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.

Looking to boost your results with paid media or hit your ROI targets while increasing your budget? You’ve got a few options.

At Tuff, we believe the four biggest levers to pull are:

1. Optimizing Paid Media Campaigns
2. Testing and Refining Audience Targeting
3. Experimenting with Different Creative Assets and Messaging Strategies
4. Designing Intentional User Flows and Testing Landing Pages

In this article, I’ll zoom in on experimenting with different creative assets and strategic messaging strategies and our approach to measuring their impact.

But here’s the thing—what’s the point of testing creative assets and messages if you aren’t measuring their impact? And how do you do that effectively?

For many brands, regardless of size, measuring the impact of great ad creative can be elusive and inconsistent.

I’ll dive into the ways you can measure the impact of performance creative, how we do it at Tuff, and why your brand should be doing it too. Plus, I’ll touch on who should be accountable for justifying the investment—the creative team producing it or the media team implementing it across different paid channels.

Let’s get into it! 

Established Ad Creative Testing Methodology

At Tuff, we don’t believe there’s one “right” approach to testing. Instead, we believe the approach should be dependent upon the specific question you’re trying to answer, what goals you’re working towards, and the platforms you’re using. Even small improvements in CPC  and CVR can add up to drastic business growth. 

At a high level, when we set up an A/B or multivariate test, we start with this approach: 

To put this into perspective, if we were aiming to set up a performance creative test on Meta (Facebook, Instagram), we would focus on minimizing variables to produce accurate and replicable results. 

This methodology aims to create an environment poised for constant testing, iterating, and scaling – If you’re not building on your findings, you’re losing learnings.

Begin by Assessing Potential Performance with Tuff’s Creative ROI Calculator

Here’s an example of how we measure those results with our Tuff: Performance Creative ROI Calculator Template. 

This template is a real-life calculator that you can use to plug in your monthly budget, average cost per acquisition, and lifetime value per conversion to forecast how you can maximize your media spend with performance creative. 

While performance creative may not solve all your revenue challenges, we are confident that with the right testing methodology and measurement tools in place, you will see results after a few weeks of testing. 

Tuff’s Approach to Ad Creative Testing and Measurement

Measurement is undeniably crucial for effective and replicable tests, but let’s talk about ownership, shall we?

Who should be responsible for measurement? Should it fall on the ad creative team to track measurement, or should the media team bear the accountability for justifying the investment?

In our experience, tight integration between media and creative teams is essential. They need to collaborate closely to plan, measure, and enhance results. This integration is something that sets Tuff apart from many other agencies. From day one, our in-house performance creative team has been trained to understand media intricacies, including platform allocation, top-performing ad creative, and client-specific KPIs. This advantage, having a creative team that works hand in hand with our media team, is pivotal in creating winning ad assets and campaigns that deliver results.

While we rely on the performance creative team for insights, hypotheses, and recommendations for creative asset and message testing, we count on the paid media team to establish structured testing environments across various ad platforms to effectively manage and scale creative performance.

This is a quick snapshot of how Tuff collaborates across teams:

• Paid Media Team: Start with data and get specific with audiences & campaign setup so we understand the focus of our message testing.
• Performance Creative Team: Develop high-impact channel-specific creative with an intentional messaging variety.
• Paid Media Team: Launch ads!
• Paid Media Team + Performance Creative Team: Measure, analyze, learn!
• Performance Creative Team: Develop a new round of creative fueled by data-driven insights

Real-Life Examples

We’ve done a lot of testing at Tuff – It’s kind of our thing. We’ve worked with a variety of brands at different stages of growth from early-stage to established – We’ve done it all. 

So before we part ways, let’s dive into a specific case study for a brand we worked with, soona.

• Case Study: Here!
• Background: soona, the home of the ‘virtual photoshoot’. soona is a self-serve content creation platform that helps brands create professional, high-quality photo and video content for e-commerce and digital marketing. They aim to satisfy the growing demand for digital content by providing a fast, affordable solution to traditional content creation methods.
• Strategy: Build a repeatable formula for winning ad creative.
• Results: Large scale, quick-turn gains! We achieved an average increase of 60% in total conversions MoM with a CPA below target by $200+.

A key takeaway that is transferable for almost any brand at any stage of growth – Big budgets don’t always equal big results. While having a larger budget can certainly help achieve more significant results, it’s not the only factor determining success. A well-crafted campaign with laser-focused messaging and targeting yields high-impact learnings, no matter the budget.

Interested in learning more about Tuff’s approach to testing and measuring the impact of performance creative? Reach out to us directly here!

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 Ad Testing Methodology: Our Approach to Creative Testing and Measuring Results appeared first on Tuff.

When considering expanding your brand’s advertising presence to new platforms, you are likely looking to reach new audiences, build your brand recognition and or scale your business results. Over the last couple of years, video-marketing platforms, like YouTube and TikTok, have grown immensely in not only their daily active user count but also in their platform offerings. 

In this article, we’ll dive deep into who is active on these platforms, cost considerations, pros and cons, as well as arguably the most important element of a campaign, creative strategy when launching on these video-first, sound-on platforms. 

Does this sound interesting to you? Keep reading!

Understanding Your Audience

With the right video creative, you can be seen and heard by a whole new audience. 89% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service after watching a video. At Tuff, we believe that if done right, video content allows you to take control of your brand’s story and help your audience visualize the benefits your company offers them (learn more about our POV here!).

Both YouTube and TikTok attract billions of users each month. There are 2.5 billion monthly active users (MAUs) on YouTube compared to TikTok’s 1.1 billion MAUs. While YouTube has 1+ billion more active users on its platform, there are key differences in the age groups that are active on each platform. 

Let’s take a look:

YouTube source + TikTok source

When putting these demographics side-by-side, you might notice that YouTube tends to interest an older age group compared to TikTok. On TikTok, nearly 70% of its active users each month are between the ages of 18-34. Beyond just “who” is on these platforms, it’s also important to consider the ways in which you can target these audiences effectively.

Let’s take a peek at the different options available to advertisers on each platform: 

Learn more about Youtube and TikTok interests & behaviors here.

The typical age, gender, and location options are available on both platforms. The differences come into play when considering how to reach an audience via the different interest and behavioral targeting options.

YouTube is a Google property, providing you access to all of Google’s precise targeting capabilities, like in-market segments and keyword targeting. In comparison, TikTok does not offer that much control over your targeting, but you can reach users by using a mix of purchase intentions and interactions with specific videos and creators. 

Outlining the right audience that aligns with your ideal customer profile (ICP) is incredibly important, as well as the creative messaging and assets that you utilize. High-performing YouTube content tends to be longer-form and have an educational element to it, whereas TikTok content tends to be shorter-form and have more of an entertainment focus. 

Depending on your goals and budget, there might be a place for both of these platforms within your brand’s strategy. Let’s talk about cost next.

Cost Considerations

When thinking through which ad platforms are right for your brand, cost is likely a top consideration. What is an average CPM (Cost per Mille), CPC (Cost per Click), and CTR (Click-Through Rate). Nailing down a baseline for these costs is the first step when forecasting what potential conversion volume, cost per conversion, and conversion rates could look like.

At Tuff, we pull quarterly benchmarks for all ad platforms across all of our partners (read more about that here!). Below are those average costs and the available bidding strategies on each platform.

Bidding Strategies

• YouTube
  • Viewable CPM: Bid for impressions when your ads appear in a viewable position, and you only pay when ads are measured as viewable by Active View. You may want to adjust your CPM bids to stay competitive for more valuable viewable impressions.
  • Target CPA: Allows you to set your desired average cost per conversion. Some conversions may cost more than your target and some may cost less, but altogether, Google Ads will try to keep your cost per conversion equal to the target CPA you set.
  • Max Conversions: Uses Google’s AI to set bids to help get you the most conversions for your campaign while spending your budget. When using this bid strategy, you can still set a Target CPA, which means that Google’s Smart Bidding will aim for as many conversions as possible at the CPA you set.
• TikTok
  • Cost Cap: Control your daily costs manually by setting a maximum cost you’re willing to pay for a conversion. This option can limit your budget scaling abilities but you are able to keep your cost per conversion below the intended threshold.
  • Maximum Delivery: Allows the algorithm to spend your budget as efficiently as possible. This option tends to lead to fluctuations in daily performance but typically generates the lowest cost over a longer window of time.

While both channels aim for conversions, we typically group them under the umbrella of brand-building because of their low costs (CPCs, CPVs, and CPMs). When focusing on brand-building, our strategy involves targeting users at the top-of-funnel, recognizing the need for multiple ad exposures to guide them toward conversion. Consequently, we allocate a more extended period to evaluate the campaign’s effectiveness, as opposed to expecting immediate results within a week of launch.

Pros and Cons

There are pros and cons to investing in either of these platforms, and we’ve summarized those here: 

Creative Strategies

Now let’s chat about the most fun element of any paid media campaign – creative. Specifically with video marketing, creative assets and messaging can be the most impactful elements of a campaign and have the ability to dictate a campaign’s potential for success.

At Tuff, we believe creative has the power to drive real revenue, conversions, and growth. But only when it answers to data. Our creative team is in the business of designing feedback loops, integration, and accountability between creative and performance teams so we always know just how well the creative is working (psst, read more about our ad creative process here!).

But what if we’re just looking to build brand awareness with these channels? You still need data to validate your hypotheses and gather solid learnings along the way. 

While you should be designing creative according to each platform and its nuances, there is a way to work smarter and achieve a more meaningful outcome.

Specifically with YouTube and TikTok, we’ve found that some of the same messages (think: value propositions!) can translate across channels. With that in mind, we will sometimes spend our time focusing on the design and or length of the assets themselves to lean into differences in user behavior by channel vs. completely coming up with a new concept. 

Here’s an example we tested for one of our partners, Fizz, a student debit card that builds credit:

YouTube Video, 0:52

TikTok Video, 0:15 cut down

Both of these videos feature the same value proposition and overall messaging theme, but they have been customized for each platform to meet the intended audience where they are when they see the ads. We know users are more inclined to watch higher-quality, longer-form videos on YouTube, whereas users are more inclined to engage with lower-fidelity, shorter-form videos on TikTok. In order to show up in the most impactful way, we tweaked one core video vs. creating two entirely new videos. 

Take a peek at some more videos Tuff has created specifically for YouTube and TikTok here!

Making the Decision

When debating on which platform makes more sense for your brand, there are several different factors that should come into play, like your goals, target audience and how you can target them, how much budget you have, and what creative assets are available to you.

Your brand might benefit from YouTube’s ability to lean into in-depth, educational content that is better suited for an older audience – or maybe your brand might benefit from more engaging, trendy content that is geared towards a younger audience – maybe there’s a place for both in your funnel! No matter what you land on, it is important to understand each platform’s nuances so you can design a successful campaign strategy. Still feeling unsure of which to invest in? Set up an A/B test to experiment which is the perfect fit for your brand. 

Looking for some guidance on how to get off the ground? Tuff has a team of experts ready to chat with you and help grow your business. Read more about our YouTube expertise and our TikTok expertise or reach out to us directly here!

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 YouTube vs. TikTok Ads: A Decisive Guide for Your Brand appeared first on Tuff.

Have you ever bought something from an Instagram or TikTok ad? Did it feel like that ad was specifically written just for you?

If the answer is “yes,” your purchase was the result of a successful performance ad creative testing strategy. No, they’re not listening to your phone calls. They’ve just tried enough different things that they now understand what language and visuals will stop your scroll and make you want to buy.

In a landscape saturated with information and distractions, a brand’s ability to resonate with its audience is a powerful factor of success. Performance ad creative goes beyond traditional advertising, venturing into the realm of storytelling and emotional connection. It’s not just about showcasing products or services; it’s about crafting narratives that spark curiosity, trigger emotions, and ultimately guide potential customers down the conversion funnel.

Performance creative can benefit early-stage brands, scaleups, and more established brands. How? Well, you have come to the right place to learn more 👇

• If you are an early-stage brand, you can use performance creative to invest in your brand development and validate your value props.
• If you are a scaleup, you can use performance creative to build on those brand learnings and test new ways to be competitive.
• If you are a more established brand, you can use performance creative to maximize your paid media results and drive directional growth for your business.

Understanding the Impact of Performance Creative

Performance creative draws the right kind of attention to your brand. It plays a pivotal role in your growth strategy by accelerating brand awareness, customer engagement, and conversion rates. You may think, “But we already make creative for paid media campaigns. How is this approach different from what I’m already doing?” Here are a few differentiators between performance creative vs. a traditional creative approach within paid media campaigns:

In a nutshell, traditional ad creative is about creating big, beautiful assets to garner brand awareness and emotional connections, often with a broader audience and a focus on communicating a brand’s values and identity. Performance ad creative is laser-focused on achieving measurable results and driving immediate actions from the audience. It harnesses data-driven insights, optimization techniques, and strong CTAs to guide users through the funnel.

Finding the Ideal Timeline for Testing and Iterating

The right time for testing is always. And when you think you have learned all you can? Time to re-test. No one likes a stale strategy. 💁

Identifying the right timeline to test and iterate is dependent upon many variables, like your business goals, ideal customer profile, paid media budget, and channel mix.

What are your business goals and what are you hoping to achieve with your test? 

• Are you a B2B company looking to drive MQLs? Are you a fintech company looking to acquire new accounts? Are you an eCommerce business looking to drive purchases? 
• Are you hoping to validate value propositions? Uncover new ways to be competitive? Drive directional growth? This is where you’ll determine which metrics matter when trying to analyze your data and measure the effectiveness of your test.

Who is your ideal customer profile (ICP)? 

• Nailing down who you want to speak to will help you outline what your paid media channel mix should look like. To get the most out of your test, you want to focus your paid media budget on the channels where your customers are most likely to be active.

What is your paid media budget and channel mix?

• Last but not least, the logistics. Depending upon the variables above, you might want to allocate more of your budget towards PPC or maybe social channels.

Setting the Cadence of Testing and Iterating Strategies

Developing a solid testing structure is essential for achieving meaningful results in your performance creative. Here’s how to establish a clear framework:

• Clear Objectives: Begin by defining your specific objectives for testing. Whether you aim to increase conversions, enhance click-through rates, or optimize ad spend, having well-defined goals is paramount.
• Budget Allocation: Allocate the necessary resources and budget to support your testing efforts. This includes setting aside funds for creative production, ad spend, and any tools or platforms required for analysis.
• Testing Timelines: Determine the frequency at which you’ll conduct tests. Consider running A/B tests on a regular basis, such as monthly or quarterly, to maintain a consistent and data-driven approach to optimization. Your cadence will be determined by your budget, your goals, and the competitive landscape. 

Leveraging customer behavior insights and determining which metrics matter

Reading your data and selecting the right (i.e. most informative) metrics are key to data-driven decision-making in performance creative. Here’s how to do it effectively:

• Segmentation: Once you have customer profiles, segment your audience based on relevant criteria, such as age, location, or purchasing behavior. This segmentation allows for more personalized creative and messaging.
• Key Metrics: Identify the metrics that align with your testing objectives. Depending on your goals, these may include click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, return on ad spend (ROAS), or cost per acquisition (CPA). Choose the metrics that directly measure the success of your testing efforts.
• Data Analysis Tools: Invest in data analysis tools or platforms that help you collect, analyze, and interpret customer behavior data. Platforms like Google Analytics, social media insights, or ad campaign management tools can provide valuable insights for informed decision-making.

By following these steps, you can effectively structure your testing approach and make data-driven decisions based on customer insights and relevant metrics.

Best practices for optimizing campaigns

Utilizing A/B testing and multivariate testing methods

What is the most important part of a test? The results! But how do you get the most accurate results that tell the full story? Isolating variables. Regardless of if we’re looking to validate messaging or drive directional growth, we will look at the same key variables – and these must remain equal to isolate the messaging: 

• Same Budget and Bidding Strategy: To keep your tests consistent, allocate the same budget and employ an identical bidding strategy across the variables you’re assessing. This ensures that the financial aspects do not introduce confounding factors into your analysis.
• Same Key Audiences: Identical audience segmentation is crucial. Ensure that the audience groups you’re testing your creative against are based on the same criteria. This way, you’re comparing apples to apples and not introducing bias due to audience differences.
• Same Length of Time Tested: To prevent time-related discrepancies, run your tests for the same duration. If one test runs longer than another, you risk introducing temporal factors that could skew your results.

Applying testing results to refine campaigns

Once you’ve meticulously conducted your A/B and multivariate tests and obtained accurate results, it’s time to apply these findings to refine your campaigns. This step is where the magic happens as you translate insights into action:

• Optimize Creative Assets: Use the results to refine and enhance your creative assets. Whether it’s tweaking ad copy, adjusting visuals, or experimenting with different CTAs, the data should inform your creative decisions.
• Budget Reallocation: Based on the performance data, consider reallocating your budget to the high-performing variants. This ensures that your financial resources are channeled effectively towards the best-performing elements.
• Iterative Testing: The learning process never truly ends. Continue to iterate, refine, and test new creative variations. The insights gained from previous tests should guide your ongoing campaign optimization efforts.
• Scale Success: If certain elements consistently outperform others, consider scaling those elements across your campaigns. Replicating successful strategies ensures consistent growth and results.

By incorporating these best practices into your campaign optimization process, you’ll not only achieve more robust results but also maintain a competitive edge in the dynamic landscape of performance creative.

Creative Testing in Action

To gain deeper insights into our creative performance, we made a critical adjustment to the way we flighted creative for an e-commerce partner. We isolated our creative testing campaigns and introduced a dedicated traffic campaign focused on driving users to their site. This seemingly minor change had a significant impact.

By isolating our creative testing in this controlled environment, we’ve maintained the strength of broader campaigns while gathering vital intent-based click data. This data empowered us to make more informed creative decisions that resonate better with our audience–in the right place at the right time.

Build on validated value props and test new ways to be competitive

For one of our bookkeeping partners, we had historically run brand campaigns on LinkedIn, but we were looking to level this up to capture quality leads. To do this, we wanted to confidently go into production for Document Ads with valuable ideas for content. 

We put together a multi-step testing strategy to leverage the learnings to date:

• Step 1 – Paid Media: Pull a historical creative analysis that focused on the themes of the top performing ad creative 
• Step 2 – Creative: Outline a creative testing framework and produce the creative assets

Here is how the assets came to life in concept form: Xendoo: July 2023 Social Ad Creative

• Step 3 – Paid Media: Launch the new assets in a campaign that answers the question of which content themes are the most engaging
  • In order to get an understanding of the most engaging content themes, we set up a campaign that optimized for engagement and allowed each creative theme to receive the same amount of spend so that we had an accurate read on which theme was the most engaging.
• Step 4 – Paid Media: Evaluate the results with a new creative analysis
  • Since we were optimizing for engagement, we looked at metrics, like cost per click, click-thru rate and time on site. Since we were able to spend an equal amount on each creative theme, we were able to definitively say that Educational / Informational and Founder / CEO themes were the most engaging – Specifically, “Top Reasons You Shouldn’t Wait to Catch Up on Bookkeeping in 2023” and “Top Accounting Tips for New Founders & CEOs”.
• Step 5 – Creative: Use these findings to determine the top two topics for Document Ad content development 
  • We utilized these learnings to produce two key pieces of content:
    • 2023 End of Year Checklist Tax for CEOs and Founders 
    • Top Reasons You Shouldn’t Wait to Catch Up on Bookkeeping in 2023
  • And built upon this by creating three variations of each – totaling six PDFs to test with the Document Ads campaign type on LinkedIn. 

Our journey continues as we aim to maximize paid media results and drive directional growth. The insights gained from this comprehensive testing approach provide the stepping stones for our future tests, ensuring we remain at the forefront of innovation and audience engagement. Stay tuned for the exciting developments ahead!

Conclusion

Phew! There are so many variables that go into thoughtful performance creative, data-driven testing strategies and more importantly how these two come together to maximize paid media campaigns. 

To simplify: Data + Creative = BFFs when it comes to testing, iterating, and scaling performance. Got questions on how we can help your brand leverage testing with performance creative? Hit us up – Our team of creative and paid media experts have the skills and experience needed to supercharge your campaigns.  

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 Performance Creative: What is the Ideal Timeline and Cadence of Testing and Iterating? appeared first on Tuff.

Facebook recently surpassed a monumental 3 billion individual users in 2023. In the past year, the advertising platform has undergone a series of transformations, ranging from subtle refinements in the Ads Manager interface to more substantial overhauls, such as the revamping of their campaign objectives. Whether the changes are small or large, Facebook consistently adapts its advertising platform to remain at the forefront of innovation. 

Drawing from our experience of these changes over the years, Tuff is here to equip you with the insights and strategies needed to navigate the forthcoming year.

Welcome to the 2024 Facebook Advertising Guide, where we delve into the ever-shifting realm of Facebook advertising and provide you with a glimpse of the strategies that will define the year ahead.

Facebook Ads Landscape in 2024

A Bird’s Eye View: How Facebook Ads Have Transformed

Facebook is constantly evolving many aspects of its advertising platform–from smaller changes like elements of the Ads Manager interface to larger changes like removing certain targeting options or introducing new placement features. Over just the past three years, we’ve encountered changes that have made a serious difference on the platform, such as:

• The switch to standard events and Aggregated Event Measurement with the release of Apple’s iOS 14.5 in early 2021
• The restriction of viewing ad metric reporting limited to the preceding 37 months
• The removal of several detailed targeting options including sensitive options referencing health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation
• The introduction of Facebook/Instagram Reels, a new video-first format

In addition to these specific changes, Facebook has also been moving to Meta Advantage products. These tools automate certain aspects of your ad campaigns, making the most of AI to optimize the value of your advertising investments and the visibility your ads receive.. Advantage+ placements replaced Automatic Placements; Advantage+ campaign budget replaced Campaign Budget Optimization; Advantage+ catalog ads replaced Dynamic Ads; Advantage+ detailed targeting replaced detailed targeting expansion. And those are only a few of the ways Facebook is moving toward automatic options. 

Key Trends and Predictions: What Marketers Can Anticipate

Facebook has already started announcing other changes rolling out next year, including simplified campaign objectives, which will be introduced in early 2024. While Facebook has updated its campaign objectives before, this is significant because they will streamline the existing eleven objectives into six new ones: sales, leads, engagement, app promotion, traffic, and awareness. Some of the objectives that are being phased out will become optimization tactics that you can select within the new objectives.

Marketers can anticipate Facebook to keep moving toward a more user-friendly ads platform, one that includes more AI-related features. The Advantage products have given us a taste of how AI can be of use on the platform, but Facebook is also beginning to release generative AI-powered features for ad creatives that will be fully rolled out in 2024. The intent is for these features to “unlock a new era of creativity that maximizes the productivity, personalization and performance for all advertisers.” Put simply – Facebook is jumping on the capabilities of AI to make life easier for advertisers. They aim to be the go-to platform for those looking to promote their products or services.

The New Normal: Ad Costs, Competition, and User Behavior

You’re probably asking yourself, “How much do Facebook Ads cost?” or “How will I stay competitive?” These are great questions, and we’ll provide some guidance throughout this article.

At Tuff, we analyze performance data from all of our partners every quarter to create updated benchmarks of what we’re seeing across industries. Here is the latest data we’ve found:

2024 Facebook Advertising Benchmarks by Objective

2024 Facebook Advertising Benchmarks by Industry

With competition being fiercer than ever, it’s important to come to the table (the Facebook table) with fresh new ways to get in front of your target audience. New automatic and generative AI features in-platform are making advertisers feel more confident with advertising on Facebook by saving time and resources. 

Ready to keep diving into the nitty-gritty of what you can expect from Facebook Ads in 2024? 

Granular Facebook Targeting

2024’s Advanced Targeting Options

There are a multitude of targeting options available on Meta. You can drill down on your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by location targeting and detailed targeting. Digging into what these options entail… 

• Location Targeting: This includes the ability to target users by their country, region or city (or have recently visited). 
• Detailed Targeting: This is comprised of age ranges, genders, languages, demographics, interests, behaviors, and custom audiences.
  • Age Ranges: Users ranging from 13-65+
  • Genders: Women, men, or people of all genders
  • Languages: Specific languages to accommodate localization strategies
  • Demographics: Education, employment, household, and lifestyle details
  • Interests: Interests, activities, the Pages they have liked, and closely related topics
  • Behaviors: Purchase behaviors or intents, device usage, and more
  • Custom Audiences: Users who have already shown an interest in your business or product – You can choose from your owned sources (website data, app activities, catalogs, customer lists, offline activities) or from Meta sources (video engagement, lead forms, instant experiences, shopping, FB/IG accounts, events, on-Facebook listings)
    • Pssst, custom audiences are the sources that lookalike audiences are created from!

Let’s go a step beyond what Meta offers on paper and talk through how you might get creative and put these into use in a campaign for your business. 

Beating the Competition: Leveraging Unique Targeting Strategies

There are many components of a successful Meta campaign. Your targeting strategy is a huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to getting in front of the right audience.

At the end of the day, you could be optimizing your campaign for the right objective and have the best creative assets – But if you’re not targeting the right audience, you’re never going to see the results you want.

Let’s chat through how you might use unique targeting strategies to get in front of the right audiences and beat your competitors. 

Prospecting

• Interests and behaviors
  • Instead of targeting: Health and wellness interests and engaged shoppers behaviors
  • Think: Health and wellness interests narrowed by engaged shoppers behaviors
• Lookalike audiences 
  • Instead of targeting: LAL off of past purchasers
  • Think: LAL off of past purchasers with a higher-than-average product price 

By implementing these modifications in your prospecting strategy, you can enhance your chances of reaching audiences with a stronger interest in your products or services and increase the potential for conversions.

Retargeting

• Custom audiences – Your sources
  • Instead of targeting: Website visitors
  • Think: Website visitors of a specific landing page with a frequency of 2+
• Custom audiences – Meta sources
  • Instead of targeting: All video viewers
  • Think: People who have either completed or viewed at least 15 seconds of videos in a specific prospecting campaign

These improvements mean you can optimize your ad campaigns to reach users who have demonstrated a higher level of engagement and interest in your brand, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

By drilling down more specifically on these targeting options, you should be able to:

• Allocate your ad dollars towards the most qualified users
• Increase your ad frequency, brand awareness and recall
• Pair specific creative messages and assets with specific audiences
• Increase conversions, improve CPAs and strengthen CVRs

Transitioning to the next section, we’ve covered the significance of unique targeting strategies and the optimal management of ad frequency. Now, let’s dive into setting up a robust testing framework, followed by measuring and scaling the results of your Facebook ad campaigns for success in 2024.

Optimizing Your Facebook Ad Campaigns

Pro Tips: Effective Use of Facebook Pixel in 2024

As you begin your journey with Facebook advertising, one of the first things to do is to set up a pixel in your ad account and place it on your website or app.

You can do this in a few ways, such as placing it via a tag manager, like Google Tag Manager, or placing it directly in the header of your website. You can make sure that it’s firing effectively on your website by using Preview mode of Google Tag Manager or installing the Meta Pixel Helper Chrome extension. Facebook also offers a Testing Tool you can utilize in Events Manager!

Once your pixel is placed, you can begin setting up either standard events or custom conversions (events) to track specific actions happening on your site, such as page views, add to carts, purchases, leads, or registrations completed. 

Facebook offers a default list of standard events that you can readily configure to match activities on your website. . But if the action you want to track isn’t on that list, you have the option to create custom events, such as tracking button clicks, form submissions, or interactions with unique features.

We may find advertisers beginning to utilize these custom events even more in 2024 now that Facebook no longer requires you to lean on the standard events and prioritize them to your pixel (this was a process that was rolled out when iOS 14.5 was released a few years ago). 

After your pixel is correctly placed and events are configured, you can start gathering data about visitors coming from your ads and monitor their activities on your website. You can also startbucketing them into your retargeting audience to serve ads to them again later. 

Ad Frequency Matters: Striking the Perfect Balance

Facebook’s ad frequency metric refers to the average number of times a particular ad is shown to a unique user within the timeframe you’re looking at in Ads Manager. TLDR – the amount of times someone is seeing the exact same ad of yours. And while showing the same ad to the same user is a good thing and necessary to break through the noise, it can also be a negative thing if your ad frequency is too high. Ad fatigue happens when individuals encounter an ad so often that they begin to ignore it and simply pass it by without paying much attention.

If your ad frequency is too low, it can result in fewer conversions and a higher CPA because people don’t see your ad often enough to generate interest and take action. Conversely, having a too high ad frequency can lead to a lower click-through rate because some people might not be interested in clicking, despite repeatedly seeing your ad, resulting in more impressions but fewer clicks.

Our general guideline is to maintain an ad frequency between 1 and 6.

The ideal frequency depends on several key factors:

• Number of Ads: If you’re running multiple ads in your campaign, you’ll have a more extensive pool of creatives to show to your audience. This naturally keeps individual ad frequencies from becoming excessively high.
• Audience Size: In smaller audiences, there are fewer people to show your ads to, so the same individuals are more likely to see them repeatedly, potentially leading to a higher frequency.
• Budget: A higher budget enables you to generate more impressions, which can, in turn, lead to a higher frequency.
• Creative Quality: If your creative content is of low quality or hasn’t been updated in a while, this can result in a higher frequency, contributing to ad fatigue.

Facebook used to offer a cap that you could set for frequency to limit the number of times the same user saw your ad, but this feature is no longer available. We recommend you monitor this metric on your campaigns and individual ads closely, and if you find that your frequency is approaching the high end of the recommended range, you make optimizations such as refreshing your creative, layering more ads in, expanding your audience, or adjusting your budget.

Testing Framework

Now that we’ve talked about some of the most important components of a successful campaign, let’s dive into how to set up a solid testing framework to get the results you’re looking for.

To get the most out of all of your tests, it’s important to isolate variables. Whether you’re testing campaign objectives, bid strategies, audiences, messaging options, creative assets, different calls-to-action, or landing pages, it’s crucial to focus your attention on one to get the cleanest and most accurate results.

If you want to determine which campaign objectives are best for your business, you might structure a test like:

• ⭐ Optimize for different campaign objectives ⭐
• Allocate the same budget and bidding strategy
• Use the same key audiences
• Run for the same length of time
• Test the same creative assets, messaging or CTAs

If you want to determine which key audiences are best for your business, you might structure a test like:

• Optimize for the same campaign objective
• Allocate the same budget and bidding strategy
• ⭐ Test different key audiences and tailored creative / messaging ⭐
• Run for the same length of time

If you want to determine which creative is best for your business, you might structure a test like:

• Optimize for the same campaign objective
• Allocate the same budget and bidding strategy
• Use the same key audiences
• Run for the same length of time
• ⭐ Test different creative assets, messaging or CTAs ⭐

Logistically, you can use Meta’s A/B testing functionality in-platform to minimize competition (against yourself!) – Specifically if you’re testing audiences.

You’re not limited to just an A/B test – You can test up to five campaigns or up to five ad sets against one another. If you want to test different ad designs or messaging, it’s a good idea to separate this process into different ad sets. This allows you to focus on the most important groups of people, making sure you get the most value out of your advertising budget.

Something like this: 

This structure ensures you’re focusing on the variations between creative vs. grouping them altogether in one ad set and having the algorithm dedicate all of the budget toward one variation. 

Analytics: Measuring and Scaling

Choosing how to optimize your campaigns successfully is arguably the most important piece of the puzzle – Measuring your results success rate and scaling what worked. If something’s working for your brand, you want to be able to replicate it, iterate upon it, and continue to test and learn new things (the cycle never ends!). 

Starting with measuring results –  We typically think about campaigns in two buckets:

• Brand – Building your brand, whether that is with awareness or recall
• Performance – Driving specific results 

With brand campaigns, we’re focused on top- and mid-funnel metrics like impressions, CPM, landing page views, cost per landing page views (CPLPV), click-through rates (CTR), ThruPlays, ThruPlay Rates, and ad frequency. Whereas, with performance campaigns, we’re focused more so on bottom-funnel metrics like conversion volume, cost per conversion, conversion rate, return on ad spend (ROAS), and revenue.

Once you’ve determined what works, you’ll get to work on scaling it. For scaling, we also think about this in two buckets: Scaling vertically or horizontally.

• Vertically – Pump more money into what you know works, aka existing campaigns.
• Horizontally – Identify opportunities outside of what you know what works, aka new audiences or creative.

While vertical scaling may initially appear to be cost-effective, long-term success often comes from horizontal scaling, which opens up new opportunities and growth potential for your campaigns. With a strong foundation in measuring, optimizing, and scaling your campaigns, let’s now delve into the specific ad formats available in 2024, examining their advantages and disadvantages.

2024’s Facebook Ad Formats: Pros and Cons

Now, let’s dive into the world of Facebook ad formats in 2024. In the section below, we’ll break down the pros and cons of each format to help you make informed decisions about your advertising strategy. It’s all about finding the right fit for your business and making the most of your marketing efforts. Let’s get started!

The Future of Advertising on Facebook

Facebook is always introducing new features to continue growing and engaging its user base. There are countless opportunities for all different brands to show up strategically, build their brand presence, and ultimately increase profitability. 

If you’re wondering where to start, what to focus on, or what your advertising journey might look like on Facebook, then hit us up! Our team of paid social experts is here to assist you. We have the experience, expertise, and creative chops to supercharge your campaigns. We’ll ensure your brand stands out amidst the digital noise.

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 2024 Facebook Advertising Guide 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.

In the new landscape of paid social advertising, most customer success representatives and account managers (whether they are at Meta, TikTok, or Snapchat) are pushing broad prospecting as the new “meta” – pun intended. As a growth agency, we are approached from these representatives often, and historically speaking, advice from these representatives can be super hit and miss. They can generate some good recommendations here and there, but it’s always a good idea to validate their advice and make sure it aligns with the goals you’re trying to accomplish. In the post-iOS 14 paid social ecosystem, we’ve had ample opportunity to test this new strategy, and have created a list of general “do’s and don’ts” of broad prospecting to keep in mind. 

What is broad prospecting in paid social advertising? 

Broad prospecting, as we define it for this exercise, is the intentional effort of creating minimally constructed audiences. These audiences have very few parameters on them: maybe some loose demographic targeting, and a few interests or data points to reference to. These can get up to 10m+ in size, depending on the different parameters included, and are used predominantly on social ads. 

Why should I use broad targeting as a part of my paid social advertising strategy? 

Casting a wide net at the top of the funnel allows you to show your products to a variety of people that might not have otherwise seen them. The running hypothesis for leaning on broad prospecting as a strategy is that the pixels associated with your ad account are much, much smarter than the advertiser running the ads.

Ironic, right? 

The theory has some merit: a pixel associated with your ad account collects thousands of data points, and is constantly learning. We equate it to cast iron: the more data it collects, the more seasoned it becomes, and the better the result. The whole premise of machine learning depends on the pixel being smarter than what we can come up with manually. Every bid, every ad placement, every conversion feeds the pixel more information. In theory, each action creates a larger data subset for the pixel to continue to optimize, and get better. 

The do’s and don’ts of broad prospecting: 

Do: 

• Use a variety of  lookalikes
• Test various broad prospecting techniques
• Choose a conversion oriented objective 

Don’t: 

• Use broad prospecting for new ad accounts
• Optimize for in-platform events 
• Wait too long to make a change

The “Do’s” of Broad Prospecting:

Use Large Lookalikes: 

Lookalike audiences are a powerful way to reach new people in your potential conversion pool. Work smarter, not harder. By using data you already have access to (think: past purchasers, people who have visited your website, people who have engaged with your accounts, etc), you can strategically build lookalikes of this data. Once you pick the source for your lookalike audience, you’re able to go a step further and select the percentage (of lookalike) you want to use, ranging from 1% to 10%. We have seen some of the strongest performance for our eCommerce partners with combining a mix of percentages – Example: Targeting a 1%, 2%, 3%, 4% and 5% lookalike audiences. By combining different levels of intent, you’re able to more broadly target potential customers and maximize your brand’s exposure in one fell swoop.

Test Various Targeting Techniques:

Whether you are doing light demographic guardrails, implementing various interest or behavior based targeting, or using lookalike data for your broad prospecting, we say this: move fast, test fast, learn fast. It’s the motto of David, one of our Paid Social channel experts, and I say it daily. Isolate your variables, test things in a consistent manner, and apply your learnings to your next iteration. If you have a winning strategy, isolate it into its own campaign, and continue to use the test campaign  to try  new ideas and refine your broad prospecting strategy. By isolating new techniques into a test campaign, you’re able to work around pushing all of your campaigns back into the learning phase (which can sometimes negatively affect performance).

Choose a Conversion Oriented Objective

Don’t waste time and money optimizing for lead generation, or one of the other productive optimization strategies on Meta. For example, if you are an eCommerce store, optimize for purchases or add to carts! If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that the pixel delivers ads based on the objective and the selected conversion event. 

By choosing purchasers, you’re reaching an audience that is the most likely to purchase. If you’re optimizing to add to cart, you’re reaching an audience that is most likely to add a product to the cart. If you’re broad prospecting, adding a simple guardrail of a conversion-oriented objective gives the pixel enough guidance to find the right subset of users you should be targeting in addition to your other parameters. 

The “Don’ts” of Broad Prospecting:

Don’t Use Broad Prospecting for New Ad Accounts and Pixels:

The whole theory behind broad prospecting is that it uses machine learning to optimize and deliver your ads. If you have a brand new ad account, or pixel, then the machine doesn’t have enough information to create accurate and insightful learnings. We’ve mentioned “guardrails” a few times in this article: those guardrails serve the purpose of pointing the pixel in the right direction. If you have a brand new pixel without much data, there aren’t enough guardrails built in to deliver your ads effectively, and you’re better off manually targeting the audience you want to deliver ads to. 

Don’t Optimize for In-Platform Events 

Take for instance, lead generation ads as an example of an in-platform optimized event. In some instances these ads can be successful – But typically for highly specific goals paired with pretty narrow targeting, think retargeting people who have previously engaged with one of your leads ads. While these ads can be simple and require little effort from the user, they add a step to the process of being able to maximize the potential of this purchase intent. What do I mean by that? Well, when someone fills out your lead form then this data is typically collected in the platform. Once you have that data then you need to download the leads via Ads Manager or your Facebook Page. This seems simple enough, but generally speaking, attention spans are short. If someone is ready to convert, it’s best to capture the intent as instantaneously as possible. If you keep people waiting, the interest begins to wean off and leads might fall through the crack.

Don’t Try to Sell to Everyone

You may be speaking to a broad audience, but that doesn’t mean you should water down your message. We recommend using compelling creative that is user-generated to tell the story of your brand and why people should care. Hone in on those value propositions of your business, and test out different messaging. If you water down your message while broad prospecting, you won’t appeal strongly enough to anyone to get valuable insights for continued optimization. Pro-tip: Not sure what type of creative works best for your audience? Check this out!

Looking for help when it comes to paid social? 

Look no further. Whether it’s a kick-ass creative strategy, a need for structured testing, or guidance on how to find your target audience on paid social, we’re here to help. Let’s talk! 

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 The Do’s and Don’ts of Broad Prospecting appeared first on Tuff.

As a growth marketing agency, Tuff is always looking for new tools and tactics to continue to elevate our paid marketing efforts for our partners. In the Fall of 2021, Tuff began working with Black Crow, an AI tool that creates predictive audiences to allow marketers to scale their prospecting campaigns, and make their remarketing efforts more efficient.

Since implementing Black Crow across various partners, Tuff has managed over $1,000,000 in ad spend for Black Crow audiences for our ecommerce partners and has generated key takeaways on how to best leverage their AI marketing tool.  In this post, we’ll outline what we’ve learned and our recommendations if you’re looking to scale traffic and revenue with advanced targeting options for Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, and more. 

What are predictive audiences, anyways? 

Black Crow uses an artificial intelligence tool to score users in real-time based on their likelihood to buy. This score predicts the value of the user and allows marketers to bucket them on three tiers of purchase likelihood: high, medium, and low. High intent users are users who are most likely to purchase, and low intent users are those who are considered to be unlikely to purchase. 

This form of machine learning uses first-party data only, which helps marketers avoid the restrictions and limitations of third-party data enforced by iOS 14.5. The best part of predictive audiences, however, is that the more data that it generates and collects, the more efficient it gets – as we’ve seen with our various e-commerce partners at Tuff. 

How can I use predictive audiences in my paid acquisition efforts? 

There are two main ways you can incorporate predictive audiences into your paid marketing efforts. At Tuff, we often break our tactics on paid acquisition down into two main categories: prospecting, and retargeting. We use Black Crow for both types of targeting. 

For Prospecting Efforts: 

After installing Black Crow and letting it generate enough data to begin to use (usually within a week based on our experience, but it depends on traffic volume for your website to ultimately decide), you can create lookalike audiences of the high, medium, and low intent users. These lookalike audiences can be used to reach new users who match the characteristics of your most (and least!) likely audiences to purchase, and allows you to scale ad spend horizontally to new audiences without guessing what characteristics they contain. 

For Retargeting Efforts:

The majority of your audience that visits your website isn’t going to convert. Let’s face it- most websites have a bounce rate between 50-70%, meaning that between 50-70% of the traffic leaves the website within a minute without visiting a second page. Usually this rate is even higher for prospecting traffic. 

Since Black Crow allows marketers to use their predictive audiences to bucket users by intent – high, medium, and low, you can control your spend and efforts by the quality of users you’re targeting. It makes sense to focus on users who are more likely to convert, and then remarket education and engagement-based creative to less likely to convert users to increase their intent. These sorts of efficiencies free up additional spend for even more prospecting, increasing your overall marketing reach. 

Do predictive audiences work for eCommerce marketing?

In summary, YES.

After managing over $1 million in spend for Black Crow specific audiences, we can safely say that Black Crow is very effective in scaling prospecting efforts and making retargeting efforts more efficient. (And no we aren’t a partner with Black Crow and they didn’t ask us to write this post). 

So we answered the question that these Black Crow audiences do, in fact, work for ecommerce and that they’re effective. Now let’s answer the question of how effective? Let’s put our money where our mouth is. Since incorporating these audiences, we saw cost per purchase drop and our conversion rates jump across the board over the course of 90 days:  

• Prospecting = 48% decrease in CPS and a 55% increase in CVR
• Retargeting = 53% decrease in CPS and a 16% increase in CVR

Like a cast iron skillet, the more the pixel was used, the better our predictive audiences became (in both prospecting and retargeting). It stands to reason that predictive audiences refine the accuracy of their lookalike data, as well as create better predictive scores for a more refined user targeting experience the more it is used. 

Alongside these Black Crow audiences, we were running broader interest/behavior audiences and other retargeting audiences. To further put into perspective the effectiveness of Black Crow:

• Prospecting = 23% of total prospecting purchase volume came from two Black Crow audiences
• Retargeting = 58% of the total retargeting purchase volume came from three Black Crow audiences 

By utilizing Black Crow predictive audiences across different paid platforms, we were able to get a comprehensive look at the significant impact these audiences had (and are still having) on performance. 

What advertising channels can I use predictive audiences for? 

Any advertising channel that supports the use of first-party data should allow you to use predictive audiences as a part of your targeting efforts. At Tuff, we use Black Crow for a variety of paid acquisition channels, including: 

• Facebook (Meta)
• Instagram (Meta)
• TikTok
• Snapchat
• Pinterest
• Google Search (as an observation audience)
• Youtube

Ready to use predictive audiences in your ecommerce marketing strategy?

Want to unlock further ecommerce scale and efficiency, or learn more about how to leverage predictive audiences for your ecommerce scaleup? Let’s chat!

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 Do Predictive Audiences Work? We Managed $1.1M in Ad Spend for Black Crow Audiences to Find Out appeared first on Tuff.

Author’s Note: This post was updated on March 13, 2023 with new links, data, TikTok best practices, insights, and resources. 

Diversifying your paid media channels is the name of the game when it comes to social advertising in 2023, especially as targeting options and campaign objectives expand across platforms. As the number of daily active users continues to increase with each passing day across platforms like TikTok, we are uncovering more and more opportunities for businesses in any industry to show up natively in-platform and find pockets of profitability. 

Translation: If your growth marketing agency is not testing TikTok, you are (probably) missing out.

TikTok is a platform where you can be successful with budgets as small as the minimum daily spends ($20-$50/day). If you want to spend more, the sky’s the limit for how much you can scale – 30.25% of the world’s total internet users are on TikTok, and there are a reported 1.53 billion active users. 

We have managed hundreds of thousands of dollars in TikTok spend for our clients across industries from eCommerce to higher education to B2B brands. We have seen a ton of success and growth opportunities on the channel, particularly for a partner that we have worked with since 2021, Sabio, an online coding bootcamp based in Los Angeles.

We have seen success on TikTok since day one when we launched – When we first kicked off and started gaining traction from an application perspective, we actually had to pause our campaigns on this platform because there were too many leads for their sales team to work. You love to see it 🤓

Since this was a new platform for us to test in 2021, we started with a small budget to ensure TikTok was going to be effective, and we gradually ramped up spend over a three month period (and it continued all the way to 2023 from then). Numbers speak louder than words in most growth marketing conversations so this blog post aims to tell the story and evolution of Sabio’s campaigns on TikTok [with data!]. 

A little bit of background so these numbers have context: 

• With Sabio being an online coding bootcamp, our primary goal is to grow the number of qualified applications submitted on their site. 
• Our primary KPI is Cost Per Application (CPA). 
• We’ve run ads on 8 different paid media channels for Sabio – Reddit, Google, Bing, Quora, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok! Having access to this much data across channels has been really helpful when comparing channel performance and understanding the level of impact each platform has.

The CPA on TikTok was 66% lower than the CPA on other paid acquisition channels.

When we first launched TikTok, we saw immediate success, with CPAs consistently in the $11-$16 range over the first few months. With the level of volume and affordability of these leads, we were all slightly skeptical over the quality of applicants.

To help keep a pulse on lead quality, we worked closely with the Sabio sales team to validate how many TikTok applications were actually attending info sessions and enrolling in bootcamp programs. By doing this, we were able to identify that TikTok’s applications were slightly less qualified compared to Facebook and Instagram, but the CPA was still averaging 66% lower than the blended CPA across paid media so it still made sense to include TikTok in the media mix.

Zooming out to understand the impact from a strictly-social perspective, moving from 2021 → 2022:

• TikTok: We scaled our spend by 180% and saw applications increase by 204%. Our cost per application only increased by $2.
• Facebook and Instagram: We increased our spend by 2% and saw applications increase respectively by 2%. Our cost per application remained the same.

By testing TikTok, validating the lead quality and staying close to the funnel flow with the Sabio sales team, we were able to significantly scale spend, but more importantly, applications increased more than our spend with the CPA remaining steady.

Here are some of our biggest takeaways so far from TikTok:

High-Impact Creative is Necessary

If you want to see success on TikTok, you have to make sure you are using creative assets that mimic the TikTok style that users expect to see when they doom scroll their For You Page.

For Sabio specifically, they have just south of 12,000 organic followers and almost 160k likes on their videos. They get anywhere from 200 to 5,000 views per video so we opted for Spark ads when they became available in July 2021. This ad format allows you to elevate your organic content in paid campaigns.

Not only were we able to utilize existing content but also we were able to leverage this content to increase our last-click applications and organic engagement. Take a look at two videos we used in paid campaigns vs. two we did not (you’ll see the difference in views in the left hand corner):

Our top-performing ads played off of some of TikTok’s most viral video and sound trends, with text overlays that speak to Sabio’s value props. Blending the brand’s identity across organic and paid social helped us establish credibility and ultimately increase applications. 

BUT if posting to TikTok everyday isn’t right for you, do not let it deter you! TikTok ads can still work for you if your audience is on the channel. You can still create strong video ads without necessarily repurposing organic posts. Check out this article where we talk about some of our best creative tips for TikTok!

But is your audience on TikTok?

TikTok’s usage has grown significantly since its initial launch in 2016 – It is now the sixth most popular social media platform in the world.

Before you add TikTok to your mix of social advertising channels, take a beat and ask yourself if your audience is ACTUALLY an active TikTok user, or if this is a shiny new(er) toy and you’re jumping in without a real strategy. 

Sabio’s target audience is perfect for TikTok: 18-30 year olds who tend to be early adopters of tech and are looking for change in their lives. Specifically, we targeted:

• Users interested in Gaming (top performer!)
• Users interested in Tech (top performer!)
• Users interested in Music
• Users interested in Culture/Education

Campaign Setup

Whenever we test new social channels, one of the first things we test is campaign optimizations. For Sabio’s TikTok campaigns, we tested conversion vs. traffic. 

While our traffic campaigns had insanely low CPCs (like $0.08 vs. $1.84 with conversion campaigns), the quality was not there. The conversion rates were abysmal, and we quickly decided that conversion campaigns were the clear winner. 

Note: That seems super intuitive, but you’d be surprised how many times we see traffic campaigns crush it on some of these secondary social channels like TikTok, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Sometimes it is as simple as driving more (qualified) traffic to the site = more conversion. But not always. Testing is necessary!

Craving some high level tips and considerations for a successful TIkTok campaign no matter the industry? Keep reading!

• Ensure you have a clear goal to track performance towards and tag your website accordingly
• Explore the interests, behaviors and demographics available for targeting your ideal customer and build broad but highly qualified audiences from this research
• Design creative for TikTok in-mind – Here are some more specific best practices written by our Creative Team Lead, Elle
• Consider using ad formats native to the platform, like Spark ads to elevate pre-existing organic content

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for spending a few minutes reading through our TikTok endeavors with Sabio. We hope you picked up a thing or two to test. 

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 How We Achieved a 12x ROAS on TikTok appeared first on Tuff.

Author’s Note: This post was originally published in 2021. It has since been updated!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen how TikTok has changed the social media game. What once started as a quirky music platform for preteens quickly – and I mean QUICKLY – climbed the ladder to become one of the most popular social media apps.

Here are the TikTok facts:

• TikTok has over one billion monthly active users.
• TikTok ads reach 17.9% of all internet users age 18+. 
• 67% of users say TIkTok inspires them to shop – even when they weren’t planning to do so.
• TikTok was the most downloaded app of 2021, with 656 million downloads. That’s over 100 million downloads more than the runner-up, Instagram, which was downloaded 5445 million times last year.
• TikTok is the top app for consumer spend, increasing by 77% in 2021, with $2.3 billion dollars in the app.

Aside from the massive number of monthly active users and year over year growth, TikTok has fundamentally changed how we consume video content online, and other social media giants are emulating that same style – we see you Instagram Reels. We want it vertical, we want the cleverly-edited music to add umph, and we want it short and sweet.

Pair TikTok’s insane growth with the need to diversify channel mix due to iOS14 and updates to Facebook advertising, and you get one big question.

How can I use TikTok ads to scale up my social presence and grow my business?

We’re so glad you asked! Almost all of our partners at Tuff are running ads on TikTok – or are trying to figure out how they can. We’ve found that success is determined less by the industry of your business and more by the video creative you have + ability to produce new video creative.

Check out these 5 tips for successfully launching your first TikTok campaign! 👇

1. Set Up Your TikTok Pixel and Events

Just like every other social channel, TikTok also has an events manager tool that allows you to track app events and activity on your website with a piece of code. The TikTok pixel has the ability to integrate with a variety of partners, namely Shopify and Google Tag Manager, for easy setup. TikTok also  provides the option to manually install the pixel in the header of your website.

Once the pixel’s base code is installed on your site, you’ll be prompted to set the event rules using either Standard Mode or Developer Mode. The method you choose is based on your business and conversion path – We’ve set up events both ways successfully! TikTok’s Standard Mode is most similar to Facebook’s Event Setup Tool (if you’re familiar with that).

2. Build Custom Audiences and Create Lookalikes From Them

Once you have your pixel installed, take a second to create custom audiences based on website, app activity and your customer lists. These typically take a day or so to populate. Once your custom audience reaches a minimum of 1,000 people, you can then  create lookalike audiences.

These lookalikes will come in handy when you’re creating target audiences for prospecting campaigns, and you’ll be able to exclude some of your custom audiences from ad groups to prevent waste and minimize audience overlap.

3. Create Target Audiences that Aren’t Too Small

We have tested A LOT on TikTok from completely broad targeting relying on the advanced algorithm to find qualified users to refined retargeting audiences leaning on our website data and or customer lists, and a takeaway that we have seen apply to most of our partners is that broader is better. 

Maybe not completely broad – But grouping together relevant interests, interactions with specific videos, creators and hashtags to make one, large audience has consistently generated the strongest and most efficient results for us. This even applies to retargeting campaigns – Pairing website visitors with video viewers with cart abandoners vs. isolating these in their own ad sets. Larger audiences (caveat: with relevant targeting) typically yield lower costs per results.

Here are a few additional tips on audience targeting that we’ve learned the hard way on TikTok:

• Ditch the age targeting. We know that most TikTok users are under the age of 35. If your target audience’s age range is above that, TikTok might not be the right channel for you anyway. Targeting by age can narrow your audience size without improving results.
• Watch for ad fatigue. Smaller audiences mean that your frequency gets higher, faster. You’ll want to keep an eye on your results – if you see costs start to increase, try rotating in new creative first. TikTok recommends updating creative every 2-4 weeks and keeping 3-5 assets in each ad group.
• Narrow your placements to TikTok only if you want to utilize Spark ads – TIkTok’s native ad format that allows you to leverage organic content to publish as an ad. Spark ads allow you to swap out creative more regularly based on popular trends and organic engagement.

4. Develop Video Ads Made With TikTok Trends in Mind

One more time for the people in the back (and because this is so, so important). You’re interrupting someone’s feed with a brand ad that the user didn’t ask for, but got anyway. Your content should be captivating, designed with TikTok consumption in mind, and concise – Oh and sound! TikTok is a sound-on optimized platform and requires a thumb-stopping music or voice overs.

Based on the campaign results we’ve seen so far for our clients, here are a few TikTok ad creative tips to help get you started:

• Keep it short and sweet. Our best ads have been 15-20 seconds long.
• Make sure your product is at the forefront of your creative, ideally showing how it works.
• Strategically test creative so that you can test and learn what works for your brand. Pinpoint a few themes and go to town! You want to make sure your videos differ so that you can draw meaningful insights as to what’s performing best. If they’re all similar, it’s hard to understand what type of content will yield the best results.
• Shoot your videos in a UGC-style fashion. Lofi is the name of the game – Making sure your creative does not feel overly polished is the best way to appear more natively in the platform and build brand authenticity.
• TikTok has a pretty strict ad approval process. Make sure you’re buttoned up and familiar with their advertising policies before you put your ads in review.

Peek here if you want to get some insight into what the top performing ads are on TikTok – You can filter by region, industry and campaign objective to get a look at how your competitors are advertising or here to read through  5 Tips for Making Great (and Cost Effective) Video Ad Creative from one of our seasoned creative team members, Elle!

5. Use UTMs to Track Attribution in Google Analytics

Like any social media platform, native attribution in TikTok’s ad manager using data from the pixel is often inflated compared to Google Analytics so we will typically use GA as our north star when defining success

To know what worked and what didn’t on TikTok, we recommend using an organized naming convention for your UTM parameters that will give you insight into how both the audience you’re targeting and the creative you’re running performed in Google Analytics.

Common TikTok Ads Questions

Q: How much does it cost to advertise on TikTok?
A: Currently, the minimum spend requirement on TikTok is $50/day. The campaigns we’ve run here at Tuff have had CPMs in the $4-$7 range. Naturally, performance varies based on the industry, your campaign optimization, audience targeting and creative, but we have seen more efficient CPCs and CPMs on TikTok than most other social platforms we run.

Q: Do I need an organic presence on TikTok to run ads on the channel?
A: Unlike other social channels, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., where you’re required to have a business page or profile built to run ads, you can run ads on TikTok without creating an organic channel. In fact, you access TikTok’s ads manager through a completely different login portal than where you’d login to an organic account.t.

Q: Is my audience on TikTok?
A: While the channel has grown exponentially over the last few years, , the demographic still skews younger compared to other channels, like Facebook. . That being said, eight new users join TikTok every second, with an average of 650,000 new users joining daily. Don’t rule out TikTok advertising yet!

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 Running a TikTok Ad Campaign: 5 Tips for a Successful Launch appeared first on Tuff.