TikTok Works: How TikTok drives business impact for advertisers

With over one billion people coming to TikTok every month – and 150 million in Europe alone – the platform provides an unparalleled opportunity for brands to entertain and engage their audiences in ways that drive strong, measurable business impact. In fact, 92% of TikTok users take some kind of action after watching a video and 37% have bought something they discovered while on the platform.

While we know that TikTok drives strong results for businesses, the platform wanted to fully explore the impact it has on business objectives, so it partnered with trusted third-party partners to study campaign performance across numerous verticals.

Read on to find out just how effective TikTok is at driving sales impact, strong performanceandincreasedcreative quality, and how to leverage the platform to reach – and exceed – your brand’s business goals.

TikTok drives sales for brands

TikTok is an effective and efficient part of the marketer’s media mix – and it’s one that drives big results. Multiple studies have shown that TikTok generates business impact across several critical dimensions, including return on ad spend, sales efficiency, incremental sales and offline sales.

Over the past two years, four separate Nielsen Media Mix Model Meta Analyses commissioned by TikTok have consistently shown that TikTok drives positive ROAS and sales efficiency across the CPG vertical. According to the studies, Europe saw a 64% higher paid media ROAS versus all digital media measured in the models, and almost three times the offline sales efficiency.

Combining the power of TikTok ads with data insights can help brands unlock how their ads drive sales outcomes on the platform. These findings highlight TikTok’s position as a fundamental partner in driving sales with less spend.

TikTok powers effective and efficient media impact

TikTok has become a vital channel throughout the customer journey, from capturing first-touch discoveries to driving purchases. In fact, brands that implement a full-funnel campaign see a strong positive impact on their performance outcomes from their brand ads. This strategy can lead to a 3x increase in conversions compared with single-objective campaigns.

For brands seeking to quantify the performance of their TikTok Ads, Conversion Lift Study provides insights into the number of incremental conversions generated by each campaign. European mobility super-app, Bolt, utilised this study and uncovered a staggering 1977% increase in app installs in their latest campaign.

TikTok builds brand equity with creative, impactful ads

One of the most crucial elements in any TikTok campaign is the creative, and it’s one of the best ways for clients to unlock ad effectiveness: according to Nielsen, 47% of a brand’s sales lift from advertising is the consequence of the creative, over any other element.

Analysis has shown that creative that seamlessly blends into the platform’s culture of authenticity and community-driven entertainment consistently outperforms repurposed and adaptive ads on TikTok, especially when brands understand how to use TikTok-specific creative codes like music, frequent scene changes, voice-overs and text overlays.

3 key pillars to nailing performance marketing with TikTok

TikTok’s performance solutions enable brands to combine creative entertainment and commerce across the entire marketing funnel, powering a seamless customer journey from discovery to purchase and beyond. Here are the three key pillars to winning performance on TikTok.

1. System fundamentals

The bedrock of a successful performance campaign on TikTok is providing its system with all the data it needs to help you achieve your objectives. Follow their fail-safe framework to make sure your campaigns are set up effectively.

• Establish the right data connections: TikTok recommends that their advertisers use the their Pixel and Events API to maximise performance by deduplicating events and enablingAdvanced Matching.
• Improve business outcomes with optimisation: From lead generation to app event optimisation and value-based optimisation, leverage TikTok’s optimisation tools to drive improved campaign performance.
• Boost campaign performance with automation: Smart Performance Campaign (SPC) leverages machine learning to run performance campaigns at scale, helping brands to optimise for the best placements, bid strategy, targeting and creative.

2. Creative that converts

We know that creativity is important, not just for branding objectives, but for campaigns across the entire marketing funnel. Here are TikTok’s tips for cracking the code on creativity on the platform:

• Go native: Use engaging creative cues to be native to the platform, including faster-paced music, transitions and scene changes, movement, text, emojis and brand visibility and/or early product placement.
• Partner with creators: TikTok has found that specific branded content in collaboration with creators drives +122% higher 2s view-through rate, +93% higher engagement rate and +27% higher ad recall [4].
• Automate and optimise: Smart Creative is TikTok’s next-generation automated creative solution. It allows brands to simplify ad creation while driving performance through anti-creative fatigue strategies.

TikTok has a host of tools and resources designed to make creating for the platform easy. For more tips, explore the platform’s creative hub and check out their Creative Codebook

3. Go beyond last click with performance you can measure

Recent research identified that 79% of all conversions attributed to TikTok by users themselves were missed by last-click attribution models. To really understand the power of your campaigns, leverage TikTok’s suite of measurement solutions, which includes Attribution Manager, Conversion Lift Studies and Post-Purchase Surveys/a>

Accelerate your performance journey today

TikTok’s three pillars are designed with performance marketers in mind, so make sure to focus on the system fundamentals, creative best practice and using a combination of their measurement tools to build effective campaigns that really pack a punch.