TikTok has emerged as one of the most popular social media platforms, with millions of users worldwide. As a marketer, leveraging TikTok’s immense reach and engagement can be a game-changer for businesses. However, to achieve optimal results, it is crucial to understand and implement TikTok’s best practices for web auction campaigns.
In this guide, we will decode TikTok’s best practices for optimizing web auction campaigns. We will cover various aspects of campaign optimization, including account structure, data connections, creative strategies, bidding, attribution, and measurement. By following these best practices, you can ensure that your campaigns are set up for success on TikTok.
Account Structure and Optimization
Nurtured Account Strategy
A nurtured account strategy is the key to scalable growth and long-term performance on TikTok. It involves a phased approach within the conversion funnel, starting with upper funnel conversion events and gradually progressing towards lower funnel events.
For performance advertisers, implementing a nurtured account strategy allows TikTok’s system to learn about your consumers and gain a deep understanding of who is most likely to engage with your ad and convert. By starting with upper funnel events such as “search” and “add to cart,” you can nurture your account and optimize it for increased web conversions and decreased CPAs.
To nurture your account effectively, ensure that your account is structured properly by creating one account and diversifying your Ad Groups. This will help in optimizing your ad account and maximizing its performance. Additionally, set up your data connections to allow TikTok’s system to accurately measure and learn from the actions that consumers take on your website.
Optimal Data Connection Setup
Data connections are essential for powering all your measurement, optimization, automation, and targeting capabilities. To deliver high-performance ads, it is crucial to set up safe and reliable data connection solutions.
Leverage the TikTok Pixel and Events API together to seamlessly integrate our platform with your systems. This integration allows for accurate measurement and optimization based on consumer actions on your website. By creating events for each action a customer takes and passing relevant parameters back to our platform, you can build a full-funnel marketing strategy and optimize your campaign outcomes.
Enrich your data connections with match keys using Advanced Matching and build custom audiences to ensure that your ads are delivered to the most relevant audiences. These data connection solutions will future-proof your business and help you maximize your campaign performance on TikTok.
Campaign Setup and Optimization
Setting and Scaling Budgets
Setting and scaling your budgets correctly is crucial for effective campaign management on TikTok. By following TikTok’s best practices, you can use your budget as effectively and efficiently as possible.
At the campaign level, leave the budget as an open budget, allowing TikTok’s system to accumulate and accelerate learnings and properly scale your spend. For Ad Groups, use daily budgets instead of lifetime budgets. This will enable you to meet your cost goals and spend efficiently while optimizing for conversions.
When nearing 80% of budget utilization, consider increasing your budget. However, it is essential to increase the budget by no more than 50% at a time and limit your budget adjustments to twice per day. Waiting 1-2 days to observe key performance indicators (KPIs) before scaling will ensure maintained stability and prevent excessive fluctuations.
Bidding Strategy
Selecting the right bidding strategy is crucial for optimizing your campaign performance on TikTok. TikTok offers a range of bidding strategies to help you achieve your desired business outcomes.
The Maximum Delivery bidding strategy aims to maximize the number of results for a set budget by controlling the average cost per action (CPA) from the auction. This strategy is suitable when you do not have strict guidelines for maximum CPA and your primary goal is to spend the full budget and generate the most volume of results.
On the other hand, the Cost Cap bidding strategy controls the cost of results while maximizing the number of results for a set budget. This strategy is ideal when CPA/ROAs are more important than delivery volume or the number of conversions. It aims to minimize CPA by delivering the cheapest results first.
When selecting the bidding strategy, consider factors such as your campaign goals, target CPA, and optimization events. It is recommended to use a combination of Cost Cap and Maximum Delivery bidding strategies across Ad Groups and tailor the strategy according to your specific use case.
The Learning Phase
The learning phase is a crucial stage in ad delivery on TikTok. It is the initial stage where the system actively explores and targets new customers to find the most relevant audience for your Ad Groups. During this phase, the system gathers insights and refines its understanding of your target audience and their behaviors.
While in the learning phase, it is normal to experience fluctuations in CPA. However, these fluctuations will stabilize over time as the system learns and optimizes delivery based on the data collected. To ensure successful navigation through the learning phase, it is recommended to use under 20% of your campaign budget during this period.
Ad Groups should achieve approximately 50 conversions to exit the learning phase and stabilize their Cost Per Acquisition. Once an Ad Group exits the learning phase, you can confidently scale your budget and expect more stable performance.
It is important to avoid making significant edits to your Ad Groups during the learning phase, as this can retrigger the learning phase and disrupt the optimization process. Instead, focus on monitoring key metrics, making minor adjustments, and allowing the system to gather sufficient data for optimal performance.
Targeting
Targeting the right audience is crucial for the success of your web auction campaigns on TikTok. TikTok offers a range of powerful audience targeting tools that allow you to reach customers with flexible and effective targeting options.
When setting up your targeting strategy, consider starting with a broad targeting approach. This will help you reach a wider audience and increase the chances of discovering new potential customers. Use demo targeting, interest/behavior targeting, or custom audiences to find the right audiences for your business.
If you have specific audiences that have shown success in the past, leverage them by using smart targeting or lookalike audiences. Smart targeting allows TikTok’s system to optimize your campaign delivery based on real-time data and insights. Lookalike audiences help you expand your reach by targeting users who are similar to your existing customer base.
However, it is important to avoid setting a target that is too narrow. A narrow audience size can lead to difficulties in exiting the learning phase and increase the likelihood of creative fatigue. Consider narrow targeting only if you have specific needs or if you have validated its effectiveness through testing.
Creative Strategies for Web Auction Campaigns
Creative Diversity
Creative diversity is essential for the success of your web auction campaigns on TikTok. By adding at least 3-5 unique creative assets per Ad Group, you can maximize your campaign’s reach and engagement.
Having a variety of creative assets allows TikTok’s system to optimize delivery and avoid creative fatigue. When too many assets are grouped together, a few ads may receive the majority of impressions, clicks, and conversions, while the rest receive fewer. By spreading your assets across Ad Groups or refreshing them over time, you can ensure better optimization and engagement.
Creative Quality
Creative quality plays a vital role in capturing audience attention and driving conversions on TikTok. When creating your creative assets, consider the following best practices:
- Videos should have a minimum resolution of 720p to ensure optimal viewing experience.
- Always create vertical and full-screen videos for the best engagement on TikTok.
- Include audio and sound in your videos to enhance the overall experience and capture attention.
- Aim for video lengths longer than 5 seconds, with an ideal range of 21-34 seconds. This allows you to tell a compelling story and engage your audience effectively.
By adhering to these creative quality best practices, you can ensure that your creative assets perform well on TikTok and resonate with your target audience.
Creative Optimization
Creative optimization is an ongoing process that helps improve the performance of your web auction campaigns. To optimize your creative assets effectively, consider the following strategies:
- Use diversified Ad Groups to compare the performance of different creative styles and variations. This will help you identify the most effective creative elements and optimize accordingly.
- Partner with TikTok creators using the TikTok Creator Marketplace. By collaborating with popular creators, you can leverage their audience and create ads that resonate most with users.
- Leverage third-party tools like CapCut to edit your videos or find third-party agencies to help you with creative production. These tools and resources can enhance the quality and impact of your creative assets.
Creative optimization is an iterative process. Monitor the performance of your creative assets, make data-driven adjustments, and continue to test and refine your campaigns to achieve optimal results.
Ad Fatigue
Ad fatigue occurs when your ad reaches the maximum number of people interested in your offering. To detect and avoid ad fatigue, it is essential to monitor key indicators such as click-through rate (CTR), impressions (reach), CPA, and ROAS.
If you notice a declining CTR with increasing frequency, decreasing impressions, and rising CPA or declining ROAS, it may indicate ad fatigue. To combat ad fatigue, refresh your Ad Group with new creative assets or adjust your targeting, bidding, and budget strategies.
By staying vigilant and actively managing ad fatigue, you can maintain the effectiveness of your campaigns and ensure sustained engagement from your target audience.
Attribution and Measurement
Attribution Strategy
Implementing the right attribution strategy is crucial for understanding the impact of your TikTok campaigns and optimizing your bidding and targeting strategies.
TikTok offers various attribution options, including Click Through Attribution (CTA) and View Through Attribution (VTA). CTA attribution gives conversion credit when a user clicks a TikTok ad and completes the desired conversion action. VTA attribution, on the other hand, gives conversion credit when a user views (without clicking) a TikTok ad and completes the desired conversion action.
When setting up your attribution strategy, consider the attribution window settings. TikTok’s default attribution window settings are 7-day click and 1-day view. However, you can customize the attribution windows based on your campaign strategies and goals. Longer attribution windows can help capture more events and show the impact of your ads, while shorter windows provide a more immediate view of performance.
Additionally, consider implementing Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), which distributes credit to various touchpoints of a user’s conversion journey. This strategy provides a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of your TikTok campaigns and helps optimize your media strategy.
Campaign Measurement
To measure the effectiveness and impact of your TikTok campaigns, consider implementing post-purchase surveys and conversion lift studies.
Post-purchase surveys provide valuable insight into audience consumption behaviors and help reveal the top sources of brand discovery or site visits. By using customer-sourced data as an input in your attribution framework, you can gain a comprehensive view of your brand’s effectiveness on TikTok.
Conversion lift studies measure incremental conversions as a result of your TikTok campaigns. These studies help prove the causal impact between impressions and conversions, strengthening confidence in your media strategy. Work with your TikTok representative to align on your campaign strategy before launching a conversion lift study and interpret the learnings afterward.
Store visit attribution is another valuable measurement tool that ties your TikTok media with physical visits to your brick-and-mortar business locations. By understanding the incremental foot traffic driven by your TikTok campaigns, you can gain deeper insights into your audience’s offline behaviors and optimize your creative strategies accordingly.
By leveraging these attribution and measurement strategies, you can gain actionable data, make informed decisions, and optimize the success of your TikTok campaigns.
