If you’re a business owner who’s been considering advertising on TikTok, you’re in for a treat. TikTok, the social media app that was once known as Musical.ly, is becoming an increasingly popular platform for advertising. With so many people using the app (50% of the US population), you’re sure to reach a large audience. In this guide, we will discuss everything you need to know about advertising on TikTok! We’ll cover topics such as who can you target, what type of campaigns there are, what type of ads are available on TikTok, and how to measure results. By the end of this guide, you’ll be ready to start advertising your business on TikTok!

As per usual we also start with how can we find your audience on any ad platform. Creating the perfect creative and not in front of your target audience is not worth it!

There are two choices we have when starting your TikTok ads targeting; Custom Targeting and Automatic Targeting. While Automatic sounds tempting, it’s always better to start with custom targeting.  Custom targeting is where you can manually set up who you want to see your ads.  While Automatic is automatic is machine learning by TikTok.  Always, always, always your TikTok ads agency should be testing, we just believe the testing should start with the manual.

In the next section is your basic demographic audience targeting that you see with any ad platform.

Location- You can’t quite get as sophisticated with targeting as you can with Facebook ads and narrowing down to zip code and more. But you can get down to Designated Marketing Areas.  A way your advertising agency may be familiar with Google ads.

Language- Nothing fancy here just your user’s language of choice.

Gender- These are Gengers they have chosen.

Age- Did you know 54% of users on TikTok are above the age of 30?

After the basic demographic audiences, we dive into the meat of your targeting for TikTok ads. The first step allows you to create a custom audience by uploading your IDFA/GAID or using a lookalike audience.  The lookalike audience is going to be based on what you have input into TikTok such as email list, IDFA/GAID, How someone has interacted with your page, and what your TikTok pixel can pick up from your users.

We will talk more about these types of remarketing audiences. Just like with any other ad platform there are lots of ways to engage the BOF ( Bottom of the funnel) or remarketing audiences to close the marketing funnel. In this section, you are also able to exclude audiences, so if you are just trying to reach a new audience then this is where you should exclude your marketing audience.

Now your TikTok ad agency will get into interest and behaviors.

First, let’s look at “interest”.  These are categories that TikTik has determined that your audience is interested in based on their behavior on the platform. While we list the main interest below there are lots and lots of subcategories available under each one.

• Apps
• Financial Services
• Tech and Electronics
• Appliance
• Apparel & Accessories
• Baby, Kids & Maternity
• Beauty & Personal Care
• Sports and Outdoors
• Business Services
• Vehicles and Transportation
• Home Improvement

• Travel
• Household products
• E-commerce
• Games
• Food & Beverage
• Pets
• news & Entertainment
• Life services
• Education

The next three are behavior-related; video interactions, creator interactions, and hashtag interactions.

Video Interactions

• Target users based on the videos they have interacted with such as watching it till the end, liking, sharing, and commenting.

Creator Interactions

• What creators have your users followed or viewed their profile? There is also a whole subsection here of categories.
  • Comedy, drama, talent, pop culture, motivation & advice, daily life, society, family life, fashion & beauty, outdoor activities & nature, art, oddly satisfying, food and beverage, travel, games, sports, fitness & health, transportation & vehicle, technology & education, occupations, transitions.  lipsync, random shoot, animal, DIY & Life hacks, ACG Content, and relationship.

Hashtag Interactions

• This target those who have watched a video with specific hashtags. Here is a handy resource to find popular TikTok hashtags for ads that your ad agency should be using.

Lastly on our list of behaviors & interests is device targeting.  With device targeting, you can target by the type of device the user is watching TikTok on all the way down to the model.  You can also target by the carrier that your user has. Lastly, you can target by connection type.  This can really matter when it comes down to the ability of your user to actually watch your video with ranges from 2G-5G and Wifi.

Alright, we are finishing with all the cold audiences or those who don’t know you inside the Tiktik ads platform.  Let’s go back to the remarketing audiences or warm audiences that TikTok has.  They are very familiar with what you have already been using with many other ad platforms.

Customer File

• This consist of uploading your email list and or other resources of emails that you have gathered inside the platform.

Engagement

• Create an audience of those who saw, clicked, or engaged with your Tiktok account.  This is a new one for just those who “saw” your content.

App activity

• Create a list of those who have downloaded your app and engaged with certain activities within your app.

Website Traffic

• These are those users who have been to your website before regardless of the source of traffic.  Break it down by the time frame they last visited and where and what they interacted with on your website.

Lead Generation

• When you run lead generation ads on TikTok you are able to remarket to them on how they interacted with your lead generation ad.

Business Account

• You can create a list of those who have followed or interacted with your business account or rather your profile.

As you can see the remarketing audiences your Tiktok ad agency can pick are not too far off from what you have looked at before. Let’s move on to the strategy of your ad campaigns.

Now choosing a marketing objective actually inside the platform comes before audience choice but the audience always comes first. TikTok has intentionally made the marketing objectives similar to Facebook ads. Many ad platforms have done this for familiarity.  As with any ad platform strategy you will use multiple marketing objectives in order to build an audience.  The expectation that someone will convert on the first pass of an ad or better yet your website is only 5%.

Awareness

• Reach
  • Show your ad to the max amount of people. This is great for a remarketing audience that is already familiar with you.

Consideration

• Traffic
  • This drives traffic to the website, which can sometimes be a cheaper option than going straight for conversions.  It’s a great starting point.
• App Installs
  • These are specific to if you have an app and driving people to install your app.
• Video Views
  • This is an excellent way to build an audience of those who have watched your videos.  It’s typically one of the most inexpensive ways to do it and you can build remarketing audiences to these viewers.
• Lead Generation
  • These types of ads have a pop-up where you are filling out your information and are great for building your email marketing.
• Community interactions
  • This objective is geared toward getting more people to follow your page.  This might be vital to get to the minim of 1,000 users to go live.

Conversion

• Conversions
  • We know, this is one that you want.  We can set up with your TikTok pixel what is a conversion or desired action of your website. While this seems tempting to go straight for, it’s usually ( and we test) not the best action to go after until TikTok understands your audience with so many conversions already happening.

As we said above there are many strategies that are involved in how your campaign is set up, at minimum your ad budget strategy should involve creating 70% of your budget towards TOF (Top of the funnel) or cold audience and 30% to BOF ( Bottom of the funnel) or remarketing audiences.  Let’s next talk about how to create ad creative that matches your audience where they are in the funnel.

This is what we believe many businesses are worried about.  The creative of videos.  Ad creative is where the creativity comes in to attract your audience to do the best they can. So let’s review all the types of creative we will need to create for you.

First, you need a video in a vertical format of, wait no we don’t.  We can actually create an ad with multiple images.  While that is an option, creating a video is going to be our best option. No, we don’t need to bring out a full video crew to create ads for TikTok ads or even TikToks in general.  We got this!

You can choose a TikTok that you have already posted, which might be a good idea.  By using a post you have already used organically you already know that the creative works with current interactions.  Your ad will start with some engagement of comments, likes, and shares.

If we are creating a video, we need to upload an existing video in these formats.

Format: MP4, MOV, MPEG, AVI or GIF;File size: Up to 500 MBFor TikTok: Resolution: 540*960; Bitrate: 516 Kbps, 5-60s; Safe zone: From left – 44px, From right – 140px, From top – 130px; From bottom – 483-484px

But we need to create it first, we need to tell a story.  It’s not as complicated as it stands and it might very well not even involve any filming of anyone in your organization.  While personal videos are best, it’s completely within the realm to hire actors to send your message.  Don’t worry though it’s not like A star actors that will cost big bucks.  We have evolved quite a bit and getting influencers or actors to promote your product in a video is completely doable. The important part is telling the story of your product or service, what is the “why”.  Let’s have fun let’s hit the message of what you stand for and why someone needs your product or service down the path of purchase. Oh and that music selection! It’s what Tiktok was built on.

What else is involved with your TikTok ads? Well, we have some ad copy to write and the ultimate CTA or call to action.  What do we want your user to do??

Now that what seems hard to you and easier to use, let’s launch those ads and measure the success!

What Your TikTok Ads Agency Should Measure For Results

Ah, the metrics, what is working and what is not? Every ad campaign has a funnel from 

“Are they seeing my ads”, “are they interacting with my ads”, “are they clicking through” and “what are they doing on my website”?  let’s break that down into some metrics. Just like with any ad platform there are hundreds of metrics to look at so let’s name a few.

Impressions, Engagement, View views, Clicks, CTR, Reach, Frequency, and Conversions.  Nothing new to see here, all the basic metrics plus a ton more of those happen in between these that allow your ad agency to be able to figure out where adjustments need to be made.

We know we are really being brief here, but that is what you hire a TikTok ad agency for to look at the data and tell you what is working and what is not working.  What you don’t want to see is automated reporting that you do not fully understand why it’s not working. What you also don’t want to do is be so involved with all the metrics that you are not off running important items of running other marketing strategies and/or your business.  We got this!

We know we have only scratched the basics of TikTok marketing and there is much more to explore with specific strategies to cover. We promise to get future blogs out to lay out how you can be the most successful with TikTok ads.  We covered in another blog why you need to get started with your tik ads marketing if you are still stuck there. Hopefully, we were able to show you how you can find your target audience on here, and truly is the most important aspect of any marketing decision. We are to just see videos being watched but actions taking place, take a look at TikTok stats on why it’s our time and your budget well spent.

Just Want To Listen?

Ep #35 – Why Your Business Needs TikTok Ads

Listen to “Ep #35 – Why Your Business Needs TikTok Ads” on Spreaker.

The digital marketing team talks about TikTok Ads and why your business should consider getting behind them. TikTok ads may fit your business more than you think. Follow along to learn more about the in’s and out’s of TikTok Ads.

Listen on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, Podcast Addict, and Google!

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