How to Advertise on TikTok (2024)

TikTok Marketing

The world of online advertising, digital marketing, and customer outreach is becoming increasingly complex. This is a result of advertising…

Carole Foy

Last Update: April 2024

The world of online advertising, digital marketing, and customer outreach is becoming increasingly complex. This is a result of advertising standards as well as the rise in different trends, spanning influencer marketing, paid ads, keyword SEO, and more.

As one of the most popular and widely used social media platforms in the world, TikTok is ideal for reaching a wide and diverse array of potential customers – whether you’re selling a product or service.

How Can Brands Advertise on TikTok?

There are a number of different advertising options available to brands and businesses through TikTok.

Paid advertising
Influencer marketing
Collaboration posts and videos
Trending videos

With the potential to go viral on TikTok for brands that are able to leverage their presence effectively, TikTok is and can be an ideal platform for advertising to existing customers and attracting new ones.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the advertising avenues mentioned above and how to make them work for your brand, business, or profile.

The Different Types of TikTok Ads Available

TikTok ads can and should be used by brands and businesses across all sectors – including the most engaging and creative brands, and more corporate businesses.

The most popular types of ads include:

In-Feed Video Ads, which appear as normal videos in the For You feed
Brand Takeover, putting your brand name and message right in the centre of the screen as a pop up and then playing an in-feed ad
Hashtag Challenge, sponsoring a hashtag which appears on the Discovery page and is geared towards increasing engagement
Branded AR, think filters, stickers, backgrounds, and sounds which all focus on and are centred around your logo and branding

To set any of these types of ads up, you will need to first create a TikTok Ad account. For this, you will need to access the TikTok ads manager.

Working With TikTok Ads Manager

Once you’re in the ads manager tool, you will be asked to set up an account – verifying your contact information and creating a branded profile on the app.

5 Steps to Create an Advertising Campaign

Choose a campaign objective, for example to drive traffic to your website, to convert followers into customers, or to encourage email sign ups
Give your campaign a name and set a daily budget
Create and then select a group to whom you want your campaign to be shared, using demographic data and audience filters
Select how and where you want your campaign to be placed on the TikTok app (if you’re new to ads, opt for ‘Automatic Placement’ to let TikTok determine the optimum placement based on your campaign and audience)
Create the ad’s visual display and aesthetic, using recommended ad specifications and sizing for TikTok and selecting the video or image that best suits your campaign

Once you’re ready to share your campaign, you can choose a final Call to Action that will appear with your ad and submit it for review and posting.

This is the best way to advertise on TikTok via a platform which tracks the success of your ad and lets you know the conversion rate based on your activity.

Another feature on TikTok which is worth noting is TikTok Promote.

This is another paid advertising option which allows creators to put money behind their existing videos and content and promote that content to a targeted audience.

The Benefits of Influencer and Collaborative Advertising

There are ways of doing sponsored and paid influencer posts, or unpaid features – depending on the profile of the influencer and how they operate.

Most influencers will need to be paid for a direct ad – or you can explore partnerships which see them gifted free products or services in return for a TikTok video talking about what they receive.

Collaborations meanwhile will see two brands or profiles join together for mutual benefits, sharing each other’s reach and boosting the visibility of both parties through the shared post.

In order for either or both of these advertising options to work, you need to ideally partner or work with other creators who hold the same values and who share the same target demographic as you. After all, there is no real benefit in boosting visibility of your brand to users who are unlikely to follow you or engage with your message.

How to Go Viral

The final thing to note when talking about advertising on TikTok is the role of viral and trending content.

There is no arguing that if you can create a video that goes viral, this delivers excellent marketing potential. Not only does it get your video out there on the app, but it promotes your profile and brand name, and will result in a spike in followers and engagement.

But how do you achieve it?

For those starting out on their advertising journey, the best thing to do is to select some trending videos and challenges which are relevant to your industry and start from there.

Create entertaining content, combine trending videos with original and unique content, post consistently to keep up the momentum on your profile visibility. This is not a quick fix and will not result in instant conversion or even an overnight boost in followers. However, delivered consistently, trending videos and entertaining ideas can be a powerful way to boost your reputation on the app.

Suffice to say, there are lots of different ways in which TikTok can support your advertising goals – but how you choose to advertise will depend on your budget, how quickly you want to see results, and what those results are.

We hope this article helps you to unpick the right advertising channel for you!