campaign’s goals and your level of experience with TikTok Ads Manager.
Tips for Creating Compelling TikTok Ads
While some of these tips may seem obvious, many ad campaigns fail to execute the basics effectively.
Here are a few tips for creating engaging TikTok ads:
- Authentic content does well on TikTok, but brands must invest in high-quality sound and video to grow their business.
- Use relevant hashtags every time you post an ad video. TikTok learns from the hashtags you use to optimize your campaign.
- Create ad videos for different stages of the sales funnel, which can be created using tools like ClickFunnels or its alternatives.
- How-to videos, behind-the-scenes footage, and blooper reels are always popular with audiences.
- Collaborate with influencers in your niche to improve your reach.
- Stay up-to-date with the latest trending topics to create appropriate ads.
- Engage with your audience by responding to their comments and questions.
- Use an online video editor to create shorter ads by cutting down longer videos.
- Show interest in other relevant accounts so they may share your message with their followers.
- Boost engagement by offering discounts, polls, and other interactive content.
Use Analytics to Fine-tune Your Campaign
Analyzing ad campaign performance begins with identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track. KPIs will vary depending on your industry, marketing goals, and target audience, whether it’s B2C or B2B.
When you access the analytics section, you’ll see it’s divided into four categories:
Overview Tab: Provides account performance data for a week, month, or custom date range. Displays profile views, video views, followers, shares, likes, comments, and number of live videos hosted.
Content Tab: Lists your best-performing videos within a custom date range. Collects data on views, likes, shares, and comments on the most popular posts.
Follower Tab: Provides demographic information about your followers, including where they are from and when they are most active.
Live Analytics: Provides insights into your live video performance, including total videos, hosting time, new followers added, unique views, total views, and diamonds earned.
These metrics show how your account and videos are performing and can be used to refine your ad and content strategy to improve your reach and grow your business. By following these metrics and making necessary changes, you can optimize your TikTok ad campaigns for better performance over time.
In conclusion
TikTok offers a unique opportunity to connect and interact with your audience, but building a strong organic presence can be a time-consuming task. This is where TikTok ads and our guide can be of great assistance, providing businesses with the tools to reach their target audience quickly and effectively.