It’s time for brands to shine with TikTok Ads Manager
A new way for brands to tell their story
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Deciding where to allocate their hard fought budgets is a constant challenge for marketers, who not only need to see results and ROI, but creative new ways to reach audiences, and real overall value.
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With its vibrant and engaged global community, TikTok is proving the perfect platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to reach new customers in 2020. The backbone of the global economy, it’s been an extremely tough year for SMBs everywhere, and these businesses are now relying on digital advertising more than ever before.
Recent third-party holiday research commissioned by TikTok revealed that people come to the platform to discover new products and are also inspired to purchase them. With a 100 million-plus EU community, it doesn’t matter whether a brand sells dog collars, candles, clothing, art, virtual cookery lessons, or mindfulness coaching; SMBs of every kind are discovering there’s an audience for them on the platform.
TikTok is a space that allows SMBs to build relationships with other like-minded businesses too. By leveraging hashtags such as #smallbusinesscheck (2.8 billion views) and #smallbusinessowner (920 million views), brands can share their unique business stories and journey with others, building communities and ecosystems of support.
"From the highs to the lows, smaller brands have a journey to share with their audience, organically and through targeted advertising. With many brands having already jumped in, TikTok is the place for them to reach, engage and connect with their ideal customers in a dynamic and impactful way," says Lisa Friedrich, head of SMB Europe for TikTok.
With the recent launch of Ads Manager, TikTok now provides businesses with all the tools they need to share their products with the world quickly and authentically, says Friedrich. To support the ad platform, the TikTok for Business SMB Hub features step-by-step how-to guides, creative inspiration and campaign optimisation tips to help businesses get the very best from their ads.
The In-Feed Ad format served by TikTok Ads Manager allows brands to seamlessly appear in the stream of 100% sound-on, full-screen videos that appear in a user’s personal ‘For You’ feed. For brands with an active Ads Manager account, the marketing potential of this format cannot be overstated. As Friedrich notes, these businesses regularly receive an average of 200,000-plus views per post while enjoying an average engagement rate of 9%.
“TikTok Ads Manager is a platform that enables smaller brands to make connections with their customers. It empowers businesses to quickly set up campaigns that allow them to achieve goals from awareness to consideration to conversion. And because we know there are millions of other things that marketing teams have to do, we’ve built a range of creative tools into the Ads Manager platform – including Smart Video (which automatically cuts and edits your videos) and pre-approved soundtrack and video template options – to help them easily create powerful and engaging TikToks,” says Friedrich.
There’s also a powerful suite of in-app creative tools that offer brands and agencies a level of versatility usually reserved for professional editing software. With features like variable speed, filters, AR effects, music, text and voice-over, small businesses can produce compelling content on their phone app with very little fuss.
The TikTok opportunity
Brands like Lancaster University, ba&sh and My Jolie Candle are some of TikTok Ads Manager’s most successful early adopters.
Lancaster University worked with student ambassadors to create a series of In-Feed Ads using student-generated content and TikTok trends to generate mass exposure for its online open days.
The ad creative harnessed TikTok trends like dancing, reversed video and much-loved filters and effects. Lancaster University strongly embraced the creativity of the platform as well as TikTok’s ‘Don’t Make Ads, Make TikToks’ creative proposition. With a particularly lean budget, the campaign exceeded expectations, and generated over 10 million impressions and 9 million engagements across all ads. Over 90,000 users clicked through to the landing page, showing the ads sparked mass interest and consideration.
“We’ve loved sharing the great work our students created and having them speak for the brand. Having flexibility and control over the campaign has meant we can really maximise performance and spend,” says Cat Prill, marketing coordinator at Lancaster University.
Brands smashing targets with TikTok Ads Manager
Meanwhile, for Parisian fashion brand ba&sh, partnering with pioneering ad agency tigrz, TikTok Ads Manager provided the ideal solution to raise awareness and drive fashion-conscious digital natives to discover the new collection, ‘Reebok x ba&sh’. Using eye-grabbing creative against a catchy soundtrack, ba&sh smashed its benchmarks, with the In-Feed Ad reaching over 5 million users and generating over nine million impressions, plus over 100,000 clicks to an ecommerce landing page.
Also hailing from Paris, My Jolie Candle designed a series of elegant and creative In-Feed Ads to launch via TikTok Ads Manager. As part of a Mother’s Day campaign targeting new customers, the creative video assets combined glossy footage with My Jolie Candle products, in a range of different scenarios – from seeing a ‘Wonder Mom’ to using split-screen edit techniques, faux text conversations and still product pictures with animated text.
Each advert landed a simple but effective call to action to ‘Shop Now’, and sent users to an ecommerce landing page, driving over 49 million impressions, an impressive 0.49% click-through rate, and over 1,800 conversions.
With its simple, speedy set-up process and familiar interface, TikTok Ads Manager will have any brand sharing its products with the platform's 100 million-strong European community in no time. Optimised for maximum engagement, Ads Manager ensures SMBs can be seen and heard on a global scale, amplifying the reach of small businesses like no other platform. And with so many brands already enjoying huge successes, there's really nothing left to do but follow suit, jump in and start winning with TikTok.
TikTok for Business is all about making it simple to create and execute inspiring TikTok campaigns. Whether you’re new to the platform or have already built a community, TikTok's Lisa Friedrich recommends a few things to ensure success.
“The first is to start out by keeping your target audience broad so you can be discovered by as many of your potential customers as possible. Second, if you don't already have the TikTok Pixel, I cannot emphasise enough how much this will help you optimise your campaigns and measure the results,” says Friedrich.
“Finally, I would be sure to start with campaigns that focus on raising awareness to familiarise people with your brand or business, rather than looking for immediate conversions to ensure you see holistic success on the platform. Be discovered by the TikTok community, tell your story and then inspire them to purchase.”
Started in 2018, Omolola Jewellery is a UK-based SMB that produces modern afro-centric jewellery inspired by Yoruba culture and other West African art and architecture. A company created by siblings, Omolola is a brand born of the desire to pay homage to West African cultures and build connections with home, sharing a heritage with the diaspora.
The young brand recently discovered the power of TikTok to tell stories in an entertaining way and reach new customers. Taiwo Adegbulu, co-founder and co-CEO of Omolola Jewellery, explains: “While we previously relied on offline marketing for our pop-ups and concessions in stores, we’ve much preferred creating adverts online as we’ve experienced a new level of engagement with our customers – it’s also been so much fun creating the content. We love being able to inform people of our products while making them laugh too. That’s why TikTok is perfect because it allows creatives to have fun. Recently, we spotted how one of our followers shared our campaign on TikTok, and we could instantly trace the positive impact this had on our sales.”
For businesses getting started on TikTok Ads Manager before 15 December, TikTok will match ad spend up to €1,800. Now SMBs can go twice as big this season. Click here to find out more.
Lisa Friedrich
Head of SMB Europe for TikTok
Visit TikTok for Small Businesses resource hub here
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Stop motion and frame effects are just two of the video editing options made possible for any small business by TikTok's in-app creative tools
Using camera movement and effects like split-screen can make TikTok ads look professional with little effort or expertise
Lancaster University earned 10 million impressions with a limited budget, through ads raising awareness of its open days for prospective students
For businesses getting started on TikTok Ads Manager before 15 December, TikTok will match ad spend up to €1,800. Now SMBs can go twice as big this season. Click here to find out more.
With its vibrant and engaged global community, TikTok is proving the perfect platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to reach new customers in 2020. The backbone of the global economy, it’s been an extremely tough year for SMBs everywhere, and these businesses are now relying on digital advertising more than ever before.
Recent third-party holiday research commissioned by TikTok revealed that people come to the platform to discover new products and are also inspired to purchase them. With a 100 million-plus EU community, it doesn’t matter whether a brand sells dog collars, candles, clothing, art, virtual cookery lessons, or mindfulness coaching; SMBs of every kind are discovering there’s an audience for them on the platform.
TikTok is a space that allows SMBs to build relationships with other like-minded businesses too. By leveraging hashtags such as #smallbusinesscheck (2.8 billion views) and #smallbusinessowner (920 million views), brands can share their unique business stories and journey with others, building communities and ecosystems of support.
"From the highs to the lows, smaller brands have a journey to share with their audience, organically and through targeted advertising. With many brands having already jumped in, TikTok is the place for them to reach, engage and connect with their ideal customers in a dynamic and impactful way," says Lisa Friedrich, head of SMB Europe for TikTok.
With the recent launch of Ads Manager, TikTok now provides businesses with all the tools they need to share their products with the world quickly and authentically, says Friedrich. To support the ad platform, the TikTok for Business SMB Hub features step-by-step how-to guides, creative inspiration and campaign optimisation tips to help businesses get the very best from their ads.
