You can’t miss the rise to social media fame from TikTok. TikTok has soared the ranks of the social media leaderboard with being the fastest growing platform in the world, with over 25 million active monthly users, making the platform the 6th most popular in the world.

Naturally, this has led to more ad inventory being available in TikTok, and many media buyers utilising this opportunity to shift budgets from popular channels such as Facebook to try TikTok.

However, not everyone has managed to capitalise successfully on these great opportunities, with many brands discussing the difficulties of getting TikTok to perform well because other channel strategies just won’t work for the platform. So what will?

Here at Digital Voices, we have vast amounts of experience running ads across various industries with some great results. We’re here to share just how to get the most out of your ads, thanks to continual testing within the platform which follows best practices, their tag line “Make TikToks, not ads”:

1. Nailing the hook

Your hook is crucial to your ad performance - your goal should be to capture your audience’s attention within six seconds. The hook should include a short insight to your product or service, and anything after six seconds should go into detail about your unique selling points. Make sure you’re testing your hook as well - a different script might be the key to winning over your audience.

2. Take advantage of Influencer and UGC content 

In line with our Paid Social predictions for 2023, we’re strongly encouraging all brands to take advantage of UGC and influencers. Why? Over 90% of users have more trust in UGC than traditional ads, and 61% of consumers trust influencer recommendations. So UGC = customers. Just make sure that the influencer you work with is the right fit for your brand and the product or service that you’re promoting. We’ve seen a lot of wins with UGC mashups especially, and this is down to the native, seamless fit of the content within the platform. Remember, Spark Ads are your friend!

3. The content type is crucial. 78% of the audience responds to candid, engaging and authentic content.

Is the problem that your content isn’t relevant to the platform and your audience? Best performing content types include daily life, entertainment, cuisine and beauty and care - so take advantage of what’s working on the platform! You can also lean into using trending music, challenges or effects where you can blend these into your brand's messaging - this will generally give you the upper hand in ad performance. TikTok has recently launched their ’top performing trends’ and ‘top performing products’ which will save you hours of searching for the right content that makes sure you’re staying on trend. 

4. Your ads are failing because of your creative

Most problems are easily fixed by the creative! Is your AOV low for your brand? Show a collection of your best sellers in bundles. Struggling to drive a higher CTR? Look at your call to action in the creative, it’s highly likely that you're not giving your audience a reason to visit the website. Creative is KING across social ads, and that’s exactly what helps you win at auction and win your audience over, converting them to customers! 

5. Are you narrowing your audience too much?

Ads have excellent targeting parameters to narrow your audience downs to a specific niche, whether that’s by interests, demographics and behaviours. However, you may be going too narrow and missing potential customers. When you target broadly, you’re allowing the algorithm to find new, optimal audiences for your ads. It can be scary trusting the platform, but the majority of the time AI will win. Digital advertising has come a long way and the platform wants you to win at the auction!

6. Use tried and tested ad ideas

If you’re struggling to find a winning content idea, here are three ad ideas we LOVE at Digital Voices (because they convert!):

• Showcase your best-selling product or service (in action if possible!) 
• Happy customers who already love your product or service - this is a great example of social proof. Just make sure you have consent from the customer to use the content.
• Behind the scenes videos of your brand

We understand that it is hard to keep up with the constantly changing landscape of paid media. This is why we have a specialist paid team in-house to support your next influencer marketing campaign. If you require support with strategy, campaign or even technical support, please reach out to us.