Written by
Mackenzie TaylorPosted last year
With a potential ad reach of 1 in 6 adults every month, TikTok ads should be on every digital marketer’s radar. But, that’s not to say that effective marketing on this platform is easy.
Notoriously confusing analytics with ultra-fast-moving trends, this video social media app can seem like an untamable beast.
As TikTok continues to dominate the attention of over 1 billion monthly active users. However, it’s critical marketers start to understand what resources are out there to help them. Social analytics tools like Flick, for example, can be the difference between going in blind or leveraging the full power that is TikTok.
In this article, we’ll explain how to best approach advertising on TikTok, why it’s important, and why implementing social analytics tools can make or break your social strategy on the world’s fifth most-used social media platform.
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What is TikTok For Business?
An all-in-one service on the platform itself, TikTok For Business aims to help marketers advertise more effectively on the app.
While a TikTok Business account acts as the public profile of a company on the app, an Ads Manager account is a comprehensive dashboard and resource center for everything behind the advert. This service allows you to share ads on TikTok as a verified business and provides a comprehensive overview of your business strategy, budget, and metrics.
TikTok for Business has four major strategy solutions for its clients, each with a wide range of resources to get your business started:
1. Advertising
Helps shape your overall campaign strategy with the goal to boost brand visibility, engagement, and reach.
2. Creative
3. Commerce
Developed to help your business incorporate TikTok’s Shopping Ads feature to drive eCommerce sales through the platform.
4. Measurement
Provides you with general analytics to better understand your campaign’s performance.
For more in-depth, targeted metrics, businesses may want to consider implementing a third-party analytics tool like Flick. Detailed metrics will help your business understand your campaign’s nuances and serve you better for future campaign executions.
The Best TikTok Ads for Businesses
1. TopView Ads
Placed at the top of a user’s For You page, a TopView ad is the first piece of content the user will be shown when they’ve opened the app. It can be up to 60 seconds long and is captured in an immersive, full-screen vertical video format that eliminates all other on-screen distractions.
2. In-Feed Ads
This type of ad will be randomly placed within a user’s For You feed, mimicking native ad content. Similar to TopView, in-feed content is vertical and can be up to 60 seconds long. However, this ad type has the added opportunity for viewer engagement by liking, commenting on, and sharing the advert.
3. Brand Takeover Ads
A Brand Takeover ad has the same visual format as a TopView ad, but with the added benefit of viewer exclusivity. Implementing a Brand Takeover campaign will guarantee your business’ advert will be the only brand shown for a particular category for a full day.
For example, imagine you’re a beauty brand that has chosen to implement a Takeover campaign. This means users will only receive beauty-related ads from your brand for a full day. This means higher visibility and engagement opportunities for your brand, from a targeted audience of beauty lovers.
Why TikTok advertising?
Digital marketing moves fast, so marketers need to move faster. So, with TikTok reported to be the most downloaded app in 2021, it makes sense for brands to leverage the platform’s visibility power. Here are some reasons why:
- TikTok advertising expands the reach of your video content
According to We Are Social’s Digital 2022 Global Statshot Report, a TikTok ad has the potential to reach 11.8% of the world’s population over 18 years old, across 154 countries.
- TikTok Advertising Target Audiences
As TikTok continues to mature, so too has its audience demographic. Although Gen-Z still holds the crown for the largest age demographic, making up 47% of total monthly active users, 42% of users now sit between the ages of 30 – 49.
- Your Creativity Gets The Right Recognition
TikTok is all about being unique and creative. Adverts that feel like classic adverts tend to perform worse than those that choose to utilize trending sounds and concept ideas. The TikTok creative center is a useful tool for companies, providing a variety of tools and features that allow them to create distinctive and eye-catching advertising, perfectly balancing the platform’s focus on creativity and interesting content.
Brands that lean into their creativity and have fun with their content, often outperform more classic marketing techniques. A great example of this is the language learning app, Duolingo. In just 18 months, Duolingo’s TikTok profile became a viral sensation through its non-traditional approach, averaging almost 4 million views for every video.
How to get started with TikTok advertising
After you have registered and been approved for a TikTok for Business and Ads Manager Account, you’re ready to start advertising on TikTok!
Step 1: Create Your First TikTok Ad Campaign
Login in to your Ads Manager account and click on the ‘Campaigns’ tab.
Step 2: Choose your objective
Now, you need to specify what you want to achieve with this campaign. TikTok has broken down seven objectives into three categories that you can choose from:
Awareness
- Reach – Put your ad in front of the most eyeballs
Consideration
- Traffic – Drive web traffic toward a specific URL
- App Installs – Drive users to download your brand’s app
- Video Views – Get as many video ad plays as possible
- Lead Generation – Maximize users who submit a pre-populated form to collect leads
Conversions
- Conversions – Lead users to your site to perform specific actions (e.g. purchase or subscribe to something)
- Catalog Sales – Maximizing sales from your product catalog available on TikTok
Step 3: Name Your Campaign and Set a Budget
First, give your campaign an easily recognizable ad name – make sure to keep it under 512 characters.
Now, you need to specify your budget.
Budgets can be set to a general campaign lifetime budget or a specific daily budget cap. This will be unique to your business situation and goals.
If you choose to implement ad groups for your campaign, you’ll be able to name and specify individual budgets for each ad group.
Alternatively, you can choose TikTok’s Campaign Budget Optimization and allow the platform to automatically allocate your budget for you, according to previously collected data.
Step 4: Select Your Audience
Now it’s time to specify your target audience. The parameters you set here will determine to who TikTok shows your ads. Demographic considerations like age, language, interests, and gender can all be specified here!
Alternatively, you can select “automatic audience” to let TikTok decide for you.
Step 5: Create Your Content
Now it’s time to create! There are many ways to go about this process; however, the first step will be to choose the placement of your TikTok ad (e.g. TopView, In-Feed, etc.).
For brands newer to TikTok, you may choose to implement TikTok’s Automated Creative Optimization. This tool will autogenerate short-form video content from your submitted images and videos. Alternatively, you can log in to your business account and film your content, as you would user-generated content!
Step 7: Submit & Track Results
Once you’re happy with your ad, you can press Submit. Your ad will then go through a review process before it goes live. You can also choose to distribute your content to other platforms, to maximize reach!
After your ad has gone live, it’s crucial you track your results. TikTok will provide general campaign metrics that will help your brand see how your ads performed. However, to really gauge an idea of your campaign’s performance and inform future marketing efforts, you need to dive deeper. Doing so will give your future marketing efforts an informed edge
After your ad has gone live, it’s crucial you track your results. TikTok will provide general campaign metrics that will help your brand see how your ads performed. However, to really gauge an idea of your campaign’s performance and inform future marketing efforts, you need to dive deeper. Doing so will give your future marketing efforts an informed edge
Implementing an analytic tool like Flick allows you to deep-dive into and break down the nuances of your campaign’s performance.
Ready to Create Effective TikTok Ads?
Up your brand’s digital marketing game and start to reach more of your target audiences through TikTok ads. By utilizing TikTok for Business solutions, Ad Manager dashboard, and creative tools, your business can begin to leverage the platform’s reach and engagement potential.
To maximize the platform’s advertising power, it’s essential brands have access to in-depth analyses of their campaigns. These metrics not only justify ad spending and help shape future campaigns, they also help you to better understand your target market! That’s why implementing an analytic tool like Flick is invaluable when shaping your digital marketing strategy.
Want to experience the difference Flick can make for yourself? Start your Free Trial now!
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