Everything you need to know about TikTok advertising
Thinking about using TikTok Ads for your brand or business?
As one of the most downloaded social apps with over 800 million monthly users — now is the time to get your brand started on TikTok. Whether you’re looking to make sales, drive traffic to your website, or launch a new product, a creative and well-targeted TikTok campaign can drive some pretty big results. In this guide, discover everything you need to know about the different creative TikTok advertising options and how to set them up. Part 1/2, stay tuned for part 2.
To get started advertising on TikTok, you will need a TikTok advertising account or account manager. But first, you may be wondering if your brand is right for TikTok, or maybe you’re trying to decide where to invest your time - TikTok, Instagram, Facebook?!
Your TikTok Advertising Options
TikTok offers several options for advertisers to reach their target demographic:
In-Feed Video: Ads appear in the native news feed of TikTok on the For You page.
Brand Takeover: Ad appears when TikTok users open the app and completely take over the screen for a few seconds before turning into an In-Feed Video ad.
Hashtag Challenge: Ad appears on the Discovery page. It encourages users to participate in user content creation challenges. These can include a shoppable component for retailers.
Branded AR Content: Ad appears as branded lenses, stickers, and other 2D/3D/AR content for TikTok users to use in their videos.
Custom Influencer Package: Ad appears as part of sponsored content created by a TikTok user with influence in your market.
You will need a TikTok ad account manager for most of these options. The exception is the first: In-Feed Video ads. Advertisers with access to the self-service dashboard can create In-Feed Video ad campaigns.
Here’s how to set up your ads:
STEP #1: CREATE A BUSINESS ACCOUNT
Even if you already have a personal TikTok account, you’ll need to create an account specifically for your business—I would recommend using your business email here. In the past, you had to get your business approved to advertise on the platform, but now anyone can get in and start launching campaigns.
STEP #2: CREATE AN AD CAMPAIGN
Once you log in, TikTok will take you straight to the campaign creation - it’s a super simple process to follow. Don’t forget to name your campaign and set your budget! I find a lifetime spend always easier to manage than a daily spend, especially if you are in beginner mode. A nice feature on TikTok: you can easily start a creative split (A/B) test at the campaign level.
Advertising Objectives
Once you’ve named your campaign and set your budget, you need to choose an advertising objective for your campaign. Your first and most top-of-funnel option is awareness: launch a reach campaign. This type of campaign is purely for branding purposes and will not include a call-to-action and simply aims to show your advertisement to as many users as possible.
As you move down the funnel in your strategy, consideration objectives are fairly straight forward. Use your advertising spend on TikTok to drive users to your site, download your mobile app, or increase the views on your branded video on TikTok.
Last but not least: conversion ads. This is the choose-your-own-adventure campaign, where you get to pick the end goal, whether it is opting into an email newsletter, registering for an account, or making a purchase on your e-commerce site.
STEP #3: SELECT AN AD GROUP
At this step you’ll choose the ad placements, details, budgeting and billing, and third-party tracking. Ad details will vary based on your campaign objective, but should be pretty straight-forward. For example, if you chose “traffic” as your objective, the ad details will need to identify if you’re driving users to your website or an app and exactly where you want them to land.
Also, don’t forget to place a TikTok pixel on your site to capture users and their behaviours/actions. You can easily pop it into your Google Tag Manager and go.
Placement
TikTok gives you a few options when choosing your ad placement, but only for certain campaign objectives. Similar to Facebook you can place your ads by desktop vs mobile, or by in-platform placements. You can choose to have your ads automatically placed across these apps according to TikTok’s algorithm, or you can specify where you want your ads to appear.
Targeting
TikTok ad targeting options are pretty basic. The only demographics you can target are based on gender, age, location, and language. The most in-depth targeting is under “interests,” which includes a variety of topics people follow on TikTok, from apparel and appliances down to tech and travel. These interest categories are pretty broad so one way to work around this it to create a lookalike audience from your existing database.
Budget and bidding
Fill in your daily budget (plan your lifetime budget!) and then choose your bid per click, or conversion, or view (whatever goal you set for the campaign), the delivery type, and input any third party tracking links you might want to include for your analytics.
STEP #4: CREATE YOUR TIKTOK ADS
If your business doesn’t have an in-house creative team or a creative agency or a videographer on the team, fear not. TikTok truly is the platform for user-generated content, and they will hold your hand through the ad creation process.
For TikTok ads, they’ll appear on a user’s For You page in the feed. After the video ad ends, it’ll freeze on the last frame and give the user a call to action—which is why they ask for the final frame above.
You can also create a video from imagery on your website’s landing page. This is mostly for ecommerce sites with product pages or mobile apps, but TikTok will grab images straight from your landing page, match them up with music appropriately, and make them into lovely ads.
That’s it, folks. There you have it! You can learn more about TikTok advertising here. Next up - blog part 2/2 - reporting on your campaigns.