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In this article, you will learn how to create ads on TikTok to promote your products or services. But before we start showing you how ads are served, you should ask yourself some other questions to see if advertising on TikTok is right for your business:

Is TikTok Advertising Right For My Business?
With more than 500 million active users worldwide, TikTok presents a huge opportunity for advertisers. Not only has TikTok surpassed Twitter and Snapchat in popularity, it is also less saturated with ads than its older counterparts. The visual app, which allows users to edit and share 15-second videos with built-in filters, effects, and music, has truly rocked the marketing world with its unprecedented virality.

At the beginning of 2019, the application launched a beta version of its ad offering, that is, the different ad formats that can be seen on TikTok. Since then, big names like Grubhub, Nike, Fenty Beauty, and Apple Music have used TikTok ads to promote products in unique and visually compelling campaigns. With advanced targeting and unique ad creation features, the TikTok ad platform is unlike many of its predecessors.

However, not all businesses are positioned to benefit from advertising on TikTok. Before investing your time and effort in advertising on TikTok, here are two questions to ask yourself to determine if this ad platform is right for you.

What is the target audience for my business?
If young people are one of the main targets of your business, ads on TikTok could be a worthwhile investment. With 66% of TikTok users under 30 years old (41% are between 16 and 24 years old). This, therefore, is not a suitable platform for companies that have targeted over 30 years old.

However, it should be noted that while TikTok’s current audience is predominantly young, social media tends to be embraced by younger audiences first, and then they make their mark on older demographics. Therefore, it may still be worth learning more about the platform to stay ahead, even if TikTok is not the right channel for your business at the moment.

Do you have the budget to advertise on TikTok?
While big companies like Nike, Disney, and Grubhub have been quick to decide to advertise on TikTok to make a big impression, TikTok ads might be less affordable for smaller businesses.

Because the ads on the platform are new and rare, they have a premium cost that starts at an average of $ 10 per CPM and can work up to a total budget of $ 300,000 for larger campaigns. In addition, TikTok campaigns require a minimum investment of $ 500, so they may not be very suitable for your business if you are looking for more affordable and predictable advertising options.

If you think your business meets the requirements we just mentioned, here is a guide where we show you step by step how to start advertising on this platform.

Do you have the budget to advertise on TikTok?
While big companies like Nike, Disney, and Grubhub have been quick to decide to advertise on TikTok to make a big impression, TikTok ads might be less affordable for smaller businesses.

Because the ads on the platform are new and rare, they have a premium cost that starts at an average of $ 10 per CPM and can work up to a total budget of $ 300,000 for larger campaigns. In addition, TikTok campaigns require a minimum investment of $ 500, so they may not be very suitable for your business if you are looking for more affordable and predictable advertising options.

If you think your business meets the requirements we just mentioned, here is a guide where we show you step by step how to start advertising on this platform.

# 1 – Create a TikTok ad account
To create your first advertising campaign on TikTok, visit the main TikTok Ads page and click the create an ad button.

Because the TikTok ads are still in beta, the ad creation process is not fully open to any business yet. When you click the button, a form appears asking for details to set up your account. After submitting this information, a representative will contact you to set up your ad account on TikTok.

It can take up to 48 hours for you to register with an enabled account. Once you have access to your new account, the ad creation process is relatively straightforward.

# 2 – Create a TikTok ad campaign
If you have launched paid campaigns on FB you will see that the control panel is relatively similar.

On the TikTok ad panel, click the Campaign tab at the top of the page and then click the Create button.

Next, choose a campaign objective. As of today, you can choose between three options:

Traffic
Conversions
Installing apps
To set your budget at the campaign level, select the Daily budget or Total budget option in Settings. Keep in mind that both the daily budget and the total budget must be at least $ 500.

# 3 – Set Your TikTok Ads Location, Details, and Targets
The next step is to create an ad group for your campaign and choose your formats and objectives.

One of the most useful features of the TikTok ad panel is that it allows you to select the exact platforms on which you would like to run your ads. These include not only TikTok but also its entire family of apps like Vigo Video (India only), BuzzVideo, News Republic, and others.

There is also an option for automatic placements, in which TikTok determines the platform based on its performance.

Once you’ve selected your preferred placements, follow the prompts to enter all the necessary details to start running your ad, including URLs where you want to drive traffic, display names, images, and categories. You can also select up to 20 keywords to describe your website or app, which will then be used to match your products with the right audience.

The segmentation section allows you to define the target audience for your ads. Set parameters for location, age, gender, languages, interests, devices, and more to engage your target audience.

If you have the database of a specific group of people to target, you can create a custom audience by uploading the IDs of existing TikTok users. To do so simply upload the IDs as a CSV, TXT or ZIP file.

# 4 – Control the spending, duration, and objectives of TikTok ads
Now you’re ready to choose a budget, a schedule, and a goal for your TikTok ads.

Set a budget and duration.
In the budget and duration section, set the budget for the ad group. You can choose a daily budget (the amount you are willing to spend each day) or a total budget (the total amount you are willing to spend during the campaign scheduling).

Also choose the expected duration for your ads
Daybreak allows you to select specific times of the day or week to run your ads.

Choose a print consumption option
Next, set the rate at which you want your budget to be spent. The standard delivery option spaces your budget linearly throughout the duration of the campaign, while the Expedited option spends the budget as quickly as possible during the scheduled time.

Select your optimization goal
Your optimization goal reflects the key metric you hope to achieve with your campaign. You can choose to optimize your ad group for Conversion, Click, or Impression.

If you choose conversion as your goal, your ad will be served to the people who are most likely to convert. To track all actions that result in a conversion (for example, app downloads or form submissions), create conversion events by clicking Library and selecting Conversions. This process is very similar to that of Facebook Ads.

From here, decide if you want to set up conversion tracking for the app installation or certain elements of your landing page using pixels.

To create an app install conversion, enter a name for the conversion event, link to your app on Google Play or the App Store, and select a tracking partner to start measuring your ad conversions.

The price of the conversions will be valued using the oCPC method Optimized Cost per Click in English or optimized cost per click, which guarantees that your ads will be shown to users who are more likely to perform the expected actions. With oCPC, you bid on the individual conversion cost you expect but then pay per CPC (cost per click). TikTok ads automatically adjust bids based on their settings, bringing the cost of your campaign closer to the target price.

If you select click as the overall goal for your ad group, you will pay based on CPC, and your ad will be optimized to generate as many clicks as possible.

Finally, if you target impression, you will pay based on CPM (cost per thousand), which indicates the price of a thousand impressions.

Enable or disable smart optimization
TikTok offers an option called Smart Optimization, and if it’s enabled, your bid will constantly adjust and optimize to increase conversions. If you choose to pay for clicks or impressions as your goal, it’s best to turn off Smart Optimization.

# 5 – Design your ads using the TikTok video creation kit
When it comes to designing the creative assets for your ads, the process is pretty straightforward. TikTok ads can be horizontal, vertical or square videos and images. The best thing about the ad platform is a tool called the Video Creation Kit, which provides video and image templates that you can customize using your existing images. It also includes more than 300 free background music options.

Types of ads on TikTok
Advertising on TikTok currently allows the following types of ads:

Brand acquisition
ads in the feed or home screen
hashtag challenges
brand lenses or brand filters
Below we explain in detail the advertising ads on TikTok:

Brand acquisition
A brand acquisition ad will appear instantly when a user opens TikTok, playing automatically. They are videos of between 3 and 5 seconds on full screen. The ad can then redirect the user to an internal or external link, be it another video on TikTok, a website, or an external application. Currently, this ad type is limited to a single advertiser per category per day.

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