Social Media Marketing

TikTok has become the world’s leading platform for sharing short-form videos. What once started as dancing clips and lip-syncing trends evolved into an opportunity for brand discovery, a news outlet, an educational resource and so much more. With TikTok’s growing influence on buying power and committed user base, it’s essential your business understands the ins and outs of advertising on the app that has taken consumers’ worlds by storm.

Don’t know where to start? We’ve compiled the highlights of the platform and how you can use it to expand your business and better reach your audience. Keep reading to learn more about how to optimize your marketing strategy through TikTok advertising.

The Recent Rise of TikTok

In a time when many businesses were struggling to stay afloat as the pandemic drove people into their homes, TikTok’s popularity skyrocketed and cemented an emerging platform into a major social media contender. Since its launch in 2016, the app has amassed over a billion users. For perspective, Instagram was launched in 2010 and only has half a billion more.

TikTok has shown no signs of slowing down as it breaks app store records and keeps its relevance by evolving to match the digital landscape. With eight new users joining every second, TikTok is expected to match Instagram’s 1.5 billion users by the end of the year.

Beyond its impressive user base, TikTok has also become one of the top-grossing apps with over 2.5 billion dollars in consumer spending recorded last year.

Who Uses TikTok?

TikTok quickly gained a large userbase of mostly Gen Z and Millennial users. The app has now pulled ahead of Instagram as the most popular app among Gen Z’s, with 37.3 million users falling in this age range compared to Instagram’s 33.3 million.

While TikTok is known for its popularity among younger generations, we can’t discount the rising numbers of older generations that are joining the ranks of this video sharing platform. In 2021, the percentages of 35–57-year-olds using the app jumped from 26% to 36% of total users.

The userbase also skews female, with 61% of the users in the U.S. being women, and 57% worldwide. While the demographics of the app are still considerably diverse, there is a lot of potential for brands seeking to reach younger generations of women.

What Sets TikTok Apart from the Pack?

If you’ve been eyeing a new business milestone, want to launch a new service, or you are looking to better reach your audiences, TikTok advertising might be the revitalization your marketing strategy needs. It has proven to be the most engaging social media, with people spending an average of 10.85 minutes per open on the app compared to Instagram’s 2.95-minute average user session.

Not only does TikTok boast increased engagement, but it also has a way of turning previously inaccessible topics into easy-to-understand concepts for users of all ages and education levels.

For example, with growing hashtags #FinTok and #MoneyTok, influencers and trusted sources are getting people interested in bettering their financial wellness and even shifting their perspective to seeing investing and finance as a source of entertainment. Younger audiences are discovering topics like finances and health and wellness and are engaging with them in a way we’ve never seen before because they’ve been made relatable.

The unique advantages of TikTok don’t stop at engagement and education. Research shows:

• 1 in 2 Gen Z TikTok users are likely to buy something while using TikTok
• 81% of users use TikTok to discover new products and brands
• TikTok video ads take up 6x more screen space than banner ads
• 33% of TikTok users in the U.S. use the app for news updates

Level Up with TikTok Advertising

You’ve heard all the benefits to advertising on TikTok, but what does it actually look like? As you cultivate your business’s TikTok advertising plan, you need to get to know the ad types available to you, including:

• In-Feed Ads: Up to 60 seconds long and appears as users scroll through For You Page (FYP).

• Brand Takeover Ads: 3-5-second video directing user to a hashtag challenge or landing page, depending on the campaign objective.

• Top View Ads: 60-second video format and displays immediately after user opens the app.

• Branded Hashtag Challenge Ads: Featured at the top of TikTok’s Discover page. Redirects user to a Brand Challenge page listing the rules, description, and a link to an advertiser’s website.

Keep in mind that no matter which ad type you invest in, the goal is always to make it look as natural as possible. People have a tendency to skip past ads, but if they don’t immediately realize the video is an ad there’s a greater chance, they’ll watch it all the way through and respond to your call of action. To effectively engage with your audience, make a seamless user experience the cornerstone of your ad creation. Most of all, TikTok made its name because it’s a fun to use, so get creative and have some fun with your messaging!

How to Target Your Audience on TikTok

It’s a common adage that if you try to reach everyone, you reach no one — so let’s talk targeting. Whether you’re trying to reach people who have searched the #FinTok hashtag in the last week or connect with a lookalike audience to people who’ve interacted on your app, TikTok has the targeting options you need, including:

• Audience targeting: Include or exclude lookalike or custom audiences.
• Demographic targeting: Specify age, gender, location, and language.
• Interests and behavior targeting: Specify interests, purchase intent, behaviors, and hashtags.
• Smart targeting: Employ target expansion, automatic targeting and targeting recommendations.

How to Measure TikTok Ads’ Effectiveness

After you craft your message, film your TikTok ad and target the right audiences, how do you know if it’s really working for your brand? There are a few ways you can track your ads’ effectiveness:

• Impressions
• Conversion Rate
• Reach
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Cost per Click (CPC)
• Cost per View (CPV)
• Cost per Action (CPA)
• Return on Investment (ROI)
• Cost per 1000 Impressions (CPM)
• Engagement Rate

Call in Help from The Experts

If you’re ready to take the next step to growing your business and reaching your goals through TikTok advertising, we’re here to help. Get in touch with our team today and we’ll guide you through the ever-evolving social media landscape and help you with everything from content creation to tracking analytics.