By now, nearly all of us have heard about TikTok. It is the 7th most used social media platform in the world with 689 million global active users as of January 2021.
The popular belief is that Gen Z makes up the majority of its users, but TikTok is steadily growing beyond this age demographic. The business side of TikTok is expanding pretty quickly too.
TikTok is known to be full of all kinds of challenges, funny videos and collabs – that is true, there is plenty of amazing creative content. It is the perfect place for your business to unleash creativity and generate valuable engagement.
In 2019 TikTok released its advertising platform – TikTok for Business and since then its growth has markedly increased.
Getting started with TikTok Ads Manager is pretty simple. Here’s how to start:
1. Create an account
Go to https://getstarted.tiktok.com/ and fill in all the necessary information to set up your business account.
2. Implement TikTok Pixel and set up conversion events
In order to optimize your campaigns for certain events such as page views, add to carts, sales, or app events such as installs, registrations, you need to set up TikTok Pixel and set up your conversion events. If you have experience with Facebook Ads Manager, this should sound familiar. It’s exactly the same as Facebook Pixel and Facebook events.
In order to complete this step, go to “Assets” ⇒ “Events” ⇒ “App events/Website Pixel”. The system will then guide you through the set-up. Working with a web/app developer will be much easier, but if not, there are instructions provided by TikTok on how to implement the Pixel yourself.
3. Create a campaign
After creating an account and setting up the TikTok Pixel go to the “Campaign” tab at the top of the page and then click the “create” button. What you will see after that is really similar to the Facebook Ads Manager layout.
Firstly, choose your advertising objective, depending on what you want to achieve with your campaign. There are five options to choose from:
- Reach – show your ad to the maximum number of people
- Traffic – send more people to a destination on your website or app
- App installs – get more people to install your app
- Video Views – get more people to view your video content
- Conversions – drive valuable actions on your website
Then give your campaign a name, and you’re set to go on to the next step.
4. Create an ad group
In this step, you first need to set up an ad group name – something that will be clear and descriptive for you. Then choose your placements and pick a URL you want to traffic your ads to along with the TikTok Pixel and the event you want to optimise for.
Now comes the time to set up your target audience. TikTok provides different options for targeting – demographics, interests, behaviour. It’s up to you how wide or narrow you want to go, since it depends on your target audience.
5. Set up budget and schedule
When setting up the budget for your ads, remember the minimum daily spend currently is 20 USD. With the budget set, pick the start date of your campaign and if necessary the end date as well. If needed, select a specific time that your ads will be active or choose to have them live at all times.
6. Bidding & tracking
When starting out with TikTok advertising, bidding is something you will need to test out. The Ads Manager provides you with a suggested bid, which if you don’t have a lot of data on how high your bid should be, then it’s definitely something you can start with. Afterwards, with time and analysis, you can adapt the bid to your needs.
Let’s move on to tracking. TikTok gives the option to add impression tracking URL as well as click tracking URL, just insert them in the correct field and you’re set.
7. Create ads
Before creating your ads, I recommend that you go through the quick guide of how TikTok ads are approved. This will prevent you from making some simple mistakes with ad creation.
Once you’re familiar with the ad approval guide, click the “single video” button, upload content you prepared earlier, add caption text and choose your CTA.
8. Launch campaign
Now that you are all set, you can hit publish and watch your ad drift off into the TikTok World once it is approved by TikTok.
As you can see, starting out with TikTok advertising isn’t so complicated. Of course there are certain things you’ll need to keep in mind such as:
- proper Pixel and conversion events set up
- choosing the correct target audience
- implementing the tracking
- writing compelling copy for your audience
Overall, the setup process is pretty straightforward.
The trickiest part is content creation. Your ads are like the cherry on top of the cake. They need to be eye-catching and engaging. They are pretty much the most important part of your TikTok campaign. So how can you create those types of videos? Well this definitely is a whole other topic, so stay tuned. We are coming back with more TikTok guides. But before that dive into the content production process we’ve talked about previously. It’s a great start to the topic!
Here at Monsoon we are open to all social media advertising, if you’re looking to expand your social media appearance, feel free to contact us. We’re keen on helping you with growing your business in different fields!
