The potential U.S. ban of TikTok has dominated headlines for years. Most recently, in December 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals denied TikTok’s challenge, prompting the platform to file an emergency injunction. This decision, pending Supreme Court review, could create significant disruptions for advertisers.

As a platform that’s become a favorite for engaging Gen Z and Millennial audiences with short-form video, its absence could have a considerable impact on paid and organic social media strategies. 

Here’s what this could mean for your brand and how to prepare:

The Immediate Impact: What Advertisers Can Expect

TikTok’s algorithm and short-form video format have been game-changers for performance and storytelling. But if TikTok goes offline in the U.S., here’s what we’re looking at:

• Rising Costs Elsewhere: A surge in advertisers shifting budgets to platforms like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts will likely increase competition and drive up CPMs.
• Campaign Disruptions: Active campaigns on TikTok may face abrupt stops, impacting ROI. Pivoting budgets quickly to other platforms will be key to minimizing disruption.
• Audience Shifts: TikTok’s young demographic won’t disappear. We anticipate Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts to take the lead, with YouTube Shorts likely absorbing more due to its superior searchability and reach. Instagram Reels will likely attract more people who are focused on sharing highly visual content. 

How We’re Helping Clients Adapt

While the future of the TikTok ban remains uncertain, we are recommending our clients take a proactive, data-driven approach that prioritizes testing different platforms and transferring organic audience engagement.

While we don’t recommend abandoning TikTok early, we do recommend preparing by testing Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts if you’re currently live on TikTok. 

Brands who can get ahead on these two platforms will be well-poised to beat out other brands if TikTok’s actually banned. 

Short-form video isn’t going anywhere. Audiences will naturally shift to other platforms offering similar features, like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels.

Test TikTok-Style Creative on Alternative Channels

We’re helping clients refine their creative assets to fit these platforms, leveraging what works on TikTok and tweaking it for new environments. Specifically: 

• Instagram’s algorithm prioritizes content that has been shared and has a broad reach – Focus on highly shareable and engaging visuals that blend highly polished brand content with the more scrappy, user-generated content that is organic on the platform.
• YouTube’s algorithm prioritizes fostering an audience with a longer attention span – Focus on audio and visual elements with a lean towards longer-form content.

Migrate Organic Follows to Owned Platforms

For partners with strong organic followings on TikTok, we recommend implementing strategies to move those audiences to email, websites, and other platforms you own. Here are a few specific ideas we’ve recommended:

• Leverage a link-in-bio tool (like Linktree) to create a centralized place that directs followers to email sign ups, your website, and or your other social platforms.
• Run contests or giveaways to encourage your followers to join your email list or visit the website.
• Mention your other social platform handles to showcase where your audience can find you.

Monitor Ban Updates

With the ban still pending, brands have an opportunity to plan proactively rather than reactively. We are strategizing and preparing for shifts in user behavior. We’re confident that audiences will continue engaging with similar content on other platforms. By reinvesting in alternative channels beforehand, we’re positioning ourselves to seamlessly reallocate budgets if the ban becomes a reality.

Need to Future-Proof Your Paid Media Strategy?

Connect with the Tuff team to diversify your channels, optimize creative for new platforms, and keep your campaigns performing—no matter what happens next.

Kate Theobald

Hey there! I’m Kate, the Head of Social at Tuff. I specialize in crafting paid social campaigns and testing performance creative to drive business results. Outside of Tuff, I enjoy tackling home renovation projects, skiing, and nerding out over the Enneagram (personality test)!

The post Preparing for a TikTok Ban: Strategies to Protect Campaigns and Budgets appeared first on Tuff.

With Facebook getting more challenging by the day, many advertisers and marketers are turning their attention to advertising on TikTok. It seems like every day there is another statistic about how TikTok is growing into a massive platform for not just Gen Z but Millennials and older generations as well. 

Hours are spent scrolling through the feed as the algorithm cranks out content to keep its users glued in the uncomfortable yet addicting scrolling position. With such an effective attention trap, it should come as no surprise that advertisers, small businesses, and startups are eyeing the potential to put their ads in front of TikTok users.

While TikTok is still young, and its advertising platform is even younger, it boasts unique targeting options that may appeal to advertisers that have struggled to find their target audience on Facebook. So naturally, the next question is, “What’s the secret to making TikTok ads work? What makes a good ad on TikTok?” 

As a growth marketing agency, we’ve managed hundreds of thousands of dollars on TikTok this year and leaned on real insights and learnings to outline the information below. Let’s dig in! 

What type of ads work best on TikTok? 

A common mistake is thinking that a social media app is a social media app, and if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Many advertisers assume this for many reasons: Creative limitations, the similarity of the advertising platforms interface, the similar language, and that they’re all paid ads. This thought is a mistake.

As cliché as it may sound, no two advertising platforms are alike. Every social media app and advertising platform is different. They have unique features and unique users with varying behaviors. As such, each one has different strategies, tactics, and creative assets that work.

TikTok is no different. Do a quick google search on TikTok creative best practices and you’ll stumble on a myriad of well-crafted articles that tell you that the best TikTok ads are ads that feel like TikToks. It should come as no surprise then that TikTok has developed its own organic TikTok ad of sorts called Spark ads.

What is a spark ad? 

Spark ads are a new-ish ad format allowing advertisers to boost organic content by using organic posts as ads. Just like organic videos, users can comment, like, and share Spark ads. Unlike normal TikTok video ads, users can even click the handle name or profile picture of the account associated with the Spark ad. It’s almost like they’re organic posts because they are! There are two different ways to run spark ads:

1. By using your own TikTok account that has been linked to your business account
2. Using an authorized account or using authorized posts

For more information on using your own linked TikTok account visit this link.

Do TikTok Spark Ads work?

The best TikTok ads are ads that don’t feel like an ad at all. They feel like a native TikTok that the user is seeing as they doom scroll through the app. Maybe that’s why Spark ads have been extremely successful in a variety of different uses since they were introduced.

We had the chance to test Spark ads with one of our partners, Teachable. Initially, we ran the Spark ads alongside our normal creative in the same ad set – Eventually moving the Spark ads to their own ad set, as TikTok’s algorithm allocates spend differently between assets.

The results were wild! In our testing, Spark ads beat our normal TikTok ads in nearly every category. For context, we saw:

• The CPC was $1 lower with Spark ads than with our normal ads. 
• The cost per lead was 30% lower with the Spark ads compared to the normal ads.
• The number of times our videos were played at 100% of their duration averaged 22% with our Spark ads vs. the average of 6% with our normal ads. 
• The average watch time per person was also up by a whole second.

How We Pick Spark Ads at Tuff

When it comes to picking out what will make for a good Spark ad, there’s no perfect secret- sauce. There’s a bit of tacit understanding involved in knowing what’ll perform well. We’ve managed to capture some of the questions we typically ask when we’re evaluating organic TikTok videos for use as an ad.

 6 Questions We Ask When Selecting Spark Ads

1. Does it feel like a TikTok?
2. Is there text on the video?
3. Does it use a trending sound?
4. Does it use a trending style?
5. How much engagement (social proof) does it have?
6. Does it have a clear CTA

Does It Feel Like A TikTok

The type of creative that works on TikTok is UGC content that feels both authentic and like it’s native to TikTok. In fact, recent research reports that 92% of consumers trust UGC more than traditional brand ads.

So choose a video that feels less like an ad and more like a TikTok you’d want to watch.

Is There Text On The Video

Copy matters! And that includes the text on the video. Even though TikTok is a sound-on optimized platform by default, captions and words on the video help users quickly get the gist of the video and improve ad recall. 

Words can also strategically lure the viewer in further. To avoid getting too behavioral science-y, we can just leave it at: When someone views your Spark ad, they look at everything, and not just the video or product in a vacuum. What experience do you want the viewer to have when they see your ad?

Does The Video Ad Use A Trending Sound?

The sound you choose for your video is important. Using a trending sound might not be super important when it comes to reach for an ad like it would be for an organic TikTok post, but it is still important to your ad converting people effectively.

A trending sound could help your Spark ad, again, feel more native to the platform. As users scroll, they’ll recognize your sound and spend more time watching it as a result. This will increase your odds of converting. This leads us to…

Does Your TikTok Ad Use A Trending Style?

Your TikTok ads, especially your Spark ads, should ideally be entertaining but they should also be authentic and built to convert. That’s where trending styles like “TikTok made me buy it” or “Top X Hacks That Actually Work” come in.

Tapping into the trending styles will help make your ad relatable and entertaining to the users.

How Much Engagement Does It Have?

When choosing a Spark ad, looking at the number of views on the organic post could be an indicator of how well it performed organically. Just because something didn’t go bonkers as an organic post doesn’t mean it won’t kill as a Spark ad. 

That said, looking at the engagement when qualifying the posts could tell you what’s already working so that you could amplify that.

Does The Ad Have A Clear CTA?

Without a call to action, a Spark ad is just a boosted post. The purpose of an ad at the end of the day is to convert. Make sure your Spark ad has a clear CTA to tell users what to do next so that they don’t just swipe to the next post.

Even with these guiding questions though, there’s still no perfect way to know what will work. 

Remember that people don’t come to TikTok to look for ads. They come to scroll and be entertained or learn or laugh. So your ads should fit next to the content they want to see. The best way to make a TikTok ad that looks like a TikTok is to just make a TikTok. That’s what Spark ads are.

We’ve tested a lot on TikTok across our different partners from different bid strategies to new objectives to specific-to-TikTok audiences to new ad types – With that, we’ve learned a lot! If you’re interested in diving deeper into the world of TikTok, here are a few additional articles we’ve written that might be helpful for you: 

• How Much Do TikTok Ads Cost?
• Running a TikTok Ad Campaign: 5 Tips for a Successful Launch  
• Want To Run TikTok Prospecting Campaigns That Convert? Try This! [Data Included]
• The 5 Main Components of Effective TikTok Ad Creative

Want to skip straight to running some TikTok campaigns with us? Let’s chat! 

The post Do Spark Ads Get Better Results on TikTok? (Yes, but it’s Complex) appeared first on Tuff.

One of the challenges that aspiring TikTok advertisers and agencies often run into as they plan their TikTok Ads campaigns is benchmarking.

How do our results stack up against the industry or even just other campaigns we manage? How do we know if our TikTok ad campaign is successful compared to other campaigns?

Having benchmark data for other TikTok video ads could be incredibly valuable for determining just how effective your campaigns are relative to the industry. It could also give you an idea of just how much TikTok ads cost so that you can plan properly.

So we spent $103,368 in 30 days on TikTok ads to find out just what our internal benchmarks are. Let’s take a look! 

How We Pulled TikTok Ads Benchmark Data

To get benchmark data for our TikTok ads, we did it the good ole fashioned way. We rolled up our sleeves and dug into the data from our TikTok Ad Account. We took a sample of 9 partners across 7 industries and 33 campaigns. From there, we calculated aggregates of their KPIs for 30 days.

Keep in mind that this is an aggregate of data across a couple of different campaign objectives (Traffic and Conversions) and each client has different TikTok ad creative. So your individual benchmarks may look different depending on your chosen campaign objective and the quality of your assets. 

So… How Much Do TikTok Video Ads Cost?

Nailing down the answer to that question can be a bit tricky. As is with most things in marketing and social advertising, the answer is that it depends.

There are a number of different factors that influence the cost of your TikTok advertising efforts. Things like:

• Ad objective
• Audiences
• Industry
• Ad Placements
• Ad format
• Creative and Ad Text
• Landing Page

In 2019, AdAge released a report that said TikTok ads could cost anywhere from $50,000 to $120,000. Across the Internet, the consensus on the first page of Google is that TikTok ads start at $10 per CPM.

If those TikTok ad costs feel expensive, there’s hope still. Our benchmark data showed a range of individual CPMs from $5.71 to $26.51. We saw CPCs in our TikTok Ads Manager as low as $0.90. So startups and scaleups can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that advertising on TikTok is possible even if you may not have a massive budget.

Average CPC

CPC or cost per click is a measure of how much it costs for a click on your TikTok ad. Low CPCs are every advertiser’s dream and it would mean that your ad is effectively driving traffic to your landing page. Influenced by a host of factors like targeting, copy, creative, campaign objective, and placements, driving down the cost per click can be a challenge.

Our individual CPCs from this dataset ranged from $.90 to $4.85. E-commerce partners definitely had the highest CPCs of all of our industries in the dataset. EdTech had the lowest average CPC with $.90.

Average CPM

CPM or cost per 1000 impressions is a measure of how much it costs to get your ads in front of your target audience. A higher CPM could be a good indicator that your audience is too narrow or too competitive.

The campaign objective you select will also influence the CPM of your ad campaign. When you run a traffic campaign or a video views campaign, typically you can expect the CPMs to be lower than if you selected a conversions campaign.

In our dataset, the average CPM was $12.85. Our lowest CPM came from the Business and Industrial industry with a CPM of $8.06. Our highest CPM came from the e-commerce industry with a CPM of $26.51.

Average CTR

CTR is a measure of what percentage of people clicked through to your website from your TikTok video ad. The combination of your video, your copy, and your targeting will influence your CTR. A high click-through rate is typically an indicator that you’re getting in front of the right people in your audience that are interested in your ad, and that said ad is strong and resonates with your audience enough for them to click it and visit the landing page!

In our dataset, the average click-through rate for our TikTok ads was .64%. Again the Finance & Industrial interests came out on top with a CTR of 1.03%. The technology industry had the lowest click-through rate at 0.26%.

Average Hook Rate

Ad hook rates (AKA thumb stop rates) are vital to benchmarking success on TikTok. They’re a reliable way to evaluate video ads’ performance. With TikTok hook rates, you can determine if your ads actually arrest the attention of TikTok users. The video ads hook rate is calculated by dividing 2-second video views by impressions.

The highest video ads hook rate came from the Technology industry with a rate of 26.91% Bringing up the rear was EdTech with a hook rate of 3.11%. The average hook rate was 13.99%.

Average Cost Per View

Cost per view as the name implies is a measure of how much each view of your TikTok ad costs. While an impression measures the number of times your ad was seen on screen, a view measures the number of times your TikTok video or video ad was played, excluding replays.

A higher cost per view could mean that your video creative isn’t appealing to your target audience.

Our average cost per view was $0.01. Our industry costs per view ranged from $0.01 to $0.03. E-commerce had the highest cost per view at $0.03.

Takeaways

Having this benchmark data in our back pocket is not only helpful as a TikTok Ads agency, but we can also share it with our partners who are considering advertising on TikTok to help them put performance into context. 

Even though several of the KPIs fall into a range, it still helps us figure out what costs we want to aim for and helps our partners know what they may expect when we get started. The best part is, the more partners that explore TikTok, the more data we have to continue to build upon our benchmarks and consistently update them so we can be working off of the most relevant data!

The post We Spent $100k on TikTok Video Ads in 30 Days and Pulled These Benchmarks appeared first on Tuff.

In the last year, TikTok has proven it has the ability to get more powerful in the social media world, and now the search world as well. Even compelling Google to make statements about TikTok eating into their search market share. 

On top of that, after Google’s most recent core update, TikTok’s visibility in Google search went up 133%. Though this number is impressive, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to SEOs or folks who have been watching search patterns over the last 5-7 years. 

For the last several years, Google has viewed video as the up-and-coming search result for a majority of searchers. Google began improving its ability to crawl, understand, and index videos across the web. YouTube continued to gain more traction in the search market share as its very own search engine, paving the way for newcomer TikTok. 

There has been recent speculation of TikTok joining the ranks of search engines. It’s no surprise, considering they’ve been running their own ads encouraging users to use the search functionality in-app to discover restaurants, how-tos, and even jobs. 

Knowing this, it begs the question “do you need SEO to be successful on TikTok?” Let’s dive in and figure this out together. 

What is TikTok SEO?

TikTok SEO seems to be taking a very similar approach to general SEO with a focus on keywords and phrases. When using their search functionality to type in a keyword, you see trending variations of that keyword. Once you click to search, top ranking posts in certain topics will populate in order of engagement rates. 

Aside from the obvious similarities in search functionalities, even content optimization techniques (more on these in a bit) are being figured out by the everyday TikTok user. 

So, TikTok uses SEO?

There’s no doubt from the SEO community, it’s TikTok that hasn’t alluded to much about this. Through different TikTok-ers results, it’s safe to say that TikTok has SEO functionalities and it’s working for the users who take the time to do it right.

How do I optimize my content to rank on TikTok?

Through my research (*ahem* watching too many TikToks for my elder-millennial brain to handle), I found there’s a 3-tier formula out there that is doing the trick for those looking to nab ranks on TikTok:

1. Text Overlay
2. Captions + Hashtags
3. Audio (yup.)

Text overlay

This is the text you see on the actual video itself. This happens post-recording in the editing phase. Folks who mention the appropriate target keywords in their overlay are seeing better results for visibility.

Captions + hashtags

This is definitely the most obvious optimization area. Peppering your target keywords into your caption along with hashtagging said keywords, will result in better visibility as well. 

Audio 

Finally, your audio will have an impact on your ability to be more visible for a topic. You must have subtitle functionality turned on (which I recommend). When creating your video, make sure you’re saying the actual keywords (naturally, I hope). Once to the editing screen, turn on the captions and let TikTok scan the audio to produce captions on your behalf.

Let me break that last ranking factor down a bit more… TikTok has AI that will scan your audio to caption each word on your behalf. TikTok-ers who use this functionality will rank better for their videos. 

Similar to Google or YouTube, this functionality helping ranks could be due to 2 very important reasons: universal friendliness and more keyword signals. 

Oftentimes, search engines will favor content that is universally friendly to those with particular impairments that need other features like captions to consume the content. On top of that, captions and video transcripts are features that provide signals to search engines to crawl this content to better rank and understand what the video is about. 

This adds another interesting question: Is YouTube also ranking you by your audio? Though their caption functionality leaves something to be desired, it’s available nonetheless (I’ll save this for another time).

Performing TikTok keyword research

Luckily, you don’t need to learn some crazy new technique to perform quality keyword research for your TikTok SEO campaign. There are 2 simple ways to perform your TikTok keyword research:

1. In-app
2. Via Google

In-app

Much like YouTube, in-app keyword research is the most valuable way to see what populates for your keyword targets in terms of variations of the word as you type in the search bar and, of course, what results actually populate.

When performing keyword research in TikTok, take notice of variations and even test out natural variations used in your industry. For example, when doing research for this blog I might search TikTok SEO then variants like TikTok SEO Research or TikTok SEO Keyword Research etc.  

I would also be interested in combing through the top results to note things like the general content of the top TikToks and the language being used in the overlay, captions, hashtags, and audio. 

Via Google

If TikTok isn’t producing how you’d hoped (look at you, trailblazer) then performing keyword research via Google is a safe bet. 

You can do this through manual search by heading to Google and analyzing the SERPs of the keywords you’re looking to target. Take note of the questions being answered, keyword variants being used, and any gaps in knowledge you could fill. 

If you have the resources, this can also be done through trusted SEO tools like SEMrush or ahrefs. 

TikTok SEO strategies to implement

First and foremost, as you’re getting up and running on the platform make sure you optimize your profile as you would with any other social profile for your brand. This looks like a value statement or catchy one-liner and, of course, you must include a link to your website/store/etc.

Quantity + Quality

Well, here’s a first for this SEO, advising folks to boost the quantity of their content. Now, don’t get too crazy, the quality still matters but everyone has to start somewhere!

Being consistently engaging on the platform will help to boost your visibility and prove authority in your industry and over the keywords you’re targeting. It will also be a good sign to engage users who benefit from your content because they’ll know they can count on your updates and will continue to engage with you, only further boosting your ranks. 

Ultimately, get out there and give it your best shot, find what works or what doesn’t work, replicate the good and trash the bad. 

Newsworthy industry TikToks

If you’re in an industry that relates to a lot of newsworthy content, it’s time to dust off some hot takes. 

Younger generations are always looking for ways to be involved, but like to consume most of their content in the exact way TikTok serves it: bite-sized, informational videos. 

If the content presents itself, put yourself and your company out there by staying ahead of the conversation and talking about breaking news in your industry and your take on its impacts. 

This strategy will get you noticed, make you look like a valuable resource, and keep your brand name trending within your industry.

Culture

Going in a completely different direction, culture focused TikToks are a great way to show off your brand’s values, voice, and style. 

A great way to implement this strategy is to share in-office (or remote) sneak peeks around the day-to-day fun and community within the company or day-in-the-life videos to show how the ‘magic’ happens. 

Another great culture technique is to show off any philanthropic efforts your company partakes in as a whole. This is an impactful way to show the younger generations, who are driven by positively influencing the world around them, that your company ‘gets it’. And, it’s just a great way to encourage others to be involved as well!

Paid alignment, influencers, and partnerships

There’s a whole world of TikTok strategies out there for the taking. As you dive into creating campaigns, consider aligning the strategies of your paid efforts with your SEO efforts by covering similar topics and using the same keywords.

Other strategies to consider are tapping into the vast influencer bank TikTok houses or partnering with other brands that would make sense to help boost each other’s visibility and to gain new audiences as well. 

Great. Is TikTok worth it for me?

Generally, yes. 

TikTok is a growing presence, and even if that plateaus at some point, it’s a strong indicator that video content is the new king. 

Like any digital strategy, it will be worth the most bang for your buck if you go in with a strong strategy and an understanding for how you can work to see success on the platform. 

Plan your TikTok strategy by choosing to do TikTok SEO, paid TikTok campaigns, or both! Once that’s in place, line up a general content strategy and make sure to include creative. A major success factor for both TikTok SEO and paid TikTok campaigns relies on your creative. So, make sure you’re putting in the time and effort (and $$$).

If you’re ready to take the leap into the world of TikTok, or just need a little refresh of your TikTok strategy, we’ve got your back. Our savvy team of TikTok experts, creatives, and strategists are ready to help you get the TikTok ranks. 

The post TikTok SEO: What Is It and How to Rank appeared first on Tuff.

Author’s Note: We’ve given this blog post a refresh on November 2, 2023, complete with fresh information, new links, relevant data, and more.

In the past couple of years, TikTok has quickly become one of the top acquisition channels for startups and established brands. The platform now has 1 billion (with a B!) monthly active users total — Of which, the MAUs in the US have now passed 100 million, equaling 37% of America’s 267.6 million mobile internet users.

On most channels, it is relatively easy to repurpose your ad creative. With a few light edits, an ad created for Meta can easily become an ad for Display or an ad for LinkedIn – But on TikTok, each ad needs to be created specifically for the platform and getting it right is critical. You only have a few seconds to grab your target audience’s attention before they scroll past your ad.

So how do you make the right asset for TikTok? How do you introduce a compelling hook within the first 3-5 seconds so your audience stays to hear the whole value proposition? How do you create a diverse suite of low-budget videos in-house (with an intentional range of messaging, formats, creators, and styles) that you can test quickly and learn from? 

This article is here to help you answer these questions. I will cover the mentality of the average user in-app and the basic details for TikTok ad creative, including the ad specifications, inspiration for ad hooks and high-converting ad archetypes. Then, I’ll walk through three examples from Tuff’s portfolio as a TikTok ads agency to help outline why and how they work on TikTok.

TikTok Mentality In-App

TikTok was an app designed for entertainment vs. a platform like LinkedIn that was designed for education and thought leadership or a platform like Pinterest that was designed for inspiration and planning. 

TikTok has continued to evolve into a place for people to be creative and express themselves – And because of that there is a variety of content on the platform. This makes TikTok an ideal platform for organic content to thrive, as well as for paid content for advertising across a variety of  industries. 

The allure for TikTok advertising is that you’re able to capture your audience’s attention while they’re in a creative and imaginative headspace and if you design the right creative, you’re able to heighten brand awareness, increase consideration, and ultimately drive users to convert (whatever action that is for your business!).

Video Ad Specifications

Before you start planning your creative, let’s talk about the boundaries that you’re working in. 

• Video length: At most, TikTok ads can be 60 seconds long, but it is a best practice for videos to be much shorter: TikTok suggests videos be just 9-15 seconds in length. 

• Resolution: Professionally produced Tiktok ad creative tends not to perform well on TikTok. Instead, think: low-fidelity video content. Grab your smartphone and start playing around in the TikTok app creating videos – it’s fun, easy, and effective. 

• Sound: TikTok is a sound-on optimized platform – That means this is a hugely important element of your creative assets. Lean into the features that are available natively within the platform, like recording voice overs to narrate videos or selecting trending songs to have timely background music. 

• Subtitles and Text Overlays: While TikTok is a sound-on optimized platform, subtitles and text overlays are also hugely important elements of the creative asset – That might seem counterintuitive, but many people watch TikTok videos on mute. Including captions or other text ensures you capture their attention no matter if the sound is on or off. 

Inspiration for Ad Hooks

We’ve talked about some of the detailed ad specifications for TikTok ads – Now, let’s dive into arguably the most important element of creative assets designed for TikTok: Hooks! 3-5 seconds is essentially all the time you have to hook your audience to convince them to stay engaged with your content and ultimately your brand. 

Some common and more effective ad hooks to lean into:

• 3 ways to improve your… 
• Did you know…?
• That is why your [X] isn’t working and how [X] can help.

High-Converting Ad Archetypes 

At Tuff, we define an ad archetype as any popular style of ad creative that can be tweaked and tailored for any industry or product.  

These will look different depending on what audience you’re targeting. For example:

• For prospecting cold audiences, you might lean into an ad archetype that initially draws them in with a listicle or a behind-the-scenes style video that gives your audience a reason to stay around. 
• For retargeting a warmer audience, you might want to introduce an archetype that includes testimonials or social proof to inch them further down the funnel to convert.

TikTok Creative Best Practices: 

Telling your story and communicating your brand’s value proposition in less than 15 seconds is not easy, even before considering all the limits above. But it’s absolutely possible, and if you can crack the code, TikTok can be a huge growth driver for your brand. 

Let’s take a look at five successful TikTok creatives and explore what our team has learned from them as we develop more and more TikToks for our clients. 

1. Soona

TikTok Creative Here

Insight: This ad concisely explains how Soona’s process works, walking the audience through the key steps in working together. It clearly states the problem Soona solves, introduces various products, and highlights the key benefits brands can get from working with Soona. 

Despite the fact Soona is a photography business focused on creating beautiful images, this TikTok video has a production quality that’s more in line with other videos on the platform, helping it to feel more like organic content than an ad.

What to Do: To effectively introduce your brand to new audiences, focus on defining the key value drivers you need to convey in a short video. Consider incorporating them into a “how it works” ad creative like this one – these help potential customers understand the process much better, removing any uncertainties and boosting conversion rates. 

2. Fizz 

TikTok Creative Here

Insight: This ad introduces a story element within the first 6 seconds that highlights recent grad struggles and how he could not get a credit card. It starts with a person talking to the camera with very light branded animation to support the storyline, and the messaging throughout speaks specifically to an immediate need.

What to do: Use existing user-generated content that you have available to create a narrative that supports your brand’s mission. Lean into the TikTok-styled text and add in your brand’s visuals when relevant to increase brand recognition.

3. Sabio 

TikTok Creative Here

Insight: The ad leans on a strong value proposition for Sabio – “You won’t just learn how to code, you’ll learn how to solve real-world problems for real companies, so you’re job-ready on day one.” The idea behind this video was to combine a VP we know converts for Sabio with features within the TikTok platform that make creative assets feel more native to the platform, like on-screen text and trending sounds. We learned a lot from this specific video that we were able to incorporate into future rounds of ad testing.

What to Do: Isolate your brand’s key value propositions and highlight the problem, solution, and benefits to educate your audience and incorporate elements that lend themselves to longer video views (engaging in-platform features!). This should naturally hook your audience. TikTok moves FAST, and you have to ensure your messaging – Whether on-screen, voicing over, or in the caption – is sticky, intentional, and very clear.

Start Creating TikTok Ads Today

You don’t need a big media budget or a fancy creative agency to start producing TikTok ad creative – all you need is a smartphone and some imagination. Producing winning creative holds the key to a successful TikTok marketing campaign, but you might not get it right the first time. 

At Tuff, our media team is constantly testing out new Tiktok creative assets for our client. If it doesn’t work, we’ll drop it right away, and keep testing out new ideas until we land on the winning formula. 

Got some TikTok ad ideas you want to try for your brand? Hit us up – our team of TikTok experts has the skills and experience needed to supercharge your campaigns! 

Ellen Jantsch

Ellen is the founder at Tuff and one of the team’s core growth marketers. She is a versatile marketer with expertise in multiple channels – from ppc to seo to email to others – responsible for the experiments and testing.  She is happiest when she’s on the ski hill or outside pointing her mountain bike downhill.

The post TikTok Creative Best Practices: How to Make Great TikTok Creative [Updated] appeared first on Tuff.

What was once considered a platform for users to share silly, short-form videos that featured new dances and or lip-syncing trending audios in 2016 is now considered the top app for consumer spend in 2022. Not only does TikTok have over one billion monthly active users, but 67% of users say the app inspires them to shop AND it was the most downloaded app in 2021 and it’s expected to triple revenue by the end of 2022. 

What does this mean for your business? It means TikTok has A TON of potential and should be considered in your marketing mix.

But how do you build broad, prospecting campaigns that convert? As a growth marketing agency, we’ve tested on all of the major channels and TikTok has now become a core platform in the channel mix for almost every single client we work with today. 

TLDR, here are the do’s and don’ts of TikTok campaigns that convert:

Do

• Cast a wide net with targeting
• Incorporate Spark ads 
• Shoot videos raw, unfiltered and lofi 

Don’t

• Get too specific with your audiences
• Be quiet (TikTok = Sound on optimized platform)
• Forget subtitles and or text overlays 

When setting up a typical paid social campaign, you’d likely focus on a few variables, like the campaign objective, audiences, and creative. While aligning the campaign objective with your business goal and targeting an audience that is congruent with your product and brand are incredibly important pieces of the puzzle, creative can make or break your campaign. 70% of campaign performance on TikTok is rooted in the creative assets you use. Read that again. 

Cast a wide net with targeting

That being said, targeting IS important; it’s just not AS important as your creative assets and that is because broader is almost always better when audience planning on TikTok. TikTok appeals to a variety of demographics, and it’s catching up to Meta in size. 

There are the typical options you would imagine, like location, language, gender, age and interest options. There are also some unique-to-TikTok targeting options, like interactions with specific videos, creators and hashtags! Combining relevant interests with interactions has been a winning strategy for us in the past. 

One of our partners, Sabio, has a broad target audience ranging from people who are interested in gaming to music lovers. Taking this into consideration, we tested segmenting out our interest audiences vs. combining them into one supercharged audience, and we saw our conversion rate skyrocket from around 5% to 24% and our CPA drop from $16 to $8.  

Combining these interests + utilizing their strong organic presence with Spark Ads helped us improve performance immensely.

Incorporate Spark ads 

Spark ads have changed the game by creating a powerful and unique way to boost organic content in your paid campaigns. What are they, you ask? They’re one of TikTok’s newer ad formats that lets a brand boost their own organic content. According to TikTok, Spark Ads have a 142% higher engagement rate and generate a 43% higher conversion rate than standard in-feed Ads. If the creative is produced specifically for TikTok and does not feel overly polished, Spark ads are a strong way to optimize creative in a way that feels cohesive when served on a user’s FYP. 

But do they actually convert? We have utilized Spark Ads in quite a few of our campaigns across different industries – eCommerce, B2B, Tech – and have found time and time again that they’re an incredibly effective and efficient way to push conversions.

We have been testing Spark ads for one of our partners, Joylux, to compare how they perform with standard in-feed ads. Analyzing the data after being live for around two weeks now, this ad format is serving more impressions, clicks and video views at a higher CTR with longer average watch times – All while generating more conversions. See the chart below for more specifics! 

Beyond these paid KPIs that we look at when determining campaign success, paid metrics (such as paid followers, likes, comments, shares, and profile visits) were also much higher from the Spark Ads. This contributes to a higher engagement which in turn means that TikTok’s algorithm will push the video out more!

Spark ads can be used directly from your branded account or from an influencer’s account. Making your brand’s content feel like user-generated content and or using an influencer’s account to promote your brand automatically builds a foundation of trust with the audience by humanizing the brand and making the content feel less outright like an ad.

Shoot videos raw, unfiltered and lofi 

TikTok recently released a presentation highlighting their best practices for TikTok ad creative, and the recurring theme seems to be shoot your videos lofi and don’t make creative that feels overly polished.

I could not say it any better than Elle, one of the creative strategists here at Tuff, “Almost every single video looks like it was shot on an iPhone. And even the ones that were shot with nice equipment get some sort of filter or treatment that *suggests* it was casual or off-the-cuff.” (More helpful tips from Elle on that in this article about TikTok ad creative!) 

One of partners, Sesh, leaned into that creator-first, user-generated content vibe, and it really paid off. Our creative team here at Tuff created these two assets –  A Day in The Life + Group Support – that we tested against some other videos that felt more produced and polished. The results speak for themselves.

More impressions, clicks and video views do not always mean higher CTRs, longer watch times and more conversion volume. However, in this instance, it did. It is important to dive deep into these metrics as a whole to understand the audience on the platform and what speaks to them, ultimately driving them to convert.

TikTok trends, targeting capabilities and creative best practices are always changing, and we’re always testing and iterating. If you’re ready to start running TikTok campaigns that actually convert, give us a shout! 

Kate Theobald

Hey there! I’m Kate, the Head of Social at Tuff. I specialize in crafting paid social campaigns and testing performance creative to drive business results. Outside of Tuff, I enjoy tackling home renovation projects, skiing, and nerding out over the Enneagram (personality test)!

The post Want To Run TikTok Prospecting Campaigns That Convert? Try This! [Data Included] appeared first on Tuff.

With attention spans shortening and the fast-paced world of social media speeding up, figuring out what type of marketing works for your audience can be tricky. As a growth marketing agency, we dissect all sorts of data points every day to single out which metric(s) will tell us what we need to know. The more specific we can get, the easier it is to improve what we have and plan out what we need. 

Growth on TikTok is a new marketing tactic for many businesses. Determining 1) whether the platform works for your business (and if you’ll find your target audience there), and 2) what kind of content they want to see, can be very difficult in the beginning. That’s where ad hook rates come in. 

Ad hook rates (AKA thumb stop rates) are vital to benchmarking success on TikTok. They’re a reliable way to evaluate video performance and whether your ads actually stop thumbs from scrolling past them. Calculated by 2 second video views divided by impressions, it is a key indicator of what’s successfully capturing your audience’s attention.

Ad Hook Rate = 2-Second Video Views / Impressions

Think of it like this: Of all the people who were presented with your video ad, what percentage of them stuck around for at least 2 seconds? The first few seconds of an ad are really what determines whether someone will give you their attention at all, making the “hook” arguably the most important part. We consistently see that raising the ad hook rate improves the rest of the performance metrics. So the more people who stick around for 2+ seconds, the more people will watch the full ad, click, and eventually, convert. Here’s what that looks like.

Ad Hook Rate in Action

In order to better understand TikTok ad creative performance, we took a 6-month look (January 1 – June 30, 2022) across 11 TikTok accounts we manage. The average ad hook rate across accounts was 30.66%, with several in the 40% to 45% range. This means that for most partners, less than a third of the people who saw their ad watched the video for 2 seconds or more. 

After taking a deeper dive into the accounts that had the highest ad hook rates, we noticed some interesting trends. 

Insight: Client 1 was able to get the main message of who they are and what they do across within the first 2 seconds of the video. See an excellent example of this here.

What to do: Test, test, test! Testing the same video concept with slight tweaks helped Client 1 find the best version of their ad (AKA what was resonating the most with potential clients). In this instance, we found that user generated content worked better than stock video.  After analyzing hook rates further, we also were able to determine that videos that proposed a question to draw in users had better hook rates compared to other video concepts that were more drawn out in getting their message across.

Insight: Client 2 utilized trending music and saw significantly higher hook rates in their video ads by doing so. Videos that used stock background music or even no music at all had significantly lower hook rates. Check out an example here.

What to do: Stay up to date with what’s trending on the TikTok platform. A study done by SEMrush found that “more than half of viral TikTok videos used music as their primary backing sound in the first three seconds.” The addition of trendy music to your video ads help draw potential customers in and keep them engaged throughout the remainder of the video.

Insight: Client 3 found success with the use of text overlays and voiceovers. Right at the start of the video, it got the attention of their audience and brought them on a “journey” through their product. See this storytelling journey in action here.

What to do: By using text overlays and a voiceover, the audience could see and hear the full user journey. Create an engaging journey that draws the audience in and makes them want to continue watching until the end. 

What This Means for TikTok Ad Creative 

In the digital world of social advertising, using key metrics like ad hook rate can be an incredibly useful tool to take your marketing strategy to the next level. Utilizing this simple metric can give you a better idea of what content resonates with your audience the most, helping you create an effective creative strategy and ultimately increase performance in the long run. If TikTok is something you are interested in (or struggling with), reach out and talk to us!

The post Benchmarking TikTok Video Ad Hook Rates appeared first on Tuff.

Is your B2B brand on TikTok? If the answer is no, you might’ve read that question and thought “No, our target audience is not using TikTok so why would we be”, or,  “Isn’t TikTok mainly used by Gen-zs or Millennials”. If any of these thoughts crossed your mind, keep reading, because it may surprise you how Tuff partners use TikTok for B2B marketing.

Oftentimes, when we’re working with B2B brands, they think the best social ads channel for their business is either LinkedIn or Facebook. Historically, yes, these have been two of the top-performing social channels for B2B advertising, but the times are changing and the way B2B brands are advertising on social media is too. Within the past year, TikTok ads have become a large portion of Tuff partners’ paid social budgets across all different types of industries, and many of our B2B partners are now joining in on the buzz. 

It’s not just Gen-z on TikTok

Did you know that only half of the users on TikTok are below the age of 30? According to Statista’s 2022 TikTok demographic stats, 41% of all TikTok users are between the ages of 30-49 and 11% of users are 50+.  

TikTok has become a popular platform where people go to unwind for the day or get a laugh during their lunch break which makes it the perfect place to connect with your audience in a creative way. 

Think about it, how often do you log into LinkedIn on the weekends or when you’re unplugged from work? 

TikTok is a different experience. A lot of our B2B partners at Tuff are discovering that TikTok is where their audience is spending a majority of their free time when they’re not working, often times even more than Facebook. 

How we approach B2B TikTok campaigns at Tuff

As a growth marketing agency, before we launch ads on any new channel for our partners, the first thing we’ll do is a channel deep dive on the audience targeting options to make sure we’re able to reach their audience on that platform. 

On TikTok, you can target users by location, gender, age, languages, interests (including industry interests like ecomm, education, financial services, etc.), video interactions, creator interactions and hashtag interactions. 

Once we’ve built out the target audiences, we’ll look into how we can reach these users and convert them into a lead and/or customer. There are two approaches to lead generation through TikTok ads. 

1. Option one: You can set up a campaign using TikTok’s native lead gen objective which will populate a form within the platform with custom fields for the user to fill out once they click on the ad 
2. Option two: You can set up a conversion campaign and send the user to your website and optimize for users to submit a lead gen form on your site. 

Once we launch campaigns, we’ll monitor the lead quality to see how the MQLs and SQLs compare to the more traditional B2B social ads channels like Facebook and Instagram. 

How Teachable is using TikTok to acquire new leads

We recently launched a TikTok campaign for our partner Teachable –– a platform that allows individual creators with an array of skills and talents to create courses and sell them so that they can teach others to do what they do. So naturally, we wanted to go after an audience that aligned with Teachable’s product––people that are likely to have hobbies and talents that they’d want to teach courses on.  So we brainstormed different interests and hobbies that we see courses being created from across the web, and we matched those up to interests available in TikTok. After some hashtag research to find effective hashtags, we combined them all into one Interest and Hashtag campaign. 

After we settled on the audience, we researched which TikTok optimization event would help us best accomplish our goal. Looking at the standard events for TikTok we saw quite a few options that could help us target people at different stages of the user funnel, but ultimately our goal was to get users to sign up for a free trial though, so we settled on complete registration, which tracks when users create an account on the Teachable website. 

Even though this campaign was going to be for a B2B audience, we didn’t want the creative to be too corporate-y and abandon the fun nature of TikTok videos. We recognized that TikTok as a platform responds well to ads that look and feel native, and we know that even though we’re targeitng a B2B audience, it’s still people on the other end. So we just needed creative that would appeal to actual people who would want to use Teachable to sell courses.

The result was an array of creative options that ranged from motion graphics to UGC. After running them for a week, we quickly saw that we had made the right decision. Our CAC numbers outperformed Facebook, and our CTR was incredible. We had two separate campaigns and our contest campaign outperformed our evergreen campaign by a pretty significant margin–– likely because it leveraged better offers and incentives than the evergreen campaign did.

Now that we know TikTok ads work for our B2B partner Teachable, we’ve continued to experiment with new creative and audience targeting, but one thing is salient for us: Treat the people on TikTok like real people. Address their concerns, show them the benefits, grab their attention, and they’ll convert just like a B2C user would. It just might take a bit longer.

How Thnks is using TikTok to acquire new leads

For our partners Thnks we knew it wasn’t going to go be as easy to jump right in and drive quality conversions. Due to this, we took a two-pronged approach to work our way into a conversion-based campaign getting potential customers to sign up for a demo using TikTok for B2B marketing. 

Our first phase was prospecting to find out exactly what audiences and creative resonated best with potential customers. For this campaign we used the Traffic objective optimization toward a view content event that fires every time someone lands on the TikTok specific landing page. 

Replicating where we have seen success on other social platforms we structured our campaign to target three main interest based audiences:

Business Growth:

Sales:

HR:

Our second phase of this campaign will be to evaluate key metrics of our prospecting campaign and determine what audiences and creative will get carried over to a conversion-based campaign. With phase one of this test being a prospecting traffic campaign we looked specifically at metrics like clicks to the site, CPC, CTR and CPM. Compared to Facebook our initial findings are that CPC was 84% cheaper than Facebook and CPMs compared to Facebook were 1/4th of the cost.

Something that gets overlooked in the prospecting phase of campaigns is the data the pixel is collecting and how to leverage it. By running a traffic campaign to start, not only are you able to drive a large amount of traffic to your site, you are also able to collect valuable data through the pixel to further target those potential customers in the conversion phase of your campaign. In addition to carrying over the top performing interested based audiences. We will also be able to build out custom pixel based audiences based on users interactions with our ads and landing page. For this client we will be building out two custom pixel based audiences to retarget potential customers. One going after anyone who has visited our specific landing page in the last 90 days and has not taken any actions. The other being anyone who has watched 50% of our ad, and not taken any action to the site. These both are great ways to re-engage potential customers and get them to take action!

How B2B Brand Visory is using TikTok to acquire new leads

For our B2B partner Visory, we did some initial research on potential audiences on TikTok and found some interest targeting options that would allow us to reach their target audience. We kicked off our campaign by identifying two main interest based audiences that we have seen perform well on other social platforms, like Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Broad interests around money management and bookkeeping:

eCommerce specific interests:

One thing we’ve learned about targeting on TikTok is that broader is usually better (for prospecting or retargeting campaigns). The reason we separated these out was because they were roughly the same size + eCommerce (alone) has been a top performing audience for us in the past.

Prior to considering TikTok for Visory, we were able to test out some user-generated content on our other social platforms, which allowed us to determine what resonates most with Visory’s B2B audience and then repurpose the top performing creative for TikTok. Creative is SO crucial on any social platform but specifically on TikTok. If you want to dive deeper into the creative world, here is an additional resource: The 5 Main Components of Effective TikTok Ad Creative.

We knew that TikTok was going to be more of a top of funnel channel for Visory (similar to how we’ve viewed Facebook), so we’ve been optimzinig our campaigns for traffic to the site. To measure success, we are looking at clicks to the site, CTR, CPC and site engagement in Google Analytics. The result? Compared to Facebook, we have seen comparable CTRs but lower CPCs. Looking in GA, we’ve seen time on site as high as 00:06:25! While we have yet to see any last-click conversions from this site, we’ve learned that more traffic to the site historically results in more conversions over time. 

Conclusion

TikTok ads are becoming very popular among B2B brands and it’s an effective & cost-efficient way to reach your target audience in a creative way. If you’re ready to see how TikTok Ads can work for your business, give us a shout!

McKenzie Fowler

Hey there! I’m McKenzie, a Growth Marketer at Tuff who lives in Nashville, TN. After years of experience working at agencies in paid media, I found my way to Tuff in 2021 to work with startups, scaleups, and established brands on full-funnel growth strategies rooted in data. When I’m not working, you can find me taking my dog Burley to the park, traveling with friends and family, or winding down at the local yoga studio. Let’s connect.

The post How These Three Companies Use TikTok for B2B Marketing appeared first on Tuff.

When it comes to driving more traffic and applications online with growth marketing, the big challenge is how to scale and which marketing channels will help you grow fastest. With limited time, money, and people, you can’t afford to waste it on strategies and tactics that are sub-optimal. 

When we first partnered with Multiverse (a start-up company that provides an outstanding alternative to college through corporate training and professional apprenticeships) as their startup marketing agency, we wanted to test different campaigns with clear metrics to figure out which ones work and then focus on scaling those channels.

In this post, I’m going to focus in our our paid social strategy, with a focus on a deep dive on TikTok ads. We’ll look at why we selected TiKTok ads, the campaign structure, the best performing creative assets, and the results compared to other channels in our mix. (Spoiler: TikTok generated 3x times more applications than Instagram with a 52% lower CPA.) 

Diversified Channel Mix 

In our growth marketing strategy for Multiverse, we prioritized testing campaigns with social ads and PPC. 

For social ads, we focused on Instagram as the primary channel where we allocated 67% of our total budget and then we dedicated a portion of the total budget (33%) to testing other social ad channels. With the Multiverse target audience being between the ages of 18-26, we were super eager to test TikTok to see if this channel would be effective in driving applications and if effective, if it would be scalable. 

Clearly Defined CPA Targets and Goals 

Our goal for Multiverse was to prioritize high-impact growth campaigns to quickly drive key learnings, then invest in additional campaigns to scale up on what works. Since Multiverse didn’t have a ton of historical data in the US for us to learn from, we did some research on competitors and the average costs for TikTok ads and Instagram ads to come up with our KPI goals. 

Instagram KPI goals (for the first month): 

• Cost-per-click: $3.00
• Cost-per-application (CPA): $65

TikTok KPI goals (for the first month): 

• Cost-per-click: $2.00 
• Cost-per-application (CPA): $80 

Identifying the Target Audience & Funnel Stage 

When launching campaigns for a new partner, our social ads team at Tuff will put together an audience targeting strategy for each stage of the audience funnel. However, since we were starting from scratch and building campaigns on new platforms for Multiverse, we knew we needed to focus on the top of funnel audiences since we haven’t built up the brand recognition or audience size to retarget users based on previous ad interactions through bottom-funnel audiences. 

For TikTok, our primary focus was targeting a large, top of funnel audience that we could then educate and convert to applicants through our video creative. 

A Campaign Structure for Scale 

For Multiverse’s US paid acquisition, we were focused on six markets, including New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Phoenix and Boston. We knew we needed to drive as many applicants on TikTok as possible in each market, so we set up a prospecting campaign for each location, that way we could control the budget at the campaign level based on demand needs per market. 

Within each campaign, we wanted to test two different audiences on TikTok: 

1. A broad audience with no interest targeting, ages 18-26 
2. Education or motivation interest targeting, ages 18-26

After a few weeks of testing, we saw that the broad targeting was outperforming our interest-based targeting with a lower cost per application. Compared to other social ad platforms,  the TikTok algorithm is extremely accurate in serving your ads to your target audience (just think about how it perfectly curates a For You Page that’s specific to each TikTok users’ interest). So removing the interest targeting allowed us to widen our audience pool and let TikTok do the work of finding the users who were likely to apply for a Multiverse application based on the algorithm data.  

High-Peforming TiKTok Ad Creative 

When it comes to TikTok creative, videos that feature trending and relevant content are the key to success (check out our tips for creating trending video content). For Multiverse, we wanted to move QUICK, which meant that we needed to develop 3-5 TikTok videos fast to be able to launch on TikTok. 

For the creative, we wanted to lean into the Multiverse value props to educate our top-of-funnel audiences about Multiverse in a fun, trending and captivating way. 

Check ‘em out!

1. Job without degree
2. College vs. Apprenticeship 
3. Student Loan Stress

Results

So how did these TikTok campaigns perform? The short answer: we far surpassed our goals for applications and cost-per-application which allowed us to scale the monthly budget on this channel by 5x. 

• Average cost-per-click (CPC): $0.47
• Applications: 357
• Average cost-per-application (CPA): $16.77

But how does this compare to the other paid channels (like Instagram)?

TikTok generated 3x times more applications than Instagram with a 52% lower CPA. 

For Multiverse, we measure apprenticeship applications based on last-click attribution in Google Analytics, so while these results far exceeded our expectations, we also wanted to see how our campaigns have helped increase non-last click conversions. 

Since launching TikTok ads, we’ve seen a 110% increase in Multiverse Google Search branded conversions in the US. 🚀

Based on these learnings, we’ve continued to scale our TikTok campaigns and have found it to be the most cost-efficient paid channel driving the lowest CPA for Multiverse in both the US and UK. 

Are you interested in launching TikTok ads to help grow your business? Let’s chat! 

McKenzie Fowler

Hey there! I’m McKenzie, a Growth Marketer at Tuff who lives in Nashville, TN. After years of experience working at agencies in paid media, I found my way to Tuff in 2021 to work with startups, scaleups, and established brands on full-funnel growth strategies rooted in data. When I’m not working, you can find me taking my dog Burley to the park, traveling with friends and family, or winding down at the local yoga studio. Let’s connect.

The post TikTok Ads for Startups: How Multiverse Drives Quality Conversions at Scale (with a CPA lower than any other channel) appeared first on Tuff.

Author’s Note: We’ve given this blog post a refresh on November 2, 2023, complete with fresh information, new links, relevant data, and more.

As we head into the end of the year and approach 2024, you’re likely starting to think through your marketing strategy for the new year. What channels have worked well for you this past year? What do you want to explore to meet your goals? At Tuff, we’re always identifying new channels to help our partners scale and diversify their digital ad spend, and TikTok is one of the first channels we recommend if it makes sense for our partner’s product, service or audience. 

It’s been reported that there are 1.7 billion users as of 2023, a 17% increase year-over-year, and this continues to grow. If low attention spans on the platform scare you from advertising on the platform, TikTok has reported that ads viewed for less than 6 seconds still produce a stronger impact compared to ads viewed for 20 seconds or more. If you have video creative you can customize for the platform – or you’re able to bake it into your resources this coming year – now’s the time to explore the top social media platform and reach an audience that may not be present on other platforms.

One of the biggest barriers to entry onto a new platform is the cost. Many elements of a campaign have the ability to impact cost, like the creative assets you use and the audiences you target. Having engaging video content is absolutely imperative for a successful campaign on TikTok as 93% of TikTok users spend time on the platform with sound on. When developing your creative assets for TikTok, it’s important to look through it at a performance creative lens and keep in mind creative best practices for TikTok specifically.

Before launching campaigns on TikTok, start by asking yourself the following questions: 

1. Do you have a library of lofi, attention-grabbing videos – preferably user-generated content?
2. Have you defined the audience you want to reach?
3. Last but not least, do you have a product or service that could be promoted in these videos to get the message across to said audience?

If you have “yes” to all of the aforementioned questions then you are ready to start building your first campaign with a TikTok ads agency like Tuff. In this article, we’re breaking down what it takes to run a successful ad campaign on TikTok and how TikTok ads compare in costs to other social ad platforms.

TikTok Ads: Is It Worth It? 

Before you start thinking about an advertising budget for TikTok, you might wonder if TikTok is even worth testing. While TikTok might be known for its virality and trends from organic videos, its advertising opportunities have been proven extremely beneficial for companies in almost every industry, from eCommerce to tech to education. We’ve tested a lot on the platform – even spending $100k in a 30-day period with one of our partners!

We’ve even tested TikTok with our B2B partners, who are not technically partners that immediately jump to explore the channel. If you are able to find pockets of success on TikTok, it’s very scalable and can help not only engage existing demand but also create new paths for revenue for your business.

How Do TikTok Ads Work? 

TikTok ads are less obvious to spot to the average user since they come off in a more organic nature compared to other channels like Facebook or Instagram. As typical with online advertising, TikTok ads cost different amounts and exist in different forms. A user can view your ad in different places which impacts the costs of your ad. If you decide to advertise on TikTok, you can choose from a variety of different ad formats, such as: 

• Image Ads
• Carousel Ads
• Video Ads
• Spark Ads
• Collection Ads 
• Playable Ads 

Image Ads

Image ads run through TikTok’s newsfeed partner placements, such as the Global App Bundle and Pangle, and will include an image, brand or app name, and ad text.

Carousel Ads

Carousel ads are a newer ad format that are supported on the newsfeed app series, BuzzVideo. You can highlight up to 10 images and unique captions in one single ad, shown from left to right in an order that you can specify. You can also point to one landing page URL or a unique URL for each image, which makes this format helpful in showcasing several products.

Video Ads

Video ads will run through the platform’s newsfeed and/or the newsfeed of apps that fall under TikTok’s newsfeed partner placements again (Global App Bundle and Pangle). These are the most common type of format for self-serve ads as they will show up in your target audiences’ For You Page (FYP). 

Video ads can be 5-60 seconds and can include a video, display image, brand name and ad text. TikTok (and our social team here at Tuff) recommend shorter videos that can keep the attention of your audience. TikTok reports, “1 in 4 top-performing videos have a duration between 21 and 34 seconds and see, on average, a 1.6% lift in impressions.”

Spark Ads

Spark ads allow you to leverage existing organic TikTok posts by generating a code that lets you run the video as an ad directly from your TikTok page or a partner/content creators’ page. If you are familiar with boosting posts on Facebook or Instagram, this ad type is very similar. Additionally, spark ads incorporate more ways to interact, engage with and ultimately convert via your ad.

Because the videos look more native than ordinary video ads, we’ve seen a lot of success with spark ads at Tuff. For a few of our partners, we have run spark ads through a content creator’s or influencer’s page using the spark code. We’ve tested this for a few different partners and seen differing results – which just proves this is the format to test!

 In the table below, we analyzed regular videos vs. spark ads to understand the difference in users to the site, pages/session, time on site, last click conversion volume and the average cost per acquisition. You can see a much better performance on TikTok once we started a regular vs. Spark Ad test for one of our partners.

In this table, however, we tested the same exact creative asset as a Spark ad vs. as a regular uploaded ad to the partner’s ads library and, while we generated the exact same CTR, we drove slightly more conversions at a more efficient CPA.

Collection Ads

When using collection ads, someone taps an interactive element of your ad and it will lead to an Instant Gallery Page, where visitors can browse a curated gallery of product cards. You can either handpick the products to feature in your Instant Gallery Page or let TikTok Ads Manager dynamically display the most relevant products for each visitor. From the Instant Gallery Page, people can browse your catalog of products and then head to your website to complete their purchase journey.

Playable Ads

Playable ads allow you to display an interactive preview of your app ahead of downloading it. The idea is that you are able to give your audience a fully-immersive experience ahead of the commitment of downloading a new app.

How much do TikTok ads cost? 

Similar to other social ad platforms, you can customize the amount you spend and personalize your bid strategy. Typically, advertisers on TikTok pay a median price of $1.00 for every click and a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) of $10. Keep in mind that this number is generated through a blended analysis of all advertisers so this cost is not the case for every business. 

TikTok has two different minimum daily spends, depending on where you set the budget:

• If you set your budget at the campaign level, there is a minimum daily budget of $50
• If you set your budget at the ad set level, there is a minimum daily budget of $20

Campaign Objective 

Choosing the right objective is really important when setting up ad campaigns on TikTok. TikTok recommends starting by choosing an objective that will get at least 50 events during the first 7 days, which will allow TikTok to have enough data to get your ad out of the learning phase. Similar to other platforms, you will see lower CPCs and CPMs when optimizing for an objective that’s higher in the funnel (traffic, page view) vs. optimizing for a lower-funnel event (checkout, complete payment), but the CVR will be higher when optimizing for the lower-funnel events.

Audience Segmentation 

TikTok’s algorithm is one of the best out there so most of the time you will see lower costs when your audience is broad and therefore large. In fact, TikTok recommends consolidating your audiences as much as possible and either putting all of your interests into one “super” audience or running the ad group with no interest targeting and letting the TikTok algorithm do its thing and serve the ad to the user who will likely take the action you are optimizing for (better known as Automatic Targeting). If you want to read more about this, check out this blog where we outline Tuff’s recommendations for prospecting campaigns that convert!

Budget & Bid Amount 

TikTok allows you to set a daily or lifetime budget at both the campaign level and the ad set level. When setting the budget at the ad set level, you can use:

• Bid caps for more manual control over the bid used in the auction by putting a limit on the cost per result 
• Cost caps for a more goal-based cost per result as you will never pay higher the bid amount set but you might not spend your entire budget
• Lowest cost for the maximum number of results

Creative

Last but not least, the most important factor to achieving low costs on TikTok is the ad creative. While TikTok users are typically more engaged in the video ad than users of any other social ad platform, the average CTR on TikTok is typically a little lower than the CTR on other social ad platforms. That is why we like to look at a TikTok-specific metric called ad hook rate which can also be considered as the “thumb stop rate.” This metric reports on if an ad has caused people to stop scrolling past the video and watch it. It is calculated by 2-second video views divided by impressions and is helpful in indicating if a video has captured your audience’s attention, or if it hasn’t, and it is time to pivot by testing something else in line with TikTok’s creative best practices.

Here at Tuff, our performance creative team prioritizes producing creative assets that are designed for each individual platform. Our approach looks like this:

We design and produce our assets based on the partner’s messaging and value propositions

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We build a creative testing framework to help test specific variants and generate fast results

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We pull the data through monthly analyses to call out top-performing assets and trends in messaging and design

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We build out new creative according to these top-performing aspects and rotate in!

How Do TikTok Ads Compare to Other Platforms? 

Data is great but without context, it does not have a lot of impact. It is always hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison on social ad platform costs since there are a lot of factors that go into the average, but when looking at CPCs and CPMs, TikTok is more cost efficient than Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. 

Take a look the benchmarks our paid media pulled this year for TikTok and Meta that span across industries, objectives and creative types:

What does this mean for you? If your target audience is on TikTok and you have the budget and creative needed to test on this channel, then it’s 100% worth the test and has the potential to be a very successful and scalable channel for your business. 

Looking for more tips on how to set up a successful TikTok campaign? Check out this article!

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