Since its inception, TikTok has enjoyed exponential growth. Within a few years, it has experienced a massive increase in popularity.
With an active user base that grew by 800%, the platform caters to 1 billion active users today.
Isn’t that quite surprising?
Since its start in 2016, the social media video-sharing platform has taken the digital world to new heights by exploring several market trends.
TikTok became a video-sharing social media platform where users create short videos on trending music. Well, now it has expanded to house tremendously diverse content and is known for being a creative outlet for brands.
It has enabled users to reach a large community, and unsurprisingly brands have also tapped into the same for catering to global audiences.
With its unstoppable growth, brands are utilizing it to its utmost potential via reaching younger audiences.
Despite its stellar growth, many are still unaware of TikTok advertising opportunities. Quite surprising, though!
If you are still sitting and wondering how to utilize this tool as your digital marketing asset, then you are on the right path.
With this TikTok ads guide, you can learn the techniques, how this platform works, and everything about TikTok advertising to launch your first-ever campaign.
Let’s get into it!
Why Tiktok Ads?
TikTok, a platform primarily favored by Gen-Z and Millenials, observes Baby Boomers and Gen-X jumping over it too. With such a broad range of audiences, the platform yields a high probability of targeting.
TikTok’s content is almost 15 secs to a minute. This is excellent news for advertisers since ads here are at a premium and are not likely to get lost in bundles of competing ads.
An easy-to-use advertising platform, TikTok is an excellent channel for creating an engaging ad campaign. However, like any other social media platform, TikTok advertising is not a preferred mode for all brands.
Before investing in TikTok ads, you need to figure out if your brand is a good match for TikTok. It is integral to consider your target audience prior to your investments.
It is reported that TikTok has a majority of users under 30 and is majorly influenced by Gen-Z and Millenials. Besides this, when considering its global range, it certainly benefits from widespread adoption worldwide.
If your brand resonates with younger audiences and is inclined or has international aspirations, then TikTok is the best yet untapped opportunity for you.
Also, even if you’re a small-scale or local business, you can utilize TikTok ads in your favor.
Let’s take a closer look at the classification of TikTok ads!
Types of Tiktok Ads
TikTok ads massively serve advertisers in creating compelling campaigns, engaging advertisements, and optimizing.
With a variety to choose from, it’s hard to know which ad format suits your brand, so we need to dive into all the different types. Here are all the categories of TikTok ads; however, all sorts of ads are unavailable in all regions.
In Feed Ads
These are self-made ads created by yourself via the TikTok Ad Manager interface. They appear as the fourth video users see while scrolling the feed. The feed features videos that the algorithms believe align with your interest as per the app’s user-based activity. As per the research, In-Feed ads achieve 23% more retention than TV ads.
Brand Takeover Ads
Brand Takeovers are the ads, including both TopView and In-Feed ads, and only display one business per day. The starting cost of this category is reported to be around USD 50,000 per day, but it has proven records of an increase in engagements, followers, and conversions.
TopView Ads
These ads appear once a day, typically after a user opens the app for the first time. These ads can go up to 60 seconds long, making them perfect for businesses looking for a more extended period of attention, for instance, movie or series trailers. According to the research, 71% of users say TopView ads are much attention-grabbing.
Spark Ads
Spark ads allow you to feature organic content from your account or even from others. TikTok research says that Spark ads have a 24% higher completion rate with 142% more engagement than In-Feed ads. It enables brands to sponsor popular and relatable organic content.
Carousel Ads
These ads consist of up to 10 images and appear in TikTok’s news feed section. Unique captions and hashtags can be added to each one of those 10 images or videos.
How to Set Up Your Ads on TikTok?
Creating ads on TikTok is comparatively more manageable, but it’s essential to understand how each component works together so you can draft a successful advertising campaign.
With a defined target audience, a realistic budget, and eye-grabbing creatives, you can expand your ad reach, improve ad performance, and meet your TikTok advertising goals.
Keep continuing for a step-by-step guide to TikTok advertising!
Create a TikTok Business Ad Account
All you need to start with is creating a TikTok business ad account. Even if you have an existing TikTok account, a business ad account is essential to develop advertisements.
You will be signed into a business ad account with some basic information about you and your business. Once completed and after receiving confirmation, you are all ready to proceed with this platform.
Create a New Campaign
Under the tab named campaign, start creating your ad campaign with a create button. With this, you will be asked to choose an objective for your campaign to drive traffic, conversions, or app installations.
Add a name to your campaign with an allocated budget. You can choose a lifetime budget to reach as many people as possible and a daily budget to reach your target audience gradually – the choice is yours!
Create an Ad Group
An ad group is required to define the target audience, campaign budgets, and ad placement. Your choice of ad placement will determine where your ad will be displayed, either on TikTok only or its partner platforms.
Also, if you have just begun with this, then choosing Automatic Placement is suggested to place your ads for maximum reach. With the Automated Creative Optimisation feature, TikTok will create multiple variations of your content and test their engagements.
Location, age, and gender must be specified to target your desired audience. You can also add native languages and user interest for better target reach.
Create a New Ad
After setting up your ad group, you can configure your first ad. You can be as creative as possible with an option to upload a video or an image. After creating an ad of your liking, preview it to see how it will appear to TikTok users.
Also, you can add a name to your ad to later distinguish between several ads within the same group. You need to add text using 12 to 100 characters to convey your message more effectively. Adding a CTA per your desired goals would be the last step in creating an ad.
Measure Your Ad Performance
Your TikTok ads must follow the formatting guidelines to display the ad correctly and generate engagements. Start making your ad with the most suggested range of about 10 to 15 seconds, less than 500MB in either of these formats; mp4, mov., Mpeg, .3gp, or .avi.
Would it be a Good Technique to Leverage TikTok in Your Marketing Strategy?
Since 2020, TikTok has become a go-to advertising platform for various brands. With the increasing number of users, the number of ads grew from 9% to 37%.
Despite the fantastic results and rankings yielded by TikTok, research shows that advertisers are still unsure about this platform. According to the 2021 Kantar report, many users consider it the most engaging platform but are uncertain about its trustworthiness.
In contrast, it’s also a significant discovery that 55% of users find TikTok innovative and helps them explore new things.
So the key is the audience and your brand objectives!
If you have your target audience on this platform with all your objectives not contradicting, then TikTok can serve you as the best source of advertising.
Get Started With TikTok Advertising Now
Incorporating TikTok into your advertising strategy can be a valuable addition. You can grow your TikTok presence alongside your other social channels too.
TikTok advertising isn’t different from other social media platforms’ advertising. The self-service ads feature makes TikTok an easy-to-use advertising platform that takes no time to get your hands on it efficiently.
With a strong sense of community within TikTok, the audience can strongly resonate with content, and users can engage with brands too.
Keep discovering and learning more to take full advantage of this platform.
