Whether you want to sell more of your products or services or increase traffic to your store, we invite you to read this article to learn how to advertise on TikTok and the most important tips for success

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The popularity of the TikTok platform has increased unprecedentedly. This social network currently has approximately 800 million monthly active users around the world. It took Instagram 6 years and Facebook more than 4 years to achieve the level of growth that TikTok has achieved in the past three years. Are you thinking of using TikTok in your advertising plans?

In this article, we have prepared a detailed guide on how to advertise on TikTok, and how to do it step by step so that you achieve your goals in promoting your store.

If you do not have an online store yet, we invite you to launch into the world of E-commerce

Importance and advantages of advertising on TikTok

Before knowing how to advertise on TikTok, you must first know the importance and advantages of advertising on this platform. Here is a summary of the most important features that make TikTok a destination for marketers all over the world:

• TikTok is one of the most popular applications in recent years. TikTok has become an essential platform for younger users. If you are targeting this vital demographic, then the TikTok platform is the right place for you to promote your business.

• TikTok is a platform with a more diverse young audience, where everyone can be themselves and share their daily lives in a spontaneous and authentic way, which means you won't have to put much effort into content creation.

• The application continues to gain market share from the giants Facebook and Snapchat, so your presence on this platform has become more than necessary.

• TikTok is the fourth social network with the highest engagement rate per post, which gives us an idea of the potential it represents for increasing your brand awareness and sales.

• TikTok advertising campaigns can provide you with good returns on your ad spend. Placing your ads on TikTok will help you reach a vibrant young audience that loves great content and has good spending habits.

• The TikTok ad platform provides a powerful platform not just for large corporations, but even for small and medium-sized businesses to advertise to millions of people worldwide.

• The TikTok platform helps you boost brand awareness with over 61 minutes of average use per day.

• Before ads launched on the platform, TikTok users had already spent $50 million there, thanks to in-app purchases. Between May 2018 and April 2019, the TikTok platform enjoyed a massive 500% increase in app spending, reaching $7.4 billion.

• Video is the type of content that offers higher engagement rates from the audience and thus a better conversion rate than a post containing text and images. Therefore, TikTok is the right platform to promote your business as a platform based primarily on short videos ranging from 15 to 60 seconds.

Characteristics of advertising types on TikTok

• In TikTok Ads, you can display a full-screen ad, which appears when the user opens the app. This format, called "Brand Takeover," is especially effective in boosting your reputation, promoting a product, praising an exceptional offer, or highlighting a hashtag challenge.

This format is ephemeral; you can only use it for 24 hours, and then your ad turns into an In-Feed video.

•  In-Feed videos on the TikTok platform are similar to videos available on other social networks such as Facebook or Instagram. These 15-second videos appear in user feeds, and their goal is to increase your visibility, but also to encourage internet users to take action. In fact, in these clips, you can invite your followers to visit your online store, download an app, or learn more about a product.

• Hashtag challenges are probably the most popular TikTok ad format because they allow users to actively interact with brands by participating in the challenge.

The ad is available in the "Discover" tab of the app, encouraging users to participate in content creation challenges for 6 days.

Any brand can create a hashtag challenge on TikTok. This format creates engagement by integrating the brand's message with user-generated content. In order to boost the success of the challenge, brands use TikTok ads to sponsor the hashtag, but they also use influencers to generate buzz around the contest.

• TikTok TopView ads combine Brand Takeover and In-Feed video formats. They display when the app is opened and then turn into a video in the user's feed. This dynamic format enhances your message and allows you to present a video up to 60 seconds long with a Call to Action (CTA).

• Branded Effects; just like the augmented reality options offered by Instagram and Snapchat, TikTok's Branded Effects add 3D objects, filters, or masks to user videos. This format brings a deep level of user engagement, while allowing the community to indirectly promote your brand, as these filters are regularly used during hashtag challenges.

TikTok Ads Manager

To understand how to advertise on TikTok, it is essential to understand TikTok Ads Manager. TikTok’s self-service ad platform allows you to create, manage, and optimize your campaigns through TikTok Ads Manager, which has all the tools you need to create, launch, manage, and track your ad campaigns and understand how to advertise on TikTok. In this section, we will explore each part of TikTok Ads Manager, if you are new to the platform:

1-Dashboard

In the Dashboard, you'll get an overview of your TikTok ad data and can track performance changes. You'll find information on active campaigns, ad budget spend, ad performance over time, and more.

2-Campaigns Section

On the Campaigns page, you will be able to view and manage all campaigns, ad groups, and ads. By clicking the "Create" button, you can immediately create an ad.

  3-Library

In this section of TikTok Ads Manager, your ad assets are stored. Here you will find everything you need to create or manage ad assets, audiences, pixels, and more.

4-Reporting

In the Reporting section of TikTok Ads Manager, you will be able to create custom ad reports or generate reports using one of the built-in predefined templates. You can run reports quickly or schedule reports to be delivered whenever and wherever you need them.

How to Advertise on TikTok: 7 Essential Steps

If you are wondering how to advertise on TikTok, we have compiled this complete guide that will show you the steps you need to take to create ads on TikTok and get the desired results. Here are the most important steps to succeed in doing so:

1 . Choose your campaign goal accurately

The first step to understanding how to advertise on TikTok is to choose your goal carefully. TikTok Ads allow you to choose your campaign goal, to help you configure your ads to be as successful as possible. Here are the goals available on the platform for how to advertise on TikTok:

• Reach: To increase awareness of brand management.

• Traffic: To drive customers to your site.

• App Installs: To increase downloads of your application.

• Video Views: To increase views of your ads.

• Conversions: To convert visitors.

2. Activate TikTok Pixel

TikTok provides advertisers with a pixel to better track the actions of users who take action. Go to TikTok Ads Manager to define the events you want to track users for, which will help you calculate your return on ad spend.

3. Determine the Budget

In TikTok ads, there are two types of budgets: Lifetime and Daily. The first is the maximum amount you want to spend on a campaign or ad group, and your ads will be distributed in order to spend your budget as quickly as possible.

A daily budget is what you want to spend each day on your ads. You will be able to set the pace, duration, and advertising method for your campaign on TikTok.

  4. Choose the Right Placement

TikTok offers you two ways to run ads:

-  Automatic Placement: You leave it to TikTok to optimize the delivery of your ads on the platform and related applications (Vigo Video, Top Buzz, Buzz Video, and News Republic)

-  Select Placement: You choose the applications in which you want your ads to appear.

5. Target Audience Settings

As with other social networks, for your campaigns to succeed, target users by location, gender, age, language, interests, devices, and technologies used.

TikTok also allows you to target custom audiences. Using the pixel, you can target online store visitors, or people who downloaded your app or visited a specific page.

6. Understand Bidding Strategies

TikTok Ads Manager currently offers four different bidding methods for TikTok advertising prices:

• Cost Per Click (CPC): Here, ads are shown to users who are most likely to click on them. The goal is to get a cost per click as close as possible to the bid you set. It applies to Traffic, App Install, and Conversion goals.

• Optimized Cost Per Click (oCPC): The bid is calculated based on clicks on the landing page. It applies to App Install or Conversion goals.

• Cost Per Mille (CPM): The price charged per 1000 impressions, where ads are shown to get as many viewers as possible and reach as many users as possible within your budget. Use it if you want to increase the visibility of your brand or product.

• Cost Per View (CPV): This option allows you to set the price you are willing to pay for 1,000 views of 2 or 6 seconds of video.

7. Monitor Campaign Performance

After TikTok approves your ad campaign and starts running it, you can monitor its performance in your dashboard.

Use filters in campaign reports to dive deeper into your data. See how your ads are performing based on certain dimensions and metrics. These filters include ad creative, audience demographics, device type, and placement.

Important tips on how to advertise on TikTok

We offer these five additional tips on how to advertise on TikTok, in order for you to succeed in your advertising campaigns, before, during, and after the campaigns:

Needs Analysis

To start a successful ad content strategy on the TikTok platform, it is essential to first analyze your current presence on the web, analyze your needs for advertising campaigns, and learn how to advertise on TikTok.

Define your target audience accurately

As part of the method of advertising on TikTok and before creating the campaign, it is necessary to identify your target audience and think about the best way to reach them. It will be necessary to place ads taking into account the industry and the potential audience.

Choose the right TikTok ad format

The TikTok advertising platform, as mentioned above, offers a wide range of ad formats to target potential customers. Based on your advertising goals, you must choose the most impactful tool to distribute your campaigns, and this is the most prominent way to advertise on TikTok.

Be innovative

In the most important step, which is launching the ad campaign, devise the best way to make the ad attractive depending on the campaign type.

Track, evaluation, and optimization

TikTok includes measurement tools so you can track your ad performance. Similar to Facebook, TikTok uses a pixel to monitor your ad performance and measure results by tracking the behavior of visitors to your online store.

When the first results begin to appear, it is time to analyze the campaigns and study the click-through rate, impressions, and conversions of your potential customers. Once the evaluation is done, start developing solutions to further optimize the advertising strategy each time on the TikTok platform and learn how to advertise on TikTok.

Are TikTok Ads suitable for your online store?

TikTok is mostly suitable for most businesses. However, not all businesses will find success using it. It was created specifically for businesses looking for large, engaged audiences. The average engagement rate on TikTok is 29%. You will also be interested to know that 90% of TikTok users visit the app more than once a day, spending an average of nearly a minute per day on the app. This makes TikTok the best platform to engage with the audience.

If you have a product destined for the younger generation, you will likely perform well with TikTok ads. This is because 50% of TikTok’s global audience is under 34 years old and 26% are between 18 and 24 years old. However, there are still plenty of opportunities to reach different age groups.

If you have a product aimed at an international audience, advertising on TikTok is best for you. 

A Final Thought?

Brands have slowly started to integrate the TikTok platform into their advertising strategies, so there is still little competition, and now is the perfect time to learn how to advertise on TikTok to attract future consumers!

It is possible to give a real boost to your e-commerce store through TikTok ads, without the need to allocate huge budgets to it. The best way to advertise on TikTok for a successful TikTok ad campaign requires effective targeting, ad quality, and knowing the best way to advertise on TikTok.

On the Salla platform, we enable store owners to design effective advertising campaigns through innovative marketing tools and a marketing plan, including easy integration with TikTok Pixel.

Create your online store on Salla now and design the most powerful ads on TikTok!