Benefits, Best Practices + How to Create Campaigns

TikTok continues to take the social media world by storm. We created this step-by-step information that will help you craft TikTok advertisements like the professionals.

Our social media advertising consultants a number of years in the past: TikTok is mainly essentially the most underrated advert platform proper now — tremendous low CPMs and lots of development potential.

Our social media advertising consultants right now: TikTok is not only a spot to drive consciousness. It’s a hub for product discovery and buy, group engagement, and viewers development. It’s a contender within the digital area and different platforms comprehend it.

In the previous few years, the TikTok social media video app has taken over the social media panorama. It’s additionally reworked the purchasing trade as we all know it.

Statista stories that TikTok’s 2024 advert income is projected to succeed in over $18 billion globally, with entrepreneurs “dedicating extra time and {dollars} in direction of the app than ever.”

TikTok’s success lies in its extremely subtle (and mysterious) algorithm. The extra you utilize it, the higher it turns into at understanding what sort of movies to serve you. The extra you want or comply with a sure sort of content material, the extra of that sort you’ll see.

With all of the hype surrounding TikTok and its shortly evolving choices for entrepreneurs, we tapped HawkSEM Social Lead Strategist Nicole Goodnough to assist us make sense of all of it and supply some professional ideas for creating efficient TikTok campaigns.

What are TikTok advertisements?

TikTok advertisements are video content material on the app that’s created, promoted, or sponsored by a specific model or creator. Together with video campaigns, advertisers may create Branded Results advertisements.

These are personalized, sponsored results that may embrace parts like a name to motion (CTA) or a singular video filter.

“In true TikTok vogue, promoting on the platform has grown exponentially over the previous couple of years,” says Goodnough.

She provides that together with TikTok Store, the platform’s in-app purchasing characteristic, “lead gen types may help seize leads for what you are promoting seamlessly.”

TikTok is predicted to generate a whopping $23 billion in U.S. promoting income by the tip of 2024, with projections of double that quantity by 2027.

The info is obvious: manufacturers who leverage TikTok efficiently have a great likelihood of seeing elevated gross sales and a constructive return on advert spend (ROAS).

Professional tip:  TikTok Analytics may help manufacturers monitor the correct metrics and use real-time knowledge to assist create customized audiences and future campaigns.

10 steps to creating profitable TikTok advertisements:

1. Understand the TikTok ad platform
2. Identify your audience
3. Create and edit within the app
4. Start strong
5. Play off of trends
6. Focus on storytelling
7. Leverage audio
8. Conduct consistent testing
9. Keep your messaging direct
10. Keep iterating

1. Perceive the TikTok advert platform

As TikTok continues to evolve, so too does the platform’s promoting choices:

Kinds of advertisements

In-feed advertisements: The sort of advert exhibits up in the identical place and in the identical method as natural content material.

TopView advertisements: Movies that seem as quickly as somebody opens the app.

Branded Mission: On this format, you possibly can increase top-performing movies as advertisements and supply content material from creators on TikTok.

Branded Impact: Customers have the choice to publish a video utilizing your branded video filter or impact.

Spark advertisements: These are just like user-generated content material, whereby a model takes an present video (of theirs or one other creator’s) and turns it into an advert.

TikTok Promote: Increase content material utilizing TikTok’s built-in promoting instruments to assist enhance viewers engagement and gross sales.

Search advertisements: Seem in TikTok’s search outcomes, reaching high-intent audiences at a crucial second within the purchaser’s journey.

You’ll additionally need to familiarize your self with their advert administration platform. If you happen to’re not already arrange on TikTok (and you ought to be) listed here are the steps to start out a TikTok advertisements supervisor account:

• Obtain the TikTok app and arrange a enterprise account
• Click on round to get aware of the TikTok Adverts Supervisor
• Whenever you’re able to create an advert, select your objective from 3 choices: Consciousness (attain), Consideration (site visitors, interplay, lead gen, and many others.), and Conversions
• Resolve in your viewers section
• Decide your finances and marketing campaign size
• Create your video advert content material
• Submit your advert for evaluate
• Monitor the outcomes and iterate as needed

Professional tip: TikTok has its personal information to 6 rules that’ll provide help to create ads that perform.

2. Determine your viewers

If you happen to suppose the youngins are the one viewers on TikTok, suppose once more.

In actual fact, Exploding Topics stories that the most important proportion of TikTok customers in 2024 are between the ages of 25 and 34, with 55% of customers being beneath 30.

Spend sufficient time on the app, and also you’re certain to see a spread of demographics.

When you’ve zoomed in in your viewers, you can begin following and interacting with their content material. This can floor extra of that content material sort, providing you with a window into what’s resonating most with this viewers section.

This can show immensely useful while you’re creating content material your self.

Goodnough provides that, as TikTok’s Gen Z consumer base ages, schools and universities ought to make the most of the large pool of potential college students on the platform – for each undergrad and grad packages.

“Location tagging can be an enormous win for native companies as TikTokers are leaning in direction of utilizing the platform as a replacement for Google,” she explains.

Professional tip: Together with interested by your viewers, hold the funnel stage in thoughts. Is your objective extra geared towards consciousness, site visitors, or conversions? This may even inform the way you method your model’s movies.

3. Create and edit inside the app

Subsequent, you’ll need your movies to suit seamlessly into the viewer’s For You Web page.

(That is the principle part of the app the place folks scroll by algorithm-selected movies to search out new accounts to view, work together with, and comply with.)

Among the best methods to try this is by creating natively in TikTok.

“Extremely polished movies or animated textual content graphics don’t work on this platform like they do on YouTube or LinkedIn,” says Goodnough.

So, moderately than struggling to repurpose content material you’ve used on different platforms, it’s typically a greatest follow to create your movies instantly in-app. This may even make it simpler to edit and publish the content material when it’s prepared.

Movies created elsewhere could render poorly or not fill the specs correctly.

Professional tip: HubSpot stories that the three best time frames to post on TikTok are 6-9 p.m., 3-6 p.m., and 12-3 p.m., in that order.

4. Begin sturdy

The addictive nature of TikTok comes from the truth that you possibly can endlessly scroll.

However whilst you can technically add a video up to 10 minutes long, don’t be mistaken: you’ve acquired 1-2 seconds to make an affect.

You’ll want to hook your viewers quick to maintain them from scrolling on by. If you happen to don’t? Your video will get “deranked” by the algorithm, successfully sealing your marketing campaign’s destiny.

By way of our staff’s expertise creating profitable TikTok advertisements, we’ve seen that capitalizing off present app developments (extra on that under) and utilizing trending sounds and audio clips are nice methods to make these first seconds depend.

5. Play off of developments

This can be arduous for entrepreneurs to listen to, however it’s practically unattainable to foretell TikTok developments.

They arrive from out of nowhere (living proof: an audio clip from the Gilmore Ladies TV present in 2001 changing into part of a meme in 2024) and fizzle out simply as shortly.

However it’s additionally true that this is among the greatest methods to get your advert seen by as many individuals as doable.

When taking part in off TikTok developments, your greatest guess is to leap on the bandwagon when the pattern remains to be fairly new — meaning you haven’t seen tons of different manufacturers play off the identical pattern.

Attempting to capitalize on a pattern that’s dropping steam will seemingly lead to viewers having a form of “pattern fatigue” that causes them to see or hear the pattern and hold scrolling.

“I feel displaying the human facet of manufacturers and companies will be actually profitable,” provides Goodnough.

“Is a school president an important dancer? What about that head chef who’s quippy and hilarious – may he make some nice stitches? Attempt it out, get inventive, and throw your model tips out the window.”

Professional tip: There aren’t a ton of evergreen developments on the app. However one which’s confirmed to have some endurance is the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt tag. If you happen to’re an ecommerce model particularly, this tag might be value perusing for inspiration.

6. Deal with storytelling

Profitable advertisements usually have some type of storytelling factor to their content material.

Whether or not it’s a “day within the life” sort publish (these are inclined to carry out effectively), somebody talking instantly into the digicam, or one thing extra, hold storytelling high of thoughts.

Whenever you take a look at high-performing advertisements in TikTok’s ad library, it’s clear that movies telling a narrative utilizing actual folks and real-life settings (vs. overly stylized or graphic-heavy movies) are those that see success.

Mainly, intention to create good TikToks, don’t simply run advertisements.

Professional tip: Don’t be afraid to interrupt the proverbial fourth wall. Speaking on to the viewer, even asking them a query, has been proven to assist folks join with what they’re watching. Discover present templates and see which could work on your model.

7. Leverage audio

Whereas it’s widespread for folks to make use of nearly all different well-liked social media apps with out sound, TikTok is decidedly a “sound on” atmosphere.

Captions are useful, particularly for making your content material as accessible as doable. However, as Social Media Right now stories, “manufacturers want to think about sound as a key part of their overall branding effort.”

TikTok presents an audio library with royalty-free music, citing a study that discovered TikTok was the one social media platform “the place advertisements with audio generated important lifts in each buy intent and model favorability.”

Manufacturers can use this library to discover a whole bunch of 1000’s of recordings and filter by preferences reminiscent of:

• Area
• Usable placements
• Themes
• Temper
• Period
• Style

8. Conduct constant testing

TikTok appears to know what we need to see earlier than we do.

“Their algorithm is unmatched within the social area, so I at all times take a look at their auto-targeting choices in opposition to my very own audiences I’ve constructed for my shoppers (primarily based on pursuits or lookalikes), and TikTok’s algorithm performs higher pretty usually,” explains Goodnough.

Testing out targets (aka marketing campaign goals, which we’ll get into under) may help you with marketing campaign optimization – and may yield shocking outcomes.

“One consumer not too long ago created a TikTok account, and one in every of their targets was to develop their followers along with working model consciousness campaigns,” says Goodnough.

“We examined Video View campaigns and Attain campaigns, however they weren’t leading to viewers engagement and development. So we switched to Group Engagement campaigns and noticed a greater than 13,000% enhance in paid followers after 30 days.”

If you happen to’re new to the platform, need to see if it’s best for you, or have a restricted finances, you can begin by publishing natural, free TikTok movies.

This manner, you possibly can take a look at a number of completely different methods out and see what resonates. From there, you should use advert choices to amplify your content material. That is additionally an effective way to develop your presence and following.

Professional tip: Don’t be afraid to have enjoyable and check out new issues together with your natural movies. An ideal instance: The language studying web site and app Duolingo gained a ton of visibility for posting humorous, ridiculous movies that performed on developments and featured an individual donning the company’s mascot owl costume.

9. Hold your messaging direct

Out of your caption to your calls to motion (CTAs), much less is extra. With TikTok advertising copy, you need to be direct, concise, and interesting proper out of the gate.

Plus, for those who’re going for a objective aside from model consciousness, you’ve acquired to have a robust sufficient message that’ll encourage viewers to navigate away from the app. If you happen to’ve used the app, you realize that’s no simple feat.

Professional tip: When creating TikTok advertisements, Search Engine Journal recommends greatest practices reminiscent of balancing promotion with leisure, utilizing partnerships to spice up consciousness, utilizing a 9:16 video format, and having captions.

10. Hold iterating

As talked about above in the case of TikTok developments, it’s practically unattainable to foretell what movies will hit their stride on the app.

Due to that, moderately than dropping out on a marketing campaign that’s not getting views, it’s greatest to maintain iterating.

Altering up the primary few seconds, rushing up the video, or altering out the music might be simply the tweak a video wants to start out performing effectively.

So in case you have a great feeling about what you’ve created? Hold fine-tuning it to see if efficiency improves because of this.

Professional tip: Use TikTok analytics to trace which advert model resonates greatest together with your viewers by monitoring metrics like views, feedback, likes, and favorites.

TikTok advert goals

TikTok advertisements let you choose an “goal,” which is the objective you need your marketing campaign to attain. Listed here are your choices:

• Consciousness – These campaigns are all about rising your model’s consciousness and attain, getting you the utmost quantity of impressions out of your audience.
• Consideration – This middle-of-the-funnel objective goals to develop your model’s site visitors, video views, and group interplay, aka getting extra folks onto your profile web page.
• Conversion – These action-oriented campaigns are supposed to encourage somebody to finish a process, like app installs or buy completion. Assume: web site conversions, lead era, app promotion, and product gross sales.

How a lot do TikTok advertisements price?

In the case of TikTok advertisements, $1 is the typical price per click on and $10 is the typical CPM. Goodnough factors out {that a} widespread false impression about promoting on TikTok is that it’s expensive.

In actuality, CPMs (costs per mille aka 1,000 impressions) common out to be $10 on TikTok on the marketing campaign stage. By comparability, CPMs are round $7 on Meta (that is a median throughout all marketing campaign varieties: attain, engagement, and conversion). TikTok has a minimum cap of $500 to be spent per marketing campaign.

The common CPC (price per click on) is $1 on each TikTok and Meta advert platforms.

On the advert group stage, daily budgets have to be over $20, whereas lifetime budgets are calculated by multiplying the minimal each day finances and the variety of scheduled days.

The rise of TikTok Outlets

For the reason that rollout of TikTok Store within the U.S., in-app motion has been booming.

With social commerce persevering with to develop in reputation, Influencer Advertising Hub stories that TikTok is outperforming its Meta rivals by a big margin.

In actual fact, TikTok Store sold more than ⅔ of the total social shopping gross merchandise value (GMV) in February 2024.

Whereas the vast majority of sales occur in Southeast Asia, TikTok Store now has a maintain within the U.S. market as effectively. Goodnough says, “TikTok creates a seamless purchasing expertise from discovery to analysis to buy — whats up, #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.”

Creating TikTok advertisements: What not to do

Together with all her useful knowledgeable insights, we wished to get Goodnough’s ideas about widespread pitfalls she’s seen advertisers fall for in the case of TikTok – and the way they are often prevented.

“What works on LinkedIn in all probability received’t work on TikTok – and vice versa,” she says. “In the case of social promoting, you possibly can’t simply slap a ‘TikTok Technique’ sticker in your LinkedIn or Meta technique and count on it to work.”

Relatively, she says every platform has its personal goal and strengths. Your TikTok technique ought to plug into your holistic digital advertising technique on your model in its distinctive method, “not simply replicate one other platform’s technique.”

The takeaway

When in comparison with different well-liked social platforms, TikTok’s present development simply can’t be beat. That’s why you’ll seemingly proceed to see extra manufacturers becoming a member of in and creating TikTok content material.

If you wish to attain the correct viewers in a brand new, direct method, create enjoyable natural content material that exhibits off your model’s character, or just sustain with the competitors, TikTok is the place you need to be.

This publish has been up to date and was initially printed in March 2022.