Can I skip the learning curve and make TikTok campaigns work right away?

Answer, Wolf Marketing CEO Maor Benaim, transition.

1️⃣ Testing Ads Organically

One factor that sets TikTok apart for advertisers is its extremely strict compliance policies, even compared to other platforms like Meta.

Maor’s recommendation to verify compliance before publishing ads is to have an organic TikTok account that isn’t connected to your brands or campaigns. If you publish the content you plan to use in your ads organically and the algorithm doesn’t flag it, you’re more likely to see success when you push paid traffic to that asset.

2️⃣ Set Up An Extra Business Manager

Similar to the organic account for asset testing, Maor recommends setting up two Business Manager accounts on TikTok – one for testing ads to ensure compliance that can get banned without any consequences, and a clean account that only runs ads that are certain to perform and are clear of any potential compliance issues.

Because of the relative lack of ad saturation and the opportunity to test a variety of approaches through multiple Business Managers, TikTok offers can generate higher lead quality and AOV than other platforms, especially if you have a product that is appropriate for broad demographic targeting.

Speaking of demographics…

3️⃣ Older Demographics are Hitting

Much like the early days of Facebook and Instagram, the “olds” are coming to TikTok.

For advertisers, this means that users aged 45 and older are a viable targeting segment that hasn’t been oversaturated with ads yet. If your offer or product is appropriate for this audience, targeting an older demographic on TikTok can pay significant dividends.
TikTok is changing

Further, TikTok has made a pronounced push to extend video lengths platform-wide. This push and the platform’s changing demographics have made longer videos, including VSLs, more potent as creative assets.

4️⃣ Skeptic Shoppers

Maor has also found that shoppers on TikTok are more likely to do additional research and learn more about a product before they buy it. In simple terms, they’re skeptical, and they don’t want to get scammed. And in practical terms, Maor has found that advertorials turn off TikTok leads, so he doesn’t use them on the platform anymore.

Further, TikTok users will search both on- and off-platform for a product to make sure that they’re not getting something that’s dropshipped, for example. They want to make sure that they’re getting the lowest price, or to see if it’s easier to get on Amazon, and so on.

With that in mind, you can lean into this impulse and demonstrate transparency by telling ad viewers to find your product on Amazon if they want.

5️⃣ Audience Product Research Lifts All Campaigns

Finally, there’s an additional benefit for advertisers to the product research that TikTok shoppers do on their own.

Even though the research cycle can extend time to conversion, successful TikTok campaigns can generate a noticeable uplift on Amazon, Google Search, and other platforms because of the increased traffic created by your TikTok audience.

This lift creates more opportunities to monetize, especially if you’re running campaigns on other channels. Paid and organic Google campaigns, Amazon listings, and Bing search campaigns can perform better if you’re consistently driving engagement and conversions through TikTok.