TikTok Advertising: How Content and Community Management Improve Performance
In this article, you will learn how to choose the right content for TikTok Advertising and make the correct strategic decisions for a successful campaign.
- What is meant by TikTok Advertising?
- What is the main goal of TikTok Advertising?
- Who is TikTok Advertising suitable for?
- Advantages of TikTok Advertising
- How does TikTok Advertising work?
- How to build a TikTok Ad?
- Which TikTok Ads formats exist?
- How is a TikTok campaign created?
- Step-by-step guide for the TikTok Ads Manager
- How much do TikTok ads cost?
- 3 Best Practices for TikTok Advertising
- Which tools are helpful for TikTok Advertising?
- How do you combine content and community management with TikTok Ads?
- Conclusion
In the fast-paced world of social media platforms, TikTok has left a lasting impression. With billions of downloads and a constantly growing community, brands have realized that TikTok Advertising goes far beyond traditional marketing methods and represents a paradise for advertisers. But as with any advertising platform, it's not enough to just be present. The key to success lies in the perfect symbiosis of outstanding content and efficient community management. Why exactly are these two components so crucial on TikTok? And how can they be used to significantly increase the performance of TikTok Advertising? This article shows how you can optimize advertising measures in your company to achieve maximum success.
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What is meant by TikTok Advertising?
TikTok has gained immense popularity in recent years. In the first quarter of 2023, the social media platform has 1.677 billion users worldwide, of which 19.51 million users are in Germany. Many brands see this platform as a valuable and profitable opportunity to spread their messages in a creative and entertaining way. TikTok provides a advertising platform for content creators who want to advertise using diverse posts.
What is the main goal of TikTok Advertising?
Before we delve into the depths of content and community management, it's important that you understand TikTok and its dynamics. TikTok advertising aims to increase the visibility of the advertiser or sell a product or service. To preserve the spirit of TikTok, your content should be as entertaining, educational, and creative as possible.
The power of the right content
Not only GenZ likes to be entertained. It is becoming more and more clear that all users want the content to be vivid and riveting. For you as an advertiser, this means that your ads must be authentic, memorable and appealing. Only well-thought-out and high-quality content that understands the platform and its users can significantly increase interaction with the ad and thus the performance.
Community Management as key to engagement
Active community management ensures that your audience does not remain just passive consumers, but enters into a dialogue with your brand. By responding to comments, accepting feedback, and building a community around your brand, engagement and ultimately the conversion rate can be greatly increased. In this article, we have summarized the Best Practices for Community Management.
A successful TikTok advertising campaign should not be viewed in isolation. It must be seen as part of an integrated strategy that connects content and community management. For example, your company could create a TikTok ad for a product, assign it to a specific Ad Group, and finally integrate it into a larger campaign. You have 3 classifications available:
TikTok Ad = advertising for a single product, service, or special offer
TikTok Ad Group = Collection of TikTok Ads
TikTok Ad Campaign = Compilation of TikTok Ad Groups
Who is TikTok Advertising suitable for?
Brands focusing on younger target groups find TikTok Ads to be an invaluable medium. The demographic composition of the user base speaks in particular to businesses who tailor their products or services specifically to people aged 18-35. However, with each year the age of users continues to rise, which means a steady expansion. In addition, TikTok is a platform where visual content is in the foreground. This offers, in particular, brands with visually appealing products a great chance, as they come into their own in video format. But TikTok demands more than just visual presence: creativity is required. The most effective commercials on TikTok are memorable, entertaining and unique.
Source: Smart-Home-Fox
Be brave and leave the traditional advertising formats behind. Take creative risks, as that is the only way to be successful on this platform.
Advantages of TikTok Advertising
- Access to a young and engaged audience: TikTok users spend an average of almost one hour a day in the app. Take the opportunity and reach your target audience daily.
- Viral potential: Unique and creative ads have the potential to go viral, which can significantly increase the reach and influence of your advertising campaign.
- Unique advertising formats: With features like Hashtag Challenges and Branded Effects, you can create interactive and attention-catching advertising campaigns that stand out from boring ads.
- Detailed targeting options: TikTok offers you detailed targeting options, including demographic, geographic and behavioral criteria.
- Performance Metrics: Here you get access to a variety of metrics and analyses to measure the success of your ads and adjust your strategies accordingly.
How does TikTok Advertising work?
TikTok is currently rising to the most used search engine worldwide and will consequently establish itself as one of the leading performance marketing platforms. Currently, TikTok is a very profitable marketing platform, as the costs for the ads are still very low compared to Facebook or YouTube. Make your decision quickly, because the time of the great TikTok era has just begun.
Wouldn't it be great if your target audience scrolls through their feeds and your ad immediately catches their attention?
Some important key data summarized:
Always use a vertical format. Never make TikTok Ads look like advertising, they must be designed to look like TikToks. They should not be too long and not too short, ideally 20-45 seconds. TikTok Ads that were filmed in selfie mode are the most viewed videos. But question yourself: How do I stand out from the crowd? How do I get the dreamy scrollers into action mode? Use the “pattern-interrupt method”: A change must take place every 2-7 seconds.
- Camera setting
- Background
- Sound
If you follow all these points, the suspense will be kept for all viewers. If you lose them at any point, you have given away the hard-won attention.
How to build a TikTok Ad?
- Reveal a secret: At the beginning, ask the question if the viewers already know about the secret way? Or you ask a provocative thesis.
- Tell your story: Build empathy with your counterpart by telling your story of suffering before you knew the secret.
- The turning point: Show what indispensable advantages your product or service has.
- Learning aspect: Bring something educational to it. For example, what all this is good for or how it all works.
- Transition: Get people to interact.
Which TikTok Ads formats exist?
Source: localup.io
- In-Feed Ads: These are short video ads that appear in the users' "For You" feed. They are typically between 9 and 15 seconds long. These ads can be skipped and contain calls to action such as "Buy Now" or "Learn More".
- Top-View Ads: This is an extended version of the In-Feed ad that is displayed to users directly when they open the app. It can be up to 60 seconds long and offers a full-screen view without distractions.
- Branded Hashtag Challenge Ads: As a business, you can create and promote a challenge where users are prompted to create content on a particular topic or hashtag. These challenges can organically develop into viral trends and offer high brand engagement.
- Branded Effects: With this option, you can create custom filters, stickers, or effects that users can use in their own videos. They resemble the Snapchat and Instagram filters but are tied to your brand and can contain interactive elements.
- Brand Takeover Ads: These are screen-filling ads that are displayed to users the first time they open TikTok. They are usually very short and can consist of an image or a short video. These ads are exclusive and are only shown once per day and per user.
How is a TikTok campaign created?
If you want to run TikTok Ads, you first need a business account on TikTok. If this has not been created yet, you can create a profile via TikTok-Business.
After your registration, it can take up to 24 hours until the approval is granted. Now you can take the most important step, the place where all wonders happen. Use the TikTok Ads Manager Germany. How you find your way around there and create a campaign, we will show you now.
Step-by-step guide for the TikTok Ads Manager
1. Create an account
→ Visit the official TikTok Advertising website and register for a business account.
→ After registration and confirmation, you can log into the TikTok Ads Manager.
2. Create a campaign
Source: TikTok Ads Manager
→ Click on "Create Campaign" in the dashboard and select a campaign objective:
Awareness
- Reach: You want to reach as many people as possible? This will show your ad to the most people at the best possible time.
Consideration
- Traffic: Your goal is to generate more traffic on your website? Then this is the right choice.
- App Installation: Your app should be spread? With this campaign goal, you can generate more app downloads.
- Video Views: A particular video should receive more views? Use this function.
- Community Interaction: Want to increase your interactions? Achieve as many likes, shares or comments as possible.
- Lead Generation: Do you want to take direct contact with your users? Here, you can let a form appear via a call-to-action button.
Conversions
- Conversion: Do you want to get users to perform an action on your site? Download TikTok Pixel and sync it with your Ad Manager.
3. Set up Ad Group
→ Define your target audience.
Source: TikTok Ads Manager
→ Here you can select factors such as age, gender, interests, behavior, and geography.
→ Set budget: Set a daily budget or a total budget for the entire duration of your campaign.
- CPC (Cost per Click) = Cost per click
- oCPC (Optimized Cost per Click) = Optimized Cost per click
- CPM (Cost per mille) = Cost per 1000 impressions
- CPV (Cost per thousand Views) = Cost per 1000 views
Source: TikTok Ads Manager
→ Create the schedule for your ad: This can be immediate or at a later time.
→ Choose the placement: You can let TikTok automatically decide where your ad appears, or you can choose the placement manually (e.g. only in the "For You" feed).
→ Set your optimization and bidding strategy, depending on what you want to achieve (e. g. clicks, impressions, conversions).
4. Create ad
→ Choose the ad format (e.g. In-Feed Ad, TopView Ad).
→ Upload the video or image.
→ Add relevant texts, headlines and call-to-actions.
→ Check in the preview if everything is displayed correctly.
Source: TikTok Ads Manager
5. Add payment information
→ To run the ads, you need to enter your payment information in the ad manager.
6. Monitor performance
→ Once your ad is online, you can monitor its performance in the ad manager.
→ Use access to metrics such as views, engagement rate, clicks, cost per action, and many more.
Source: TikTok Ads Manager
7. Optimization
→ Based on the collected data, changes can be made to your ongoing ad campaigns to improve performance.
How much do TikTok ads cost?
This is probably the most frequently asked question and cannot be answered generally. A campaign can be started with a minimum fee of 50 € per day. The average fee for a CPM is 10 € and must be started with a minimum investment of 500 €. Each campaign must be calculated individually.
Source: voluum.com
3 Best Practices for TikTok Advertising
- Attention Advertising:
Your TikTok Ads should not be recognized as advertising from the first moment. Use UGC (User Generated Content). Build up a suspense curve and only reveal at the very end that this contribution is a promotional post. - Stand out:
Analyze your competitors. What do you like? When do you like to watch a post a little longer? What captivates until the end? Use all this and do it even better than everyone else. Use 4k for example, maybe whisper into your microphone - find something that sets you apart from everyone else. - Entertaining: Yes, please!
TikTok stands for creativity and entertainment. So, why don't you start the show?
Which tools are helpful for TikTok Advertising?
In general, a broad overview of all functions is desired that are important in TikTok Advertising. Due to the amount of these, the overview can be lost very quickly, as many screws are important and need to be considered. Wouldn't it be nice if you had support in Administration, in Monitoring and in Setting up campaigns?
These tools can help you in the Social Media Suites category:
Other tools can help you in the Social Media Advertising category category:
Or do you need support in the Social Media Monitoring category?
How do you combine content and community management with TikTok Ads?
You have already learned how to spice up content in TikTok Ads. Use Branded Hashtag Challenges, for example, to encourage your users to participate and create a sense of community. By integrating community interactions and call-to-action buttons, you can interact directly with your target audience. Build a good bridge between the interest of your brand and your community and thus create a positive, supportive and engaged environment. This way, you ensure that others not only become aware of your brand, but also actively interact with it and thus a branding effect sneaks in.
Conclusion
In the fast-paced world of TikTok, content and community management can make the difference between a forgettable and a viral campaign. Are you ready to invest in your success? With TikTok Advertising, you get the chance, to profitably leverage the impressive possibilities in marketing.
Pia Dzimalle ist Senior Marketing Managerin bei Lookfamed. Als Full Service Influencer Marketing Agentur kann Lookfamed alle relevanten Dienste rund um das Social Media Marketing abbilden. Dazu zählen das Creator-Management bestehend aus einem großen Portfolio an performancestarken Creator*innen sowie das Campaign-Management, das reichweitenstarke und messbare Influencer-Kampagnen umsetzt.
