Tik Tok ads can be an absolute goldmine for your business

If you’re a brand that wants to promote a product or service, one of the most cost-effective ways to do so is through social media advertising. And currently, there are few (if any) approaches that will deliver better engagement than TikTok ads.

TikTok is the most popular short video sharing social media network throughout the US, Asia and the Middle East, and its usage is growing rapidly throughout Europe as well. Its core demographic is women 18-25, but also has millions of users 35 years and under - both male and female.

Businesses of all sizes can utilise TikTok’s ads manager to create short videos to communicate a message to their desired audience(s) to run over specific dates and at a designated budget. There are several different formats to choose between, each with its own pros and cons and which one you go with will depend on a variety of different factors.

If you’re thinking about using TikTok video ads as part of your digital marketing campaign, there are many managed brand ad formats that you can go with.

• Infeed ads: When a user opens the TikTok app, they’re shown their ‘For You’ page. Infeed ads are shown to users as they’re scrolling down through these videos on the discovery page.
• Top view ads: This format of ad is played for users as soon as they open the app for the first time that day, and it is only shown once each day. They can be up to 60 seconds long, which makes them a great way to communicate a longer message than usual.
• Branded effects: You can even use 2D, 3D and augmented reality filters and stickers overlaid on videos to grab attention and boost engagement and awareness through the branded effects format. Doing so enables users to interact with your brand in a variety of ways (playing a game, etc.).
• Brand takeovers: If you have a lot of money to spend, brand takeovers are a great way to spread mass awareness in a short amount of time, making it a great option for new product launches. You can utilise a range of formats like top view and infeed ads all at once - but you’re limited to one day only.
• Spark ads: This format allows advertisers to use either their own videos or posts made by others (with authorisation of course) to include a call-to-action that’s featured on the screen for users to click.
• Carousel ads: The Ads Manager by TikTok enables you to use image ads on BuzzVideo in a carousel format, so you can show your products in more detail and in a catalogue fashion.
• Pangle ads: This isn’t actually available in Australia (yet, anyway), but Pangle is a video ad platform that enables advertisers to create interactive video ads and push them through multiple different mobile apps at once instead of through a single platform.

When considering the fact that of all users on the platform there are roughly 41% 18-24 year olds on there, if you’re looking to target an audience that falls within that age range it’s impossible to look past as a marketing channel.

Though it’s only been around for a short time in the scheme of things, it boasts more than a billion monthly active users. It’s indeed a new and expanding platform that offers unparalleled marketing opportunities and has an incredibly high engagement rate against other social networks. In fact, you can expect to see better post engagement than any other social platform out there at the moment! And if you incorporate a solid influencer marketing strategy, this engagement rate will only grow higher.

You can create unique ads that effectively increase awareness and grow your online presence substantially without having to break the bank to do so because TikTok is a wonderfully affordable social platform to advertise on (provided you do it right!).

Wondering whether it’s actually worth spending money to run an ad campaign on TikTok? What if we told you it delivers an average 2.5x ROAS (return on ad spend) if, say, you decided to utilise a branded hashtag challenge?

There’s absolutely no doubt that when you use TikTok advertising as part of your marketing strategy, you’re going to see great results. Not only does this include an increase in brand awareness, but you’ll also be connecting with a much more engaged audience.

Having said that, if you don’t have the knowledge and experience to create and implement a great strategy and quality content, it might end up being a fruitless venture. If you really want to see amazing results, it’s always a better option to leave it to the pros who understand the best ways to leverage the platform and deliver great outcomes.

For those keen to use TikTok advertising, you might not love the fact that it’s not actually the cheapest across all social media networks. Pricing kicks off at $10 per 1,000 impressions ($10/CPM). But when breaking it down, that means you’re looking at one cent every time your ad is displayed - which doesn’t sound too bad, right?

In addition, though, it’s another $500 in order to initiate the campaign itself which of course also needs to be incorporated into the overall costs. So no, it’s not what you might consider low-cost advertising. Having said that, it’d be next to impossible to find another platform that offers a similar CPE (cost per engagement).

As such, it’s absolutely vital that when you decide to use TikTok as an advertising medium you’re doing so the right way. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting both time and money that might’ve been better spent elsewhere. So make sure you speak with expert TikTok marketers before taking any next steps.

Ready to kick off your first TikTok ad campaign? Before you do, there are quite a few things you need to think about.

For example, you need to know what your objectives are for the campaign. Are you simply looking for overall brand or product awareness? Do you want to focus on conversions?

Understanding which stage your desired audience is sitting in the marketing funnel (awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty, advocacy) is an important piece of this targeting puzzle. As is determining your budget, deciding on the type of placements you want (e.g. news feed app placement) and recognising your bidding strategy.

Indeed, there are multiple factors that go into creating a successful strategy. And without a good strategy behind it, a campaign isn’t going to see the results you want it to achieve. Proper planning and preparation prevents poor performance!

If you weren’t able to drill down and segment audiences on TikTok, it wouldn’t be very effective as a website traffic lead generation ad solution, would it? Thankfully, there are plenty of options available to help you target very specific audiences so you see the best possible results.

Your custom audience can be built through a number of different parameters, including:

• Gender
• Age
• Location
• Language
• Interests
• Behaviours
• Device (connection type, OS, carrier, model and even device price)

Even better still, you can use data such as customer file, engagement, app activity and website traffic to build a lookalike or custom audience. And once you’ve done that, you can choose to either include or exclude this within your targeting!

As you can now see, TikTok provides a huge level of customisation when it comes to building out audience segmentation. Doing so will ensure your ads are seen by only the most relevant users, which minimises ad wastage and maximises ROAS.

If you’ve been working on segmenting your audience within the TikTok ad manager and come across ‘lookalike’, you might be a little lost on what that means.

Put simply, a lookalike audience works as a way for you to better target people with shared attributes to your already existing customer base. How it works is that you create your own custom audiences in the ad manager, and TikTok then uses an array of algorithms to understand these audiences better.

It will even provide you with information that you may not already have that is common throughout these custom audiences such as demographics and interests.

Using all of this information, TikTok then searches out similar users and provides you with a 10,000 sample size ‘lookalike’ audience that falls within one of three different lookalike audience types; narrow, balanced or broad. Each type has its uses in the grand scheme of things - it just depends what your particular goals are as to which you opt for.

If your car starts to make a ticking noise in the engine bay while you're driving it, you take it to a mechanic. When you’re after some new switches and power outlets installed in your home, you phone an electrician. And should you live in Gotham and there’s a crime committed, you use the bat signal to call Batman.

Like most things in life, when you want to run TikTok ads it always pays to bring a dedicated expert in. Because unless you’ve got lots of experience doing so, it’s incredibly difficult to see great results and would take a long time for you to properly understand the right approach.

A great TikTok advertising partner agency will have the most up to date knowledge on TikTok advertising including best practices, which means much better outcomes for you. They’ll also be able to provide you with fully transparent reporting so you know exactly where every cent of your budget was spent and why.

Trying to compare the effectiveness of advertising between two different social platforms is pretty much like comparing apples to oranges, because every social network has its own advantages when it comes to marketing.

On top of the differences of the platforms themselves, effectiveness also entirely depends on several other factors:

• Target audience: If you want to access a really broad audience and need a lot of options to get your message across, YouTube might be the better option. However, if your target audience is skewed younger (from 18 up to 35 years of age), TikTok is the way to go every single time.
• Campaign objectives: TikTok is the perfect platform for any brand that’s looking to create brand or product awareness and/or recognition amongst younger audiences, and who want to see substantial engagement figures for their advertising campaign. YouTube is generally seen as an ad platform promoting click-throughs while TikTok is more passive and not as action-oriented.
• Budget: The amount you’re happy to spend on your advertising is going to play a huge part in which platform you choose. YouTube’s CPM cost is lower than TikTok’s, but its average engagement rate is also substantially lower.
• Product being advertised: If you’re advertising a particular product, what that is will determine the most appropriate social network that should be used. Fashion, beauty and fitness products, for example, work really well on TikTok.

When you use TikTok advertising, there are several different format options to choose between. Each of these formats offers its own benefits, and looks quite different from the others.

For example, if you go with Infeed as a user scrolls through the videos that are presented to them in the discovery page, they’ll be presented with your ad as the fourth video seen within the feed. Though they can be up to 60 seconds long, the optimal length is 9-15 seconds.

There’s also top view ads - 60 seconds full screen advertisements that are shown immediately when a user opens the app for the first time that day.

You can also choose branded hashtag challenge ads, inspiring creators to make content based on a hashtag you get trending, which can be featured on the discover page.

If your budget is high, you might consider a brand takeover which involves several different formats in one (top view, infeed and branded hashtags). While pricey, this approach is great for maximum exposure.

It’s impossible to say with 100% confidence that running an ad campaign on TikTok is going to guarantee a massive influx of followers for your brand. While it might bring some in, the success of your campaign depends on a variety of different factors.

This includes the creation of highly engaging content that inspires, entertains or teaches the audience. Further, you need to make sure your audience segmentation is on point and aligns with the content you create, too.

So, to make a long story a little shorter, if you know what you’re doing and create relevant content to the right audience, you have a greater chance of achieving the goal you set out to achieve.

But to put you in the best possible position to see the greatest outcomes in a TikTok advertising campaign, it’s impossible to look past collaborating with an agency to get the job done.

There are quite a few different considerations that you can take to generate leads using TikTok marketing.

First and foremost, it’s vital that you conduct plenty of research before taking any steps so you have a solid understanding of what has the best chance of working and what doesn’t. Because at the end of the day, every brand is different so what works for someone else might not for you.

It’s also essential to create a content strategy and schedule that is based on the research you’ve done. This will include everything from the style and topics of the content you’ll create to best engage with your target audience, your audience segmentations and even posting dates and times.

You might also think about influencer outreach as part of your strategy. When you partner with influencers, you’re tapping into their already-established network of followers and this can be highly effective for lead generation.

Out of all social media networks out there, TikTok is the very fastest in terms of growth. And the incredibly fast growing audience figures of TikTok means that the demographics of its users are constantly broadening. As such, the opportunities for marketing to a wide variety of different age, gender, location and interest segments are growing every single day.

Additionally, there is a very high engagement rate on TikTok posts which shows that the audience has a higher interest in the content they’re consuming. So, provided you’re making relevant video content that aligns with your prospective new audience’s interests and serving it to them at the right time, TikTok may prove to be a very lucrative platform to expand your reach potential.

To ensure the best results (and you don’t waste your money), make sure you have the experience and understanding of the platform and its audience. If you lack this, it might be time to engage with a digital agency that offers TikTok marketing services.

One MILLION DOLLARS *touches pinky to corner of mouth*

No, but seriously, the amount you forecast as your budget for TikTok ads will depend on a few different things:

• Goals: If you’re after a general awareness campaign, this is going to look quite different cost-wise than a highly targeted campaign.
• Campaign length: An infeed campaign that runs for two days isn’t going to cost nearly as much as one that’s scheduled to run a full month.
• Industry or niche: If you operate in a wide-reaching industry (e.g. fashion, beauty) chances are you’ll be spending a bit more than a highly niche one.

It’s also important to know that an expert TikTok marketer will be able to monitor the campaign closely and perform optimisation actions to maximise your return on investment. That is, they’ll recognise elements that are underperforming and those that are doing well, and optimise accordingly to ensure the best outcome. This is why it pays to bring in the pros.

The beauty of TikTok advertising is that it’s relevant to every business and can be incredibly effective whether you’re a multinational brand like Nike or a local small business.

Having said that, it’s best suited to brands seeking out a highly engaged young audience to communicate to. It’s also dependent on the goals of the business and whether the $10 CPM suits your marketing budget (and is going to bring the best ROI).

If all of this sounds like your business and you choose to use TikTok ads as part of your marketing approach, monitoring your campaign closely to make sure you’re conducting appropriate optimisation is also key to getting the most out of it.

But if you’re still umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether it’s the best platform for your business, it’s probably time to have a chat with the TikTok marketing specialists at First Page Australia. We’ll clear things up and make sure you see nothing but exceptional outcomes.