TikTok campaigns generally have higher engagement rates and generate more impressions than ads on other popular social media platforms.
Sounds exciting, right?
We’re here to help you step up your TikTok ads game so you can get the best bang for your campaign budget.
More specifically, our guide covers a number of things you can do to optimize your ad campaigns on TikTok, such as:
- Choosing the right target audience
- Sprucing up your account by collaborating with TikTok creators
- Analyzing relevant metrics to measure ad performance
Plus, many more!
Now, let’s get your brand on the For You page.
What is a TikTok Ad Campaign?
A TikTok ad campaign is a type of social media advertisement that targets TikTok users based on age, gender, location, interests, and other demographic and psychographic criteria.
Since TikTok has a growing audience worldwide, TikTok ads have become one of the more preferred digital marketing advertising tools out there.
Let’s have a look at what the U.S. TikTok user base looks to see if you can find your buying persona on the platform.
Stats on TikTok Users and Ad Reach Potential
Lately, TikTok has gained a lot of popularity in the U.S (and not only for younger audiences).
Specifically, the app reached 78.7 million active users in 2021 and is projected to reach 89.7 million users by 2023.
And that’s only in the U.S.!
At a global scale, TikTok reached one billion users in 2021. And that number is expected to keep growing.
Furthermore, of the 78.7 million users, 75.5% are adults over 20 years old. You can find a detailed breakdown of the TikTok user age groups (by Statista) in the graph below.
Taking a closer look at the TikTok users, we see that the Tiktok advertising audience is predominantly female across all age groups.
Clearly, there’s a lot of advertising potential on TikTok.
Let’s take a look at a popular TikTok ad format example.
These are all videos created by TikTok users as a response to Chipotle’s mid-pandemic branded hashtag challenge (which is a type of TikTok ad, as you’ll see in the following section).
Chipotle challenged users to create videos of their go-to Chipotle order for a chance to win $10k and have their order included in the Chipotle menu.
To enter the contest, users had to use the hashtag #chipotleroyalty when posting their videos.
As you can imagine, the campaign was a huge success and boosted Chipotle’s brand awareness in a fun and creative way.
In the next section, we’re going to look at more TikTok ad formats.
Types of TikTok Ads
The TikTok Ads Manager enables users to advertise on the whole TikTok app family. That includes apps like Vigo Video, Helo, Babe, TopBuzz, and others.
However, in this post, we're going to discuss TikTok ad formats for self-serve accounts only, including:
- TikTok In-Feed Ads: Short videos up to 60 seconds placed in users' For You feed.
- TikTok Brand Takeover Ads: Images or GIFs displayed full-screen for three seconds upon a user opening the TikTok app.
- TikTok Top View Ads: 60-second long videos placed at the top of a user's For You feed when opening the app.
- TikTok Branded Hashtag Ads: A hashtag challenge sponsored by brands. Users are invited to create TikTok videos of themselves joining the challenge, which are then uploaded using the respective hashtag in the video description, boosting brand awareness and driving engagement.
- TikTok Branded Effects Ads: A custom filter created by a brand that users can apply while filming TikTok videos.
Regardless of the ad type you choose, there are a couple of things you should take into account to really take your video ads to the next level.
Let’s see the first one.
1. Choose the Best Audience for Your Ad Campaign on TikTok
Ads on TikTok can potentially reach 884.9 million users above 18 years old from around the world.
But your product will certainly not be relevant to all these people.
Assuming you don’t want to waste ad spend on an uninterested audience, the right targeting strategies will help you ensure your ad placement is reaching people who are likely to purchase your product.
Doing so can naturally make your campaigns more successful and effective.
Similar to Facebook’s Ad Manager, TikTok enables you to target your audience based on multiple demographic and psychographic characteristics, including:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Interests
Moreover, you can also create lookalike audiences and target people with similar profiles as your existing customers.
And, considering that ads inspire around 37% of social media users to purchase a product, making sure your ads are placed in front of the right people will most certainly increase your sales.
In fact, 80% of marketers who use video content as part of their marketing efforts claim they registered a sales increase.
Yes, video content has great advertising potential.
However, you can only reap the benefits if your videos are watched by the right people.
And yet this is only a fraction of what you need to do to ensure social network advertising success.
Here comes another thing you should keep in mind.
2. Make Sure Your Ad Campaigns Include a High-Conversion Call-to-Action (CTA)
Every piece of customer-oriented content needs a concise call to action (CTA) to let users know what they should do next.
This applies to the TikTok community as well. They need you to tell them what to do after they’ve viewed your ad.
Do you want to drive traffic to your landing page? Use a CTA that prompts users to visit your website and learn more about your offering.
Or is it app installs you're after? In that case, tell users to download and install your app.
CTAs are very straightforward pieces of content that can make a huge difference when using TikTok ads.
Did you know that you can increase your conversion rate by up to 24% by simply changing “your” to “my” in your CTA copy?
Let’s see an example of a simple yet effective CTA from the famous beauty brand, Sephora.
After seeing this video of an influencer talking about Sephora fragrances under $35, the CTA reiterates the message of the video: “shop fragrances”; “find new and best-selling scents”.
But you cannot only rely on your CTA.
You also need to…
3. Create Fabulous & Engaging Content for Your TikTok Ad Campaigns
Having great, eye-catching, and engaging content is one of the most important things to do in terms of optimizing your TikTok ad campaigns to make them a success.
However, not all of us have the time and dedication to keep pace with new TikTok trends, challenges, and all the like.
Plus, most of us surely don't have video editing skills nor the necessary content creation expertise to produce engaging TikTok marketing campaigns.
Have you considered influencer partnerships?
If not, maybe it’s time you do.
You probably already figured that Gen Z and millennial creators tend to have an eye for viral video creation.
We are super aware of that as well.
That’s why we created a platform to help them bring their knowledge and skills closer to small business owners that want to leverage social media platforms such as TikTok for business.
In detail, Insense is common ground for brands looking for content and TikTok creators producing content.
Think about Insense as a job posting platform with a Creator Marketplace, and detailed, step-by-step creator brief templates.
On our platform, you can fill out detailed influencer briefs to tell creators what your content needs are.
Alternatively, you can browse our TikTok Creator Marketplace to look for the person whose portfolio aligns with your marketing strategy and campaign optimization goals.
For a step-by-step guide on how to find the right TikTok creator for your brand, visit our blog post on influencer marketing and Top TikTok Influencers for Brands.
Take a look at what great content can do for a brand.
Below, you can see the creatives used in a Too Faced ad group aimed at boosting brand awareness and sales among a young audience of Gen Z women in the UK.
All these ad creatives use consistent brand imagery with bold colors and fonts, showcasing the product packaging, name, and utility.
These are the results of this awesomely crafted content:
- 7.6 million ad impressions
- 1.3 million clicks
- 18.38% CTR
Now let’s see how you can measure the success of your campaigns as well.
4. Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Analyzing Your TikTok Ad Campaigns’ Performance
When it comes to any social media ad campaign, analyzing the performance and results is essential.
To measure your ad performance on TikTok, choose relevant metrics to track.
For example, you can analyze metrics such as:
- Click-through rate (CTR): You can tell if your ad is doing well if your CTR is above 1%
- Conversions: The number of times your ad fulfilled the set campaign objective
- Cost per click (CPC): The amount you're paying for each person clicking on your ad (value)
This sort of analysis can help you save valuable time and money by figuring out what's working and what's not.
Ultimately, ad performance metrics show you what sort of investment you should make in terms of your ad campaigns.
In addition to these metrics, the most important indicator of an ad’s performance is ROAS—return on ad spend.
To calculate your ROAS, you can simply divide the ad revenue by your ad spend. To get your ROAS as a percentage, multiply the result by 100. You can tell you're at a loss if your ROAS is anything less than 100%.
Speaking of ROAS…
According to TikTok, 90% of branded hashtag challenges see a 250% ROAS.
That’s amazing, isn’t it?
When you have a high ROAS, it’s time to scale.
We’re gonna tell you why creating TikTok content at scale matters in a bit.
Bonus: Produce Ad Creatives for TikTok at Scale
Producing creatives at scale for TikTok ad campaigns can be particularly beneficial for businesses. Namely, by scaling your content production with the help of professional content creators, you can:
1. Maintain stylistic consistency
When you outsource your content production to professional creators, we recommend you establish brand imagery guidelines so that your style is consistent across all videos.
This will help your brand be easily recognizable by your target audience, which boosts trust and loyalty.
Plus, having stylistic consistency is a differentiating factor that can make you stand out from the competition.
2. Save time and money
Partnering up with influencers will save you tons of time and money.
According to Semrush, 40% of businesses outsource video content production.
Why not join them?
For small businesses, having a full-time content creator for TikTok ads might not be feasible.
And handling everything by yourself as the business owner is not doable (unless your day has more than 24 hours).
3. Be consistent with your social media scheduling thus increasing engagement
When doing everything by yourself, your schedule is not always consistent—especially when you’re running a growing business.
New daily challenges might throw TikTok ads at the bottom of your priority list.
And when this happens, you cannot deliver consistently. Thus, you can’t produce the results you want.
On the other hand, when you collaborate with influencers, you can establish a constant flow of content that feeds your TikTok account the attention it needs.
It’s time to wrap things up.
Now Over to You
We hope this post helped you arm yourself with everything you need to know about creating content for your TikTok ad campaigns.
Now it’s time to get creative… with our content creators.
Book a demo with Insense and see just how easy and convenient it is to have professionally-made quality video content at your fingertips.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1.How do I create a TikTok ad campaign?
These are some steps you need to take to create a TikTok ad campaign:
- Figure out your campaign objective
- Set a daily or lifetime budget for your ad
- Choose the ad placement that best fits your goals
- Fine-tune your audience targeting settings
- Set a schedule for your ads
- Choose a fitting bidding strategy
- Create your ad creatives and copy
- Publish your ad
Q2. How do I find TikTok ads?
To find TikTok ads, you can access TikTok’s Ad Library tool — Top Ads. This tool enables you to browse through popular ads by region, industry, and campaign objective.
Plus, you have the ability to sort filtered ads by reach, engagement, and views rate.
To access TikTok's Top Ads page, go to your TikTok business account, hover over Inspiration, go to Creative Center, and once there, click on Top Ads.
Q3. How much does it cost to run ads on TikTok?
The cost per 1k views (CPM) for TikTok ads is $10 plus a minimum campaign budget of $500. However, different ad formats have different prices. For example, to run a branded hashtag challenge for six days you need to pay $150k, and a brand takeover costs $50k per day.
