Build brand awareness & engagement with targeted, segmented audience reach from a surprisingly wide demographic.
TikTok’s core user base has historically been young – in 2020 a quarter of UK internet users aged 15-25 were using it. (compare that to 9% of those aged 26-35).
That is broadening though – lockdowns and trending TikToks pushing through to other channels have vastly grown awareness and usage of the app across a wider spread of age groups and while most of the organic content is still created by generation Z, the content is consumed by a much more varied demographic – evidenced by the 3.7 million active users in the UK and an estimated reach of 10 million by the end of 2021.
Combine those stats with an average time spent in the app of 41 minutes, and you can begin to see the appeal of TikTok as an advertising platform.
Though not as advanced as Facebook & Instagram in terms of creative options, targeting and catalogue integration, campaigns can be created to optimise for various objectives – Reach, Traffic, App Installs, Video Views, Lead Generation and (much like Facebook) – Conversions (this requires the TikTok Pixel to be installed on your site in order to track and optimise).
You can run ads with a min daily budget of £50 (or a lifetime budget for a specific period with the same minimum).
For ad creative, you have options – ideally we’d recommend you put together dedicated video, but there is an automated creative optimisation feature in which TikTok will use a selection of assets (images, videos and text) and automatically combine them – so you can potentially repurpose existing assets if necessary.
Geographic targeting lacks the tight control of Facebook (In Scotland, you can choose Scotland, Glasgow, Edinburgh, or ‘Other’!), so if you’re outside the 2 big cities you’ll have broad geographic reach whether you want it or not, but I’m told TikTok are working on improving this.
You can restrict by core age groups, languages and phone operating system and there’s a rudimentary interest targeting option with broad categories that assist in more accurate audience segmentation.
In addition there are targeting elements based on previous video or content creator engagement in particular categories, so you can use that to find audiences that are more likely to engage too.
Attention grabbing video is only part of the equation.
Considerations:
Audiences
Where are they in the world? What are their interests? How long does journey to purchase take? What are their demographics?
Technical
Ideally you want the TikTok pixel installed and set up properly. (There are two versions – the default doesn’t send conversion parameters, so ideally you want the developer version).
Resource
Do you already have a TikTok following? Is the pixel already installed? The data it collects, even if you’re not actively using it, can be very valuable for targeting purposes.
Creative
TikTok works best when the creative grabs your attention from the beginning, so you may find dedicated content outperforms assets that have worked well on other platforms.
Assets
The TikTok creative center is a good place to find some inspiration – see what’s trending and which ads are outperforming others. An important note is that as an advertiser you can’t use commercial music without the correct license (unlike organic creators) so you’ll need to find an alternative, perhaps from their commercial library (or pay up for a license).
Website Structure
Do you have relevant landing pages for your ads? Introductory copy for those you are building awareness with? Detail for those further down the path to conversion?
Measurement & Attribution
Alongside the relevant metrics for whichever campaign optimisation you’ve chosen to use, the usual CPC, CPM, Reach, Impressions and Frequency are reported by default.
In addition you can see video engagement stats such as ‘Video Views at 50%’, ‘average watch time per video view’ and appropriate conversion events – all useful in your TikTok campaign optimisation.
We tend to find that TikTok works well at the top of the funnel – building awareness, generating interest and establishing a proposition. As a channel it can integrate well with more transaction based retargeting, and at the end of the day, also provides access to an audience that doesn’t spend anywhere near as much time on Instagram or Facebook.
On the technical side – we can help you get the pixel up and running on your site and get your campaign planned and implemented from top to bottom, so you can feel confident contacting us for assistance with all aspects of TikTok advertising.
Read more about our specific services we offer below, or just get in touch for a chat now.
