TikTok advertising is increasingly chosen by many people because this form of customer approach is extremely potential and impressive. If you are learning about how to run TikTok ads, this article is for you.

What is TikTok Ads?

TikTok Ads are marketing forms used on the TikTok platform. With the purpose of increasing brand awareness, introducing products for sales. The campaign directs consumers interested in the product, from the TikTok page to websites outside the platform according to the desired settings.

Why should you advertise on TikTok?

TikTok is a social video application originating from China that has been chosen by millions of Marketers to become a powerful brand promotion tool. According to Digital Marketing expert Nguyen Dinh Bao, TikTok Ads has the following outstanding advantages:

• With more than 1.601 billion global users, about 1.05 billion of whom are active monthly, TikTok is the most downloaded and visited app in the world, surpassing even Facebook.
• With just a phone and video editing software like CapCut, businesses can attract a large number of potential customers through TikTok advertising.
• In Vietnam, the number of TikTok users has reached 12 million and is increasing at an extremely fast rate. Businesses only need a simple campaign to attract a large amount of traffic when advertising on TikTok.
• Most TikTok users in Vietnam are young Gen Z users under 30 years old, with “no bargaining” purchasing behavior, so businesses can target this audience much more easily than Facebook.
• TikTok is extremely viral, as long as the content is good and funny enough, sometimes without quality, you can still attract a large number of potential customers to your brand when participating in this advertising platform.
• In particular, TikTok also regularly organizes subsidy programs exclusively for stores on TikTok Shop, helping businesses or even individual sellers increase sales effectively.

The opportunity to reach users on TikTok is quite good, but businesses as well as Marketers need to clearly define their goals, target audience and appropriate advertising types to use TikTok Ads most effectively.

4 commonly used types of tiktok advertising

Leverage the power of TikTok – the booming short-form video platform – to reach millions of potential users with these four ad formats:

Brand Takeovers:

• Grab attention right from the moment you open the app: Your brand image will take over the entire screen within the first few seconds, creating a strong impression and attracting maximum user attention.
• Increase Hashtag Challenge Views: Encourage users to create videos with your hashtag challenge, spread your brand and attract huge traffic.
• Create FOMO effect: Limited number of advertisers per day, creating scarcity and urging users to interact.

Native Video Ads:

• Perfect integration: Your video ads will appear interspersed between regular videos, creating a sense of authenticity and easily capturing users’ attention.
• Drive action: Embed clear CTAs (calls to action) that prompt users to visit your website, download your app, or make a direct purchase.
• Increase conversion rates: Clear goals, seamless shopping journey, optimize advertising campaign effectiveness.

Video Challenges (Video Challenge Ads):

• Stimulate creativity: Hashtag challenge attracts users to participate in creating videos based on your topic and hashtag, spreading the brand naturally and effectively.
• Increase interaction: Encourage users to share videos, comment and discuss, create community effects and promote user participation.
• Wide reach: Video challenges have the potential to go viral, attracting large numbers of new users and raising brand awareness.

Branded Lens (Two-way interactive Tiktok ads):

• Unique interactive experiences: Create AR (virtual reality) effects that bring your brand into the user’s real world, capture attention and make a lasting impression.
• Stimulate content creation: Encourage users to use your AR filter to create videos, share, and spread your brand creatively.
• Increase advertising effectiveness: Two-way interaction between brand and user increases brand recall and promotes purchase action.

6 Steps to Create a TikTok Advertising Account

Currently, TikTok supports individuals or businesses to create two types of accounts: personal TikTok (Self-Serve) and TikTok Agency (TikTok Ads Agency). We recommend that you use a personal TikTok account if you are a beginner. Running TikTok ads through an Agency is more suitable for experienced advertisers. How to create a personal TikTok Ads account is as follows:

• Step 1: Click on the link: https://ads.tiktok.com/i18n/signup to access the TikTok Ads account registration page.

• Step 2: Click Create Now. If you are IP blocked, change your IP address using WARP app.
• Step 3: Fill in the information to register an account and confirm via Gmail.
• Step 4: Fill in your basic business information. Then, click Continue and verify with OTP code via phone.
• Step 5: Under Tax Status, select Non-VAT Registered Business. Then select Manual Payments and click Go to TikTok Ads Manager .
• Step 6: After completing the above steps, you have reached the Ads Manager of the TikTok platform. Here you can set up your own advertising campaign.

Detailed TikTok advertising guide 2024

Are you looking to advertise on Tiktok in a cost-effective and effective way? Don’t worry, with the detailed instructions below from Tsunami Innovation, you can do it yourself!

Step 1: Create a campaign

• Step 1: Select the Campaign tab on the menu to access the manager.
• Step 2: Click Create to create a new TikTok advertising campaign.
• Step 3: Tap Create Basic if you’re new. Tap Create Advanced if you want full control over your TikTok ads.

Step 2: Select campaign objective

Depending on the customer journey, you will choose different TikTok Ads campaign goals. There are 7 goals, specifically:

Campaign	Target
Increase awareness (Awareness)	Ads reach maximum target audience.
Brand Engagement (Consideration)	Views: Maximum number of times the ad video is played.  Traffic: Directs users to a specific URL (link). Download: Increase your business app downloads.
Conversion Rate (Conversions)	Drive actions on your business website (e.g., purchases, signups).  The ad will use pre-made forms to capture leads. Ads that drive valuable action on your website. Advertise on TikTok Shop product catalog.

Step 3: Set a name and budget for your campaign 

The next step is to decide on the name and budget for the entire advertising campaign. You should name it something that is easy to read, easy to remember, and easy to distinguish from other campaigns. Note that the campaign name is allowed to be up to 512 characters. Regarding the budget setting, the minimum budget for a campaign is usually 500,000 VND or more.

Step 4: Choose where to display ads

If you want to advertise on TikTok, click on this platform only. In addition, depending on the ad format, you can also advertise on other platforms that have TikTok links such as BuzzVideo, TopBuzz, NewsRepublic, Babe, Website, App.

Step 5: Target the audience displayed on TikTok Ads

Similar to other social media platforms, TikTok allows businesses to select target customers based on criteria such as: gender, age, geographic area, language, interests, and consumer behavior.

To get the most out of your advertising, you need to clearly define your target audience that is relevant to your product and business goals. This helps ensure that your ads reach the right people who are likely to be interested in and engage with your product/service.

Step 6: Set up ad group schedule and budget

About the ad schedule (Schedule): You need to choose the start and end time of the ad campaign on TikTok.

About the Dayparting feature: This is a function that allows businesses to choose a specific time of day to display ads.

• All Day: TikTok will deliver ads throughout the day.
• Specific Time: If you select Select Specific Time, your ads will be delivered according to the schedule your business sets. For example, you want your ads to only appear at 7am and from 8pm to 9pm on Sundays.

Regarding bidding budget for each ad click (Bid Strategy), businesses have three options:

• Daily budget: For example, if you set 500,000 VND and choose this type, TikTok can use up 100,000 VND in one day.
• Total budget (Lifetime): For example, if you set 500,000 VND and choose this type, TikTok will divide 100,000 VND equally every day for the entire advertising period.
• Unlimited budget (No Limit): This form is suitable for businesses with abundant budget and unlimited advertising days.

Once you have completed all the above steps, you are ready to set up your TikTok ad group. Let’s move on to the next step of creating an ad template.

Step 7: Bidding & Optimization

• Optimization Goal: Leave the default selection to let TikTok automatically optimize to meet your advertising goal. If you want high conversions, select Conversion.
• Smart Optimization: If you don’t have much experience with manual bidding, choose this feature.
• Bid: You need to determine the price you are willing to pay per conversion, TikTok will use this price to optimize your advertising campaign.
• Delivery Type: You can choose Accelerated if you want TikTok to spend your budget faster and deliver your ads quickly, or choose Standard to deliver at the usual speed.

Once the installation is complete, click Next to continue.

Step 8: Set up video ad display

Click “Add From Computer” to download the advertising video. If you want to reuse the video, click “Add From Library”. Choose a video that fits the TikTok advertising format. Usually, shop owners or businesses with a moderate budget choose the TikTok In-Feed format.

Besides, you should invest in service and product videos to run TikTok ads, add some CTA buttons to the Landing Page to increase conversion rate.

Please note the following parameters to run effective TikTok Ads videos:

• Recommended aspect ratio:  9:16/1:1/16:9.
• Resolution:  ≥ 720 * 1280px / ≥ 640 * 640px / 1280 * 720px.
• File type:  .mp4 / .mov / .mpeg / .3gp / .avi.
• Bitrate: 16 516kbps.
• Video duration:  Short video 5 ~ 60 seconds.
• File Size:  File size 500MB.
• Call To Action : Choose a call to action that is appropriate for your business’s products and services.

Once installed, click Submit for TikTok to review and approve your ad.

Step 9: Attach Tracking Pixel on Website

Attaching a tracking pixel to your website makes it easier to check website traffic through the TikTok platform. From there, advertisers can promptly make appropriate adjustments to their TikTok Ads campaigns. Go to Library, select Manage Website Pixel and follow the step-by-step instructions available on TikTok.

Step 10: Monitor TikTok Ad Status

You will track the status of your TikTok advertising campaign through the status column, specifically:

• In review: The video is under review and not distributed yet.
• Active: The ad has been approved and is active.
• Not delivering: Ad not running due to policy violation or insufficient budget.
• Deleted: Ad has been deleted.
• Inactive: The ad has been paused.
• Completed: The ad has run for the required amount of time and has stopped serving.

Experience and notes when running ads on TikTok

Here are 13 tips to help you increase efficiency while running TikTok Ads :

Do not use images of celebrities 

Businesses absolutely do not use celebrity images in TikTok videos and ads (even if your company has cooperated with them). To avoid violating TikTok’s advertising policy, businesses need to proactively contact TikTok manually first. After being approved for the ad template using celebrity images, you can run the ad.

Do not advertise products that violate our policies. 

TikTok’s policy will reject advertising for certain types of products such as: adult products, functional foods, oriental medicine, etc. On the other hand, TikTok Ads will also be restricted if the content contains phrases such as: “complete treatment”, “effective commitment”, “100% cure”. You should pay close attention to this information to have the optimal way to run TikTok ads.

Prepare resources for running TikTok ads

By making the most of the necessary resources available including: email, mobile number and landing page, visa card and at least 15 short videos introducing the brand and products. When customers know and learn about the product/brand, they will have more complete information about your industry.

Regularly updated information from TikTok

TikTok regularly updates the latest information and advertising regulations through TikTok For Business and TikTok Help Center . Therefore, you should regularly visit this document page and read TikTok’s documents to be able to grasp the latest information and be more proactive in setting up TikTok ads.

Use appropriate Hashtags

Use hashtags that are directly related to the content of your video ad and the product/service you provide. At the same time, combine popular hashtags and low-competition hashtags to attract more viewers.

However, avoid using hashtags that are too general and unrelated to the video content, and only use a maximum of 30 hashtags for each promotional video.

Enable Smart Creative Ads on TikTok

Smart Creative Ads lets you upload up to 10 video ads and add 5 ad descriptions. It then automatically mixes videos and ad descriptions randomly to determine which ad combination is the most effective.

Make sure your promotional videos are in high resolution

Videos with too low resolution will cause the system to reject video upload requests or only display on secondary platforms such as Vigo, Helo, Buzz Video (Website systems linked to TikTok).

For TikTok ad description

Because of limited description space, you need to optimize your ad text. If you need to explain your product/service in detail, insert the text directly into the video ad content.

Create multiple ad groups and ads

Create multiple ad groups and ads to test and compare the effectiveness of each group. Additionally, create two videos for the same ad group to test the engagement of each video.

Collaborate with influential celebrities

Cooperating with KOLs and KOCs who have great influence in the target customer file is an effective way to help businesses increase their brand recognition in the market, especially for brands that are not yet known by many people.

TikTok has built-in features to help businesses connect with influencers in each niche. You can find the best representative for your product from this list.

Post at least 3 videos per day

TikTok users tend to access the app to find interesting entertainment content every day and buying goods is not the first goal when accessing TikTok. Therefore, you need to create a personal account as a normal user, then post videos with rich content every day to increase reach.

Share your content or campaign on other social networks

Sharing content on other social platforms will help you expand your reach to your target audience. On TikTok, users are typically young. Facebook, Instagram, etc. will have a more diverse demographic, from young to old.

Create new trends on TikTok

Creating new trends on TikTok will attract more users to follow your account. From there, your brand will reach more users. This is also one of the most effective and economical ways to run TikTok ads.

Above are detailed instructions on how to run effective TikTok ads, helping to bring in the highest revenue with maximum cost savings. Hopefully, with the above information, you will no longer feel difficult when running a TikTok advertising campaign.

With practical experience in hundreds of large and small projects, Tsunami Innovation is the leading unit trusted by customers to cooperate in implementing TikTok Ads advertising campaigns. Please contact 0822467979 if you have any questions that need to be answered.