5 Steps for Creating TikTok Ads

TikTok is an up and coming digital advertising platform. With 800 million monthly active users, it beats out LinkedIn (660 million), Reddit (430 million), Snapchat (218 million), Twitter, and Pinterest. It's a great platform for advertising on social media, and it integrates well with social media management tools to simplify tracking your campaign.

TikTok ads can help you reach a young crowd that loves to share fun content. About half of all TikTok users are 18-24 years old. When creating TikTok ads, appeal to this audience with creative, fun videos.

Overview: What are TikTok ads?

TikTok ads are short videos that show up on TikTok as viewers watch videos. They're a perfect addition to your social media strategy when targeting a younger audience that's plugged into TikTok. They feature fun filters and text overlays that appeal to young adults.

Users can comment, like, and share their favorite videos. This can spread your brand’s message rapidly. Each time users create a video using a branded effect, it gets shared with their network and expands your reach.

TikTok has an ad ranking algorithm that considers the quality of the ad and the likelihood users will interact with it. As engagement increases, TikTok serves your ad up to more users, so the more interest you can spark with your ad, the better it will do on TikTok.

Who are TikTok ads for?

Companies looking for a large, young, engaged target market will do well with TikTok ads. Users spend about 80 minutes per day on TikTok. They create videos, comment, like, and share videos with their friends.

Brands that cater to a well-funded Gen Z audience may do well with TikTok ads. The majority of TikTok users in the United States are between the ages of 10 and 29 years old. As of May 2020, 40.2% of users in the United States had a household income of $100,000.

If you want to reach an international audience, look seriously at TikTok. About 43% of TikTok new users are from India. Russia, Mexico, and Pakistan also have tens of millions of people on the platform.

5 types of TikTok ads

You can use a variety of ads on TikTok, each highlighting your business differently. These five types will help you engage with your audience.

1. In-Feed ads

In-Feed ads are video ads shown between user videos and are great for creative videos. They usually run 9-15 seconds. You can include multiple calls to action that encourage users to click on your link to shop now.

At 9-15 seconds, In-Feed ads must catch the user’s attention fast because they can be scrolled past quickly. Use an eye-catching visual or bold headline to entice the click.

2. Brand Takeover ads

Brand Takeover ads show up when you open TikTok. They present a full-screen video to your targeted audience. This is one of the best ad options for building mass awareness and driving sales. It doesn't get much better than a full-screen ad right in front of your target market.

Brand Takeover ads also appear on the For You page as still images, GIFs, or videos. They include a clickable link that will drive users to a landing page or a hashtag challenge, which we'll cover in detail below.

3. TopView ads

TopView ads build on Brand Takeovers. TikTok users aren’t as bombarded with TopView ads as they can be with the Brand Takeover ads, which appear as soon as they open the app. TopView ads will appear in the first in-feed post after 3 seconds.

TopView ads display at the top of the For You page and allow for 60 seconds of full-screen video with autoplay and sound.

4. Branded Hashtag Challenge

A Branded Hashtag Challenge is a one-of-a-kind advertising option that is exclusive to TikTok. Branded Hashtag Challenge ads offer the opportunity for both organic and sponsored opportunities. They are an excellent way to encourage user-generated content and build your brand’s awareness.

The Branded Hashtag Challenge is fun for users. You can engage with the customer and get them involved with your brand. When users click on the hashtag, they will come to a page with your brand’s logo, a link to your website, and the description of the challenge.

Partnering with popular TikTok creators is a great way to get your Branded Hashtag Challenge to take off.

5. Branded Effects ads

Branded Effects ads turn up the fun with shareable stickers, filters, and special effects you create with your brand images. You can then share these items and exciting effects with users as they make their own videos to share. This encourages user-generated content.

How to advertise on TikTok to promote your business

It's easy to create an ad with TikTok's ad kit. Set up your account, and set the parameters of your advertising campaign. Then you simply create a fun and engaging video. Follow these steps.

1. Create a TikTok ads account

Go to TikTok for Business. Click on Get Started. You will enter your email address and select a password. Verify your email, agree to the terms and conditions, and you're ready to start your next campaign.

2. Create a TikTok ad campaign

Click the Campaign link at the top of the page. Then click the Create button. Next, select your campaign objective. Choose from four objectives -- awareness, traffic, app installs, and conversions.

TikTok makes it easy to define your advertising objective. Image source: Author

3. Select the ad details

Enter the essential details necessary to run your ad campaign. These will include relevant URLs, display names, and images and categories. Select up to 20 keywords to describe your website. This will be used to match your products with the correct audience.

In the Targeting section, select the parameters for location, age, gender, language, and interests of your audience.

TikTok lets you select the location, gender, and age of the people who will view your ads. Image source: Author

4. Set the budget and optimization

The next step is to set the daily budget and the schedule for your campaign. This will ensure you don’t go over your advertising budget. TikTok lets you choose either a daily budget or a total budget.

TikTok offers dayparting which allows you to select specific times of the day to run your ads. If you know your target market is most likely to be online during happy hour, you can have your ads run after 5 p.m.

How quickly do you want your budget spent? The standard delivery option will space out your budget evenly across the duration of the campaign. The accelerate option will burn through your budget as quickly as possible.

Selecting the budget and schedule on TikTok platform is simple. Image source: Author

Next, select an optimization goal. Optimize your ad for clicks, conversions, or impressions. Selecting conversions will serve your ad to the people who are most likely to convert for your product or service.

Selecting clicks as the goal for your ad group will set your billing to a CPC (cost per click) basis. Your ad will be optimized to drive as many clicks as possible. The impression goal will bill your ad on a CPM (cost per mille) basis. This will charge you based on a thousand impressions.

TikTok offers a Smart Optimization option. Enable it, and your billing will be constantly adjusted and optimized to increase conversions. Keep this on for conversion goals, but turn it off if you are optimizing for impressions.

5. Create your ad

It's time to get creative and design your ad with TikTok’s video creation kit. TikTok ads offer a number of formats. Your ads can be horizontal, vertical, square, or you can use images. The video creation kit provides video and image templates to help you customize your existing images. It also offers over 300 options for free background music.

Tips for creating a great TikTok ad:

• Grab attention quickly: Use an image that stands out and piques curiosity.
• Use vertical videos: A vertical orientation gives your videos the optimal screen space.
• Use TikTok’s native editing features: Make your video stand out with different text overlays and filters.
• Use TikTok creators: Tiktok influencers know how to produce content that gets shares and views. Use influencer cross-promotions to drive the success of your advertising campaign.
• Incorporate trending audio and challenges: Jumping in on the latest trend is a great way to get your message spread quickly.

Examples of excellent TikTok ads

Great TikTok ads grab reader attention and engage the consumer. As customers engage with the ad, it gets shared and viewed more, lowering your customer cost per acquisition. Look at these great TikTok ads to inspire your own.

Ralph Lauren winning challenge

This Branded Hashtag Challenge ad by Ralph Lauren encourages its customers to create their own content with the brand’s hashtag. The ad featured actress and influencer Diana Silvers and challenged its viewers to share a time when they were winning. This encourages user-generated content. Since the contest coincided with the U.S. Open, the top three challenge winners received Ralph Lauren U.S. Open apparel.

Influencer Diana Silvers boosts the Ralph Lauren brand to the TikTok audience. Image source: Author

Leanne Ward nutrition

Leanne Ward is a fitness brand that shares nutrition and fitness tips in her videos. She has gained over 300,000 followers and over five million likes on TikTok. Leanne offers advice in her videos about weight loss and a positive message for young adults.

In the In-Feed ad below, Leanne Ward provides advice to teenage girls. This ad generated 1.6 million views, 315,000 likes, and 3,108 comments.

Interesting In-Feed videos are a great way to boost engagement and increase views. Image source: Author

Guess Brand Takeover ad

Guess launched a Brand Takeover ad featuring a hashtag challenge. The challenge involved consumers showing off their denim fashion sense.

After six days of running the Guess Brand Takeover ad campaign, 5,500 users created videos with the #InMyDenim hashtag. The videos generated over 10.5 million views, added 12,000 followers, and boosted the engagement rate by 14.3%.

Guess customers took photos wearing their favorite jeans and shared them on TikTok. Image source: Getty Images

Chipotle Branded Hashtag Challenge

Chipotle creates fun ad campaigns to engage its audience. In this Boorito Halloween promotion, Chipotle encouraged users to create their own content with a Branded Hashtag Challenge. The hashtag #Boorito gained 4.1 billion views as users eagerly uploaded their costumes to show off their creativity.

A Branded Hashtag Challenge engages a large audience as user-generated content gets shared with each individual’s followers. Image source: Author

Marketing with TikTok ads

TikTok makes creating ads simple and easy. The process for signing up and managing your campaign prompts you through each step. The video creation templates offer a wide variety of designs that can display your images and videos well, with some great background music.

TikTok ads engage a young audience in a creative way. The TikTok platform lets you blend paid advertising with organic content to generate thousands of shares and comments. Fill your channel with the fun videos that made TikTok so popular. When your paid ad generates interest in your brand, your viewers will come back for more content.