TikTok Advertising In Easy Steps

TikTok is a social media platform which allows users to create and share short videos with music, filters and many other features. Within couple of years, TikTok has experienced a stimulating roller-coaster ride around the globe.

In the beginning, TikTok has experienced temporary ban in countries like India, Indonesia and is finding it hard to sustain its ground in US, where many Senators have accused TikTok of giving information of American users to Chinese Government. And often remains in the news for its unfit content. Whatever we say about it figures are contradicting. TikTok has so far managed to enter and entertain 150 markets with 75 languages (as of 2018). Also, along with Douyin (similar to TikTok for use in China to comply with Chinese censorship restrictions), it has surpassed 1 Billion downloads. While TikTok individually has hit 800 Million downloads. So, is TikTok advertising recommended to your business?

To check whether TikTok advertising is beneficial, let's look at demographics of TikTok users. Around 43% of it's users are from India, so if you want to target Indian audience, then TikTok is the platform for you. Indian brands will enjoy greater advantage than others due to this geographic distribution. And then if we look at the gender diversity, there are 56% males and 44% females. It is engrossing to see male users more because on number of other social media platforms women are more dominant.

Finally, the most important factor of all i.e. age group. You are not going to get all generations here. TikTok has taken on the younger generation all over the world with approximately 41%of the users belonging to 16-24 age group. About 66% of TikTiok users are below 30. So, if the above description suits you, then you can definitely go for TikTok advertising. Now, you may wonder, how much it will cost?

Now, TikTok has just started ad campaign and its complete structure is still unknown. Presently, only 3-4 types of ads can be seen on TikTok and that too are also rare. Only a handful of businesses have started advertising on TikTok. Some of the big brands are Disney, Nike & Grubhub. So, does it mean that only large businesses can advertise on TikTok?

Currently ads shown are very less in number and are rare, and that is what makes running campaigns valuable. All the other platforms are extremely crowded with advertisements which makes it irritating for users and highly competitive for brands. In such an environment, TikTok advertising becomes very effective and a good investment. Do you need any extra skills to excel in TikTok advertising compared to On Instagram or Facebook, advertisements are simply in the form of an image or a normal video. But if you are planning to do the same on TikTok, then, No, it won't be as effective.

TikTok is known for short videos blended with entertaining background music and other features and users expect to see the same in your ad campaigns. That’s why you need to do this extra effort of infusing creativity in your normal videos using TikTok features. Even TikTok offers a video creation kit to those who want to run an ad campaign. It's an in-app tool which provides numerous image and video templates to customize the ad. There are over 300 free background music templates to apply to your ad in order to make it more like able and If you find this task difficult, you can hire influencer.

Are there any real-life examples or statistics that prove that Tiktok advertising has really changed the attitude of users towards the brands?

Around 52% of TikTok users would buy a product just to become part of the community built around the product. If we compare TikTok users with internet users worldwide, then TikTok users are 40% more likely to buy the product than overall internet users. Besides, 61% of TikTok users tend to buy the brands they see advertised and this tendency is 35% more among Tiktok users than internet users worldwide. Now, the question is how to start TikTok advertising in easy steps?

• 1. Create your TikTok ad account.
• 2. Design your ad campaign.
• 3. Choose the goal of your campaign.

So, what are you expecting from the campaign?

Is it more traffic or more app downloads or is your campaign objective to get engagement.

• 4 Choose Placements.

So, where on TikTok do you want to show the ad. Do you want it to be placed in the video feed or between the stories if users or both. It gives you a lot of freedom. TikTok ads even offer you the chance to explore advertising on another familiar apps like News Republic, Buzz Video, etc. There is also an option of automatic placement, where TikTok will automatically optimize the delivery across all the placements.

• 5. Choose Targeting.

And this can include parameters like gender, location, age, language and interest. You can even go for audience or device targeting. So, you can choose connection type, device price, operating system and you can also create look-a-like audience which will help you find groups of people, who are similar to your existing customers.

• 6. Bidding and Optimize for your Goal.

So, you can optimize for impressions. then, TikTok will show your ad to as many people as possible and you will be built for CPM, but if you want to optimize for clicks, then your ad will be built for CPC, Cost per Click. Similarly, you can go for conversion and then you pay for every sale.

• 7. TikTok then gives you Results.

So, what are the achievements based on your optimization goal and in the dashboard, you can see detailed statistics. Now, you may wonder what are the types of types of TikTok Ads?

Here are basically four different types of ads:

• 1. In-feed Native Advertising.

So, depending on the type of product, these ads appear either at the bottom of an organic TikTok video or in the feed and these ads may come with website links or buttons like‘ Order Now’ or ‘Download Now’. But, these ads can be skipped and there are multiple options available to design an overall ad and then you can check the usage of your ad like impressions, clicks, click through rates(CTR)

• 2. Brand Takeovers

This sort of ads appear instantly when you open the app. It is a screen ad and can be either a three or five seconds GIF, image or video. And these ads are used to link back to brand’s profile or Hash tag challenges on.

TikTok or any external website. On TikTok, these advertisements are given on category basis, so only one brand can take a particular category on a particular day. This limitation makes these ads more costly than In-feed native ads.

• 3.Hash tag Challenge ads.

These are sponsored challenges and they are presented as advertisement on TikTok. You can team up with TikTok marketing team for creative challenges which would encourage users to try it and indirectly help you reach more users. In such ads, a user will see a specific banner with ‘#Name_of_Challenge’ written on it and with an option to join that challenge. Clicking on that banner will take the user to the rules and instructions for the same. Usually, these banners will appear on Discover page. And you can also trace the usage of your ad using clicks, banner views, trending slot and number of user generated content.

• 4. Branded Filters and Lenses

TikTok offers branded filters and this feature is similar to AR filters on Snapchat and Instagram. If your brand can have its own filters, it will result in new face filters, 3D objects and more for users. And these are more likely to be used by users leading to popularity and lots of engagement. So, whenever these filters and lenses are used by users, you will be shown to more and more people on the platform. Smart Strategy to excel in TikTok Marketing is to use Influencer Marketing. There is an advantage to you if you do it on TikTok. Unlike other social media platforms where majority of influencers are actors, singers, sportsperson etc., on TikTok you will find that most of the influencers with millions of followers are just ordinary teenagers like you.

Now, here are two influencers on two platforms with same following, with whom you will try to collaborate for your brand?

Obviously, everyone will love to have Douyin as an influencere on board. In social media, what matters is the number of followers and the quality of content that the influencer generates.

Many of us will go for the TikTok sensation because it's more cost-effective and it's the smart thing to do. if you follow these tips, then your Tiktok marketing will definitely rock.

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