565 Media

If your audience is primarily Gen Z and Millennials, TikTok is a great place to advertise. As the
latest mobile-first platform that’s allowing businesses to reach a massive audience, its users are
highly engaged. How engaged? According to Backlinko, the average TikTok user in the U.S. is
on the social platform for more than 30 minutes a day. And with an average session time of
more than 10 minutes, this is a prime opportunity for businesses to engage with a captive
audience – and generate significant results.

Why is TikTok such a valuable platform for marketers?

Over 800 million people use TikTok every month, making it the world’s fastest growing social
media platform. And about 70% of TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24. If that’s
your target demographic, running advertising and influencer marketing campaigns on this social
network are a no-brainer.

With an ads platform that’s still relatively young, much of the content is user-created and the
costs are still lower compared to Facebook or Google ad buys. Businesses can take advantage
of a lower barrier to entry – on both basic ad cost and video-production cost. On the flip side,
you’ll need to get creative to get the most out of your ad spend.

Before diving in and setting up your first TikTok campaign, there are a few additional
considerations to make. Any ad campaign is an investment, so make sure you’re going to get an
ROI before you get started.

Here’s what you need to know before you start an advertising campaign on TikTok.

Is your product or service the right fit for TikTok Ads?

Not all brands are going to be the best fit here. Businesses that are highly visual – fashion, food,
lifestyle and beauty brands, for example – usually perform better than B2B brands, which usually
have sales content that is far more complicated or text-heavy.

But that doesn’t mean that B2B companies can’t win here. To succeed with TikTok, regardless of
industry, you need to create a highly creative campaign that will appeal to users’ emotions and
sense of humor. Tap into what they’re already interested in – like pets, food or tech.

Even industries that are typically viewed as ‘less-than-flashy’, like banking or insurance or
enterprise software, have an opportunity to reframe their products and services in a way that’s
fun and unexpected.

TikTok rewards creative content

TikTok is growing so fast because it’s doing something different from other social media
platforms. It encourages people to express themselves in a more authentic, in-the-moment way.
People who watch these videos are more inclined to share them with others, making TikTok the
perfect tool for marketing your products and services.

The challenge is that TikTok is incredibly noisy, with hundreds of millions of videos being
uploaded every day. To stand out, you need to find a way to make your ads creative and
entertaining, so that they can grab people’s attention.
Here are some ways you can do this:

● Defy expectations. What do consumers think they know about your industry? How can
you present your business in a way that flips that on its head?

● Go niche. Don’t try to appeal to everyone – narrow down your audience and look for a
specific niche of users you want to reach. For example, you might want to target only
teenagers who live in a specific country or city. The ability to micro-target users can help
you to find an audience that is much more receptive to your message and brand.

● Go off-topic. Don’t limit your creativity to topics within your particular industry. Have fun
with memes, holidays, your teams’ interests. Show the faces behind the brand and
connect with a new audience in a meaningful way – even if it’s silly.

Influencer/Brand Takeover collaborations

Influencers can help get the word out about your brand on TikTok and increase its visibility in the
process. Be strategic with how you approach these influencers, though. Many of them have
strict guidelines that they require their sponsors to follow. Be sure to read over these guidelines
before contacting them with your proposal so that you can avoid any hiccups.

There can be huge benefits to pursuing these types of campaign collaborations. You’ll be
introduced to their audience – but you’ll also earn ‘trust through association’. By aligning your
brand with an influencer, they’re telling their audiences that your product or service is worth their
time and money.

Influencer campaigns can fast track your brand awareness, but it’s smart to experiment with
TikTok before diving into one. First, gain a clear idea of who your audience is, what content
they’re already engaging with and who they trust.

Track Success with your TiKTok Ads Campaign

Know your campaign goals before getting started. Whether you want to increase brand
awareness or drive new sales, tracking ad performance is an important piece of the puzzle. By
regularly checking in with your metrics, you’ll know when something isn’t working and adjust
accordingly.

Does video production quality matter?

This is one area of video campaigns that scare off a lot of would-be marketers. Historically,
video production has been an expensive endeavor requiring the hiring of a full crew and hours
invested in production and editing. Without deep pockets, it can be difficult – even impossible –
for small businesses and start-ups to adopt video in their marketing efforts.

The good news is that money is no longer a barrier to entry. In fact, the more Hollywood-quality
your ad is, the less likely it will be viewed as authentic. TikTok is about sharing your experiences
in a fun and light-hearted way – and the vast majority of content is filmed on a smartphone.

That said, you don’t have to make a video yourself — there are social marketing agencies that
specialize in creating TikTok ads.

Know your TikTok ad types

There are several different types of TikTok ads, each with their own pros and cons. For today,
we’ll focus on three of the most popular for businesses – TikTok’s In-Feed Ads, Top View Ads
and Spark Ads.

● In-Feed Ads
Shown inside the user’s ‘For You’ page, In-Feed ads blend into the user’s existing feed.
They’ll be seeing your ad while scrolling between videos from the accounts they already
follow. In-feed ads are excellent for engagement, since users can interact, comment and
share your ads with their followers.

● Top View Ads
A Top View ad is a branded 60-second vertical video spot — similar to Snapchat’s
Discovery format — that users see when they open the app. This type of ad will appear
at the top of your audience’s For You feed to grab their attention right away, but it will
only play sound if they tap on it.

● Spark Ads
Spark Ads offer marketers the ability to use organic posts or a TikTok creator’s organic
posts to drive greater brand awareness and engagement. This is an ideal choice if you
already have a library of existing content. (Because this ad format relies on content that’s
already created, it’s easier and faster to kick off a campaign.) Like other ad types, Spark
Ads drive excellent engagement, allowing users to comment, share and like posts. With
one tap, users can visit a brand’s profile, and marketers can include a CTA on their post
to drive conversions.

Overall, the best way to make TikTok ads work for your business is to plan carefully and to
create a clear strategy around your campaign. We believe that running a TikTok ad campaign
can be useful for businesses in achieving their goals – if it’s applied correctly. From minding the
ad format options, to providing high quality images and videos (and actually interacting with
users), a little forethought, creativity, and intentionality can go a long way. And hopefully, if you
decide TikTok is right for you, it can go even further.

There are many factors that make business-to-business (B2B) marketing a lot tougher than traditional advertising. The B2B market is much smaller, not only in the target audience but in the target search terms and ad placements as well. And many B2B sales leads have a high potential conversion value, so the existing competition is likely to be bidding much higher than for B2C ads. All of these factors add up to make B2B advertising a challenge for many businesses, especially startups and small businesses.

But where there are difficulties, so are there opportunities! From our experience as a performance-based advertising agency, we’ve identified a few key areas to keep in mind when managing a B2B targeted marketing campaign.

Understand your audience

It’s easiest to start with the basics. Who is your audience? What are they looking for? Where do they go to find the solution that your business offers them?

Once you have a basic understanding of your core audience, you can start to formulate a strategy to market your business to them. If your product or service is in demand, search ads or shopping ads might be a good starting point. If you offer something that is new or novel, or something that your target audience may not be aware of, consider platforms like social media or display ads, which allow you to target by audience rather than intent.

Once you have your advertising platforms selected, try to whittle down your targeting to exclude general consumers. For search ads, this might entail targeting keywords that only industry insiders would use, and adding negative keywords that general consumers might use. For display or video ads, this might mean targeting niche publications that only your target audience would be interested in. For social media platforms, are there any profiles that only your target audience would follow?

Once you have an understanding of your target audience, the search terms they use, the websites they visit, or the social media accounts that they read, you’ll have a much better chance at launching a well-targeted marketing campaign.

Use advanced audience targeting to avoid general consumers

Even when you have the basic audience defined, it is important to keep your targeting as narrow as possible. The B2B market is fairly small compared to B2C, so make sure to use these tips to avoid spending your ad budget on general consumers.

For search ads campaigns, regularly check your Search Terms reports to see exactly what queries you are paying for. If you have a broad match keyword that generates a ton of impressions but has a very low conversion rate or very high cost per conversion, it may be time to retire that keyword. At the very least, consider using the Search Terms report to identify negative keywords that you can use to narrow your targeting.

For display, video and social media advertising, consider your remarketing audiences. Ads that target only a remarketing audience eliminate the possibility of your ads reaching general consumers. If you have a limited ad budget, this option should be your first and primary targeting strategy. One of the drawbacks to this approach is that your ads will only reach users that have found you by other means, so if you don’t have a robust SEO strategy or an established email list, it is unlikely that you will have a remarketing list large enough to use.

Also, in addition to using remarketing audiences for display, video or social media placements, consider adding them to your search ads campaigns as well, with a positive bidding adjustment to incentivize the ads to favor those audiences.

Just as powerful as remarketing audiences are exclusion audiences. If you have proper goal conversion tracking in place, consider creating audience lists for your current customers and add them as an exclusion audience so that you don’t continue to target them with your ads. In addition, check to see if there are targeting options that would allow you to exclude general consumers. For example, LinkedIn Ads allows you to target users based on the company size that they work at. So if your business targets large Fortune 500 companies, you can add companies smaller than 50 employees as an exclusion audience.

Separate your conversions by lead quality

Goal conversion tracking is the key to identifying the ROI of your marketing campaigns. However, not all conversions will result in the same quality of sales lead. Email newsletter signups or gated content may be good for generating initial interest from potential leads, but a contact form submission or a call to the office are likely going to generate much more valuable leads for your business.

Once you have a list of the goal conversions that you want to track, assign a value for each one. Google has an excellent resource for calculating conversion values. We tend to use these values as a way of quantitatively prioritizing each goal conversion that you want to track.

From there, your advertising platform can do the rest. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and other major advertising platforms allow users to set conversion values and then optimize the campaign bidding settings to favor high value conversions over others. Using these settings, you can be sure that your ad spend is being allocated towards the highest value leads.

Lead Generation Ads

Over the past few years, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn, and Google Ads platforms have been experimenting with Lead Generation Ads. These are special elements within the ads themselves that allow for pop-up contact forms. That way, users scrolling through their newsfeeds or watching videos on YouTube can submit a lead without interrupting their browsing experience and no need to visit your website. Overall, it allows for a much lower barrier to entry than traditional digital advertising.

In addition to social media lead form ads and YouTube TrueView for Action Ads, Snapchat and Quora are beta testing lead generation ads. If your business relies on contact forms as its highest value goal conversion, lead generation ads are an easy recommendation.

Research the competition

Most B2B shoppers take some time to make a decision and convert to a sale. They typically have longer conversion windows and potential buyers have a higher average window of time for comparison shopping. What does your product or service offer that the competition does not?

Looking through the search results or your social media feed, does your competition have specific price points or service benefits that they highlight? Keep in mind that your potential customers are likely to see those sales pitches as well as yours.

Feeling Inspired?

Do you want to know more about our customer acquisition services at 565 Media? Have questions about general B2B advertising and strategy? Don’t hesitate to contact us or call (323) 902-7439. Our experts will come up with optimized ad campaigns tailored for your business.

If you’re looking to effectively and efficiently boost ROI with your marketing budget, 565 Media is your top choice. Simply connect with our on-demand team of full stack developers and start with a list of what problems you need solved. Our team specializes in developing customized, scaled marketing campaigns geared towards generating profitable leads and growing your business.

Category: PPC

How to Make TikTok Ads Work for Your Business