- Want to grow your TikTok audience? Well, this article may be for you...
TikTok has enormous commercial potential if you’re a brand or business. With more than 20% of all online users accessing TikTok on a regular basis, it stands to reason that the app presents a huge demographic opportunity that your business would be crazy to pass up. If you don’t know much about TikTok, though, then you might not know how to approach advertising on the platform. In some ways, it works a little differently to other social media platforms, but in others, the process is very similar. Here’s how to advertise on TikTok in 2022.
Influencer marketing
First, you should consider partnering up with influencers in order to market your product or service organically. While TikTok does have paid ads (which we’ll get to in a moment), the fact is that influencer marketing could be a better strategy for you depending on the size of your business. If you team up with platforms like SocialFollowersFree to build yourself a following, then you’ll be able to hit up bigger and more…well…influential influencers, who can then bring more and more people to your brand’s TikTok page, thus raising awareness. In this way, influencer marketing presents a great organic opportunity for advancing your business.
Creating your own content
The other approach you can take to advertising on TikTok if you don’t want to use paid ads is to create content for your brand or business. This works in a very simple way; just set up a TikTok account for your business, convert it into a business account (through the “Manage account” option), and start creating content. You’ll need to publicize it yourself, of course, but you can do that simply by creating great content that users organically want to share amongst themselves. This has the added benefit of feeling much more naturalistic than paid ads, which will create a more favorable image of your brand on TikTok.
Paid ads
Here, we come to the meat of what TikTok advertising is all about: paid ads on the platform. Here’s a rundown of how to get involved with paid TikTok ads:
- Create a TikTok Ads Manager account. First, you’ll need to make an account on the TikTok Ads Manager platform, which will let you view all of your ad campaigns and make changes to them. You can use an existing TikTok account to sign up for this service if you like.
- Check out your ad objectives. From the TikTok Ads Manager window, you should see a number of different ad objectives. These include Reach, App Installs, and Lead Generation, among others. Work closely with your business’s social media personnel in order to determine which of these objectives you want to prioritize.
- Give your campaign a name and budget. Think of a recognizable and catchy campaign name for your business. Once this is done, set a budget for the campaign, which will determine the upper limit of what you want to spend on advertising in this instance.
- Choose placement. There are four places your ad can go: in-feed, within TikTok sister app news feeds, on the Pangle audience network, or automatic. During this stage, you should also choose whether you want TikTok to automatically optimize your creative process, and what audience you want to target.
- Make your ad. After a few more options, you’ll be asked to create your ad. Remember to work closely alongside your team to ensure that the ad is exactly what you want it to be before you finalize it and send it out. TikTok will also review the ad, so if there’s anything objectionable in it, you’ll know before it’s sent out.
TikTok Promote
If you’d rather not create a bespoke ad campaign and simply want to nudge some content you’ve created so that more people see it, then there’s an option for that as well. TikTok Promote is a special function that allows you to boost content in a similar way to Facebook Boost. Using it requires a Creator account within the TikTok app proper, and here’s how to do it:
- Head to your Settings menu. From your profile window in TikTok, you’ll see a Settings menu if you tap the hamburger three-line menu icon. From there, you want an option headed “Creator tools”.
- Tap Promote, and choose your video. After you tap “Promote”, you’ll see a number of videos available. Choose the one you want to promote, then tell TikTok what you’re hoping to gain from promoting your content (more views, more visits, or gaining more followers).
- Outline your campaign’s goals. TikTok will then ask you who your audience is, what your budget is, and how long you want to promote the content for. Fill in these fields, then tap Next and put your payment info into the app. Once this is done, simply tap “start promotion” and you’re done!
Managed Brands
As well as the above option, TikTok also has some special functions for “Managed Brands”, which is TikTok’s fancy way of describing bigger businesses with a more generous ad budget. These brands usually work directly alongside TikTok and have access to more ad options. If you’re lucky enough to be a Managed Brand, you’ll also be able to avail yourself of these services.
- Brand Takeover. If you’ve ever opened up TikTok and seen a brand ad you’re unfamiliar with, that was a Brand Takeover. Businesses can essentially take control of priority TikTok ads for a day, and as you can imagine, this service commands some high prices.
- TopView ads. TopView ads appear quickly when a user begins scrolling through TikTok and can contain links that users can tap. Again, you’ll be paying premium prices for a TopView placement.
- Branded Hashtag Challenge. TikTok thrives on hashtags, and it allows brands the chance to create their own, which users can then create content for. This type of promotion is unique to TikTok and lasts for between three and six days, but the benefit is that it allows users to be creative with their content generation, thus raising awareness of your brand and also allowing you to feel like a part of the TikTok community.