Every brand should be leveraging the growth of TikTok to expand its reach by running TikTok ads. Learn how to get started with this guide.
It’s currently the third most popular social network globally, catching up quickly to Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms. It’s the most popular with users under 25, though it’s also gaining traction with older audiences. In April, the app reached 1 billion users, a significant milestone.
So you want to capitalize on this growing app to reach a wider audience but may not know where to start. Let us help with that.
Is there another social media platform with more growth potential currently?
Probably not.
In other words, don’t sleep on TikTok. You must be on this platform if you have a business or are involved in content creation and social media marketing. If you’re new to TikTok and need help getting started, check out our guide to fast track success.
If you already have a handle on TikTok basics but want to know more about how to make TikTok work for you (literally!), then you’re in the right place. Below, we’ll tackle how to create a business TikTok account, set up your first ad campaign, and start driving revenue.
Ok, you understand TikTok is a popular social media platform, and you can see the marketing appeal. But why should you spend money to advertise on TikTok?
The answer is simple.
It works to target your audience and bring sales to your business.
When done right, it will produce a positive long-term return on investment (ROI) that will help to increase your revenue and brand awareness.
With TikTok, your ads can accomplish a lot more than just driving traffic to your business and hopefully bringing in sales. You can take advantage of the popularity and format of the platform to accomplish a whole host of benefits for your brand.
Considering the impressive reach and engagement on TikTok could prove to be an invaluable resource for your business. Don’t forget the app’s celebrated algorithm that will ensure your ads are shown to the people most likely to engage with them—further increasing the chances of high conversions.
Have we convinced you yet? Then, read on for step-by-step instructions to get your very own TikTok ad campaign up and running. If you already have your TikTok business and ads account set up with pixels, you can skip to creating a campaign further below.
First things first—you’ll need a TikTok business account. While you can accomplish a lot with TikTok marketing using just a regular TikTok user account, you’ll need the extra business-only features to access the TikTok ads manager.
Luckily, switching to a business account is easy. First, we’ll show you how to change a business account from a personal one in the app. Then, we’ll go over how to create a business account from scratch on the web.
So now you’re all set up in the TikTok business center. But wait, you’ll also need to set up a separate Ads account to run an ad campaign. Here’s how to do it from the web:
Unfortunately, you’re not entirely done yet. To truly get the most out of your TikTok ad campaign, you’ll want to download and set up a TikTok pixel on your business website.
If you’re unfamiliar with this, it’s a way to track user behavior on your website for clicks, purchases, form submissions, and more. Most major advertising systems, including top tier social media platforms like Facebook use them for multiple purposes.
You can set pixels up for different events, allowing you to track exactly how your ads are performing and affecting your business. Follow the steps below to get up and running in no time.
Now that your business and ads accounts are ready to go along with your tracking pixel, you're ready to start creating TikTok ads.
The next piece of this process is setting up and launching a campaign that your individual ads will be a part of.
There are quite a few different ways to run ads on TikTok. There’s the standard in-feed video ad, of course, like the one we discussed earlier. But there are other ad placement strategies for your business to gain exposure, boost engagement, and drive conversions through TikTok advertising.
Also, if you’re curious about how various types of TikTok ads perform, check out the average CTR rates of each class to give you an idea of what you can achieve.
These ads show up as specific content in users’ feeds. Think of these as the primary, barebones TikTok ads. They have an average CTR of 1.5-3%.
Branded takeover ads are precisely that—they literally “take over” the TikTok app—showing up when users first fire it up and appearing elsewhere on the For You page. As you might expect, they have a higher CTR at around 7-10%.
A step down from a takeover, these ads appear at the top of the For You page within the first few seconds instead. They generate CTRs as high as 16%—not too shabby!
These are identical to TopView ads, except they appear as the first video ad in the For You feed. Essentially, these are a level down from TopView. For a better idea of how these ad types fit together, here’s a graphic from TikTok:
Branded mission ad campaigns are a new feature to TikTok as of May 2022. They uniquely allow brands to create these branded missions, which creators can choose to participate in by creating related content. Businesses can then choose to highlight and further partner with their favorite content and users. All of this leads to a community-generated advertising campaign that’s heavy on engagement.
This is a golden opportunity for businesses to participate in viral TikTok challenges! To get involved, brands can sponsor branded hashtag challenges to prompt creators to make and post related content. A great example of this is the tag #Snoozzzapalooza.
Branded effects allow you to create your brand’s TikTok effect, which creators and users can then incorporate into their posts. This can be a wildly effective advertising method paired with the hashtag challenge and broader branded mission.
For example, Shoppers Drug Mart created an effect to promote their Beauty Lover event, which allowed users to try on makeup virtually with sponsored products and choose their favorite one. It was a hit, with over 5 thousand videos created with the effect and over 97 million hashtag video views.
Spark ads allow companies to utilize user-generated content that mentions their brand and add a link and CTA in a spark ad. This comes across as more natural since real customers and consumers of your product are posting, and you can leverage that by adding to it and promoting it with Spark ads.
TikTok influencer marketing is a great way to increase your target audience’s reach by pairing up with an influencer in your industry to advertise sponsored content. This is similar to a Spark ad, but you plan this ahead of time by collaborating with influencers.
Advertisers can display up to ten visuals with ad placement on the News Feed to display ads. Each carousel ad can have its unique text and link, giving you plenty of creative options.
Once you’ve created a campaign, any ad groups, and the specific ads you want to run, it’s time to review and launch. You’ll have previews of everything available to make sure everything looks perfect. There are plenty of options to customize your budget and targeting, with help from TikTok to optimize it all according to your goals and specifications automatically.
It can be nerve-wracking to start something that’s such a huge investment of time and money, but once everything looks good, don’t be afraid of launching. It’s the only way to learn and grow, and luckily, TikTok is a fantastic environment for both things.
Your TikTok dashboard will provide you with all the metrics and tracking details you could ever want. This makes constantly monitoring and improving your campaigns and individual ads a breeze.
Pay attention to reach, engagement, and conversions—the higher, the better, of course. As a frame of reference, 17% is a good engagement rate to aim for.
If you’ve made it this far, you now know all about how to advertise on TikTok, and, hopefully, start to set up and run your very own campaign and ad!
Before diving headfirst into TikTok ads, make sure you have clear goals, a set budget, and a vision for what you want to achieve. But most importantly, keep an open mind and have fun along the journey. It’s all a learning experience, after all, and you’ll get what you put into it.
Don’t forget to check out our related guides for more helpful info on the world of TikTok. Also, Copy.ai has a ton of free tools that can help kickstart your ad content creation! There are over 90 tools to explore and experiment with, from freestyle text generators to social media-specific copy features.
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