Are TikTok Ads worth using for Shopify stores?

Taran Soodan

Advertising on TikTok can help your Shopify store take advantage of the massive potential audience that this increasingly popular platform offers. With over 500 million monthly active users worldwide, TikTok is rapidly becoming one of the most powerful social media marketing tools.

By tapping into TikTok’s creative, energetic, and highly engaging environment, you can reach a wider audience, make meaningful connections with potential customers and generate more revenue. Advertising on TikTok is an effective way to boost brand awareness, increase engagement and build relationships with your target market.

It also provides a platform for creative storytelling to help you stand out from the competition. Whether you’re looking to promote products, services or experiences, advertising on TikTok is the perfect way to get noticed and drive conversions.

With its exciting mix of music, dance, and visuals, you can create fun, engaging content that resonates with your target market. As TikTok continues to grow in popularity, now is the time to take advantage of its growth potential for Shopify stores.

Why you should advertise on TikTok

TikTok’s unprecedented growth is a testament to its addictive interface and content. With fans spanning across 150 countries worldwide, TikTok already has more monthly active users than LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Reddit.

It is currently the sixth most popular app globally, and younger people comprise the bulk of its users. For example, in the United States, over 60% of TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24. Yet, just because they’re on the younger side doesn’t mean they’re low on funds; more than 50% of TikTok users have an annual income of $75,000 or more. These stats should excite any digital marketer hoping to target Gen Z and younger Millennials.

Shoppable Ads

TikTok is rapidly expanding its shoppable ads offering and, as a result, has become a great platform for businesses to reach potential customers. Shoppable ads allow businesses to include product links directly in their video content. This makes it easy for viewers to purchase items they see while watching the ad, increasing conversions and sales.

High Engagement Rates

TikTok is known for its high engagement rates, making it a great platform to help reach potential customers and build brand awareness. Users are more likely to watch ads on TikTok than those on other social media platforms, increasing the likelihood that viewers will interact with your business’s content and consider purchasing products.

Fast-Growing User Base

TikTok’s user base is increasing rapidly, making it a great platform for advertising to reach potential customers and expand your business’s reach. With its current growth rate, an advertising campaign on TikTok is likely to generate more impressions than those on other platforms. This will help your business reach more potential customers and increase its sales.

The Types of TikTok Ads

On TikTok, businesses have access to various ad formats that can help them reach their target audience. The most popular types of ads on TikTok are TopView Ads, Brand Takeover, In-Feed Ads, Branded Hashtag Challenge, and Branded Effects.

TopView Ads: These full-screen ads are the first thing users see when they open the app. They contain a combination of images, text, and audio to create an immersive ad experience for viewers.

Brand Takeover: These ads help businesses capture user attention as soon as users open their feeds. Brand takeovers are full-screen videos or images with sound that appear in between videos.

In-Feed Ads: These ads appear in the feed between other videos and are typically 15 to 60 seconds long. They contain images, text, sound, and video elements to help businesses boost engagement with their target market.

Branded Hashtag Challenge: This type of ad encourages users to create content using a specific hashtag that’s associated with the business. This helps businesses increase their visibility and reach for potential customers.

Branded Effects: With this type of ad, businesses can create custom effects to be used by viewers in their content. These effects usually have a business logo or other branding elements associated with them, helping to boost brand awareness.

How Shopify stores benefit from TikTok ads

TikTok provides businesses with a wide range of ad formats to help them reach their target audience and increase sales. Which type of ad is best for your business depends on your goals and budget. With the right strategy, you’ll be able to make the most out of your advertising campaigns on TikTok.

Many brands have turned to TikTok’s ad platform to help them promote their products and services. By using the various types of ads available, brands can effectively reach their target audiences and increase sales.

Promoting New Products: With TikTok ads, businesses can easily showcase new products to potential customers. Whether it be a full-screen ad, an in-feed video or a branded hashtag challenge, businesses can effectively promote their new items with the help of TikTok ads.

Growing Followers: Brands use TikTok ads to grow their follower base by targeting potential customers who are likely to engage with their content. With the right strategy, businesses can successfully increase their followers while reaching new potential customers.

Promoting New Updates: Brands use TikTok ads to keep their current follower base engaged and up-to-date on any new updates they make. Whether it’s a new product launch or an upcoming event, brands can easily promote these updates to their followers with the help of TikTok ads.

Collecting Contact Information: Businesses can use TikTok ads to collect contact information from potential customers by encouraging them to opt-in for their email list or follow them on other social media platforms for more updates.

Promoting TikTok Challenges: TikTok challenges are among the most popular ways businesses engage with their target audience. Brands can use TikTok ads to promote these challenges and encourage customers to participate in increasing brand awareness.

How to create TikTok ads

Depending on the type of ad campaign you want to launch, creating an ad may require using the self-service platform or speaking to a TikTok ad manager. The steps outlined below apply to ad types like In-feed Video Ads, which you can create entirely on your own.

Create a TikTok Ads Account

You’ll need an ad account to launch your first ad on TikTok. To create an account, visit the TikTok for Business landing page and fill in the required details. Afterward, click Sign Up to register your ad account.

Create a TikTok campaign

TikTok has an ad structure that all advertisers must follow—you must first create a campaign and ad group before building an ad. To create a campaign, go to the Campaign tab on the Ads Manager page and click Create. You’ll then choose one of the three objectives that align best with your marketing goals.

Set Your TikTok Ad Placements, Details, and Targeting

Once you create a campaign, TikTok automatically moves you into the ad group section. Here, you’ll choose your targeting placement, promotion type, audience targets, and other details. If you’re a TikTok newbie, we recommend using automatic placement to start. However, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can base your targeting on parameters such as location, age, gender, etc.

Control Your TikTok Ad Spend, Duration, and Goals

TikTok Ads can get very expensive if you do not control your spending limit. You have the option of choosing a daily budget or lifetime budget depending on how much you wish to spend.

Design Your Ad Using TikTok’s Video Creation Kit

TikTok has amazing video creation tools users can leverage to create the right content for their audience. Just remember that your images or videos must meet predetermined specifications before you can launch a campaign on the platform. 

Tips for using TikTok ads for your Shopify store

1. Use Your Target Audience’s Language: When creating your ads for TikTok, it’s important to use the target audience's language and write in a way that resonates with them. This will make your ads more effective and increase engagement levels.

2. Keep Videos Short & Sweet: People on TikTok don't like to watch videos for too long, so keep your ad videos as short and sweet as possible. A maximum of 15-30 seconds is usually a good length for TikTok ads.

3. Use Eye-catching Visuals: To make your ads stand out amongst the competition, use bright visuals and creative animations to capture viewers’ attention.

4. Incorporate Hashtags & Music: TikTok loves hashtags and music, so try adding relevant hashtags and popular music to your ads to make them more engaging.

5. Track Results: Make sure you track the results of each ad campaign so you can figure out what works best for your brand. Look at metrics like impressions, views, conversions, and engagement rate.

6. Test & Optimize: Continuously test and optimize your ads to determine the best performing ones. A/B split testing is also a great way to find out which ad creative resonates most with viewers on TikTok.

TikTok is a powerful social media platform that businesses can use to engage with their target audience. When creating ads for TikTok, it’s important to keep the videos short and sweet, use eye-catching visuals, and add hashtags and music. Additionally, be sure to track the results of each campaign so you can determine what works best for your brand.

How Cross-Store Selling grows your Shopify store

Want to know the open secret to growing your Shopify store? It’s Cross-Store Selling. With Cross-Store Selling, your brand can sell products from other stores and vice versa.

Sell your products on other brands’ websites

With Carro, we have a directory of the biggest brands for you to partner with. This means they’ll sell and market your products to their customers. But if you can’t decide which brands are the best fit, we have a tailored recommendation service where we introduce you to brands so you can begin working together.

The best part is you don’t have to pay for products like you would with traditional wholesaling. This allows you to choose different SKUs to see what complements your existing product catalog.

"Take my word for it, if you install Carro, you are going to see what I’ve seen. Which is a dramatic increase to average order value, especially on orders that contain Carro products, which for us is over 80% increase to AOV." 

Ryan Pamplin, Founder & CEO of Blendjet

Virtual inventory makes fulfillment easy

Brand partnerships are not like wholesaling. With Carro, you don’t have to buy products from your partners. Instead, orders are automatically sent to your partner brands so they can handle fulfillment themselves. 

“Before we joined Carro, we had put our company on the market. We thought we needed capital to expand our traditional wholesaling. Now, we’re able to meet our goals without having any cash come out of pocket. We’re tripling and quadrupling the numbers of units that we move because we have access to so much more inventory.”

Amy Richardson-Golia, June & January

Find new bundling & upsell opportunities to increase AOV

Perhaps the most exciting reason to leverage Cross-Store Selling is that it’s the best way to grow your Shopify store in the long run. By working collaboratively with other brands, your brand will set itself up for success. Your Shopify store will become THE destination for your niche. 

One of the best reasons to shop on Amazon is convenience. Being able to buy everything you need in one place is a powerful motivator. Wouldn’t you love it if your Shopify store was the go-to place for your customers’ needs?

"In addition to a nice contribution to the bottom line, it was also one of the most highly-engaged social posts for the year." 

David Krimper, Director of Shopify, Manduka

To learn more about how Carro can help your Shopify store grow, check us out on the Shopify App Store.

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