Mobile marketing on TikTok: tips and ways to promote
One of the marketing activities is ‘going while the going is good’ — this means, being quick enough to use potentially efficient ad channels before your competitors start using them too, or while they still treat them with distrust. TikTok can be a good example of that. In this post, we’re going to explain why ignoring new trends can be a fatal error for a business and how mobile app advertising on TikTok can bring new customers and increase visibility.
How can TikTok be useful and why?
We’ve already talked about several ways to acquire users and the opportunities of ad tools like Search Ads, and today we’ll look at some new tricks like TikTok ads. In 2020 alone, the user base of this social media worldwide was approximately 1.4 billion people. The number of TikTok sign-ups globally is projected to increase to 1.9 billion by 2026. According to the latest industry data, the global monthly TikTok iOS downloads were 9.2 million.
TikTok ads are primarily a tool for highly creative people. A boring and straightforward video with an appeal won’t work there since TikTok is an entertainment platform and you should always remember this when choosing an ad format. The content on TikTok has an authentic feel — large-scale production studios are still a minority there, so most of what you see is viral custom videos with built-in effects and simple editing.
Main advantages of TikTok as an ad platform:
- broad opportunities for experimenting with a low cost per click as compared with other social media;
- a huge library of music for videos;
- the audience as an engaged and loyal creative community;
- a wide range of tools to tell the story of the brand;
- advertising is as ‘native’ as possible in a user-friendly interface, which means no negative attitude and better perception.
The main principle of promotion on TikTok is, ‘Don’t create ads. Shoot TikToks’.
The brands that avoid glossy ads and rely on creativity and new formats as they come up with their own shows or launch activities through challenges usually resonate well with the TikTok community.
How to start a TikTok mobile ad campaign and what are the opportunities?
TikTok is focused on creating authentic user experiences. That’s why the ad integration is well-balanced and matches the way users communicate every day.
What ad formats are available now?
- TopView is a full-screen banner that appears when the app is first launched.
- Brand Takeover is a full-screen banner with a 3-5 second countdown to the Close button.
- Hashtag Challenge is a flash mob any brand can start that lasts six days.
- In-Feed Video is an ad campaign with a 5 to 15 seconds long video in the users’ feed.
- Brand Effect are branded 2D or 3D filters.
Promotion by TikTok bloggers
Many bloggers who are already popular on Instagram come to TikTok and take their audience with them. You can check those with whom you already worked — maybe they are doing well on TikTok too. You can send them a message directly and offer to cooperate. Besides, there are TikTok influencer marketing services (like TikTopers) where you can select a suitable influencer right away and make transactions easier using intermediaries. TikTok doesn’t yet have its own official influencer marketing platform, but we think that this tool is just around the corner.
Important to know: to develop a TikTok ad campaign, you may want to contact your customer account manager. There will be a lot of formalism, but official guidelines and informational articles are there for you at any time.
Users can be redirected from ads to an external page, to your account, or directly to your app page. Ad purchases are based on cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and cost per click (CPC) and they are optimized to provide an effective cost per install (eCPI).
TikTok ad formats with best performance
It’s hard to say for sure what works better on TikTok because everything depends on your product and target audience. But it can’t hurt to get an understanding of at least the fundamental principles.
- Creatives. First and foremost, you really need to understand creatives. Look what users and brands post, and pay attention to likes and comments. Answer the question: What makes you stop and watch a video till the end? What makes you engaged?
- The ‘consumption’ rate. TikTok has very dynamic content — one video can follow another in a matter of seconds. Hence the logic: You should learn to win a person’s attention quickly and confidently.
- Trends. When creating ads for your TikTok account, take a situational approach. Pay attention to popular hashtags, challenges, activities, and what’s happening in the world, and what people are discussing right now. This approach makes it possible for you to be on the same page with the TikTok community and establish some dialogue.
Success on TikTok depends on the brand’s ability to communicate with users in a creative way, through feelings.
- Ad campaign tests and analysis. Make sure to analyze what worked or didn’t work, and most importantly — why. Maybe you’ll find your ‘gold mine’ and understand quite quickly what could grab the users next time. If we talk about the number of creatives to be tested, experts recommend testing 4 to 5 creatives per week.
How to track ROI of ad campaigns on TikTok?
Incipia strategist Natalie Rozenblat told the App Masters that experts track ad campaigns as a whole at the investment level. They look at ad dynamics, test creatives, check if they adhere to the customer’s KPIs and how much they are spending. As for bloggers, the company compares the ad effect with the influencer’s fee and then decides whether it’s worth it.
In general, knowing that you are paying per 1,000 impressions, you can calculate other metrics as well. Keep in mind: If the CPM on TikTok is lower than that on other social media, this doesn’t mean that eCPI won’t be much more expensive. The key to ad efficiency is working on creatives, making a ‘creative pipeline’, and finding something to which the TikTok community would respond positively, and most importantly, effectively for the brand. Only after that can we talk about optimization.
Case studies: successful brand creatives on TikTok
Experts from Incipia shared how to create your first ad campaign and test it for three weeks using ad channel comparison, targeting, and creatives. For more details, click here.
Some interesting discoveries:
- it’s best to use portrait mode, but you can experiment;
- you should update creatives at least every 7 days to keep your ads relevant;
- it’s more efficient to use Swipe Left as a call to action instead of Swipe Up, because only Swipe Left will redirect users to the app store;
- each ad channel has its own learning period. This is what makes TikTok similar to Facebook (except for the 7-days rule) as an ad group needs 50 conversions to exit the learning phase. The algorithm will try to promote new ad groups until it reaches 20 conversions. TikTok calls this the “cold phase.”
The App Growth Awards featured original and progressive mobile ad campaigns on TikTok, including:
- KaufDA (growth by 1000% in a single day, increase in the number of users by 731%, and an increase in user activity by 146%);
- Plato (promotion through influencers: 10 bloggers in total made more than 1.2 million views, each of them individually provided up to 8,000 likes and 100 to 200 comments per post);
- Dodo Pizza (the number of installs increased to 19,587, and orders — to 6,646);
- Airbrush (app ranking jumped to #19, and the installs increased by 200,000).
Click the links above to learn more about the case studies and creatives.
Summary
So far, TikTok is a mobile app that doesn’t have a multifunctional advertising dashboard and opportunities like those of Facebook. However, the digital community expects TikTok to follow other platforms and become more commercial. Now it’s hard for a business there to evaluate the results of their ad campaigns and find a target audience quickly (as opposed to targeted advertising), but TikTok’s essence is quite easy to grasp — creativity and user engagement should come first, and that applies both to creating videos and promoting a brand on TikTok as a marketer.
