How to Acquire Customers With TikTok Ads

The human race is constantly evolving. The 20th century is referred to as the digital age, as computers and digital devices became prevalent in every sphere of life by the turn of the century.

The Emergence of Social Media and Apps Like TikTok

The 21st century saw the dawn of the social media age. People started spending most of their time on social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat.

TikTok, formerly known as "Musical.ly," was launched in 2016. It indicated the dawn of yet another era characterized by the domination of small videos with an average length of 30 seconds or less. The human attention span was shrinking, and they loved to consume content in bite-sized chunks.

TikTok's short videos took the Internet by storm! Scrollable short videos are the newest trend on social media, and it is being followed everywhere, be it in entertainment, education, marketing, or media.

The trend grew so intense that YouTube, Instagram, and other popular social media channels soon launched their own short video versions, such as YouTube Shorts, Instagram & Facebook Reels, and "Explore" on Twitter.

Look how the short video trend is sweeping even Twitter, a professional and business platform -

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TikTok is rapidly growing with over a billion active users, yet it's still an unsaturated platform. What makes it even more lucrative for the marketers is that its impressions cost only $1-5 on average, which is one-tenth of the price Facebook charges.

TikTok is no longer a futuristic opportunity in paid media - it's already making waves.

According to Social Media Examiner, Gen Z falls asleep and wakes up to this platform.

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However, it's marred by a few challenges, including general ignorance about how the platform works. What should be the best way to leverage TikTok and optimize your social media presence on similar platforms such as Instagram & Facebook Reels, and YouTube Shorts?

That might be why most businesses haven't yet decided about flashing ads on TikTok.

Here are a few reasons most marketers aren’t yet ready to take the plunge:

• There is a general lack of understanding about the platform.
• The creative requirements of TikTok advertising are complex. Businesses are often confused about where to start.
• Even though TikTok’s user base comprises all customer segments and age groups, marketers often aren’t sure if their target audience is on TikTok. The next big challenge is to choose the appropriate advertising strategy.
• Don’t expect your Facebook ads playbook to work here. TikTok greatly differs from Facebook in terms of algorithms and user behavior.

This article discusses the most successful strategies and tips to acquire customers with TikTok ads -

The 3 FAQs About TikTok

Before we jump into the nitty gritty of designing ads for TikTok, let's understand the three basic facts about TikTok.

1. Why People Use TikTok?

Let's dig into the user behavior at TikTok. The prime reason people spend time on TikTok is for entertainment. These people fundamentally have a low buying intention.

The greatest asset of TikTok is its algorithm, so you get the best feed per your preferences recorded by the platform algorithm, increasing your dopamine.

It's the secret to why you get addicted to the platform and feel better every time you scroll through the feed. The secret recipe is the "For You" Page created by the platform that curates personalized videos, especially for you.

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People love the “For You” Page so much that they don’t allow anyone else to scroll through their feed and like the videos as it may disturb their algorithm.

Here are some fascinating stats and facts about TikTok –

• The average TikTok user opens the app about eight times a day, and the total usage time is over an hour because of its highly advanced algorithm that curates the feed, especially for the user.
• People of a diverse age range use the platform because of the breadth of content it offers. So, if you think it’s all about youngsters’ dancing videos, you’re making a huge mistake.
• The platform adds thousands of videos with educational tips and tutorials that everybody loves to consume to comedy, viral memes, and entertainment to catch your attention.

2. How to Use TikTok to Grow Your Business?

You can attract enormous top-of-the-funnel traffic using TikTok as a secondary advertising channel.

The best-paid strategy on TikTok –

• Create stunning, relatable short videos to get people to stop scrolling and look at your ads.
• Divert them to your website to nurture, track, re-target, and convert.

Pro Tip: Follow this two-way approach, and you’re bound to succeed on TikTok.

Who Can Use TikTok as a Primary Marketing Channel?

The following types of businesses are highly successful on TikTok. They use it as a primary marketing channel.

• Businesses selling visual products, especially those with universal appeal and shorter sales cycles.
• Businesses with Gen Z as the target audience.
• Products with an Average Order Value (AOV) between $25-150.
• Mobile apps and games.

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Pro Tip: Currently. These products are highly successful on TikTok in terms of ROI and conversion. However, as the platform keeps adding newer audiences, it's not limited to the above products.

3. What Differentiates You From Others on TikTok?

If there is something differentiating you from the crowd on TikTok, it's definitely creativity. Regular testing and a fast ad refresh rate of your organic and ad content are the keys to success.

How to Acquire Customers With TikTok Ads?

We have discussed the fundamentals of TikTok as a platform and a social media channel. Now, let's dive into the ad strategy to acquire customers on TikTok.

Here are a few tips you should implement to succeed -

1. Throw Away Your Conventional Ads Playbook

On TikTok, ads don't look like ads. To succeed, blend your ad with the light, entertaining posts on the platform. No severe and heavy selling stuff! According to the two-way strategy discussed above, your job is to divert the users to your website, where you can earnestly use your marketing funnel to convert.

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2. Make Use of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing and similar tricks will pay you off many times over. When a person you follow who isn't a celebrity endorses or recommends a product, buying decisions are heavily impacted. What people don't want is blatant self-promotion.

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If you are creating videos, make sure they are engaging and authentic. If you don't have the skills or expertise to produce such videos, outsource creative production to creators.

3. Be Creative With Your Ads

TikTok is a treasure house of creativity, so your ads should also reflect the same to feel native to the users. You need several resources to create those fantastic videos loved on the platform. The major prerequisites are as follows:

• An extensive collection of User-Generated Content
• Necessary equipment and video-making tools
• Custom Music

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Apart from that, you should also have the patience to handle endless ad rejections.

4. Increase Your Ad Refresh Rate

On a channel like TikTok, ad fatigue is a common phenomenon because of monotonicity and several other factors. The ad failure rate is relatively high; the only remedy is rapid testing and iteration. Your ad team should constantly create and launch new ad creatives every one or two weeks.

5. Focus on the Creative and Not on Targeting

TikTok is a relatively new platform compared to Facebook and Google Ads, so it doesn't offer advanced targeting and reporting features. So, targeting can't be your primary strategy on this platform. Instead, you should focus on your creatives. They should be designed for your target audience; leave the rest to the TikTok algorithms.

6. Focus On TikTok as a Separate Channel

TikTok is a content monster, consuming far too much content than other ad channels like Facebook. So, you should have the resources and funds to produce high volumes of channel-specific creatives as you require a lot of testing on TikTok.

The Minimum Daily Budget

Are you ready for the minimum ad spend?

Here is a formula to calculate this -

Weekly budget= Target CPA x 50

Here, 50 is the minimum weekly conversion threshold you need to optimize your TikTok ads.

Daily TikTok budget= Weekly budget/7

For example, if CPA is $30

Weekly budget=$30 x 50=$1500

Daily Budget=$1500/7=$214.2

So, if your CPA is $30, you must commit a minimum ad spend of $215 to start advertising on TikTok.

Pro Tip: Apart from that, learning and testing are crucial aspects of advertising on this platform. So, set aside around 30% of your marketing budget for testing.

TikTok Can Instantly Make You Go Viral

TikTok's exponential success depends primarily on the fact that it allows you to attract hundreds of thousands of views overnight. And you can do it even if you're a completely new account with no "followers" to capitalize on.

TikTok algorithms serve content based on user's interests. It's independent of the accounts they follow. Contrary to Instagram, your video views on TikTok aren't influenced by your follower count.

So, everything boils down to your content quality and not your follower count, the age of your account, or your popularity.

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How to Advertise on TikTok?

Here are a few random tips for creating organic and advertising content for TikTok. It will help you to create channel-specific content.

Random Tips to Succeed With Your Video Ads

• Use action and appealing audio in your video’s beginning to maximize engagement.
• Use an enticing caption (e.g., “This app can be a game changer! 🤯”).
• Stimulate your audience using an offbeat or provocative visual to create intrigue.
• Use storytelling by creating a cohesive narrative around your product, where the user can imagine himself stepping into the scene. Be authentic and tell believable stories.
• In the ad, explain the problems your product is meant to solve and also share the steps they need to take to find the solution.
• Convey your message in the first three seconds. For a longer message, combine multiple 1-2 seconds videos from different camera angles and speeds.
• Use TikTok’s native publishing tools with numerous audiovisual effects. For example, you can try the following –
• Transition effects
• Background music
• Subtitles
• Robot voice narration
• Time warps
• Video reversals

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• Highlight discounts and offers.
• Use an appropriate CTA.
• Respond to comments in the comments section and use positive comments as social proof for potential customers.

Final Words

If you've successfully used Snapchat ads, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and Stories, TikTok is the next potential option. It's affordable and full of opportunities and promise. You can also repurpose assets from these channels and use them on TikTok to save time.

DashClicks' white label marketing dashboard will help you in analytics and allow you to use TikTok to achieve your marketing objectives. You can use our white label TikTok ads fulfillment services to attain constant engagement. As an agency, you can make handsome money utilizing white-label TikTok Ads reseller plans that start as low as $199/month.