TikTok Ads for Amazon FBA: A Concise (But Complete) Guide

TikTok is much more than funny challenges and lip-syncing.

With the social network reaching 1 billion users in 2021, it has become a great place for businesses to promote their products and connect with a wide range of audiences.

The types of businesses that can get the most out of this vary; Amazon FBA stores are up there with the ones that can and do take great advantage of the app to boost sales.

The question is, how do they do it?

This is exactly what we’ll cover in the following guide. 

To be specific, we’re going to cover:

• Why you should use TikTok ads
• Tips for running successful TikTok ads as an FBA business
• Examples of FBA businesses using TikTok ads

Plus, many more insightful tips for you to take your Amazon store to the next level.

Without further ado, let’s get going.

Why Should TikTok Ads Be Part of Your Marketing Strategy?

TikTok not only hosts huge numbers of users from a wide range of demographics, making audience targeting easy, but it also offers tools that businesses can use to promote their products.

With that, TikTok ads should definitely be part of your marketing strategy.

In fact, here are some statistics to demonstrate exactly why TikTok is the go-to place for FBA businesses - and eCommerce stores in general -  to run ads and drive sales.

• TikTok has been downloaded over 3 billion times
• TikTok’s content is watched for 26 hours per month, while YouTube content is watched for only 16 hours in the USA
• TikTok ranks as the second-biggest app in terms of consumer spend
• TikTok is used by 18% of global internet users aged 16 to 64
• TikTok’s generation Z penetration is at 35% globally

From the data above, you get a good idea of how popular TikTok is and why so many brands use it to raise awareness and increase sales.

With so many people downloading and engaging with the app, your target audience is bound to be there.

In the image below, you can see TikTok’s age range distribution of its US-based users.

This means that TikTok doesn’t appeal to just one age group, which can be very beneficial for your Amazon store when it comes to running ads.

There are many businesses out there that have seen TikTok’s potential and taken advantage of the TikTok For Business tools available.

Let’s have a look at an example.

Moose Toys, a toy manufacturer based in Australia, decided to leverage TikTok marketing in order to achieve a viral product launch.

The company developed an original song and a choreography and then asked online creators to make content based on its creation while also showcasing their collectible products.

By nature, TikTok is the go-to platform for things like challenges, dances, and lip-syncing, so the user-generated content gathered was bound to go viral; both organically and through the ads it used.

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Indeed it did; by collaborating with different creators who used the hashtag #OhMyGIF Moose Toys achieved:

• Over 155 million views of the #OhMyGIF hashtag
• A 4.45x return on ad spend (ROAS)
• Over 7,000 videos made by creators
• 75% of impressions came from organic content; 25% from paid content
  

This is just one of many case studies that show how businesses, including Amazon FBA stores, can take advantage of TikTok to promote their products.

If you’re thinking about running your own TikTok ads, let’s have a look at some tips to keep in mind.

5 Tips for Running Successful Ads on TikTok for Your FBA Business

Now you know why TikTok is the place for your business to be, we’re going to share some tips for running TikTok ads successfully.

The process might not always be easy, but with the right knowledge and tools, the results can really be outstanding for your FBA business.

Let’s start with the first tip.

Tip #1: Create engaging ads

First and foremost, before you actually begin running engaging TikTok ads, you need to know which ad formats to use.

You need to ask yourself, what types of ads should you go for? How will you find the right content creators to partner up with?

To begin with, here are the TikTok ad formats that the platform allows businesses to use in order to achieve their objectives:

• In-feed ads - social video ads embedded on your audience’s main feed
• Top-view ads - the first post that users see when opening the app
• Brand takeover ads - full-screen branded videos that appear as soon as users open the app
• Branded hashtags - unique hashtags created by brands for creators to use in their content
• Branded effects - brands can get creative through the use of customized effects
  

Those are the ad formats that you need to be aware of if you want to start advertising on TikTok. 

Check out each one to see if it’s a good fit for you and your business goals - you can even use more than one.

Let’s now see some key elements that will make your TikTok ads as engaging as possible.

Element #1: Be authentic

There’s nothing better than creating an ad that’s unique and authentic.

Especially since we’re talking about TikTok- whose main audience are Millennials and Gen Zers - it’s of utter importance to produce ad creatives that are authentic.

Actually, 82% of Gen Zers say they trust a company more if it uses images of real customers in its advertising

Authenticity is something that can be achieved through user-generated content, which can then be repurposed into TikTok ads for your Amazon FBA store.

Sounds good, right?

Further on in our guide, we’re going to cover some examples of Amazon FBA stores that have taken advantage of this tactic and seen great results.

For now, let’s move on to the next element.

Element #2: Be interesting and fast-paced

It’s no secret that younger generations tend to have a shorter attention span and short-form videos have played their role in this.

And what better platform to create such videos than TikTok?

Actually, short-form videos are a snappy way to create, share and inspire viewers. 

For brands, the format offers an effective way to reach audiences they may not have been able to before, by engaging them with short, impactful video messaging.

What’s more, fast-paced videos tend to have higher engagement rates, so creating TikTok ads that include your messaging in a few seconds and offer a CTA at the end, is one of the best tactics for engaging ads.

Moving on.

Element #3: Offer coupons or free samples

Everyone loves a discount or a free sample, right?

This is true not only for retail stores, but also businesses who want to drive sales through social media, and giveaways have been a great solution to this.

By offering TikTok users free samples and coupons if they follow your profile or share your video, you not only get to engage with them but also grow your online presence.

Actually, 45% of marketers agree that social media contests provide a positive ROI.

What’s more, coupons can help you drive sales, since they act as an incentive for users to make a purchase.

Author’s Note: Combine coupons with paid eCommerce ads and your sales results can be outstanding!

Overall, it’s pretty clear that incentives like coupons and samples can help brands connect with their audience and make their ads more engaging.

Let’s continue to the next element.

Element #4: Use Attractive Visuals

Even if all of the elements we just mentioned have been checked, you simply can’t expect low-quality ads to convert.

This is exactly why you need to emphasize on creating something attractive that your viewers will like.

This doesn’t mean that you need to spend big on production equipment, but creating visually appealing ads has great importance.

After all, the bar for production value has been raised a few notches, with light rings and various other equipment to upgrade the visual and sound quality becoming more accessible.

For instance, the following TikTok was created by content creator Andrea Santiago MUA and posted by retail company Target, who is a partner of NYX Cosmetics:

It’s a high-quality video made by the creator, which showcases the beauty product in a clear and attractive way.

Obviously, when it comes to user-generated content where you don’t create the videos yourself as a brand, you should always offer instructions and guidance as to how the content should be, based on your standards.

This is a process that can be controlled through our own tool, Insense.

Let’s have a look at it.

Element #5: Work with content creators

Once you’ve settled on an ad type and how you’ll make it authentic and interesting enough, it’s time to find the right creators to help take your campaign to the next level.

Let’s see how you can do that with the help of our own tool, Insense.

For the sake of example, we’ll assume we’re an Amazon FBA business in the beauty industry, offering products like cosmetics, face creams, make-up brushes, and other associated products.

Once you log into Insense, you need to select Fill out a brief so you can create your campaign.

After that, you need to add your brand:
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Next, you include some basic information about it, such as the name, logo, website, and a summary.

When ready, you can click Add brand to continue to the next stage, which is where you start creating your campaign.

Begin by adding your campaign’s name, a cover photo, and whether it'll be public or private; the former means it will be visible to everyone who fits your criteria, while the latter means it'll be invite-only.

Author’s Note: With every completed step of your campaign creation, you’re able to see it from a user’s point of view on the phone screen on your right.

Next up, it’s time to decide your campaign type; influencer partnerships are for organic ad publication and whitelisting while custom content creation is for content made independently for any purpose.

Let’s go for influencer partnerships and for TikTok when it comes to the platform our campaign will be based on.

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Plus, our campaign’s objective here will be traffic, but you can also choose between brand awareness, reach, and engagement.

What else do you need to fill in?

The payment method is one thing; you can either compensate your creators with money or your product.

In our case, it makes sense to go for Product and then choose to work with between five to 10 creators; this range will affect the total amount of content proposals you receive.

If we had chosen to pay creators with money, the Price cap per creator field would be available, where you’d enter the maximum price a creator can request.

Your campaign is almost done!

Let’s now choose a timeline for it, based on whether it’ll be Limited or Unlimited, and add a start and end date to it.

In our case, since it’s limited, we’ll add February 25th as the day by which all creatives should be sent.

What’s more, we need to decide if we - the Amazon FBA store - will handle the shipment to the creators, if they'll buy the product and we’ll reimburse them, or whether no shipment at all is required. 

Let’s go for the first option for the sake of example.

As you can see above, we’ve also added a product description - it should be concise but detailed enough for creators to understand what it’s all about.

After all, they’re the ones promoting it.

Once that's done, it’s time to decide what type of creators you want to work with.

Your criteria can be based on their location, as well as their audiences’:

...their category which in our case is beauty…

You can also specify other factors to determine your ideal demographics, such as their gender, age range, ethnicity, plus their follower range and engagement rate.

Since our FBA business is in the beauty industry, we can aim for women around 18-34 years old, giving our product more chances of being targeted at the right people.

Moving on, it’s time to define your ideal creative asset.

To begin, you need to choose whether posting on TikTok is required or not, the content’s format - vertical video/image - and its placement, e.g. in feed or story.

While this is very important information, it’s not enough for your creators to fully understand what they have to do.

That's exactly why you need to explain what they should do.

You need to add a few important technical requirements:

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Last but not least, you also should include what they shouldn’t do when creating the content, like so:

This may range from not talking about competitors, to not using copyrighted music.

As you can see above, don’t forget to instruct creators about the post’s caption, such as what hashtags to use.

Author’s Note: When it comes to the caption, give creators some freedom. Instead of telling them exactly what to say, simply provide some guidelines. This will make the caption feel more authentic.

With that, your campaign is ready!

Given a little time, you’ll start to receive proposals from TikTokers looking to promote your product.

Another way to find creators through Insense is by browsing our Creators marketplace.

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In there, you can search creators based on your own filters, such as the social media platform they use, their name, hashtags, and demographics.

Once you’ve set your criteria, our tool will provide you with the most relevant results.

Simply select as many as you want and you'll see important metrics about their accounts.

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You also get details about their audience. 

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All of this data will give you a good all-around idea of how suitable the creator is for you.

When choosing to work with a creator, there’s also the chance to chat with them and even get the full copyright to their content; this is particularly important for using the content in your own branded ads.

There are several ways that you can find influencers to promote your Amazon FBA business.

However, using a tool like Insense with a wide variety of automations, features, and a large database of creators is an easy and obvious choice. 

Let’s move on to the next tip.

Tip #2: Target the right audience

When it comes to online marketing activities, targeting the right audience is essential.

No matter whether we’re talking about TikTok, Google, or Facebook ads, their purpose is getting your business in front of the right people.

This means you need to set the right criteria based on your audience’s demographics, characteristics, and behaviors.

Tools like TikTok Ads Manager allow you to adjust these through the options available.

For example, you can choose element about your target audience such as: 

• Location
• Gender
• Age range
• Language
  

Following our previous example, we can choose our TikTok ads to be shown to women in the UK, between the ages of 18-34, who speak English.

What’s more, you can choose your audience’s interests and behaviors, such as what kinds of videos they’re interested in as well as if they've liked, commented, or shared videos in a certain category.

In our case, going for the beauty category once again makes sense for our ads to be promoted to the right people.

One popular Amazon FBA business is Merrick, which sells nutritional food for pets.

When running TikTok ads for this type of business, it would be ideal to target people interested in the pet category and who’ve interacted with animal videos.

All in all, we strongly recommend conducting market research to understand your audience and then implementing the right options to target them.

Let’s continue.

Tip #3: Experiment and iterate based on results

When leveraging online promotions of any type, you don’t have to get everything right on the first try.

It would be ideal, but you’re most likely going to have to experiment with different creatives and audiences until you find what works best for you.

Just to give you an idea, following the case of the FBA business in the beauty niche, let’s assume you’ve run two different TikTok ads campaigns based on the target audience:

1. Women and men based in the US, ages 18-34, who are interested in beauty and personal care.
2. Women based in the US, ages 35-54, who are interested in beauty and personal care.

If the second campaign generates better results because women in older age groups are more interested in certain beauty products, then it makes sense to continue with it instead of the first one.

What’s more, you can experiment with other things such as ad types, your audience’s behaviors, different caption styles, hashtags, CTAs, and even using emojis.

Those are all things you need to implement, measure their results, and iterate if needed.

Let’s move on to the next tip.

Tip #4: Track your results

As in every digital marketing campaign, measuring your results is essential.

After all, how else will you know if your TikTok ads were successful?

In order to do this, we suggest you follow one or both of the two following approaches.

Approach #1: Send traffic to an external website

The first approach includes sending traffic from your TikTok ads to an external website, which could be your Amazon store or a separate landing page.

Both can be equally efficient, but since you can’t monitor who visited your store from TikTok ads, what you can do is connect TikTok pixel to a separate landing page in order to track all necessary metrics.

This is because there isn’t a way of connecting TikTok pixel to your Amazon store, meaning you can’t track conversions from your ads.

On landing pages, on the other hand, keeping track of all necessary data that'll help you determine the effectiveness of your campaign is something that can be done.

Through that landing page you can collect email addresses, offer coupons or send people to your Amazon store.

All in all, for optimal results, it’s good practice to connect your FBA business to your TikTok ads - either directly or indirectly via a landing page - so people can visit it.

Moving on to the second approach.

Approach #2: Use Amazon Attribution

Amazon Attribution is a solution that enables you to see valuable insights into how your non-Amazon marketing channels perform on Amazon.

Basically, Amazon Attribution measures:

• Search ads
• Social ads
• Video ads
• Email marketing

And other types of non-Amazon advertising strategies, which are aiming to drive sales for an Amazon store.

The types of metrics one can track include clicks, conversion rates, as well as add to carts and purchases, which are essential to any eCommerce business.

How does it work exactly, you may ask?

Well, this tool enables integrators to easily set up Amazon Attribution tags which can be used to measure media that links to an Amazon store.

Quite useful, right?

Author’s Note: If you want to learn how to get started with Amazon Attribution, the company offers several pages with detailed instructions.

All in all, measuring the results of your promotional efforts, no matter what they are, is crucial in making your Amazon FBA business successful.

Let’s now see some examples of FBA businesses running TikTok ads for you to get inspired.

3 Examples of Amazon FBA Businesses Running TikTok Ads to Inspire You

You've seen how to do it in theory, now we’re going to feature some examples to show the process in real life.

They’ll be all about Amazon FBA businesses running TikTok ads, for you to get some ideas and inspiration.

Let’s start with the first one.

Example #1: Sol De Janeiro

Sol De Janeiro is a business selling skin and body care products.

Although it has its own website, since it’s primarily a DTC brand, it's also set up an Amazon FBA store to drive more sales.

By leveraging TikTok ads, especially top-view ones, it's able to spread awareness about its products and increase conversions, which is the campaign’s primary objective.

The caption used for the ads is:

“The gift sets everyone will love (including you). Shop limited edition sets before they're gone!”

This prompts users to take further action and make a purchase by creating a sense of urgency.

TikTok also gives the advertiser precious insights, such as the likes, comments, shares, and CTR for each campaign’s post.

It’s also worth noting that Sol De Janeiro has applied some of the tips we mentioned earlier, to its TikTok ads.

For example, the use of authentic content is heavily seen on the brand’s TikTok activity…

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…through leveraging UGC.

One could say that its ads are high-quality and fast-paced, which makes them more engaging.

Let’s continue.

Example #2: CozyEarth

CozyEarth is a company offering bedding and clothing products made from bamboo.

It has its own website where one can find and purchase the products and an Amazon FBA store has also been set up to drive more sales.

Once again, TikTok marketing has been utilized to drive traffic to the FBA store through vertical video ads.

What’s more, the caption includes a CTA prompting users to use a discount code for 30-35% off.

The campaign was launched on Black Friday; a great period to take advantage of TikTok marketing.

Author's Note: Once again, this is another brand using UGC in order to make its ads more authentic and engaging.

Let’s move on to the next example.

Example #3: Happy Socks

Happy Socks is a Swedish company selling fun and colorful socks to more than 90 countries.

Although the products can be found in many fashion apparel stores, as well as directly through the business’s website, an Amazon FBA store has also been created.

This helps the company reach a wider audience and drive more sales.

In order to promote the products even further, TikTok ads have been utilized to increase conversions.

As a small to medium-sized eCommerce company, it can be a very effective type of marketing to raise awareness, increase conversions, drive traffic, and anything else it has as an objective.

Needless to say, TikTok ads can be combined with UGC, as well as challenges, songs, filters, and much more to make your campaign appealing and vibrant.

Let’s wrap things up with some final words.

Now Over to You

There you have it.

That was our guide on how to use TikTok ads as an Amazon FBA business.

While the process might need some testing and iterations, TikTok marketing can really contribute to your business’s success.

Simply make sure to keep our tips in mind and gather the right knowledge and tool set, then everything will run smoothly.

Need some help finding the right creators to partner with for your TikTok campaigns? 

 Book a free demo with Insense and see what we can do for you.

We’ll guide you step-by-step to make sure your marketing efforts are as optimized as possible.

Thanks for reading!