In this blog post we are going to show you how to set up your default prospecting campaigns on TikTok.

So let’s get started!

HOW TO STRUCTURE YOUR TIKTOK AD ACCOUNTS WHEN YOU’RE FIRST LAUNCHING YOUR TIKTOK ADS

We keep our TikTok campaigns simple.

As our rep says, “simple is best when it comes to TikTok ads.”

That means simple campaign structures. Simple tests. Not too many creatives in one ad set.

This simplicity helps optimize the TikTok pixel quicker, meaning we get through the learning phase faster (50 conversions per week).

Here is how we set up our ad accounts when we are starting a brand new ad account for an e-commerce client.

TIKTOK AD CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE

TikTok’s ad platform is very similar to Facebook’s, so that’s helpful.

You have your Campaign, Ad Group, and Ads. Very similar Facebook’s dashboard. 

CAMPAIGN LEVEL

Campaigns are where you’re going to select your advertising objective AKA your goal – such as traffic, lead generation, video views, conversions, etc.

It’s also in the Campaign level where you control your campaign settings, such as choosing to use Campaign Budget Optimization or not. If you toggle CBO on then you’ll set your budget at the Campaign level.

It’s also recommended that you add at least two ad groups to your campaign if you choose CBO.

AD GROUP LEVEL

The Ad Group is where you choose you’re going to choose your landing page, pixel, and optimization event…

Your ad placements…

And whether or not you want to use dynamic ads…

Next, you’re going to get into the Targeting section where you’ll specify the demographics, interests, and behaviors of the users you want to target in your campaign. But make sure you select Custom targeting or else you won’t be given to option to set your targeting criteria.

A lot of advertisers like to only target folks 18+ by toggling off “All” and “13-17” under Age.

The Audience section is where you can build your retargeting audience – people who have landed on a website, engaged with your profile, upload customer lists, etc.

It’s the Interests & Behaviors section where you’ll do most of your targeting, including content interests and behavior regarding video, creator, and hashtag interactions.

AD LEVEL

Moving on to the Ad Level, where you build out your ads – you upload your videos, input your copy, choose your landing page, call to action, caption. This is whee you determine what people actually see when they see your TikTok ads.

NOTE – we like to start with 2-3 different videos we like to test at the start

This is the basic structure of our prospecting TikTok campaign. Very similar to FB which Makes it very easy for media buyers who are familiar with the most popular advertising platform ever invented – Facebook.

We also find that building TikTok campaigns are very quick and intuitive. 

TIKTOK CAMPAIGNS

On the campaign level, when we are starting with a new TikTok account, we are going to start with one campaign.

And this is optimized for conversions if I am working with an e-commerce brand. If it’s a B2B then I’m optimizing for Lead Generation. 

But for e-commerce, I am optimizing for conversions; 

TIKTOK AD GROUPS

And at the Ad Group Level, we are going to have one ad set and in this ad set we are optimizing for “add to cart” (because this is a new ad account). 

Now, I know a lot of Facebook media buyers are thinking to themselves “don’t you want to test a lot of audiences, isn’t there more that you can being doing? – and the answer is NO.

The best thing you can do for your TikTok Tok ad account when you first begin is have one campaign and one Ad Group.

And this is a prospecting campaign, which means you are using TikTok to reach a brand new customers. You’re not retargeting your old website traffic or past customers or a list. ]

NOTE – Most of our client use TikTok to reach and acquire new customers.

TIKTOK ADS

In terms of number of ads, I would say three ads is a great place to start when yore launching a new TikTok ad account

And I try to make the ads very different from each other

So, I am still using video. I’m still using around :15 seconds as the format.

I like to test three different ads within the ad set and this gives TikTok more options of who what people are going to see when they are seeing your ads and then tt can determine what budget to put towards each out. Out of the total daily budget you set on the ad set level

This is out default campaign structure for a new ad account. One camping. One ad set optimized for add to cart until I get 1000 add to carts on the pixel. Then we will change the optimization, start a new ad set, optimizing for initiate check out. And then I am going to have three different videos to serve to this audience.

This is our basic account structure.

ADVANCED TIKTOK ACCOUNT STRUCTURES

Prospecting campaign – meaning that we are targeting brand new customers and reaching brand new people on TikTok.

Inside my prospecting campaign, I might have three ad sets. Number of ad sets depends on any ad set can get 50 conversions per week. Add to cart Initiate check out. Smaller budget. The more you can consolidate ad set, the faster you can get to your 50 conversions per week. If your budget is split between 3 different ad sets, that means you’re going to need 3x the budget to get to 50 conversions per week per ad set to get out of learning phase. 

So, its better to consolidate

To recap, let’s say we are spending 100k per month for this TikTok client. I might have 3 ad sets because I have more budget and we can easily get through the 50 conversions per week in each ad set. That’s most important

But I also want to get more granular in audience testing

So maybe one audience is completely broad – targeting men and women, 18+, no interests. No lookalikes. No specifications. Straight bird. TikTok, target everybody and use your Machine Learning to find my customers. 

Broad works best on TikTok, especially when it’s a broad appeal.

But when we want to get more granular on our testing, we will add another A Group – this one would be an interest-stack.

And what we mean by interest-stack is that on any ad set where I am targeting interest, instead of separating out interest and behaviors into their own Ad Groups, I only have one Ad Group that’s targeting interests, and I will stack together a ton of different interests. 

TikTok has so many recommended interest too.

That’s the cool thing about TikTok. 

Once you start spending on your campaigns, TikTok will recommend you new interest targeting ideas. 

So we frequently go into the settings of any given Ad Group and we will see what TikTok is recommending. 

And if they recommend an interest, we add it. TikTok is smarter than we are.

Once you start spending, TikTok will recommend interests. 

But we start with our best guess. 

(We don’t want to go too narrow of interest targeting became we want to keep it broad as we don’t want to limit the algorithm. We have found broad gives us better results versus hyper-targeting.)

Another thing on the Ad Group level; TikTok will allow you to expand your interest targeting automatically. There is a little check box on the Ad Group level that says “allow TikTok to expand your interest…”

We always check this box because we believe TikTok knows more than we do. So we are deferring to the machine learning. 

LOOKALIKE AUDIENCES ON TIKTOK

The last Ad Group that we like to test is Lookalikes. 

If you’re familiar with Facebook media buying you know that a lookalike is essentially you give the platform a seed audience – maybe that’s a list of all your past purchasers. And then, Facebook, or TikTok in this case, will try to find people who are most similar to your past purchasers, but they are finding new people. 

So, it’s not exactly retargeting your past purchasers; what it is is you’re giving TikTok a ton of data about the interests and trends of the people who have purchased your product in the past – and this helps TikTok go find people who will buy your product in the future. 

Advertisers like you can also build lookalike audiences based on who visited their website, people who viewed your videos or people who click on your ads.

TikTok will take this information and optimize to new audiences. The point is, there are a lot of different things to test. 

But the three main categories we like to test when we are setting up our TikTok ad accounts are :

1. Broad
2. Interest
3. Lookalikes

And then on the Ad Group level, as I have a larger budget that means I can spend more on different types of ads. 

Once I am spending more than $1,000 per day on TikTok, we will test 5-7 ads in each Ad Group.

So my broad Ad Group will be testing 5-7 different videos, my interest Ad Group will test 5-7 different videos, and my lookalike Ad Group will test 5-7 different videos. 

Because the more budget you have, the more you can spend on any given ad. Which means that TikTok will have more data of who will purchase on your videos and they’re going to learn faster about which videos convert and which ones don’t.

So, this is our more advanced structure. This does not mean you need to have 3 Ad Groups and 7 ads to be successful on TikTok. We have ad accounts that have one Ad Group and two to three different ads that are crushing it. (And, when the ads begin to fatigue, we simply just replace the ad with new ads based on the data we’ve gotten back). 

OPTIMIZING TIKTOK ADS

What if our ads aren’t reaching our target CPA goals or if our other KPIs aren’t looking good, what do we do then?

Have no fear, TikTok Warrior!

Here is what you do:

First (and probably last is), if your CPMs are high and your CTRs are low, this means it’s time to rotate in some new ads into your TikTok Ad Group.

Ads/creatives are King on TikTok. If you want results, turn to your creatives first. 

Here is the bottom line: do not overcomplicate TikTok ads. 

The best way to structure your campaigns is very simplified… rely on TikTok’s machine learning and keep your audiences broad… Really, the focus should be only making really great ad creatives.. and the rest kind of takes care of itself regarding the targeting and the optimizations.

That’s what’s great about TikTok. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to execute a great launch. 

If you want to see a step-by-step video of how to set up a TikTok campaign, click here and I will walk you through step-by-step how I set up our campaigns so you will know exactly where to click in TikTok so you can focus on how to improve your ad creatives, your offer, your landing pages, and even your product.