If your audience is primarily Gen Z and Millennials, TikTok is a great place to advertise. As the latest mobile-first platform that’s allowing businesses to reach a massive audience, its users are highly engaged. How engaged? According to Backlinko, the average TikTok user in the U.S. is on the social platform for more than 30 minutes a day. And with an average session time of more than 10 minutes, this is a prime opportunity for businesses to engage with a captive audience – and generate significant results.
Why is TikTok such a valuable platform for marketers?
Over 800 million people use TikTok every month, making it the world’s fastest growing social media platform. And about 70% of TikTok users are between the ages of 16 and 24. If that’s your target demographic, running advertising and influencer marketing campaigns on this social network are a no-brainer. With an ads platform that’s still relatively young, much of the content is user-created and the costs are still lower compared to Facebook or Google ad buys. Businesses can take advantage of a lower barrier to entry – on both basic ad cost and video-production cost. On the flip side, you’ll need to get creative to get the most out of your ad spend. Before diving in and setting up your first TikTok campaign, there are a few additional considerations to make. Any ad campaign is an investment, so make sure you’re going to get an ROI before you get started.
Here’s what you need to know before you start an advertising campaign on TikTok.
Is your product or service the right fit for TikTok Ads?
Not all brands are going to be the best fit here. Businesses that are highly visual – fashion, food, lifestyle and beauty brands, for example – usually perform better than B2B brands, which usually have sales content that is far more complicated or text-heavy. But that doesn’t mean that B2B companies can’t win here. To succeed with TikTok, regardless of industry, you need to create a highly creative campaign that will appeal to users’ emotions and sense of humor. Tap into what they’re already interested in – like pets, food or tech. Even industries that are typically viewed as ‘less-than-flashy’, like banking or insurance or enterprise software, have an opportunity to reframe their products and services in a way that’s fun and unexpected.
TikTok rewards creative content
TikTok is growing so fast because it’s doing something different from other social media platforms. It encourages people to express themselves in a more authentic, in-the-moment way. People who watch these videos are more inclined to share them with others, making TikTok the perfect tool for marketing your products and services. The challenge is that TikTok is incredibly noisy, with hundreds of millions of videos being uploaded every day. To stand out, you need to find a way to make your ads creative and entertaining, so that they can grab people’s attention. Here are some ways you can do this: ● Defy expectations. What do consumers think they know about your industry? How can you present your business in a way that flips that on its head? ● Go niche. Don’t try to appeal to everyone – narrow down your audience and look for a specific niche of users you want to reach. For example, you might want to target only teenagers who live in a specific country or city. The ability to micro-target users can help you to find an audience that is much more receptive to your message and brand. ● Go off-topic. Don’t limit your creativity to topics within your particular industry. Have fun with memes, holidays, your teams’ interests. Show the faces behind the brand and connect with a new audience in a meaningful way – even if it’s silly.
Influencer/Brand Takeover collaborations
Influencers can help get the word out about your brand on TikTok and increase its visibility in the process. Be strategic with how you approach these influencers, though. Many of them have strict guidelines that they require their sponsors to follow. Be sure to read over these guidelines before contacting them with your proposal so that you can avoid any hiccups. There can be huge benefits to pursuing these types of campaign collaborations. You’ll be introduced to their audience – but you’ll also earn ‘trust through association’. By aligning your brand with an influencer, they’re telling their audiences that your product or service is worth their time and money. Influencer campaigns can fast track your brand awareness, but it’s smart to experiment with TikTok before diving into one. First, gain a clear idea of who your audience is, what content they’re already engaging with and who they trust.
Track Success with your TiKTok Ads Campaign
Know your campaign goals before getting started. Whether you want to increase brand awareness or drive new sales, tracking ad performance is an important piece of the puzzle. By regularly checking in with your metrics, you’ll know when something isn’t working and adjust accordingly.
Does video production quality matter?
This is one area of video campaigns that scare off a lot of would-be marketers. Historically, video production has been an expensive endeavor requiring the hiring of a full crew and hours invested in production and editing. Without deep pockets, it can be difficult – even impossible – for small businesses and start-ups to adopt video in their marketing efforts. The good news is that money is no longer a barrier to entry. In fact, the more Hollywood-quality your ad is, the less likely it will be viewed as authentic. TikTok is about sharing your experiences in a fun and light-hearted way – and the vast majority of content is filmed on a smartphone. That said, you don’t have to make a video yourself — there are social marketing agencies that specialize in creating TikTok ads.
Know your TikTok ad types
There are several different types of TikTok ads, each with their own pros and cons. For today, we’ll focus on three of the most popular for businesses – TikTok’s In-Feed Ads, Top View Ads and Spark Ads.
● In-Feed Ads Shown inside the user’s ‘For You’ page, In-Feed ads blend into the user’s existing feed. They’ll be seeing your ad while scrolling between videos from the accounts they already follow. In-feed ads are excellent for engagement, since users can interact, comment and share your ads with their followers.
● Top View Ads A Top View ad is a branded 60-second vertical video spot — similar to Snapchat’s Discovery format — that users see when they open the app. This type of ad will appear at the top of your audience’s For You feed to grab their attention right away, but it will only play sound if they tap on it.
● Spark Ads Spark Ads offer marketers the ability to use organic posts or a TikTok creator’s organic posts to drive greater brand awareness and engagement. This is an ideal choice if you already have a library of existing content. (Because this ad format relies on content that’s already created, it’s easier and faster to kick off a campaign.) Like other ad types, Spark Ads drive excellent engagement, allowing users to comment, share and like posts. With one tap, users can visit a brand’s profile, and marketers can include a CTA on their post to drive conversions. Overall, the best way to make TikTok ads work for your business is to plan carefully and to create a clear strategy around your campaign. We believe that running a TikTok ad campaign can be useful for businesses in achieving their goals – if it’s applied correctly. From minding the ad format options, to providing high quality images and videos (and actually interacting with users), a little forethought, creativity, and intentionality can go a long way. And hopefully, if you decide TikTok is right for you, it can go even further.
Whether you’re a Google Ads newbie just getting started or a seasoned professional looking for advice on how to boost the performance of your existing campaigns, we have some tips and tricks from the experts at 565 Media on how to take advantage of Google’s Smart Bidding algorithms and optimally scale your PPC campaigns to profitability.
What is Smart Bidding?
Smart Bidding is a series of automated bidding strategies available for advertisers on the Google Ads platform. According to Google, the strategies utilize machine-learning algorithms to help optimize performance for a selected goal. Advertisers can select bidding strategies that maximize conversions, optimize cost per acquisition, target a specific return-on-ad-spend, and more.
Advantages of Smart Bidding
Utilizes true auction-time bidding – Google’s machine learning identifies users that are most likely to complete a target conversion and adjusts the bidding for every single auction to optimize your budget for that conversion.
Wide range of contextual signals – Metrics such as time of day, device, operating system, location, language, demographics are cross-analyzed for richer user targeting.
Advanced optimization capabilities – Google’s machine learning can result in more precise bids and optimize your campaigns beyond what’s possible with manual options.
Saves time – With the right settings and strategy up front, advertisers can save hours (even days!) of manual bidding adjustments and PPC management.
Disadvantages of Smart Bidding
Less Manual Control – Bidding adjustments based on device, time of day, demographics, etc. don’t have any effect when using smart bidding strategies. Even if you know your target audience well, you’ll have to let the algorithm learn that on its own.
Long “Learning” Period – Smart bidding algorithms typically require about a week to complete the learning period, but this will vary depending on the available conversion data.
Potential for Increased Costs – Google Ads runs on auctions for bidding. If more competitors begin relying on smart bidding to target the same user base, the automated bidding strategies will inflate the prices as they try to outbid each other.
Maximize Conversions Bidding Strategy
The Maximize Conversions bidding strategy allows advertisers to maximize the total number of conversions with their set daily budget. This strategy can be used for search ads, display ads, Discovery campaigns, and YouTube for Action ads.
This bidding strategy is best used when you have conversions that do not have a specific value or if you do not have a specific CPA or ROAS goal for your campaign. We recommend using this strategy if your campaign has a low conversion volume or if you have a limited budget and under 90% impression share. This strategy also allows you to identify a baseline for a Target CPA (tCPA) strategy in the future.
Maximize Conversion Value Bidding Strategy
The Maximize Conversion Value bidding strategy allows advertisers to maximize the overall value of conversions with their set daily budget. This strategy can be used for search ads, display ads, Discovery campaigns, and YouTube for Action ads.
The bidding strategy is best used when you have specified and varying conversion values for all of your campaign goals, but do not have a specific CPA or ROAS target. This strategy is useful for ecommerce sites that may have very high or very low conversion values to consider, because the machine-learning algorithm will optimize for higher value conversions. This strategy also allows you to identify a baseline for a Target CPA (tCPA) strategy in the future.
Target CPA Bidding Strategy
Target CPA Bidding, or tCPA, refers to “cost per acquisition” and allows advertisers to set an average target cost for each conversion that the campaign receives. This strategy can be used for either search ads or display ads.
This bidding strategy only works if you have established a conversion value for each type of goal conversion that you are using in the campaign. We recommend using this strategy if you need to limit your ad spend for a specific CPA. This typically works best for businesses that rely on lead generation or for eCommerce businesses.
The strategy also only works if your conversion values are large enough to cover reach that target CPA. (That means setting a $0.01 Target CPA is unlikely to provide fruitful results.)
How do I calculate my Target CPA bid?
Finding the right initial target for your Target CPA settings is a tricky feat. A lower Target CPA will result in more conversions but more waste. A higher Target CPA will result in fewer conversions and better cost efficiency.
To calculate an initial Target CPA bid, you’ll need to factor in multiple considerations. How much average revenue is gained from a single conversion? How much does it cost to produce your product or service? What are the additional non-marketing costs involved? What is the gross profit and your desired net profit?
The basic equation should look something like this:
Gross Profit - Desired Net Profit = Target CPAAverage revenue - Costs of Production = Gross Profit
If your campaign has been running under a different bidding strategy for a while, Google will provide you with a recommended Target CPA to start with.
As the smart bidding algorithm learns and optimizes over time, and the campaign is capable of matching your Target CPA, consider increasing your Target CPA by 15% every month until the campaign performance maxes out. If you run your campaign for a month and find that it isn’t able to match your Target CPA, consider reducing your Target CPA by 15% per month until the campaign performance is able to match it.
Another note: There are no conversion minimum thresholds that you will need to meet for this bidding strategy.
Target ROAS Bidding Strategy
Target ROAS Bidding refers to “return on ad spend” and allows advertisers to set a target percentage of conversion value over the amount spent on the ads. This strategy can only be used on search ads.
Similarly to the Target CPA strategy, this bidding strategy only works if you have established a conversion value for each type of goal conversion that you are using in the campaign. We recommend using this strategy if you are tracking multiple goal conversions at differing values, such as eCommerce businesses or businesses that offer different price plans for their services.
How do I calculate my Target ROAS?
To start using this bidding strategy, Google requires an initial Target ROAS. To calculate this value, divide your average conversion value by the average cost of your ad. For example, if you receive $1000 for $10 spent on search ads, your ROAS is 100.
If your campaign has been running under a different bidding strategy for a while, Google may provide you with a recommended Target ROAS or Target CPA to start with.
After the smart bidding algorithm learns and optimizes over time, you may be in a situation where you are able to consistently reach a positive Target CPA or Target ROAS. From that point, if it makes sense for your business goals and you would like to scale those successes, consider incremental changes to your target. We recommend increasing your Target ROAS by 15% after each month that the campaign matches the target. Conversely, if that campaign is unable to meet your Target ROAS, consider reducing the limit by 15% each month until you find an equilibrium.
You may have already guessed, but this strategy only works if your conversion values are large enough to cover your target ROAS. (That means setting a 10,000% Target ROAS is unlikely to be successful.)
Another note: In order to use the Target ROAS bidding strategy, Google requires at least 15 conversions per month.
Other Considerations
The most important thing to consider when deciding on changing your target bids is your overall marketing goal. If you are looking for efficiency in your budget, Target ROAS will allow you to spend your ad budget effectively. However, this method does not necessarily work for businesses aimed at growth. If you are looking to grow your business, less “efficient” budgeting strategies like Maximize Conversions will allow you to reach a larger pool of potential customers.
Other Types of Bidding Strategies
Maximize Clicks
Maximize Clicks Bidding allows you to get as many clicks as possible with your daily budget. This functionality will set keyword bidding automatically to optimize the number of clicks that a campaign gets. This is useful if your campaign does not yet have defined conversions.
One of the drawbacks to this type of bidding strategy is that the Google algorithm does not necessarily know which keywords have the strongest conversion intent. So you may reduce your average CPC overall, but the quality of the leads will depend on your keyword curation abilities.
Target Impression Share
Target Impression Share Bidding allows you to set bids to show your ad at the top of the page. Using this functionality, you can set a percentage of how often you want your ads to appear at the top of the page. Google also allows advertisers to specify if they would like to target the very first spot or any ad positions at the top of the page. From there, the bidding strategy takes over and will charge you the minimum spend required to place your ads where you like.
This is not a smart bidding strategy, so many of the advantages and disadvantages listed above will not apply to Target Impression Share.
When using the Target Impression Share bidding strategy, you will be able to specify where on the search results page your ads will appear –anywhere on the first page, anywhere at the top of the page, or only in the top placement.
From there, you can specify how often you want your ads to appear in that position. The ability of your campaign to match this number will depend on the keywords that you are targeting and your daily spending limit.
You can also specify the maximum amount that you are willing to bid on any individual auction. This will help limit situations where you get into a bidding war with a competitor over a single keyword.
Best Practices for Smart Bidding
Apply smart creative solutions
Over 75% of the impact of advertising on the Google Ads platform is determined by the quality of the creative. Even if your bidding strategy and settings are perfectly optimized, if your creative isn’t up to par, you’re unlikely to see the best results.
Luckily, we can include the machine-learning algorithm in the ad creative process as well.
Google Search Ads now offer Responsive search ads (RSAs), which will test out combinations of multiple headlines and description text to identify the best performing search ad creative over time.
Google Display Ads offer Responsive display ads (RDAs), which similarly automate the process of testing different images, headlines, description text and ad dimensions, and give advertisers a live report on which combinations perform the best.
For both responsive search ads and responsive display ads, we recommend running one in each ad group for at least a month. Then, manually create search and display ads from the best performing combinations. From there, you can safely make edits to the responsive ads to test out new combinations in the future.
Implement a non-last-click attribution model
As most advertisers know, the customer journey down the sales funnel isn’t always a straight line. Some goal conversions have a wide conversion window. Some have more than 10 interactions before a successful conversion.
For the Smart Bidding algorithm to get a better understanding of the customer journey and optimize your campaign settings, it is best to use an attribution model that gives more credit to the different steps along the way to a successful conversion.
Last-click attribution modeling, for example, gives all of the credit for a successful conversion to the last-clicked ad and corresponding keyword. This setting will
We recommend using the Time Decay or Data-driven attribution models when using Smart Bidding. These settings will assign credit based on the actual contribution of each keyword and ad across the customer journey to a successful conversion, and will learn and adjust that credit over time based on the performance data that your campaign collects.
Add audience lists at the account level
Smart Bidding works best when it has more data. When you set audience lists at the account level, it allows each campaign to access the performance data set for the entire account rather than just that campaign.
With this setting, the Smart Bidding algorithm will be able to utilize richer user signals, such as intent, context, and recency. This allows for better overall performance and saves time in the “learning “ process.
If you would like to target only new users and want to avoid showing your ads to customers that have already purchased something on your website, we recommend adding the “All Converters” audience list to your campaign and add a -100% bidding adjustment.
Getting Started with Smart Bidding
As we outlined above, many smart bidding strategies rely on past performance data to help the machine learning algorithm learn and optimize a campaign’s settings. But for advertisers that are starting with a brand new account, we have a few recommendations on how to get started.
Add conversion tracking – Before any kind of smart bidding strategies can be implemented, you’ll need to make sure that your conversion tracking is in place and working correctly.
Soft launch with manual bidding – Make sure that your settings are in order before relying entirely on Smart Bidding to do the work for you. Launch your campaign with Enhanced CPC on a constrained budget for a month and check on your performance metrics to make sure that your keyword targeting, ad creative, ad extensions, and conversions are working correctly. The extra time that you give the campaign under these settings will also help build historical performance data for the machine learning algorithm to use when you switch over to Smart Bidding.
Switch to the right Smart Bidding setting – Once your campaign is running smoothly and it’s time to scale up, select the Smart Bidding strategy that works best for your goals. If you do not have specific values attached to your goal conversions, use the Maximize Conversions strategy. If you have a specific CPA goal, use the Target CPA strategy. If you have conversion values added but don’t have a specific ROAS goal, use the Maximize Conversion Value strategy. If you do, use the Target ROAS strategy.
Optimize every 30 days – As your campaign matures and the Smart Bidding algorithms learn how to optimize your performance, consider adjusting your CPA or ROAS targets gradually by 15% increases at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does the Learning Period last?
It typically takes one to two weeks for the algorithm to collect enough performance data to calibrate a newly implemented bidding strategy. This depends on the amount of conversion data that the campaign is able to collect.
If your campaign generates many conversions very quickly, it will likely exit the learning phase quickly as well. As a rule of thumb, you should aim to generate a minimum of 30 conversions per month. If your campaign generates conversions slowly, it will likely extend the length of the learning phase.
If your campaign does not generate any conversions at all, you have a much bigger problem than configuring your Smart Bidding strategy, and should consider troubleshooting your target keywords, ad creative, and conversion settings under a manual bidding strategy like eCPC before moving onto Smart Bidding.
How do I calculate the appropriate time lag for conversions?
Depending on the business that you are running, some goal conversions may have a wide window between the first impression and a successful conversion.
To identify the average time lag for your search campaigns, visit the Search Attribution report. Set a 30-day window, and the report will show you the number of days that it takes, either from first impression or first click, to result in a conversion. Below each number of days, the report will indicate the percentage of users that have completed a conversion.
To identity the average time lag for your display campaigns, set a 90-day window and segment your campaign-level conversion data by “days to conversions”. This chart will provide the average conversion lag for display ads.
Troubleshooting Common Problems with Smart Bidding Strategies
Target CPA or ROAS goal is unrealistic – If you are too aggressive with your initial target bids, the algorithm will learn that it cannot meet your target CPA or target ROAS and may stop running ads.
Not enough time to complete the learning period – The machine learning algorithm needs long term data points to form better predictions for performance. If you look at a few days worth of data and start making changes based on a small sample size, the algorithm will not be able to optimize for conversions or conversion value.
Not accounting for long conversion delays over time – Many conversions have a window of 30 days or more from first touch to last touch. The first few days of implementing Smart Bidding may seem like it is performing poorly if you do not allow for a time buffer to account for conversion delays.
Not enough ad budget to find new conversions – If the campaign is constrained by a small budget, the algorithm won’t be able to bid appropriately to find as many conversions as possible.
Feeling Inspired?
Do you want to know more about our Google Ads management services at 565 Media? Have questions about search ads marketing or digital strategy in general? Don’t hesitate to contact us or call (323) 902-7439. Our experts will come up with optimized ad campaigns tailored for your business.
If you’re looking to effectively and efficiently boost ROI with your marketing budget, 565 Media is your top choice. Simply connect with our on-demand team of full stack developers and start with a list of what problems you need solved. Our team specializes in developing customized, scaled marketing campaigns geared towards generating profitable leads and growing your business.
Snapchat Ads hit the scene back in 2014 and the company has been steadily rolling out new features every year since.
If you’re looking for inspiration for your own marketing strategies, we’ve compiled a list of excellent Snapchat Ads campaigns that made waves in the last few years.
Most of these examples cover marketing options that are geared towards bigger brands and companies with broad public appeal. That’s not to say that Snapchat doesn’t have marketing options for smaller brands! Our team at 565 Media has a lot of experience with direct response tactics using the platform, which we’ll cover throughout the article as well.
So let’s dive in and take a look at successful Snapchat Ads campaigns from famous products and brands in the past, plus some insights into whether the platform is right for your business goals.
What are Snapchat Ads?
Snapchat Ads can come in the form of three different ways to engage with Snapchat users.
The first, called sponsored geofilters, allows users to overlay a sponsored image or animation on top of their snaps based on that user’s location. For example, event organizers can help promote an ongoing festival or convention with a sponsored geofilter animation, or restaurants can promote a limited time menu item with a sponsored series of images or the product.
The next, called sponsored lenses, allows users to add a filter that distorts their faces or their surroundings with images and animations. These typically tie into the brand, such as turning your face into a Taco to promote Taco Bell or giving your head a mutant makeover for an upcoming X-Men movie. It gives users a fun way to interact with your brand without going overboard with the messaging.
The last, called Snap Ads, are vertical 10-second videos that appear while users are typically browsing their snapchat accounts. They can appear as original Shows, curated Our Stories, media companies’ Publisher Stories and between peoples’ publicly posted Stories. Whereas sponsored geofilters and lenses may be ideal for brand reinforcement, Snap Ads are much better at communicating the initial message or anything a little more complicated.
Free Snapchat Marketing Strategies
If you don’t have the marketing budget to throw behind advertising on Snapchat, there are still plenty of inventive ways to promote your business or brand for free. These are clever organic marketing strategies for Snapchat.
Some brands may consider a Brand Takeover, which is when the social media account for the brand or product is given over to someone new. This could be a well known celebrity, an industry leader, a new staff member, anyone! With the brand takeover, the attraction for other users is that the content will be new and it will come with an element of surprise. What will this person do with the platform?
Brand takeovers typically help with cross promotional strategies. It’s the social media version of a guest post on your blog, or guest hosting on a late night talk show. Other than helping to promote both the social media account and the person taking control, brand takeovers can help reinforce the messaging for both if they are selected well. For example, if a marketing agency wanted to display the personal side of the agency, having staff take turns controlling the company social media account would help promote the agency as a collection of interesting people rather than a faceless company. Or if a tourism board wanted to promote a local destination, having a well known travel blogger do a brand takeover of the Snapchat account while they visit the destination would provide valuable engagement with that blogger’s subscribers and community.
Hashtags are another popular element to incorporate into any #SnapchatMarketing strategy. There are typically two options for using hashtags. The first is to invent a new one.
Most major brands will incorporate a unique hashtag, usually the same as their advertising’s tagline, into their social media posts. In one of the examples below, Dunkin Donuts promotes #NationalDonutDay, which as a hashtag did not exist before the social media campaign went live. So marketing managers can track the use of the hashtag after the launch of the campaign to get an idea of how popular it got over the course of the campaign. And a hashtag like #NationalDonutDay is fairly general – it is not associated with Dunkin Donuts directly – so other SnapChat users can jump in and use the hashtag for their posts as well. Carefully selected hashtags with their factors in mind have a better chance of going viral.
The other option is to hop on an existing popular hashtag. Much like barnacles on the bottom of a whale, smaller brands can get some free exposure by carefully selecting relevant hashtags and incorporating them into their social media posts. We’ll explore some other options in the examples below.
Story Ads
Instagram copied them with the Story Ads.
Dynamic Ads
Involve a product catelo liek shopping ads. You can click to add to cart. Perfect for remarketing. Import your Merchant Center Feed from Google, reformat and start running.
Creative Snapchat Ads Examples
1. Stranger Things Augmented Reality Filters
The first example of the 3D World Lens being used in a marketing campaign, the Stranger Things Snapchat campaign broke into a whole new world of marketing possibilities. The app filter allowed users to scan their faces and give themselves a bloody nose and brooding background from the TV series. It also used the phone camera to transport users to the living room of Joyce Byers and the Upside Down. A very fun tie-in with the show, and an excellent example of the type of augmented reality filters that Snapchat is debuting for other brands.
2. Dunkin’ Donuts Sponsored Lenses for National Donut Day
Declaring June 2nd National Donut Day, Dunkin’ Donuts rolled out a promotion in 2017 that turned users’ heads into gigantic pink donuts. The filter itself wasn’t a huge innovation in technology, and probably the better for it. The crudeness added to the fun, and users responded well. According to Dunkin’ Donuts, the company gained ten times the number of Snapchat followers from the promotion than their average monthly followers and remains the highest viewed story by the company to this day.
Twenty-four hours before Super Bowl LI debuted in 2017, Budweiser launched an interactive campaign on Snapchat that turned the app into a gaming experience. The Snap Ad was designed as a mini football game, where users could play as a team to win exclusive Snapchat filters.
Selecting different plays to run, named humorous things like “Can Coverage” or “Brew Bootleg”. This type of advertising, as it will become obvious as you take a look at the screenshots, requires a very large budget. But even if you don’t have the funds to recreate Budweiser’s gaming experience, it’s a great example of the interactive features that Snapchat makes available to advertisers.
4. Gatorade Sponsored Lens
Speaking of Super Bowl LI brand tie-ins, Gatorade unveiled its #GatoradeDunk sponsored lens during the big game in 2017 as well. The lens allowed users to simulate being doused in a cooler filled with Gatorade, a classic football game tradition (that also happens to reinforce the brand.)
The campaign was quick, simple, and resonated with fans in a big way. The filter got more than 100 million views over Super Bowl weekend, and 170 million total.
5. MTV Music Awards Live Story
Back during the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, Snapchat was still a fairly new platform and didn’t have much of a robust selection of advertising options. To promote the VMAs, MTV started a Live Story, which allowed anyone within the geographic area to post on Snapchat using the same hashtag. This resulted in a deluge of celebrities and fans posting videos from the audience and behind the scenes, resulting in a viral flood of coverage of the event.
It was estimated that about 10 million people watched the VMAs on live television, while the event drew about 12 million users on the Snapchat Live Story. (And likely at a much cheaper cost!)
Another innovative way to promote your brand or Snapchat account is the (now) classic Snapchat takeover.
A “takeover” is when a celebrity or influencer takes control of a brand’s social media account and can post whatever they like. Relinquishing control to another person, especially a sports star adds a little unpredictability to the day. What will they post? Will they cause any trouble for the brand? The takeover itself becomes an event worth checking out. And for the Snapchat platform, the posts disappear after the day, adding a sense of FOMO for users to join in while it’s happening.
Major League Soccer dedicated an entire week in 2015 to an account takeover from its various stars, giving everyone a little bit of time to do whatever they wanted to help promote themselves and the league.
If you have access to interesting people, an account takeover might be a great opportunity to promote your brand!
Not all brands and businesses have the marketing budget to launch an augmented reality filter or an interactive game. Some smaller brands have had success with sponsored geofilters, sponsored lenses, or dedicated hashtags. And marketing gimmicks like account takeovers don’t cost a thing.
Performance Tracking is Key
Whatever your Snapchat marketing strategy, it’s important to also make sure that you track performance carefully and precisely. How many times was your unique hashtag used? How many times was your website linked, which includes UTM tracking code, clicked? Of the referral traffic to your website, how many users interacted with key elements, and how far down the sales funnel did they travel?
Many small and mid-sized businesses understand the importance of social media in improving brand awareness or generating sales leads. But without performance tracking in place before the launch of a Snapchat Ads campaign, it’s impossible to gain insights, understand users, or improve your campaigns in the future.
Optimizing Your Cost Per Acquisition
When you have your campaign strategy defined and your performance tracking in place, it’s time to optimize your campaign settings. For social media platforms like Snapchat, audience targeting is king.
In order to make sure that your targeting is as good as it can be, its a good idea to start with remarketing lists. Make sure that you have tracking pixels in place, your remarketing audiences are populating, and that your ads platform is receiving those remarketing lists. From there, you can refine the audience targeting based on what level of the sales funnel where those users were last, and market a message specific to them.
For example, if you have a list of users that added something to their cart and then left the site, target them with a special discount to get them back on board. Or if users visited a specific product page but went no further, show them ads with that product front and center.
The options are wide open to marketers looking for opportunities. In the age of Big Data, digital marketing on ads platforms like Snapchat and other social media have the potential to bring in huge ROI.
Feeling Inspired?
Do you want to know more about our Snapchat Ads services at 565 Media? Don’t hesitate to contact us or call (323) 902-7439. Our experts will come up with optimized ad campaigns tailored for your business.
If you’re looking to effectively and efficiently boost ROI with your marketing budget, 565 Media is your top choice. Simply connect with our on-demand team of full stack developers and start with a list of what problems you need solved. Our team specializes in developing customized, scaled marketing campaigns geared towards generating profitable leads and growing your business.
As a platform, TikTok thrives on digestible, engaging content. If it isn’t fun to watch or fun to join, then we would recommend finding other online marketing options. Whereas advertising on TikTok is a more performative, open type of engagement, old marketing techniques will come across as stale and stuffy. But if your business is willing to risk looking silly, the platform provides an excellent opportunity to target younger audiences on their terms.
In this article, we’ll highlight some of the best examples of what advertisers are doing on TikTok and how their engagement strategies tie in to the emotional cores of their services or products, making every post, repost and response an added reinforcement of the brand messaging.
“Quote from Matthew Ceran about TikTok Ads, their importance in the evolving online marketing landscape, and their future as an advertising and branding platform.”
Matthew Ceran, CEO 565 Media
TikTok Ads Case Studies
1. Guess Jeans
One of the original hashtag challenges on TikTok, Guess Jeans’ #InMyDenim campaign is still held up as a primary case study in TikTok Ads success stories.
#InMyDenim started a trend of users posting videos of themselves transforming from ratty clothing into fashionable denim outfits, (preferably Guess Jeans branded), reinforcing the idea that anyone can upgrade their fashion with denim products. Some posts were accompanied by thematically chosen tracks like Bebe Rexh’s “I’m a Mess”.
Using a combination of brand takeovers, sponsored influencers like prominent TikTok personalities @ourfire and @madisonwillow, the campaign lasted for about a week.
During the 6-day campaign period, #InMyDenim realized over 5,550 user-generated videos, 10.5 million video views, 14.3% engagement rate and over 12,000 additional followers for Guess’s Business Account on TikTok. The promotion resonated with consumers and considerably boosted brand affinity.
When looking for a broad audience, celebrity endorsements are a good start. But it’s important to make sure that the celebrity is a good fit for the brand and has a conceptual tie-in to the brand message.
Kool-Aid deserves a special shoutout for its ingenious tie-in with rapper Lil Jon. The brand launched a music video featuring the rapper and the Kool-Aid man, and following up with a hashtag challenge #OhYEAHChristmas. The challenge encouraged users to post videos of themselves (extremely) enjoying their Christmas celebration, with a $10,000 prize thrown in for incentive.
The campaign garnered over 10,000 videos from fans and became the brand’s first successful TikTok campaign.
With an eye on cornering the extreme sports content on TikTok, the Red Bull account provides a daily adrenaline rush for fans. The high-octane content has been reformatted for short, bite-sized clips, and targets specific niche sports communities with popular hashtags like #skydiving, #parkour, and #skimobile.
The profile has almost 5 million followers and continues to use the platform to expand the Red Bull brand past the energy drink product, and reinforce its extreme sports messaging.
4. Spikeball
Again, if you want your brand to be successful on TikTok, it’s best to lean into the aspects of your brand that make it fun. For a game like Spikeball, it comes naturally.
The profile uses the cute tagline “If volleyball and foursquare had a baby” and consistently posts slow-mo trick shots and incredible moves from players around the world. It’s a fantastic platform-specific strategy that on the surface, gives users that “wow” aspect that brings them to the platform. And as a secondary benefit, it helps establish Spikeball as a legitimate sport worthy of the attention.
The profile has almost 300,000 followers, over 5 million likes, and over 50 million views today!
Pharmaceutical advertising is always a tricky sell, especially to teens, and especially with strict FDA rules for advertising over-the-counter products. How do you promote the potential benefits of an OTC drug without running afoul? Take advantage of existing trends.
The #TooSickToBeSick challenge asked users to share their before-and-after looks as they got into Halloween costumes, as either the before or the after clips would tie into how you feel when you are sick. No medical claims. Just the feeling.
The campaign made headlines for generating over 984 million views in 2019. The hashtag is seeing a revitalization in the lead up to Halloween 2020 as well.
In 2020, the year of increasing need for creativity due to our collective indoor insolation, TikTok has become a popular destination for magic tricks, pranks and video illusions. As a video medium that prizes quick content and the expected, magic tricks especially fit the bill.
To capitalize on this trend for its upcoming film The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Universal Pictures launched a branded hashtag challenge called #FindYourMagic. This promotion encouraged users to post their own magic tricks and illusions, And the campaign provided branded music of ringing clocks to tie back into the theme of the upcoming movie.
More than 1.3 million likes and 19,000 pieces of user-generated content later, the campaign was a spectacular success.
Less Tok, More Guac. For brands that perhaps don’t have a flashy dance tie-in or extreme sports slow-motion shots, brand affinity and celebration is a good place to start. Chipotle’s Lid Flip Challenge was born.
Based on a real employee who had gone viral for their creative way of assembling burrito bowls, the Lid Flip Challenge gave users a fun, simple template for adding their own content. Think of the water bottle flip challenge from 2019 and give it a branded spin.
111,000 videos were submitted to the Challenge and it created a record-breaking digital sales day driving app downloads and delivery among the key Gen Z audience.
To promote the upcoming release of Benny Blanco’s remixed version of Graduation, Universal Records took advantage of a popular video trend currently popular on TikTok – The hand wipe.
Users would typically hold their hand up to the camera to obscure a video cut, revealing a change of clothing or setting after pulling their hands away. To capitalize on this trend and integrate the song’s theme, the campaign used the hashtag #schoolyears, where seniors would show their progression over the years of middle and high school.
The campaign clearly resonated with teens, as it generated 6 million views, almost 1 million hearts and over 81,000 user generated pieces of content. The song itself saw 4 months of sustained growth after its debut.
Do you want to know more about our TikTok ads services at 565 Media? Don’t hesitate to contact us or call (323) 902-7439. Our experts will come up with optimized ad campaigns tailored for your business.
If you’re looking to effectively and efficiently boost ROI with your marketing budget, 565 Media is your top choice. Simply connect with our on-demand team of full stack developers and start with a list of what problems you need solved. Our team specializes in developing customized, scaled marketing campaigns geared towards generating profitable leads and growing your business.
When it comes to the holidays, it’s best to be prepared and start getting ready as early as possible. According to Facebook, 1 in 4 people surveyed in the U.S. start their holiday shopping sometime between the end of October and the beginning of December.
That’s a huge opportunity to leave behind if you’re planning on a marketing blitz for the holiday season. Getting a jump start on your Christmas and Hanukkah advertising campaigns could be the difference between a boom or bust in your holiday profits.
With that in mind, here are a few strategies for focusing your Facebook Ads campaigns for the holiday season!
Save for your Q4 budget
It’s the end of the year. Q4 budgets are wrapping up. But you still have one big push for the holiday season. Make sure that you have saved up a good chunk of your annual marketing budget to cover the marketing blitz to come. Keep in mind that competitors and other marketers will likely be doing the same, so you Avg. CPC metrics may increase during peak season.
Shopping Ads for products that people may be searching for
For when user intent is clear, and you have an established amount of search traffic for your product or service, try Facebook Shopping Campaigns. Also known as Dynamic Product Ads, these ad types allow advertisers to remarket to users that previously viewed their website. Shopping Ads still use the dynamic product feed, which will display the individual product in the ad.
Newsfeed and Stories Ads for products that people may not know they want
For when your product would be a great stocking stuffer or gift idea, if only users knew about it, consider traditional social media ads. Placed in the newsfeeds or between stories clips, advertisers can give prospective customers a brief glimpse of a great gift idea. Video options tend to be especially effective for products that need a demonstration. So if you want to go this route, make sure that you have a killer video demo of your product in action ready to go.
Get testing periods completed before Black Friday
Advertisers have the option to utilize the Campaign Budget Optimization features in Facebook Ads. This allows Facebook’s machine learning algorithm to optimize your campaigns towards ads, ad copy and audiences that are most effective at driving profitable conversions for your account. The only issue is that the algorithms require some time to learn.
With about a week, most campaigns should have generated enough conversions for the campaigns to understand what’s working and adjust the targeting and settings for optimization. But if you’re having trouble getting enough conversions to complete the learning process, consider adding conversions further up the sales funnel. For example, maybe your small business only completes transactions once a day. Try adding ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘Visit Pricing Page’ as a conversion and see if that helps improve the learning process.
Aim for a broader audience
With your ad variations ready and your testing completed, make sure that your campaigns are shooting for a slightly broader audience. This is especially true for products and services that make good gift ideas, if only customers were exposed to them a little more.
This is the best time of year to test out lookalike audiences, audience expansions, and connections targeting. Although we recommend that you keep your new audience targeting separated into different campaign sets so that you can quickly pause or expand on them depending on their effectiveness.
Feeling Inspired?
Do you want to know more about our Facebook Ads services at 565 Media? Don’t hesitate to contact us or call (323) 902-7439. Our experts will come up with optimized ad campaigns tailored for your business.
If you’re looking to effectively and efficiently boost ROI with your marketing budget, 565 Media is your top choice. Simply connect with our on-demand team of full stack developers and start with a list of what problems you need solved. Our team specializes in developing customized, scaled marketing campaigns geared towards generating profitable leads and growing your business.
