TikTok Ads
TikTok Ads seem relatively straightforward with a few drawbacks since they are still newer. The first drawback is that you have to submit your request to create a TikTok Ads account through their advertiser representatives. Your request can take a couple days to be approved, but after that, the process is very user friendly.
They break their campaigns into 3 objectives: driving traffic to your site, getting people to purchase from you, or install an app. Their platform also makes it easy to set parameters to target the correct users. You can choose how much you want to spend on your ad and if you want to pay daily or once for an extended period. This is where the other drawback comes in. There is a minimum investment of $500 to run a campaign, so it’s a bit of a commitment for newer TikTok advertisers.
There are 3 categories of ads: brand takeovers, in-feed ads, and hashtag challenges. In-feed ads make the most sense for us here. With in-feed ads, there may be an option to link your site directly from the video, however because TikTok Ads is still in beta testing, this may not be available to all users.
Ad Rankings
Your ad ranking is determined by relevance to the user, quality of the content, and bid price, but even more so, by engagement. If you create content that makes users want to share, like, comment, and watch the entire video, the ad will be shown to more users. What I mean by watch the entire video is that if you make your video too long, users may swipe past before finishing the entire thing, which will set it back in the algorithm. A TikTok Ad account also provides an analytics feature that will show how much traffic your Ad is driving towards your business.
Creating Content
TikTok videos can be up to a minute long using videos or images previously taken, or they can be recorded as you are creating the content. TikTok Ads also offer a Video Creation Kit that provides templates for video ads. In my experience with regular TikTok videos though, a template probably isn’t necessary because it’s easy enough to just create your own content.
A couple musts when creating content – use general, rather than niche, hashtags in your description to slot your video in to users who are looking at that type of content already; if relevant, use trending sounds/music in your content to get bumped up in the algorithm; and be concise and eye-catching – TikTok users don’t like videos for the aesthetic, they watch for the content.
General TikTok
In my experience with TikTok, they seem to have a very good targeting system. I’ve found that if I ‘like’ a video, I will generally see more and more videos related to that particular topic or type of video. This means that you don’t necessarily have to create a TikTok Ad campaign to be noticed. Users scroll through their “For You” page which is the main screen upon opening and because of the auto-play feature, it makes them more likely to stay on the app and continue watching video after video of content geared towards them.
If you create regular content that gets people on to your account page where you can link your website, this may work as well in place of an Ad account, though you would lose the analytics feature the ad account provides.
Helpful Sources
– https://later.com/blog/tiktok-ads/ — provides a very detailed, useful video on TikTok’s app
– https://influencermarketinghub.com/tiktok-ads/
– https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-advertise-tiktok/