How to Create TikTok Ads in 10 Steps (+ What Not to Do)

TikTok has taken the social media world by storm. We created this step-by-step information that can assist you promote efficiently on this mega-popular platform.

Right here, you’ll discover:

Our social media advertising specialists in 2022: TikTok is principally probably the most underrated advert platform proper now – tremendous low CPMs and numerous progress potential.

Our social media advertising specialists at present: TikTok is not only a spot to drive consciousness – it’s a hub for product discovery and buy, neighborhood engagement, and viewers progress. It’s a contender within the digital house and different platforms realize it.

In the previous couple of years, the TikTok social media video app has taken over the social media panorama. Not solely that, but it surely’s additionally remodeled the buying business as we all know it.

Statista experiences that TikTok’s advert income is greater than $11 billion globally, with entrepreneurs “dedicating extra time and {dollars} in direction of the app than ever.” 

TikTok’s success lies in its extremely subtle (and mysterious) algorithm. The extra you employ it, the higher it turns into at understanding what sort of movies to serve you. The extra you want or comply with a sure sort of content material, the extra of that sort you’ll see. 

With all of the hype surrounding TikTok and its rapidly evolving choices for entrepreneurs, we tapped HawkSEM’s Senior Paid Social Media Supervisor Nicole Goodnough to assist us make sense of all of it and supply some professional suggestions for creating efficient TikTok campaigns.

 What are TikTok advertisements?

TikTok advertisements are video content material on the app that’s created, promoted, or sponsored by a specific model or creator. Together with video campaigns, advertisers may create Branded Results advertisements.

These are custom-made, sponsored results that may embody components like a name to motion (CTA) or a novel video filter.

“In true TikTok style, promoting on the platform has grown exponentially over the previous couple of years,” says Goodnough.

She provides that together with TikTok Store, the platform’s in-app buying function now obtainable within the U.S., “lead gen varieties can assist seize leads for your online business seamlessly.”

In 2022, TikTok generated $4 billion in U.S. promoting income. This determine is predicted to double by 2024 and almost quadruple by 2026.

The info is evident: manufacturers who leverage TikTok efficiently have a superb probability of seeing elevated gross sales and a optimistic return on advert spend (ROAS). 

Professional tip: TikTok Analytics can assist manufacturers observe the suitable metrics and use this knowledge to assist create customized audiences and future campaigns. 

 10 steps to creating profitable TikTok advertisements:

 1. Perceive the TikTok advert platform

TikTok for Enterprise presents in-feed video advert codecs, which present up in the identical place and in the identical means as natural content material (on the person’s For You Web page or FYP). 

Whereas that is the most well-liked and reasonably priced TikTok advert marketing campaign format, the platform additionally presents:

• TopView advertisements, that are movies that seem as quickly as somebody opens the app
• Model Takeover advertisements are much like TopView advertisements in that they pop up as full-screen video advertisements when a TikTok person first opens the app
• Branded Hashtag Problem advertisements, which is the place manufacturers create and promote a novel hashtag
• Branded Results, the place customers have the choice to put up a video utilizing your branded video filter or impact 
• Spark advertisements are much like user-generated content material, whereby a model takes an present video (of theirs or one other creator’s) and turns it into an advert

Much like Instagram, TikTok permits you to create particular advertisements or to pay to promote organic content. Nonetheless, the platform makes selling this content material a bit complicated.

Spark advertisements technically promote natural content material, however something in Advertisements Supervisor is a minimal of $20 per day for advert units and a minimal of $50 per day on the marketing campaign degree. 

As Shopify experiences, TikTok’s self-serve in-feed advertisements permit you to set your individual day by day funds, beginning at $5 per day when utilizing TikTok’s simplified advert placement choices exterior of Advertisements Supervisor.

Listed below are the steps to getting began on TikTok as a model:

• Obtain the TikTok app and arrange a enterprise account
• Click on round to get aware of the TikTok Advertisements Supervisor
• While you’re able to create an advert, select your aim from 3 choices: Consciousness (attain), Consideration (visitors, interplay, lead gen, and many others.), and Conversions
• Resolve in your viewers phase
• Decide your funds and marketing campaign size
• Create your video advert content material
• Submit your advert for evaluate
• Monitor the outcomes and iterate as crucial

Professional tip: TikTok has its personal information to 6 ideas that’ll enable you to create ads that perform.

 2. Determine your viewers

Should you assume Gen Z is the one viewers on TikTok, assume once more.

Whereas this age vary will be the majority, these 19 and beneath solely make up one-fourth of the platform’s thousands and thousands of energetic customers. Spend sufficient time on the app, and also you’re sure to see a variety of demographics.

When you’ve zoomed in in your viewers, you can begin following and interacting with their content material. It will floor extra of that content material sort, supplying you with a window into what’s resonating most with this viewers phase.

It will show immensely useful whenever you’re creating content material your self.

Goodnough provides that, as TikTok’s Gen Z person base ages, faculties and universities ought to make the most of the large pool of potential college students on the platform – for each undergrad and grad packages. 

“Location tagging can be an enormous win for native companies as TikTokers are leaning in direction of utilizing the platform as a replacement for Google,” she explains.

Professional tip: Together with interested by your viewers, hold the funnel stage in thoughts. Is your aim extra geared towards consciousness, visitors, or conversions? This can even inform the way you method your model’s movies.

 3. Create and edit throughout the app

You need your movies to suit seamlessly into the viewer’s For You Web page. (That is the primary part of the app the place folks scroll by way of algorithm-selected movies to search out new accounts to view, work together with, and comply with.) Probably the greatest methods to do this is by creating natively in TikTok.

“Extremely polished movies or animated textual content graphics don’t work on this platform like they do on YouTube or LinkedIn,” says Goodnough. So, slightly than struggling to repurpose content material you’ve used on different platforms, it’s usually a finest follow to create your movies straight in-app. This can even make it simpler to edit and put up the content material when it’s prepared.

Movies created elsewhere might render poorly or not fill the specs correctly.

Professional tip: HubSpot experiences that the three best time frames to post on TikTok are 6-9 PM, 3-6 PM, and 12-3 PM, in that order.

 4. Begin sturdy

The addictive nature of TikTok comes from the truth that you’ll be able to endlessly scroll. However whilst you can technically add a video up to 10 minutes long, don’t be mistaken: you’ve obtained 1-2 seconds to make an influence.

You might want to hook your viewers quick to maintain them from scrolling on by. Should you don’t? Your video will get “deranked” by the algorithm, successfully sealing your marketing campaign’s destiny. 

By way of our group’s expertise creating profitable TikTok advertisements, we’ve seen that capitalizing off present app developments (extra on that under) and utilizing trending sounds and audio clips are nice methods to make these first seconds depend.

Professional tip: In the summertime of 2023, TikTok launched a Search Ads Toggle. This new TikTok Advertisements Supervisor function permits manufacturers to create advertisements that may seem on the app’s search outcomes web page. 

 5. Play off of developments

This can be laborious for entrepreneurs to listen to, but it surely’s almost inconceivable to foretell TikTok developments. They arrive from out of nowhere (working example: the Celine Dion challenge that includes her hit track from 1996) and fizzle out simply as rapidly.

However it’s additionally true that this is likely one of the finest methods to get your advert seen by as many individuals as attainable. When taking part in off TikTok developments, your finest guess is to leap on the bandwagon when the development remains to be fairly new — meaning you haven’t seen tons of different manufacturers play off the identical development.

Making an attempt to capitalize on a development that’s shedding steam will seemingly lead to viewers having a sort of “development fatigue” that causes them to see or hear the development and hold scrolling.

“I believe exhibiting the human aspect of manufacturers and companies may be actually profitable,” provides Goodnough. “Is a university president an excellent dancer? What about that head chef who’s quippy and hilarious – may he make some nice stitches? Attempt it out, get inventive, and throw your model tips out the window.”

Professional tip: There aren’t a ton of evergreen developments on the app. However one which’s confirmed to have some endurance is the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt tag. Should you’re an ecommerce model particularly, this tag could possibly be value perusing for inspiration.

 6. Give attention to storytelling

Profitable advertisements typically have some form of storytelling component to their content material. Whether or not it’s a “day within the life” sort put up (these are inclined to carry out nicely), somebody talking straight into the digital camera, or one thing extra, hold storytelling high of thoughts.

While you take a look at high-performing advertisements in TikTok’s ad library, it’s clear that movies telling a narrative utilizing actual folks and real-life settings (vs. overly stylized or graphic-heavy movies) are those that see success.

Principally, intention to create good TikToks, not advertisements. 

Professional tip: Don’t be afraid to interrupt the proverbial fourth wall. Speaking on to the viewer, even asking them a query, has been proven to assist folks join with what they’re watching.

 7. Leverage audio

Whereas it’s frequent for folks to make use of nearly all different in style social media apps with out sound, TikTok is decidedly a “sound on” setting. 

Captions are useful, particularly for making your content material as accessible as attainable. However, as Social Media In the present day experiences, “manufacturers want to contemplate sound as a key part of their overall branding effort.” The app itself experiences that 100% of TikTok public sale advertisements function sound.

TikTok presents an audio library with royalty-free music, citing a study that discovered TikTok was the one social media platform “the place advertisements with audio generated important lifts in each buy intent and model favorability.” 

Manufacturers can use this library to discover tons of of hundreds of recordings and filter by preferences akin to:

• Area
• Usable placements
• Themes
• Temper
• Period
• Style

 8. Conduct constant testing

TikTok appears to know what we need to see earlier than we do. 

“Their algorithm is unmatched within the social house, so I at all times take a look at their auto-targeting in opposition to my very own audiences I’ve constructed for my purchasers (based mostly on pursuits or lookalikes), and TikTok’s algorithm performs higher pretty typically, which is a flip from Meta’s Benefit+ concentrating on vs. guide audiences,” explains Goodnough.

Testing out targets (aka marketing campaign goals, which we’ll get into under) can assist you with marketing campaign optimization – and may yield stunning outcomes.

“One consumer lately created a TikTok account, and one in every of their targets was to develop their followers along with operating model consciousness campaigns,” says Goodnough. 

“We examined Video View campaigns and Attain campaigns, however they weren’t leading to viewers engagement and progress. So we switched to Group Engagement campaigns and noticed a greater than 13,000% improve in paid followers after 30 days.”

Should you’re new to the platform, need to see if it’s best for you, or have a restricted funds, you can begin off by publishing natural, free TikTok movies.

This manner, you’ll be able to take a look at just a few completely different methods out and see what resonates. From there, you need to use advert choices to amplify your content material. That is additionally a good way to develop your presence and following. 

Professional tip: Don’t be afraid to have enjoyable and check out new issues together with your natural movies. An incredible instance: The language studying web site and app Duolingo gained a ton of visibility (over 62 million likes and counting) for posting humorous, ridiculous movies that performed on developments and featured an individual donning the company’s mascot owl costume.

Whereas it’s frequent for folks to make use of nearly all different in style social media apps with out sound, TikTok is decidedly a “sound on” setting. (Picture: Rawpixel)

 9. Preserve your messaging direct

Out of your caption to your calls to motion (CTAs), much less is extra. As with most advertising copy, you need to be direct, concise, and interesting proper out of the gate.

Plus, in case you’re going for a aim aside from model consciousness, you’ve obtained to have a robust sufficient message that’ll encourage viewers to navigate away from the app. Should you’ve used the app, that’s no simple feat. 

Professional tip: When creating TikTok advertisements, Search Engine Journal recommends finest practices akin to balancing promotion with leisure, utilizing partnerships to spice up consciousness, utilizing a 9:16 video format, and having captions.

 10. Preserve iterating

As talked about above with regards to TikTok developments, it’s almost inconceivable to foretell what movies will hit their stride on the app. Due to that, slightly than falling by the wayside on a marketing campaign that’s not getting views, it’s finest to maintain iterating.

Altering up the primary few seconds, rushing up the video, or altering out the music could possibly be simply the tweak a video wants to begin performing nicely. So when you have a superb feeling about what you’ve created? Preserve fine-tuning it to see if efficiency improves consequently.

Professional tip: Creating TikTok-specific touchdown pages can assist you observe how many individuals are coming to your web site from the app, since monitoring is presently restricted on the platform.

 TikTok advert goals

TikTok advertisements let you choose an “goal,” which is the aim you need your marketing campaign to realize. Listed below are your choices:

• Consciousness – These campaigns are all about rising your model’s consciousness and attain, getting you the max quantity of impressions out of your target market.
• Consideration – This middle-of-the-funnel aim goals to develop your model’s visitors, video views, and neighborhood interplay, aka getting extra folks onto your profile web page.
• Conversion – These action-oriented campaigns are supposed to encourage somebody to finish a process, like app installs or buy completion. Suppose: web site conversions, lead era, app promotion, and product gross sales. 

You’ll seemingly proceed to see extra manufacturers becoming a member of in and creating TikTok content material. (Picture: Unsplash)

 How a lot do TikTok advertisements price?

In terms of TikTok advertisements, $1 is the common price per click on and $10 is the common CPM. Goodnough factors out {that a} frequent false impression about promoting on TikTok is that it’s dear.

In actuality, CPMs (costs per mille aka 1,000 impressions) common out to be $10 on TikTok on the marketing campaign degree. By comparability, CPMs are round $7 on Meta (that is a mean throughout all marketing campaign sorts: attain, engagement, and conversion). TikTok has a minimum cap of $500 to be spent per marketing campaign.

The common CPC (price per click on) is $1 on each TikTok and Meta advert platforms.

On the advert group degree, daily budgets have to be over $20, whereas lifetime budgets are calculated by multiplying the minimal day by day funds and the variety of scheduled days. 

 The rise of TikTok Outlets

TikTok only in the near past started its U.S. rollout of TikTok Store, a brand new buying platform that permits customers to purchase and promote objects straight in-appl

“With the latest rollout of TikTok Store, I believe ecommerce and way of life manufacturers would carry out rather well,” says Goodnough, “since TikTok creates a seamless buying expertise from discovery to analysis to buy — whats up, #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt.” 

 Creating TikTok advertisements: What not to do

Together with all her useful skilled insights, we wished to get Goodnough’s ideas about frequent pitfalls she’s seen advertisers fall for with regards to TikTok – and the way they are often averted.

“What works on LinkedIn most likely gained’t work on TikTok – and vice versa,” she says. “In terms of social promoting, you’ll be able to’t simply slap a ‘TikTok Technique’ sticker in your LinkedIn or Meta technique and count on it to work.”

Reasonably, she says every platform has its personal goal and strengths. Your TikTok technique ought to plug into your holistic advertising technique to your model in its distinctive means, “not simply replicate one other platform’s technique.”

The takeaway

When in comparison with different in style social platforms, TikTok’s present progress simply can’t be beat. That’s why you’ll seemingly proceed to see extra manufacturers becoming a member of in and creating TikTok content material.

If you wish to attain the suitable viewers in a brand new, direct means, create enjoyable natural content material that exhibits off your model’s persona, or just sustain with the competitors, TikTok is the place you need to be.

This put up has been up to date and was initially revealed in March 2022.