Considered as one of today’s most popular social media platforms, TikTok, a video-sharing app, has published its first brand takeover ad from a food delivery company, GrubHub, early this year.
GrubHub admits that this five-second ad with TikTok had become a short but effective and engaging way to connect with their new customers.
As a wholesaler, learning and creating TikTok ads can effectively boost your business. In this article, we will talk about TikTok advertising and tips on how to promote using TikTok. Similar to GrubHub, a short and simple five-second ad can become your business’ overnight success story.
Although the TikTok advertising platform is still underway, we will give you a brief sneak peek into TikTok ads and how you can promote your business.
A Brief on TikTok Advertising
TikTok features short 15-second-videos that often has music and lip-sync entertainment. In the past year, TikTok videos have well expanded beyond this and into fashion, product use, talent routines, pranks, dancing, among others.
Therefore with all these creative trends on TikTok, this can provide a flourishing and relevant advertising platform to promote your business because it generally targets the young audience. If your niche product is intended for this population, then creating TikTok advertising will certainly attract new customers.
Statistics show that in China alone, 33% of the users belong to the 20-24 age group, 28% to the 25-29 age group, 20% of the users are aged less than 19 years old.
Furthermore according toCNBC.com, as of September 2018, there are 500 million TikTok users around the world and that users usually spend 52 minutes on the app per day proving its successful market penetration. This app is predominantly used in countries such as the U.S, India, China, and Europe.
In the first half of 2018, TikTok was downloaded 104 million times on Apple App’s store surpassing the social media giants like Facebook, and Instagram.
Some brands are also frustrated with the expensive marketing prices and the decline in organic customer reach on mature social media platforms and this adds to the potential of TikTok.
The current buzz in the digital world scoops that TikTok’s commercial platform is only available in the beta form to selected companies. However, there is news that the self-serve ads will be accessible to the public quite soon. Ad agencies are now eyeing the potential of TikTok as a marketing platform particularly in promoting record artists or albums, or in brand awareness campaigns.
Early this year, they had released some short experimental marketing videos and are currently beta-testing some ads in the U.S and Europe.
Possible TikTok ad types are a brand takeover, in-feed native video, and hashtag challenges. To distinguish the following ad types, here is a simple description, according toInfluencer Marketing Hub.
Brand takeover adsare full-screen five-second static or animated ads that appear when the TikTok user first opens the app such as the GrubHub video. These brand takeover ads direct the users to a page or account within TikTok or to a related hashtag challenge. To date, this ad type limits the amount of advertisers per day in each country.
In-feed native video adsare auto-playing full-screen ads that show up within user-generated content. These ads will link the users to a landing page, hashtag challenge page, or to an app store.
Brandedhashtag challengesare themes generated by brands or businesses which are associated with a promoted hashtag and entice users to create videos around the theme. These videos are usually part of a brand takeover ad or in-feed native ad packages.
TikTok’s advertising is deemed to have an interest-based targeting, more customized audience, pixel targeting, and Snapchat-style lens photo filtering.
Among the social media platform, Digiday found out that TikTok has the least effective in audience targeting capabilities. However, with the launch of the TikTok advertising platforms, TikTok will certainly improve on having more precise audience targeting which can be classified per interest categories.
Another huge milestone that will come out with the formal monetized marketing platforms is account verification through the “verified” tick which can show the legitimacy of a business channel.
How to advertise on TikTok?
Can TikTok be a relevant business-promoting platform? Definitely yes, if you want to promote specific demography, such as the millennials or Generation Z. However, promoting through TikTok does not end in simply creating and sharing your videos. TikTok advertising involves a well-thought-of ad and dedicated hard work in customer engagement.
There are five ways that brands or businesses can market on TikTok. These include the following:
1.Work with a TikTok influencer to spread your video to a broader population.
A TikTok influencer usually has a vast network of followers so collaborating with them for promotional purposes is a strategic move particularly for businesses with very few TikTok following.
For example, the Universal Pictures used popular influencers such as Rebecca Zamolo and Chris Kerr in promoting their movie, “The House with a Clock in its Walls.”
In selected locations, TikTok assists in connecting the business to its top influencers. You can reach out to TikTok by sending an inquiry to advertise@tiktok.com.
Also, you can use different marketing platforms in finding TikTok influencers. Some of these platforms include Upfluence, Aspire IQ, and Neoreach. When using these platforms, you can find your influencers depending on your specified interests, location, keywords, or demographics.
It may take time to look for influencers who will best represent your brand and product and to negotiate and convince them to believe in your business and actually use your products, so allow ample time for your search.
Sustaining a good working relationship with a TikTok influencer is also a must. You have to be clear in setting your marketing objectives and allow the influencer to maintain authenticity with his/ her followers.
2.Create your own channel and post at least three contents every day wherein one content is about your product.
Generally, TikTok users do not visit the app to buy goods or products. They use TikTok to look for entertainment or educational videos.
The top-secret in boosting your TikTok account, if you decide to have one, is to engage, engage, and engage!
Do not spam your account with product sales talks but also share videos that are relevant to your brand, whether it’s entertainment or educational. Engage with at least fifteen or twenty TikTok users per day.
It has been observed that the success of the TikTok app relies on the characteristics of the millennials to be involved and active. It also has been well established that millennials are no longer impressed with creative animated graphics but with how well videos can entice them to take action, like create a video around a theme.
When you engage with your customers, TikTok’s algorithm will be able to detect your engagement and help you publish your ad more often than usual.
3.Share your content or campaign on other social media platforms.
Sharing your content or campaign on other social media platforms will help you widen your audience reach. On TikTok, its users are mainly the younger population.
However, Facebook, Instagram, or Youtube have more general demographics ranging from the youths to the elderly.
4.Promote your business by creating a TikTok challenge.
Some actual promotional challenges that were posted on TikTok were the #BigMacTikTok from McDonald’s in Malaysia, the #InMyDenim hashtag challenge that was sponsored by Guess, or the infamous Jimmy Fallon’s #tumbleweed challenge.
Your promotional TikTok ad must involve the use of a catchy hashtag challenge name that has the name of your brand. Remember TikTok does not work like Facebook or Instagram where your ads can be shared by your social network. TikTok videos may trend if you collaborate with a TikTok crown user or influencer who will jumpstart the challenge.
In early 2019, the following contents are some of TikTok’s popular trends. Clearly, this list does not include any branded content and this serves a challenge on how marketers will be able to effectively assimilate in the trend. These themes, however, can be used as an inspiration for your hashtag challenge:
-Dance videos
-Lip Syncing
-Voice dubbing
-Duets
-Cute and cuddly animals
-Stop motion
-Memes
-Clever editing and transitions
Moreover, when you start a challenge post, do not forget to offer a reward to the best video.
5.Finally, pay to advertise on TikTok.
TikTok paid advertising platform is still in its conception stage, unlike Youtube or Facebook where ad monetization is quite established. While there isn’t a market yet on TikTok advertising, it is worth treading into if you feel that your brand or business will benefit from the campaign returns.
How much does it cost to run a TikTok ad campaign?
As mentioned, TikTok’s monetized advertising platform is still in the works. The price of a TikTok advertising campaign depends on the type of ad. Adweek.comreports that brand takeover ads cost $50,000 to $20,000 (i.e. $50,000 per day with a guaranteed 5 million ad impressions).
On the other hand, in-feed ads cost $10-per-impression having a minimum campaign expenditure of $6,000. Additionally, promoting a hashtag challenge requires a budget of $100,000 to $200,000. These promotions are recommended for large and established brands or agencies.
For small businesses that wish to use TikTok in their promotional campaigns, a biddable advertising option will soon be launched within this year.
In the biddable option, the marketers will bid against one another for the ad impressions in their respective self-managed platforms. This option is much cheaper than brand takeover ads or challenge promotion. Presently, no information is available on how much the bid options may cost.
Moreover, we can look at how Douyin (TikTok’s owner company) monetizes and run their ads. In Douyin, users are allowed to click directly to the e-Commerce sites.
How to run ads on TikTok
Now that we had unraveled what TikTok advertising is, there are two ways on how to create an ad on TikTok. However, since TikTok is still working on its public ad platform and is targeted to be available this year, businesses are limited to use these two methods. Here are some basic steps in running your promotional ads:
A.TikTok advertising website link
The first way in creating an ad on TikTok is by submitting a request using their ads link.
1.Open TikTok’s advertising site at https://ads.tiktok.com/i18n/ You will see a prompt in the middle of the page which says, “Create an Ad”.
2.When you click the “Create an Ad” prompt, you will be directed to another landing page where you are required to indicate your demographic profile.
On this page, you will need to indicate where your company is based and the primary purpose of creating an ad on TikTok. Then, click “Next”
3.The third step of creating a TikTok ad is to complete a form by indicating your contact information such as your name, company name, email address, phone number, company location, industry, and company website.
4.Finally, submit the information and this will be forwarded to TikTok’s advertising unit.
You will be receiving a response from TikTok in the email address you indicated.
B.Contact TikTok’s advertising unit
Another method of running an ad on TikTok is to directly contact TikTok through advertise@tiktok.com.A representative will connect with you to inquire about your advertising needs
Conclusion
That's my post all about Tiktok advertising.
Are you ready to start your Tiktok ads campaign?
Do you have any interesting ideas on how to promote your Tiktok channel?
Just leave me a comment and let's discuss together.
