TikTok Ads: How to optimize a TikTok ad campaign?

Now that you've set up your TikTok Ads Manager account and your ads are running on the ForYou page, it's time to optimize your ad campaign on TikTok to improve its performance.

Your first goal is for your TikTok Ads campaigns to perform well and meet or exceed the goals you've set for yourself. In this article, you'll find our tips for improving your TikTok Ads strategy, getting the most out of your campaign budget and maximizing your ROI.

We have identified several optimization levers and best practices that will make your ads a success on the platform. But first of all, you need to know that an advertising campaign on TikTok is divided into 3 main parts (like on Meta or Google for that matter):

• The Ad Campaign: to define the objective of your TikTok campaign;
• The Ad Group: to target your audience and manage your campaign budget (via an auction system); 
• And Ads: to launch your ads on TikTok, A/B test them, and optimize them as much as possible to get the best possible results. 

For each of these steps, we will help you to optimize your strategy. This article will therefore follow the three parts that make up TikTok Ads in order to share with you an effective and easy to implement method. 

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1. Define the right objectives (Ad campaign)

First of all, your brand must define the objectives of its TikTokadvertising campaign. 

On the platform, this is done in the Ad Campaign. 

TikTok's Ad Campaigns allow you to choose between 7 different campaign objectives . Each objective corresponds to a specific stage in your customer journey (Awareness, consideration, conversion, etc.)

It's even possible toaccess other campaign objectives, including being whilestilled on betas, based on your target market or connecting directly with TikTok teams. 

This part is crucial for the optimization of its TikTok ads. Indeed, one of the main mistakes that brands make is not to choose the right objective for their campaign .

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Depending on the results you want to achieve, you will have to choose one objective over another: 

• If you want to attract traffic and convert new customers on your website: opt for the Website conversion objective;
• To grow your community and gain new followers on the platform: choose the Community Interaction goal;
• To promote your application, it's simple: choose App promotion ;
• And to gain brand awareness, focus on the Video View objective. It will allow you to target an audience that specifically engages with the video content. 

Generally speaking, we do not recommend choosing the Reach objective, which does not give very good results and generates little engagement. The Website conversion goal is much more useful since it not only boosts your traffic, but also allows you to track conversions on your website and targets a more precise audience. 

Launch multiple campaigns to achieve multiple goals

To optimize your ads on TikTok, you should also keep in mind that you should launch several campaigns to accompany your prospects throughout the customer journey. At the beginning of your sales funnel, for example, you can opt for campaigns that generate engagement on your account. At the bottom of the funnel, focus on the conversion objective.  

2. Optimize a TikTok campaign by effectively targeting its audience (Ad group)

Now that you have defined your goals, you can target your audience. TikTok's Ad Group will help you target the users to whom your ads will be shown based on their sociological, demographic and geographic characteristics. 

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If you're not sure how to choose which audience to target with your TikTok ads, a good practice is to expand your audience as much as possible . By analyzing the results of your first few campaigns, you'll be able to more easily identify the audience groups that engage best with your content and optimize your next ads. 

At the same time, TikTok's algorithm will also collect data that will allow it to automatically optimize your campaigns and thus help you get better results. 

Your targeting strategy can include audiences who have already visited your brand's website, signed up for your newsletter or interacted with your TikTok posts. You can also exclude certain audiences, such as people who have already purchased the product you are promoting in your TikTok ad. 

The Lookalike audience option on TikTok Ads

The Lookalike audience feature is also very useful for optimizing a TikTok ad campaign. This feature uses an algorithm that will look at the attributes of the custom audience you've created (such as their demographics, location, operating system or interests). Then, the application will search for other users and groups that share similar attributes. 

For this strategy to work, it is recommended that you define a large enough source audience (at least 10,000 people) and select the right attributes. Another factor TikTok takes into account is the option you select for the audience size (specific, balanced or large). The more specific the audience size, the more successful the model will be in targeting a similar audience.

3. Achieving high performance creatives (ad)

If the definition of your objectives and the targeting of your audience are determining factors of success for your TikTok Ads, the creative part is even more important . Indeed, 70% of your advertising results depend on your creative. 

A TikTok creative is an ad in an image or video format that TikTok users interact with when they open the social network and scroll through their ForYou feed.

You can choose between several formats when creating an advertising campaign on TikTok, among which : 

• TopView ads: A full-screen immersive ad that lasts up to 60 seconds. This type of ad is displayed at the top of the PourToi feed as soon as the user opens the application. 
• In-Feed Ads; the ad will be placed randomly in a feed rather than being the first thing a user interacts with when they open the application; 
• The Brand Takeover: your ad will be the only ad in your category that will be displayed at the top of the For You page for an entire day;
• Branded Hashtag: this type of ad allows you to challenge your subscribers. 

In addition to choosing the right ad format (based on your goals and target audience), also consider taking care of your creative . Take the time to analyze videos from influencers and brands in your field. Identify the video formats that generate the most engagement and target the content elements you can use for your own TikTok ads. 

A good creative TikTok Ads will also : 

• Create desire by pointing out the problems your product or service solves;
• Generate curiosity and capture attention with a good scroll stopper. This is a short video (less than 20 seconds) with eye-catching content (attractive visual effects, a discount announced quickly); 
• Boost your conversion rate by ending your ad with a good call to action .

Reduce ad fatigue on TikTok

Competition between brands on the app has intensified enormously in recent months. To avoid advertising fatigueand better capture your audience's attention, you need to optimize your advertising campaigns as much as possible. 

For this, we advise you to :

• Develop native content. Give your TikTok ads an organic feel, respecting the codes and the way TikTok videos are made. Produce vertical content, use text overlay and the free music library.
• Collaborate with a content creator. Include TikTok creators to improve the engagement of your ads.
• Use multiple designs. We recommend that you use at least 3 different creatives for each ad group and alternate with the copies.

4. Redefine your advertising budget

Another very important factor to optimize your ads is to redefine your budget and bidding strategy . 

In general, you should plan a sufficient TikTok advertising budget so that the application's algorithm can optimize your performance. For awareness, this should not be a problem. But for generating traffic and conversions, the daily budget recommendation is 50 times your target CPA . For example, if your goal is an add-to-cart worth €2, you'll need to budget €100 per day on your ad groups so that the algorithm collects enough data.

Then, you can play on the bidding. At the beginning, you can use safer bidding strategies (like Bid Cap or Cos Cap). They will allow you to control your budget and collect data without your expenses exploding. Experiment with different approaches, giving each a few days to show results before moving on to the next. 

After about ten TikTok Ads campaigns, you will be able to switch to manual bidding and optimize your ads on TikTok ads not according to your cost but according to the value you can get from them . Indeed, the TikTok algorithm starts to know your audience better and to refine its retargeting. 

At this point, it is most effective at targeting profiles that are most likely to convert into customers . It will therefore focus on the people who represent the most value for your brand (because they will buy more products/services or at higher prices). 

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5. A/B testing to optimize your ads on TikTok Ads

The final step to optimizing your ads is to test. To determine which objective, targeting, creative or budget is most effective, you need to perform what is called A/B testing .

The idea is simple: you launch several TikTok campaigns simultaneously, changing only some elements . For example, you can change : 

• Your campaign objective; 
• User targeting; 
• The visual of your creatives; 
• The bidding option
• But also the schedule at which you launch your campaign;

For your A/B tests to give concrete results, remember to run your ads for at least two weeks. Avoid vacation periods or traffic peaks to avoid distorting the results. 

All you have to do is analyze your metrics and track the performance of your ad campaigns on TikTok. This data will allow you to see where you can improve, such as the quality of your content, the targeting of your audience, the amount of your bids, etc. 

Do you need help to optimise your TikTok ads campaigns? Sleeq can help you define your strategy, produce your creative and distribute your advertising campaigns. All in direct partnership with the TikTok France teams!