Learn about TikTok ads to create high-quality promotions that resonate with your audience. Drive conversions and develop impactful campaigns.
Learn about TikTok ads to create high-quality promotions that resonate with your audience. Drive conversions and develop impactful campaigns.
You might reach TikTok users through trends and hashtags. But relying on the algorithm and users’ For You pages (FYPs) doesn't guarantee conversions.
Investing in TikTok ads gives you more control over who sees your content and when, rapidly expanding your visibility where it counts.
Learning how to advertise on TikTok optimizes your marketing efforts by pushing your content toward a relevant audience and tracking the success of your promotions. Here’s everything you need to know about what TikTok ads are and how to create a TikTok marketing campaign.
TikTok ads are promotional campaigns that brands and creators can pay for. These ads typically come as full-screen videos that appear as a user scrolls through their FYP, showing a sneak peek of what the account offers. Content creators might use TikTok ads to encourage potential followers to check out their accounts, while businesses show off their products or services for potential conversions.
On TikTok, you can invest in three main categories:
A single TikTok ad is a promotional video displaying a brand or business’s offerings. An example might be an ad showing clips of models applying mascara to drive traffic to a makeup brand’s website. Another could be a user-generated video reviewing that mascara for their following.
TikTok ad groups allow you to create categories for the ads you want certain market segments to see, whether that’s people in a certain location or those in a specific age group. This feature grants creators and businesses complete control over which ads appear for specific users, which means they can more effectively allocate their budgets and pay for ads where they’ll be most impactful.
If an outdoor recreational brand wanted to run TikTok advertising throughout the United States, they could create specific ads for viewers in different locations. This would allow them to market weather-appropriate clothing to customers in various climates, making each targeted ad more effective.
A TikTok campaign is an overarching marketing initiative. Within it, you can manage multiple ad groups simultaneously and measure their total impact across the entire platform. Although your ad groups might differ in terms of content type or audience, they should all collectively contribute to your campaign objective.
Aspect ratio, length and resolution can quickly determine whether your advertisement pops or flops. A squished video looks unprofessional, and one that’s too long or too short won’t catch users’ attention. Understanding the optimal technical specs helps you deliver content in the best format possible.
Here’s a breakdown of the basics:
TikTok offers various ad formats to bring your creative vision to life, no matter your message and objective. If you’re using TikTok for business, trying various strategies can help you measure what resonates with your audience most and leads to the conversions you’re looking for.
Account posting promoted or sponsored content needs to disclaim that in the caption, so your posts will say “Sponsored” across the bottom of the description. For influencers or user-generated content, hashtags like “#ad” or “#sponsored” might be the indicator that it’s paid marketing content, but those aren’t usually TikTok ads.
Here are several common types of TikTok ads to choose from:
Before creating an ad, ensure you’re using a business account and proceed to the TikTok Ads Manager. Keep in mind that if you want to manage multiple accounts running ads and have more than one person access your campaigns, you’ll need to use TikTok Business Center.
Once you’ve set up your account, follow these steps to get started on your first TikTok ad:
Navigate to the TikTok Ads Manager, click the “Campaign” button from the top menu and tap “Create.”
TikTok provides three objectives to help you reach your marketing goals: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Here’s a breakdown to help you choose which suits your needs most:
Choose a fitting name for your campaign and select whether or not it fits into a special ad category, such as housing, employment or credit. This helps you abide by TikTok’s special ad category policy.
So, how much does it cost to advertise on TikTok? The minimum for ad groups is $20 per day, and for campaigns, it’s $50 per day. You can choose to define the budget yourself or have TikTok optimize your budget across all ads.
If you select “Campaign budget optimization,” TikTok will optimize your budget for each ad group in your campaign rather than specifying each individually. But don’t worry about spending too much – you can cap your total budget to ensure all ads and groups within your campaign fit your financial needs.
Now that you have everything set up within your campaign, you can specify individual ad groups. Name your ad group, then click “Advanced settings” under “Placements.” Here, you can toggle options to decide whether users can comment on, download and share your ad. TikTok recommends leaving user comments on to improve your ad’s engagement and impressions.
Fill in the details under “Targeting” to ensure your ad reaches the desired audience. Define the demographics by entering locations, age groups and languages.
Inform TikTok what content it can show alongside your ads: full, standard or limited inventory. Each of these tiers has specific exclusions that determine whether or not the videos TikTok shows alongside your ad include mature content. Limited inventory has no mature content, full has some, and limited has content that’s appropriate for most brands (but not all).
Set a daily budget for the maximum spend you’re willing to pay each day and schedule when your ad will run. Here, you can decide whether you want your ad to run all day or within specific time periods.
Decide how much you’ll pay per metric by setting your bidding and optimization preferences. Your bidding cost correlates with your optimization goal. If your ad’s optimization goal is video views, your metric will be cost per focused view (CPV). This way, you’ll pay your bid price when users hit your defined CPV.
You can also leave the bid control section blank for the lowest-cost bidding strategy. However, TikTok recommends a minimum bid to maximize your campaign’s performance.
Once you’ve filled in every technical detail, you can upload your content and submit your ad. At this point, you’ll also choose the destination page, which is wherever you want to lead traffic. This could be a specific product page, your brand’s website or an app install page.
After pressing “Submit,” TikTok will review the ad to ensure it follows the platform’s Community Guidelines. The review process is typically less than 24 hours, so leave enough time for a review when creating new ads.
The nature of TikTok’s snappy short-form videos pushes creators to refine their storytelling to capture attention quickly – and the same goes for advertising. If you’re trying to attract sponsorships or promote a product to boost sales, your success relies on reaching the right audience and sparking their interest fast.
Here are a few tips to ensure your TikTok ad is a hit:
Here’s an example of what a great TikTok ad looks like:
Makeup powerhouse Sephora used its ad to show off a new product from The Ordinary. It has a personal, friendly voiceover explaining what the product does while showing it in action on someone’s face. It’s a simple, product-specific video that doesn’t waste time – just tells customers why they should run out and buy it.
Learning how to advertise on TikTok helps you create impactful promotions that optimize your budget. Whether you want to grow your follower count or increase conversions, there’s a wide range of ad options to tailor your strategy to meet your objectives.
Along with advertising, there are dozens of other ways to make money on TikTok. And the Linktree blog is an excellent resource for learning how to make the most of the app. Learn how to edit stellar TikTok videos, maximize the link in your bio and get verified to add authority to your account. Don’t forget to join other creators on Linktree to create a hub for all your important links, giving your audience easy access to all you do.
