Getting Started on TikTok

TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform in the world. According to the Verge, TikTok reached 2 billion downloads as of April 29, 2020. 

With that, what does it take to get included on this platform? And how does the platform work? Take a look and find out more:

Getting into the TikTok Ad Platform:

Currently, the TikTok ad platform is still in a beta phase. There are less than 25 agencies in the world that have access to the platform, and it takes whitelisting to be included. Luckily Slicedbread is one of these agencies.

Why the TikTok Ad Auction:

It is estimated that 40% of the users on TikTok are not on the Facebook or Instagram platform, allowing brands to reach an entirely new audience. In the past, the barrier of entry to TikTok has been that the cost to enter their old “reservation-based” ad platform has been too expensive for most users. These costs range from $25,000 for an in-feed video campaign to $240,000 for a one day Top View takeover.

As opposed to the reservation-based ad system, the TikTok ad auction has a much lower $100 daily minimum ($3,000 monthly minimum). This new system allows for many more advertisers to join TikTok (once they have been added by a TikTok authorized agency).

What to expect from the platform:

The biggest difference between the reservation-based system and the new auction platform is that the auction system can optimize for conversions. Much like we have seen with Facebook, the new TikTok auction platform focuses on daily budgets and optimizing for conversion events. 

Lifetime budgets and No-Limit continuous spending options are also available within the platform.

This platform works off of a series of pixels that are placed across the website and track anything from pageviews to cart views, to purchases. 

In terms of targeting, Tiktok allows for targeting of remarketing audiences, the creation of lookalike based audiences, and interest-based targeting. With this, you are able to prospect much like Facebook, although with a more limited set of options at this time. 

It is worthwhile to note that TikTok does not track revenue at this time, but it is slated for an upcoming release. For now, the system optimizes directly for purchase, and we focus on cost per acquisition.

Additional Advertising Objective Options:

In addition to Conversions, TikTok presets several different advertising objectives targetable within the platform. Reach, Traffic, App Installs, and Video Views are additional objectives advertisers can campaign for.

• 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.

Creative Considerations:

TikTok heavily leverages the use of UGC (User-Generated Content), and many advertisers are wary about starting on TikTok before having UGC. However, TikTok supports both 1:1 and 9:16 ratio video. Our suggestion has been to start with Facebook and Instagram Stories ads and then to transition to UGC style content as it comes through. 

The key here is to get onto TikTok as quickly as possible before it gets saturated with advertisers. 

Automated Creative Optimization

Creative content is huge within the platform. There is also an option to automatically generate combinations of your creative assets (images, videos, and ad texts), and deliver high-performing combinations.

You're busy, we know this. There is a lot to manage in your business. Employees, suppliers, cash flow, marketing, sales... It's a headache just thinking about it.

With "Automated Creative Optimization", you can upload images or videos, write some ad text, and select your call-to-action (CTA) buttons. TikTok’s system will then automatically combine your creative assets into multiple ads for your campaign. These ads get continuously explored, evaluated and optimized to find the optimal combination of variables. The system will then present the best creative to your target audience based on the tested combinations.

Diverse Apps for All Marketing Goals

Advertising on TikTok comes with several incentives.

For example, on TikTok Ads, you are able to access their family of apps, which covers multiple verticals, including entertainment, news, and content discovery apps. This enables you to find the users most suitable for your products based on your marketing goals. These are advertising platforms not available anywhere else.

Entertainment apps: TikTok, Vigo Video, Helo, Babe

News or content discovery apps: TopBuzz, BuzzVideo, NewsRepublic

Next Steps:

If you are ready to start TikTok ads, we would love to help! Just drop us a line.