TikTok Ads: Key to Your Online Business Growth [Best Practices]

68% of TikTok users looked up a product or brand seen on the platform, and 57% of users said that TikTok inspired them to shop, even when they didn’t plan to shop. This clearly shows the opportunity for brands on TikTok. But where do you start? This article will help you answer that question.

Today, we'll talk about why you should consider TikTok for business. We'll also talk about different ad formats offered by TikTok and also share with you a few best practices for targeting audiences and for creating TikTok ad groups effectively. Excited? Let’s jump into it!

There are several things that must be in order before you can start making big numbers from your eCommerce business. A crucial part is how the online presence of your brand. Today, there's no better way to put your brand out than social media. But let’s face it, getting engagement on social media takes a lot of effort, trial and error and the right strategy for your niche. You may have tried a lot of things to cut through the noise on social media platforms.

This is where TikTok takes a different. TikTok is an entertainment platform with personalised short-form mobile video content. It functions on an algorithm that relies on the relevance of the content, a full-screen app with immersive music experience and isn’t all about the number of followers you have. You heard that right! This is what sets TikTok apart from social media platforms. Your chances to get engagement are way higher on TikTok than on a social media platform. You might even go viral if you post relevant content regularly.

Apart from doing great organically, you can hugely benefit from combining an organic approach with the TikTok Paid approach! We're helping our clients make huge profits by using TikTok Ads. Tap into your potential while we optimize your ads for the right audience.

Here are a few reasons to start using TikTok Ads:

Powerful Ad Formats

TikTok offers a plethora of cool formats to brands looking to grow on the platform. The utility of each format is based on the brand’s unique goals. Here is the breakdown of three powerful ad formats:

In-Feed Ads:

In-feed ads are TikTok’s standard ad format, which allows you to embed your video ads to auto-play on your target audiences’ ‘For You’ page. These ads give the ability for users to like, comment, share, follow, and shoot videos within the same TikTok sound.

In-Feed ads can be used for various campaign objectives. Each ad features a clickable CTA button which can be used to drive traffic to an external landing page, app downloads, or to your brand’s TikTok account. For best results, we recommend your ad be at least 15 seconds long. 

Top-View Ads

Top-View ads capture the user attention by appearing at the top of their ‘For You’ page when they first open the app. This ad format allows your video ad to be up to 60 seconds long, offering an immersive viewing experience without any content distractions. 

Top-View ads are perfect for increasing brand awareness because it guarantees a wide reach and a high number of impressions. Creating engaging videos is crucial for Top-View ads to perform up to their maximum potential.

Brand Takeover

Similar to Top-View ads, Brand Takeovers are full-screen static or dynamic displays, delivering a strong visual impact that the user first sees when they open TikTok, however, users are unable to like or comment. You can think of these ads as similar to YouTube’s non-skippable ads.

Brand Takeover ads are meant to be short, snappy and to the point, being either a 3-5 second long video or a 3-second image. This allows brands to direct traffic to both internal and external landing pages. The best practice while using Brand Takeover ads is to use them parallel to other formats offered by TikTok to give you the deepest reach.

Lower cost

With its unique content and audience, TikTok stands tall among social media giants like Meta with over 11 million impressions. TikTok Ads generated 235% more impressions and spent $11,000 less than Facebook and Instagram ads. This goes to show how inexpensive TikTok ads can be when optimized right, making it a clear winner.

Highest Reach and Engagement

European users spend the most time on TikTok, clocking about 2 hours per day on the app. This also goes to show the potential of attracting a large and diverse audience on the platform, specific to your brand. This is why TikTok doesn't fail to impress when it comes to reach and engagement. Its reach and rate of engagement are above other platforms.

Authenticity Sells

The missing authentic element on major rival platforms like Meta’s Facebook-Instagram duo. The authentic content shared on TikTok is what most people can relate to and keeps them hooked. The content is as diverse as the audience on TikTok.

Best Practices for TikTok Ad Groups

Run diverse ad groups simultaneously on an account.

The more, the better. Target different audiences on the basis of demographics, lookalikes or retargeting.

Avoid bulk creating too many ad groups at a time.

Especially for accounts with a history of performing poorly during the learning phase. Pay attention to the proportion of learning phase groups and post-learning phase groups which run simultaneously in one account - it is never a good idea to let learning phase groups dominate the account.

Create new ad groups at a steady rate to reach new users.

Retarget audience based on previous interests. Once you’ve reached a satisfactory conversion rate to expand your audience, or when reaching a plateau with low ROI to identify a high-quality audience with a higher chance for conversions.

Did you know?

TikTok delivers a 30% higher ROAS vs. all digital media averages.

Best Practices for targeting on TikTok:

Start out with broad targeting (excluding reach objective)

Avoid using audiences that are too specific without having the data. You can aim for a broad audience first to gather data. Draw audience insight after enough data is collected.

Aim for a balanced audience

Once you have enough data to analyze, narrow down your target audience till you find the right balance.

Algorithms + Data > Human Assumptions

Trust the algorithm and try not to make assumptions about your audience. TikTok time is highly personal and different for everyone. E.g., a toddler parent doesn’t necessarily watch videos of babies while on TikTok.

Avoid layering targeting options

Don't let your audience get too narrow. Avoid layering of demographic targeting and interest targeting.

Conclusion

TikTok is gaining popularity in online businesses for its unique advertisement model. Since it's relatively new, it doesn't cost a fortune to run ads on the platform. Now is the time for you to set up your store on TikTok and scale your revenue.

We've put out a ton of valuable content in the form of webinars that cover everything you need to know about running your business on not only TikTok but also on Facebook, Instagram and Google Ads. It’s all available for free so be sure to check it out here.

We've helped a lot of our clients by working on their accounts, running highly optimized ads for them and celebrating their growth with us. You can become a part of the club today!

Book a free consultation with our eCommerce expert to discuss the challenges you are facing with your business. We’re a friendly bunch and would love to help. Click here to get in touch.