TikTok Advertising - How to Get the Most from Your Ads on TikTok

1. What is TikTok advertising? 
2. on media budget a 
3. Step 1: Technical setup 
4. register for the Ad Account
5. Creative creation for successful TikTok ads
6. . Test as many different formats and appeals as possible. Use current trends that fit your brand. Think modular when creating creatives, not according to a rigid script. More videos can often emerge from a creative briefing than you might assume.
7. Fazit 

In the dynamic world of online marketing, TikTok has established itself as one of the most influential social media platforms for content creation. With over a billion users worldwide, TikTok provides businesses with a unique opportunity to reach a younger audience in a creative and authentic way. Moreover, users spend an average of 23.5 hours per month on TikTok, while on Facebook it's 11 hours, and on Instagram 8.5 hours. The short, viral videos allow brands to present their messages in a fun and accessible way. This opens up new ways for businesses to create brand awareness and customer loyalty. In addition, the platform fosters real-time interactions and engagement, giving businesses valuable insights into the preferences and needs of their target audiences.

What is TikTok advertising? 

In the realm of social media marketing, there is generally a distinction between paid advertising and organic marketing. While you don't need an advertising budget for organic social media marketing and merely fill your social media accounts with content, paid advertising requires a financial investment. However, organic marketing has some disadvantages compared to paid advertising. It takes significantly longer to reach a certain number of people. Plus, it requires consistently high-quality content and a long-term Content strategy..3 benefits of TikTok ads for your business Reach more people in less timeWith paid advertising you can reachfor every euro spent

on media budget a 

certain number of people

. Also, you are much more agile in content production. Individual ads can be played out withvariable media budgetstested against each other and deactivated immediately if needed, if they do not go down well with users.Real business goals instead of vanity metrics TikTok allows advertisers to define concrete goals for their advertising campaigns. Depending on the goal set, your ads are played out by the algorithm in a certain way and delivered accordingly to different people. In contrast to organic social media marketing, where many marketers focus on so-called vanity metrics such as the number of followers or likes, TikTok advertising allows the achievement of real business goals. For example, if you runan online shop and want to generate salesyou can set this goal

as the campaign goal

. The algorithm then shows your ads to people who are most likely ready to buy your product.TikTok is not a social media platform?TikTok sees itself more as anentertainment platform, comparable to Netflix or YouTube, and less as a social media platform like Facebook or Instagram. People use TikTok primarily to consume content, rather than to connect with friends. This also explains why people already spend more time on TikTok than on Facebook, Instagram and Co. This platform offers businesses

numerous opportunities in terms of advertisements

. The more time users spend on TikTok, the more ad space is created. This also results in lower advertising costs.Data-driven marketing using the TikTok PixelThe TikTok Pixel is a powerful tool for businesses to make ads directly profitable and target the right audiences. Think of the Pixel as a little detective you place on your website. Every time someone comes to your site via a TikTok ad, this Pixel detective reports back: Who bought something? Who added items to the cart? Who just looked at products? Similar to other tracking pixels, this code can monitor user behaviors on a website after clicking on a TikTok ad. With this data, you can optimize your ads in terms of their profitability.Creating your first TikTok ad campaign In the following chapter you will get the most important settings to set up a campaign in the TikTok ad account step by step.

Step 1: Technical setup 

To create your first TikTok campaign, you need an ad account, also known as an "Ad Account". You must first

register for the Ad Account

. Here you create a new account. Give basic information about your company, such as the country and region where your company is located. You also deposit your billing and payment information. 

Campaign setup 

A campaign is always structured in three stages, with different settings possible at each level. These levels are: campaign, ad group(s) and ad(s). A campaign can encompass multiple ad groups, and an ad group can contain multiple ads.Step 2: Start creating an ad campaignAfter you have logged in to TikTok, you will land in your advertiser account. If you have not previously created an ad campaign, you will be directed straight to the creation page. Otherwise, click on the red button that says "Create". You can choose between the simplified mode and the custom mode. For the full range of settings options, it is recommended to choose the custom mode. However, if you are unsure during the creation process, the simplified mode is a good choice.

Step 3: Select the goal of your TikTok ad campaign

On the campaign level, you determine the goal for your ad campaign. You can choose from three different categories:

Awareness

: Choose "Awareness" if you want to give your brand more reach and visibility.

Consideration: 

Under this category you can generate traffic for your website. It's also possible to boost views for videos or increase interaction within the community by getting more visitors or followers for a profile.

Conversions: Choose "Conversions" if you are targeting a specific action from users on your website, in your app or directly on TikTok. For example, you can promote direct sales in your online shop by selecting "Website Conversions". You can also generate leads or app installations.

Think carefully, what goal you actually want to achieve with your ad campaign

. An example to illustrate: Some people might assume that if they want to generate sales in their online shop, the campaign goal "Website Traffic" is the best fit. With this selection, however, you only instruct the algorithm to find as cost-effectively as possible people who are highly likely to click on your ad and go to your website. However, this does not necessarily mean that these people are actually ready to buy your product. In such a scenario, it would be wiser to choose the campaign goal "Conversions".Step 4: Campaign budget optimization 

TikTok allows for budget optimization at the campaign level. That is, you can set a daily or a total budget for the entire duration of the campaign. This budget is then continuously distributed by the algorithm to the various ad groups and ads within your campaign to achieve the best possible performance. If you do not activate this option, you must set budgets for each individual ad group yourself and adjust them manually depending on which group delivers better results than the others. It is advisable to use this automatic setting, as the algorithm distributes the budget more efficiently in most cases than you could do manually. Plus, it saves work effort.Step 5: Track TikTok Pixel EventsIn the following steps we move within the ad group settings. If you have previously selected "Conversions" as your campaign goal, to optimize for a certain action like a purchase on your website for example, you now need to select your pixel and the appropriate optimization event. Select for example "Complete payment", so the TikTok algorithm is optimized specifically for shop sales. Of course, the prerequisite for this is that the pixel and the corresponding event were previously set up by a developer or through integration on your website. An overview of all pixel events can be found in the relevant article from TikTok on

Standard Events Parameters

.

Step 6: Placements

With the placement settings, you determine where your ads should be displayed. Besides TikTok, partner platforms and apps are also available to you. It's usually recommended to choose the option "automatic placements". This gives the algorithm the flexibility to decide when and where it best reaches the right users to achieve optimal results. However, all setting options should be tested. Especially for conversion campaigns it might happen that results are better with exclusive placement on TikTok. This is because some platforms tend to generate cheap clicks but not necessarily cheap conversions. For more information on the different placement options on TikTok, check out our article onTikTok Ad Formats.

Step 7: Target Group Setting

TikTok provides various options to reach targeted audiences with your campaign. You can setcriteria such as location, age, gender and language. You can also choose from a variety of

interests and behaviors

. For example, if you run an online shop for sporting goods, you could target users interested in sports. You can also specifically select those who watch videos in the sports category or engage with them, follow creators in the sports field or watch videos with sports related hashtags. In addition to these audiences based on TikTok data, there are also so-called Custom Audiences and Lookalike audiences. Custom audiences can include, for example, users who have visited your website or app or interacted with your content on TikTok. This way, you can re-target people who have previously interacted with your business in some way.Lookalike audiences use your custom audiences as a data basis. This means, for example, you could create a Lookalike of your custom audience with website visitors. TikTok then fills this Lookalike with users resembling your website visitors. You can create these audiences in the Audience Manager of TikTok, which is accessible via the advertiser account.Caution: The data basis of Custom Audiences, which are based on website and app data, is significantly smaller than a few years ago due to current tracking restrictions - such as cookie banners, ad blockers or the iOS operating system. However, it is still worthwhile to occasionally test them in your ad campaigns.Step 8: Attribution Setting

With the attribution setting, you define the time frame after viewing or clicking the advertisement in which a

Conversion

is attributed. The algorithm then optimizes accordingly and looks for users who are most likely to convert within this time frame.

The suitable attribution setting depends on your company, the user journey of your target group, and your online marketing strategy. But it can also influence the optimization of your campaign within TikTok. In a time with limited data basis, the algorithm needs sufficient data to identify the appropriate audience for you. The more results can be attributed to your campaigns, the more efficiently the algorithm identifies additional people performing the desired action. So if you're just starting with TikTok ads and have achieved few or no results with your campaigns so far, it might be useful to choose a larger attribution window for optimization. However, be careful not to distort the results of your ad campaigns through over-attribution and then make wrong optimizations that ultimately cause costs. Always include multiple sources of information, such as Google Analytics or other tracking tools, in the evaluation of your TikTok advertising. Especially for businesses that want to generate leads via ads, it's always recommended to monitor the performance of campaigns using UTM parameters through a

CRM software. Step 9: Ad identity 

In the next step, you'll be setting up your first ad. The Identity determines what sender your ad should have. Set up a separate identity to set a name and profile picture for your business.As an alternative, you can activate Spark Ads. With Spark Ads you can use organic TikTok posts from your own account or, for example, from a creator's TikTok account as an ad. The use of posts from creators via Spark Ads has many advantages. Your ad appears less promotional, since the sender of the ad is a person not a business. In the best case, the post was also very authentically created by the person. TikTok consistently advises advertisers: "Make TikToks, not ads

". You should always keep this guiding principle in mind when creating your ads.

Here's how you can use Spark Ads:

Step 1: Enable creator or company account for ad use. For this, the ad setting must be activated in the settings of the TikTok account.Step 2: Activate ad authorization for the post. Activate ad authorization in the settings of the post to be advertised and generate a video code.Step 3: Select Spark Ad in ad account. As described before, activate Spark Ads on ad level and select the post using the video code.

Step 10: Add advertising material 

If you have previously selected an individual identity, you can now create a new ad by uploading a video and adding an ad text. You need to upload your video in 9:16 format to fill the entire screen in the users' feed and thus ensure the best user experience. Videos can be between 5 and 60 seconds long, however, it is recommended to use videos between 15 and 45 seconds.

Additionally, you can set a

Call-to-Action (CTA)

and a destination URL. If users then click on the call-to-action at the bottom of the ad, they are usually redirected in a browser window to your destination page.

This software can support you with TikTok Ads

There are numerous tools that can support you with TikTok Ads. We would like to recommend a few: In our category you will find even more tools and info.

Creative creation for successful TikTok ads

“TikTok is not about picking the needle in the haystack, it’s about buying the whole haystack.” - Oliver Brocato, founder of Tabs Chocolate

• Swat.io

• Hootsuite

• SocialHub

• Iconosquare

• Talkwalker

This statement by Oliver Brocato aptly illustrates what success on TikTok depends on. TikTok is not about creating that one ultimate creative (video), but aboutSocial Media Suitestry different formats and variations continuously and at high frequency

. Test as many different formats and appeals as possible. Use current trends that fit your brand. Think modular when creating creatives, not according to a rigid script. More videos can often emerge from a creative briefing than you might assume.

Another important point: The creative i.e. your ads are the decisive factor for the success of your campaign. Focus on creating compelling creatives instead of getting lost in every little technical setting in the ad account or testing the most extravagant interests and target groups. Why? Because the algorithm probably knows your target group better than you do.

Structure of a TikTok adEach of your TikTok ads, like many other ad formats, should consist ofa hook, a story, and an offer

.

Hook:

According to TikTok itself, we only have 0.4 seconds to convince people to continue watching a video or an ad. This is where the hook comes in. It covers the first 3 seconds of your video and should be designed in such a way that it speaks to your target audience and at the same time encourages as many people as possible to continue watching the video. Only in this way will your advertising message be perceived at all. You achieve this by optimizing your hook in terms of content, visually and audibly. Show something in the first few seconds that raises questions and generates great interest.You can also use a little trick to improve the hook of your video in terms of content. Imagine your video starts in the middle or even at the end. Instead of starting with "Hello, I'm Hans Peter from Company XY...", your video starts with "...And that's how I managed to improve my sleep cycle in just 3 days and I feel so much better...". This arouses the interest of users, who now want to find out how the sleep cycle was improved.Story:

After the hook comes the story. The "story" in an ad is the told story or the plot line that conveys the message or the offer and appeals to the target group. Many companies tend to always tell the same story: My product is cheaper, faster, better, easier, more efficient. But this doesn't set you apart from the crowd. Instead of talking about the advantages of your product or service, try to emotionally connect with the users and address their problems and questions. Think about what problems your target group has and at what stage of the buyer journey they are at. This will ensure that your story gets attention and the users eventually arrive at your offer.

Offer:

An "offer" in an ad is the promoted offer that is supposed to encourage people to act. This you present at the end of the video with a call to action. You explain your offer and ask users to perform a specific action. This is the only way to get users to click on the link in your ad, for example, and visit your website.

We have another article for information and tips on creating compelling

TikTok Ad Creatives

.  

Conclusion 

TikTok offers your business an impressive opportunity to reach new target groups and innovatively showcase your brand and product. With the technical features in the TikTok ad account, you can pursue real business goals, target specific audiences, and implement data-driven marketing. By actively spending time on TikTok yourself, following trends, and developing numerous creatives according to the creative framework, nothing stands in the way of launching your first TikTok campaign. You are now equipped with the necessary know-how to start your first successful TikTok ad campaign.TikTok-Ad-Creatives. 

Fazit 

TikTok bietet deinem Unternehmen eine beeindruckende Gelegenheit, neue Zielgruppen zu erreichen und Marke sowie Produkt innovativ in Szene zu setzen. Mit den technischen Features im TikTok-Werbekonto kannst du echte Business-Ziele verfolgen, spezifische Zielgruppen ansprechen und datenbasiertes Marketing umsetzen. Indem du selbst aktiv Zeit auf TikTok investierst, Trends nachgehst und zahlreiche Creatives gemäß dem Creative Framework entwickelst, steht dem Launch deiner ersten TikTok-Kampagne nichts im Weg. Nun bist du mit dem nötigen Know-how ausgestattet, um deine erste erfolgreiche TikTok-Werbekampagne zu starten.