Overview
With a base of 1 billion daily active users, TikTok Ads has a very wide audience reach. How to advertise on TikTok and what are the benefits? Check out more information in this article.
Surely you are familiar with the TikTok platform, right? The application, which was launched globally in September 2017, has now become one of the application giants in the world. As reported by Statista, by becoming the number one most downloaded application, TikTok will have 1 billion daily active users throughout 2022.
TikTok’s popularity as a medium for sharing short videos ranging from 15 seconds to 10 minutes, has become widely known and is used by many content creators and brands to enlarge their communities.
Supported by these developments, brands and individuals are now also using TikTok as a platform or medium to promote their products or services. Either by posting organic content on TikTok or advertising via TikTok Ads Manager.
What are TikTok Ads?
Basically, TikTok Ads is a place to advertise for TikTok users which will be aimed at other TikTok users around the world. There are many things you need to know before starting to use TikTok Ads, such as its function, types of ads, advertising costs, and so on.
However, it would be better for you to know more about TikTok Ads. That way, you can consider whether TIkTok Ads is useful and suitable to be used as a marketing channel for your business.
What are the advantages of advertising on TikTok?
We all probably agree, what makes us open the TikTok application without even realizing that we have spent tens to tens of minutes is the FYP (‘For You’ Page). It is on the homepage that the TikTok algorithm works, so usually in just one to two days, our FYP will be filled with content that suits our interests.
This is what makes TikTok popular with many people, including advertisers. In Indonesia alone, according to Datareportal in January 2023, TikTok users have reached 110 million. The ability of the TikTok algorithm to understand exactly what users want to see will help marketers increase users’ opportunities for interaction with brands, brand recall and conversion.
Apart from the large number of active users on TikTok, there are several other benefits of using TikTok Ads for your business, including:
Effectively Reaching Audiences and Building Relationships
TikTok’s audience has reached more than 150 countries and is the most downloaded app in the world. Moreover, TikTok Ads can also be placed on other product platforms, such as Pangle.
You can also see direct reactions from the audience who see your ad, such as the number of likes, shares and comments to build relationships with them. You can immediately get feedback from those who see your ad which is useful for evaluating ad performance apart from the dashboard.
Target Potential Users Specifically
With more than 1 billion daily active users, your ads will have the potential to reach more people according to the characteristics you want. You can choose a target audience ranging from ages 13 to over 55 years.
And of course you can also target them based on location, gender, interests, device, and even how they interact with the content on their FYP.
Ad Displays That Resemble Organic Content Displays
With a seamless display, aka blending with organic content in the audience’s FYP, it will help advertisers get the attention of the audience a few moments before they realize that what they have just seen is an advertisement.
Especially if you have good quality content and are able to increase the audience’s average viewing time. Of course, this integration will still have a CTA (Call-To-Action) on the video that appears.
Transparent and Reliable Data Measurement
With several things that can be easily seen and measured as mentioned previously, TikTok Ads also has a tool so you can track the performance of your ads. Just like Facebook Ads which use Facebook Pixel or what is now called Meta Pixel, TikTok Ads use TikTok Pixel to monitor ad performance and measure ad results by tracking behavior or website visitors.
How to Make a TikTok Ad
TikTok provides TikTok Ads Manager as a tool that will help you create, launch, manage, and track your entire advertising campaign. Before starting to use TikTok Ads Manager, you must have a business account or TikTok for Business first. You can go to your TikTok account and go to ‘settings and privacy’, then select ‘account’, and select ‘change to business account’.
Start creating a Tiktok Ads account
To create an account, you can go to TikTok for Business and register using the business account you previously created. If you already have an account, you can log in to TikTok Ads Manager and select the account you want to advertise with.
It is highly recommended that you complete your Ads Manager account information before starting to advertise. After successfully entering the TikTok Ads Manager dashboard, you can go to ‘account settings’ and fill in your account info and payment method.
Creating First Advertising Campaign On TikTok
The first thing that must be done before running advertisements on any platform is to determine the objective. On TikTok itself, you can choose various advertising objectives ranging from reach, traffic, to website conversions.
To create an advertising campaign on TikTok, here are the steps:
You will see several advertising objectives which of course you can choose according to your advertising objectives. This will help TikTok’s system to understand and channel your ads to the right audience.
So how do you choose the right advertising objective? Make sure it suits your business needs! Here are tips for choosing advertising objectives:
Reach – Show your ad to as many people as possible.
Traffic – Used to bring audiences to your business application or website.
Video Views – To get more views and engagement on your advertising videos.
Leads Generation or Prospects – To get contacts or personal data from your audience.
Community Interaction – Used to get followers or profile visits.
App Promotion or Application Promotion – Used if you want to get an audience who is interested in installing your business application.
Website Conversions – Used if you want to bring your audience to your website and take action such as buying a product or subscribing.
After selecting the advertising objective, you will be asked to specify a campaign name and now you can set the advertising budget at the Campaign level.
There are 2 types of budget that you can choose. First, daily budget, means the amount of budget you will spend every day is relatively the same. In the example above the daily budget is IDR 500,000 for one campaign.
Second, the lifetime budget or budget throughout the promotional period, is the budget set during the advertising period. The amount of budget used every day will fluctuate. Then you need to determine the period the ad will run at the Ad Group level.
After determining the objectives and budget, click “Continue” or “Continue”.
At the Ad Group level, you can define who your ad will be displayed to and where the ad will appear. For example, below the advertising content will only appear on the TikTok platform, without including Pangle.
In the Targeting or Audience section, you can start determining the location of your target audience. It can be a country, city or region.
Determine the age and gender of your target audience.
In the “Interests & Behaviors” field, you can enter several characteristics such as interests, behavior of users when viewing videos on TikTok or how they interact with video creators.
You can even target people who have watched videos from certain hashtags. For example, if you want to target an audience that is following digital marketing trends, then you can type “digital marketing” into the box and select accordingly.
Here you will set how long the ad will appear complete with the date and time.
You will also meet again with budget settings. But don’t be confused, because the budget at the Ad Group level is for the Ad Group itself that we are setting up.
In other words, one Campaign can have more than one Ad Group. Of course, this will give us the freedom to be able to test different Ad Groups.
To advertise on TikTok, we have to spend a minimum of IDR 200,000 per day for each Ad Group created, and IDR 500,000 for each Campaign created.
There are two options for bidding strategies, among them:
– Lowest Cost or cheapest cost. TikTok will find as many ‘results’ as possible within the specified budget. These ‘results’ can be in the form of traffic or number of visits, number of conversions, and so on according to the advertising objectives you choose.
– Cost Cap or Bid Cap or target cost per result. Advertisements are run by determining the target cost per result to be around this figure or even below it, but still prioritize results.
It’s time to create your TikTok ad and display it to the target audience you have created. The form of your advertisement can be in the form of videos or images, but make sure it has strong copy or captions and CTAs.
Basically there are only two steps, namely uploading videos or images that will be used as advertising content, then adding captions and strong CTAs.
Tips for using video formats to advertise on TikTok:
– Update with changing trends, make your videos look as ‘TikTok’ as possible.
– Build creativity in presenting interesting advertising content, so that the audience’s attention is not easily distracted in the first split second.
– Choose a thumbnail for the video you upload. TikTok will provide 8 snippets that you can make into thumbnails, but you can also upload them for maximum thumbnails.
– Always preview the video you are going to use first.
Don’t forget to add a strong and appropriate CTA. For example, if you sell clothes, you can use the CTA “Shop Now” or “Buy Now”.
Types of Tiktok Ads
TikTok is quite varied in providing ad formats on its platform. There are several effective ways to advertise on TikTok, depending on who you want to reach.
What types of ads are there on TikTok?
#1 In-feed Ads
In-Feed Ads are a new addition to the ad formats on TikTok. In-Feed Ads are designed so that they do not interfere with the user’s appearance and appear similar to the user’s FYP.
For this reason, ads appear more engaged and often appear more trustworthy.
This ad will still display the words “promoted” so that users can differentiate between organic content and advertising content. If the text is clicked, it will direct the user to the account or website installed by the advertiser.
In-Feed Ads are suitable for reaching audiences who are already engaged with the application. This type of advertising is quite effective in increasing brand awareness and the number of downloads.
#2 Topview Ads
This type of ad, which lasts up to 60 seconds, usually appears at the top every time a user opens the application every day. In other words, this ad will be the first video that users see, helping to increase brand awareness.
With a duration of up to 60 seconds, brands will usually use videos with very good quality and entertain potential consumers. You can also direct users to click on links related to the brand or product you offer.
The tips are: pay attention to video quality, make the story interesting and easy to follow, and embed a strong and clear CTA.
#3 Spark Ads
Spark Ads are also a new type of advertisement promoted by TikTok. Businesses or brands can use their organic content to be shown to more people via Spark Ads.
This ad will play automatically in the user’s FYP and can contain links to websites or other destinations such as profiles or applications.
Tips: Prepare a short video of less than 15 seconds with clear text and CTA.
#4 Branded Effect
To increase the potential for interaction with consumers, TikTok provides the opportunity for brands to create their own personalized filters that can last up to 10 days.
Branded Effects include displaying a brand’s logo, are often used by brands to promote products or services, and can be very effective in capturing an audience’s attention.
{{COMPONENT_IDENTIFIER}}
#5 Hashtag Challenge
This type of ad is a special ad that appears as a promoted video in the application. Hashtag Challenge TikTok Ads are specifically designed to be distributed as a challenge among users and generally include a CTA to follow the organizer’s brand or product account.
When you click on the Challenge Hashtag, you will be taken to the brand’s landing page. Where you can see their products and access the videos that appear and take part in the Hashtag Challenge.
Tips for advertising by creating a Hashtag Challenge are: Make a short and interesting video of no more than 15 seconds, make a slogan that is light and easy to remember so that people also find it easy to spread it. Lastly, don’t forget to display strong visual elements to attract the audience’s attention, for example if you have a catchy mascot or trademark.
#6 Brand Takeover
One type of advertising on TikTok that uses the entire screen of the application and usually the content appears clear and good quality, but is still interesting and is used to make a strong impression on the audience.
Brand Takeover is the most exclusive advertisement on TikTok. Apart from the advertisement appearing full screen size when the user opens the application, the brand also gets exclusivity because there is only one Brand Takeover per category per country and per day. So you could say, Traveloka & Blibli appeared all day long in Indonesia in their respective categories.
#7 Video Dan Live Shopping Ads
This type of advertising is being widely used by brands from various industries. Starting from beauty & skincare, food products and health supplements, fashion, to the travel industry.
In Video Shopping and Live Shopping Ads, your brand must first have a TikTok Shop store account, so that when the audience sees your ad from Video Shopping Ads or watches live TikTok from Live Shopping Ads, they can immediately make a purchase from your TikTok Shop landing page.
By using Video Shopping and Live Shopping Ads, you can help increase the number of people who watch your live videos, encourage viewers to see and buy your products, and increase traffic to your shop and products on TikTok Shop.
What is no less important, you can interact directly with your audience via live video. This will help you understand the audience or potential buyers of your product, or reach more target markets.
#8 Partner With TikTok Influencers
Not much has been explained about this last type of advertising on TikTok Ads, but it is also a tip to make your brand stronger and known to more people who are similar.
Like Instagram, influencers on TikTok have also been attracted by many brands because of the development of their community on TikTok, which can attract thousands of viewers and followers with just one post.
These posts are what we can use to work together. In principle, this is similar to Spark Ads which we discussed above. For example, you sell sports shoes and are working with an influencer who likes making videos about running and tennis. This will create a sense of trust and value from the influencer’s followers towards the sports shoes you sell.
The next step is to prepare a content plan that you can discuss more personally. Then after the influencer posts their collaborative video, it is your job here to advertise the content from your advertising account and with the budget you have prepared. You can give the following instructions to the influencer:
Next, from your TikTok Ads Manager account, you can follow these steps:
Wait until your ad has finished being reviewed by the system and the ad in collaboration with an influencer that suits your business will immediately appear. If everything is successful, it will look like the following image.
Tips for Advertising on Tiktok Ads
- Determine the objective of the advertising campaign
Before starting to create an advertising campaign or advertising budget, make sure your advertising goals are clear. Is it to increase sales, increase brand awareness, or want to bring your audience to your website?
So that you don’t spend money in vain without ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
- Understand the target audience first
In order to support the success of the campaign, it is recommended that you understand who the target audience you want to reach through your business? You can target demographics, interests, behavior and more as long as it is relevant to your business.
- Use appropriate and clear CTA (Call-To-Action).
CTA is important to remind and encourage the audience who watches your video to take the next action you hope for. For example following your account, logging into a website, or making a purchase.
- Try to have quality video content
In the sense that it can be enjoyed and does not disturb the aesthetics. The message conveyed is also interesting and clear.
- Always test and optimize your advertising campaigns
Some time after the advertising campaign is running, make sure to monitor its performance periodically. Optimize the campaign based on the data collected and look back at it with the objectives you set at the beginning.
You can also do A/B testing to test and find out what works and what doesn’t work about your advertising elements. And don’t forget to keep abreast of what is trending and whether these dynamics are suitable for your business account.
Conclusion
If you now understand the importance of TikTok Ads in this day and age, it is highly recommended that you create a TikTok business account and use it to market your brand. Expand your audience reach by advertising on this very popular social media platform.
Come on, always optimize your ads as you learn about this unique and large platform. Try creating other advertisements so you can compare their performance with each other and help your business grow!
