This article explains why not carefully choosing your TikTok pixel installation & event setup option could be a costly decision.

So you’ve heard you don’t need a DSLR camera to succeed on TikTok? Also been wowed by someamazing stats and the algorithm? Been binge-watching it for quite some time? But still, not motivated enough to try it out for your small business? Then this post is for you. 

This article provides you with a basic overview of each method, giving you the knowledge to start your bidding on TikTok Ads.

“Even the most niche can find their tribe on Tiktok”. Tiktok is where people seek the new, the fun, the unexpected. At least46% of the audience said so. Characterized by their open-minded nature, the community is already showing lots of love for small biz. #SmallBusinessLove hashtag alone has 160 M views. The broader #Smallbusiness got a whopping 34B views. Then you have a magic algorithm that promises to find an audience pool for your content. All sounds like a sweet deal. Do you even need Tik Tok ads after all?

Are you looking for ways to get access to and embed TikTok content into your website or app?? We’ve done some research and compiled a detailed TikTok API tutorial to give answers to the questions asked by many. Read this article to get the answers to the most commonly asked questions.

Have you ever heard about the TikTok API?

TikTok API is a set of application programming interfaces for the TikTok app. Developers can utilize the platform to create an interface for creators and users. It allows users to share videos with the entire TikTok community or to embed TikTok movies on a website.

How can I obtain the TikTok API?

TikTok offers an open API to anyone who creates an account on the developers' website with the intention of integrating TikTok into their product.

Step 1 – Create an account

First, go to theTikTok developers portal andregister an account.

Click login and enter the service if you already have an account or click Sign up.

Then fill in your email address and click Send PIN to email.

Check your inbox for the TikTok platform's automated message. Press Next after entering the code to verify your developer account. Remember that you only have one minute to complete this task.

The final step is to create a password for account access

Step 2 – Accept the ‘’TikTok for developers’’ Terms of service

The next step is to read and accept the TikTok Developer Terms and Conditions agreement that appears in the next window.

We strongly advise you to take your time and read the text thoroughly so that you are aware of the usage guidelines and limitations.

Step 3 – Connect a new application

Choose Connect a new app filed in the My apps tab once you’ve logged in your account.

Upload the icon for the app you wish to connect with TikTok and give it a name. To continue, press Start.

Upload the icon for the app you wish to connect with TikTok and give it a name. To continue, press Start.

Step 4 – Submit application for review

To begin working on your integration, you must first submit an application, which will be reviewed by the TikTok team and granted access to the platform API and software development tools.

Here’s the data you have to fill in:

You must wait for the outcome after you have submitted your app for review. You will be given a Client Key to begin working on your integration after you have received permission.

Documentation

We’re all new to Tiktok so let’s share together the documents about it.The Docs part of the TikTok developer portal contains the most important information and recommendations for utilizing the API and integrating the Open SDK solution. It's split into two sections:iOS andAndroid beginner's guides. A section onTikTok video integration is also included. Besides, we are also about to launch API feature inthe Multi TikTok Pixels app, Shopify users can follow us and take advantage of it.

Asians said that:Master yourself, master the enemy. Today in the new era of e-commerce is no exception, especially for businesses. To maximize sales, they realized they needed to understand their customers more than ever. Like Facebook, TikTok has developed pixels and APIs to help businesses better understand user behavior. So which one is suitable for your business? Let’s read the article below to better understand the benefits of each and what we must consider.

So here is the TLDR version if you have to go: Tiktok is a new kid in town that quickly rises to stardom. Recently hit 3B downloads, making it the 5th non-game, non-Facebook app to cross the threshold. Spans over 200 countries. Audiences who're twice the age of the so-called target demographic (the kids and teens) are also jumping on the bandwagon. Think 40-year-old + men and women. Marketers are rushing to profit from it. There is a pretty eerie reason behind why Tiktok is so addictive, and why anyone (including SMEs) can gain huge traction there. Without a deep wallet. It’s inescapable now, so read on if you don’t wanna miss the deal, before the market is saturated!

Let’s first talk about small businesses. Ecommerce to be exact. The Chinese version of the app (Douyin) already got in-app shopping experience integrated, hosting a whopping $26B worth of sales of makeup, clothing, and other goods in 2020 alone (that equals GDP of Iceland!).

We don’t know yet what Bytedance is up to with TikTok’s e-commerce but it’s safe to assume that it’s in their vision. Last year they teamed up with Shopify. 

Big reason to care

Let’s see how some small biz are doing on TikTok:

• This is a Nail shop with 800k+ followers and 40M views, out of genuine “watch me do my nails” shoots, nail tutorials or even customers’ breakup stories (trust me it got the most views)
• This guy, a glorified trashman, nailed 40 million views for his video shooting his cleaning process, for a house whose owner smokes for 20 years. And he even got on TV. He works for a cleaning company. 
• This shop sells water bottles, and got millions of likes just by turning the look and sound of the packing process into an ASMR video experience.

Want more? Go to TikTok’s discover page. That’s where I found them, after all.

Wondering why they’re so viral and got discovered? Glad you asked before you commit to the TikTok ads journey. 

Don’t play by the rules

It’s not just all about crazy dance and lip-sync viral. 

Wait, isn’t it what the platform is known for?

Yes, it is, but TikTok is also all about new, unexpected or bizarre things. New stuff is in fact a matter of life or death when it comes to TikTok ability to keep users stay. And stay for hours on end.

Anyone, anything can go viral here in TikTok house. From the above-mentioned examples to the construction guy with great before-after project video, electrical guy who sings good songs, the cat's slow motion, to the chef who makes music videos out of chopping sound, to the bubble effect that allows users to add them to convey dogs’ thoughts.

Remember the shiny, well touched-up photos on Instagram or the heavily edited long video on Youtube? Those are long gone on TikTok. Here you don’t have to wear suits to discuss things that matter.

In the end, this is a VUCA world where everyone is overloaded with info and too bored with everything too conventional. No wonder why they let TikTok shift them away from the beaten path. 

If you look hard enough, the small brands went viral without checking any of these boxes: 

• Staffed to make shiny after-effect kinda marketing videos
• Have a deep pocket
• Wear suits

But if you look harder, 2 content patterns emerge among them:

• A potential wow factor somewhere in their products and/or content
• Staying true to self and being light-hearted
• Not so many filters

TikTok champions creativity, not hierarchy. That’s good news for you

On TikTok, no one is king forever. Your glorious past doesn’t define or guarantee your future visibility. In TikTok’s own words:

“Neither follower count nor whether the account has had previous high-performing videos are direct factors in the recommendation system”

Why is this then? Well, you’ll have to look at TikTok's self-stated mission to gain a bit more context. It claims its ultimate guiding star is the long to inspire creativity and bring joy. 

“We're building a global community where you can create and share authentically, discover the world, and connect with others”. 

It then went on to ensure that users will find content tailored only for them as individuals, on the For You Page (FYP).

So you can at least rest assured that as long as you remain creative, or rather wild, and relevant to your target audience, TikTok will find an audience pool for you. With its so-called magic algorithm. But more on that later.

So does that mean you just go wild and wait for the magic to push you on FYP? That could be possible but so often luck is not on your side. 

So, we have to play a bit strategically here.

No, we weren’t contradicting ourselves. Just like any other platform, you gotta be on the lookout for the basic ins and outs for your content to fit. You can’t just force a filtered image, or a 20-min video to a sound-on, short video platform anyway.

Here are some secret sauce (that’s already widely known) to nail your TikTok video in case you’ve missed it

• Keep it short, ideally 9-13s. For longer videos like 30s or 1 min, you’ll have to gain better completion percentages for them to be considered on the FYP. But you might want to stay short. The average attention span of Gen Zers is no longer than that of a jellyfish (8s) so if you are lengthy, they’ll be distracted anyway. It’s not your fault.
• Keep your very first seconds hooked. You have to make it seducing enough for them to keep watching past the 9s threshold. Otherwise, that tells TikTok that no one is loving your content that much. 
• Stay away from the blind spot. So first you should format your video in 9x16 vertical, and steer your important message clear from all the space that’s reserved for comment, share buttons and the likes.
• Soundtrack matters big time. Because sound waves are easily detectable, while with image frames it is not so. This guy found that stitching your video with viral video, sound or dueting what’s already successfulalso sometimes pushes you on the FYP. 

How does the TikTok FYP work?

Now comes the most fun, and a bit scary part. 

TikTok calls its algorithm magic. The FYP is tailored to that particular individual liking. If you’ve been binge-watching for a while, you’ll know the eerie feeling that it’s a bit too accurate.

As curiosity amounts, the Wall Street Journal jumped in recently with an investigation. With dozens of automated accounts, WSJ made them watch hundreds of thousands of videos on TikTok FYP.

The result: TikTok was able to learn and tailor content to the bots’ unexpressed interests in less than 2 hours. 

How? Let’s look at a 24 y-o bot from Kentucky who was onboard. WSJ called it Kentucky 96. Right off the bat, TikTok served this guy a wide range of videos (to learn wide, and narrow down later). Those included religion, dances, sadness, forest, astrology, etc. 

In video 15, the bot pretended to linger on a sad video and rewatched it twice.

9 scrolls later, TikTok serves it another sad video, on break up. In the meantime, it is still trying to figure out whether the user likes other vibes like funny, failure, prank, etc. by instilling high-view-count videos here and there. At video 57, TikTok still serves another heartbreak, then at 60th, it's about emotional pain. The bot lingered once more. Then TikTok responds with others about love, breakups, and dating to see whether the bot's interest was in a relationship. The bot doesn’t. So at video 80, it serves one about mental health!

So what’s the key takeaway?

If you can imagine a tree of knowledge, Tiktok first goes from the trunk, then it gets better at understanding you to bring you to the tiniest branches. At the same time, it never forgets to nudge you with a bit of newness and excitement. This is creativity at its core, when randomness plays a huge role. All too often, businesses are so quick to get in shape, follow the structure. But the more you play safe, the more easily forgotten you are.

It’s not just WSJ, this guy also found that for every terrifying video there’s a lovely cute video right around the corner so TikTok can learn what you like and don’t like.

User engagement is everything

Even the likes, comments and follows are claimed to play some role in higher visibility, it’s the amount of time a user lingers over a piece of content that matters most. Every second you hesitate or rewatch or scroll past, the app knows. This combined with the video’sdescription, hashtag, audio track is part of the secret TikTok is guarding to best retain their users’ eyeballs.

So focus on making content that counts! On TikTok, a little surprise can make great delight. If you keep users hooked, TikTok will reward you with higher visibility.

Once you’re there, well-prepared, got some audience, or some purchases, you’ll have to let your pixel learn about your audience, who already bought your stuff. So you can scale up. In case you might need help with adding the pixel code, hop over to this tool which offers a copy-and-paste experience. You don’t have to worry about touching your theme ever again to set up your pixel.

It’s never easy to learn the ropes of a new platform, but if you want to start sending orders all over the world, you’ll surely want to try TikTok, test, analyze and optimize. After all, Google is getting way better at solving queries but still has to wait for users to type in keywords. TikTok doesn’t need anything and is still able to tantalize content-hungry minds. 

TikTok ads start at $10 per CPM. It seems to be pretty high compared with other platforms. Reports from AdAge in late 2019 point that advertisers on TikTok can spend between $50,000 to $120,000 depending on thead format andads objectives delivered to customers.

There are two main factors that impact the cost of your TikTok ads from the beginning of the advertising journey. So be careful to make your decision on ads optimization.

The recent launch of TikTok and its impressive increase has exploded the Internet market. Then, when the TikTok ads platform appears, it raises a question: are TikTok ads better than Facebook ads? Or are TikTok ads a worthy competitor to Facebook Ads? Let’s go through a comparison between the two and give yourself an answer. 

Until April 2020, Tiktok has gained 2 billion downloads and rank at number 7 of the largest social media networks in the world along with their ads platform just launched in 2018. It is undeniable to say that TikTok ads will create a great opportunity for marketers to expand their brand and somehow change the digital advertising market, along with Facebook and other ads platforms. According to Apptrace, 2020 This app is available in 141 out of the 195 countries in the world and supports 75 languages. It was downloaded 693 million times in 2019 and 850 million times in 2020. It contributed to the rapid increase in users of this platform.

Typical differences between TikTok ads and Facebook ads 

TikTok and Facebook are different in many different ways. Understanding the difference between them will help you utilize your ads. 

• Demographics 

Just recently emerged, TikTok’s user base is younger than Facebook’s and more important, TikTok is a mobile platform in which marketers will need a very different way to approach and convert their customers. Most audience in Tiktok is Gen Z and Millennials with the high brand awareness. So it is easy to build the impression to 

• Data testing 

While Facebook uses dynamic creative optimization based on graphical components that are defined manually at the setup of a display campaign and the dynamic information is filled in real-time for each shopper before the creative is served, TikTok uses automated creative optimization instead, its algorithm recognizes the best-performing ad creative, creates multiple ads and lets you restructure your ad campaign accordingly. 

• Geotargeting 

While TikTok targets the audience at the country/state level, and in limited countries, Facebook will target customers more specifically (country, region, or city) and worldwide. 

• Bidding structure

TikTok sets up manual bids with 4 popular bidding methodswhile Facebook can use automatic bids 

• Ads comments 

TikTok allows you to turn off comments on your ads while Facebook can not, so you can direct your customer to your online store quickly instead of replying to the comment on ad post.

• Ads sound 

On TikTok, it is required to add sound on your ads, while Facebook does not require you to add sound. 

Consider about pros betweenTikTok ads and Facebook ads

Are TikTok ads better than Facebook ads?

TikTok ads will be better than Facebook ads if you are trying to reach younger audiences. Many advertisers used to think that, due to the young demographics, the audiences are unlikely to buy things from there. However, this opinion seems to be not right anymore. These young audiences will become their customers at a certain time as many big brands are using TikTok as a powerful tool. 

However, with a small budget, it’s really hard to win on TikTok.  It can be easy to start with, but you need to invest your money to find out the most effective option to advertise your products. 

If you are a small business with financial constraints, Facebook ads are better than TikTok ads at first. When your business grows older, you can use both, try creative things for your business with TikTok. 

TikTok has become a hot social marketing trend, will you update this trend to start growing your website and increasing sales? In this article, you could know whether your business is suitable to run ads on TikTok, know how to create an ad on TikTok, and some tips to optimize your ads. 

Which types of business should use TikTok ads

TikTok has started bringing ads to its platform in 2019, even though it’s quite new, a lot of big names have used TikTok ads as a marketing tool because it fits their needs. Before advertising on TikTok, you should consider the following factors to make sure it is right for you: 

• Target audience: TikTok is for everyone, however, the users who dominate are Gen Z or millennial generation and41% of them are from 16-24. They are mostly divided into 2 groups. One would like to show up, follow and catch up with new trends very quickly, the other only use TikTok as an entertainment activity. 
• Products: Tiktok is the place to create very effective trends, you can take advantage of this element if your business tends to sell hot or trending items. Cosmetics, accessories, handmade goods, and fashion are also suitable to use TikTok ads. 
• Cost: The minimum budget at the campaign level is $50 (for both daily budget and total budgets)  and at the ad group level is $20 (daily budget). However, the actual average cost of TikTok brand ads are expensive for small businesses: 

             - Brand takeover (5 million impressions guaranteed) – $50,000 per day

             - In-feed native videos (minimum 600 impressions prepaid) – At least $6,000 and then $10 per impression

             - Hashtag challenge – $150,000 per week

             - Influencer post (with 2.5 million+ followers) – $600-$1,000 per post

What you should have before running TikTok ads

• Tiktok Ads account

Before running ads, you need to have an account for your business first. 

Step 1: Go tohttps://ads.tiktok.com/i18n/register

Step 2: Enter your business information. 

Step 3: Describe your business, enter billing information, add balance to your account. 

Then you can go straight to the platform to create an ad campaign. 

• Advertising videos 

TikTok will have a kit for you to create a video from your existing images with free background music and templates. If you create a video by yourself, make sure it is in .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .avi or .gif format and up to 500 MB. 

• Landing page/ website 

Once you advertise on TikTok, your customers will click on and go to your landing page or your website to check. A website with business information including email, contact number, address, and so on will have a higher chance of ads approval. 

• TikTok pixel 

It is crucial to have one or multiple TikTok pixels to run your ads, a smart pixel can help you to avoid wasting your money and target the right audience. 

>>> Check out: How to set up TikTok Pixel 

How to run TikTok ads

Step 1: From the TikTok Ads dashboard, click on “Campaign” and choose “Create” 

Step 2: Select Advertising Objectives, name your campaign, and set up a budget for your campaign. 

Tips: To get the ad approved faster, choose No Limit for your budget

Step 3: Create an ad group for the campaign 

• Name ad group 
• Choose ad details: it will vary based on the different campaign objectives you select at the beginning 
• Choose placement type to show your ad 
• Select to target your audiences by customizing, demographics, interest and behavior, and device 
• Set up a budget & schedule your ads 
• Enter your bidding and optimization: remember the higher you bid, the larger number of audiences will see your ads. 

Step 4: Create an ad 

Name your ad and choose a format for your ad. TikTok lets you create ad content by video or images. Make sure that your content satisfies TikTok’s requirements. 

Enter name, details, call to action, and your page URL, add your profile and choose a way to track your ad performance, finally, submit your ads for review. 

Don't forget the tracking pixel setup for your ads. The pixel will help your ads optimize to your target audience.

 How to make your ads as much effective as possible

• Your content: 
  • Make vertical videos to provide the audience with a full-screen immersive experience.
  • Keep the length of the video to less than 20 seconds to catch eyeballs.
  • Best to have 3 creatives in an ad group and keep adding fresh creatives every week.

• Your bid budget: 
  • Bid 20%–30% higher than your expected CPA (cost per acquisition) to ensure the campaign attracts sufficient volume. This initial volume lets TikTok’s algorithms quickly determine and target the audiences with the highest conversion rates.
  • AVOID applying multiple targeting dimensions in the same ad group so you don't excessively narrow the audience

TikTok is growing dramatically in the world, it’s still new for you to play around, discover its potential and launch successful campaigns. Ready to get started? 

Create your ad account now and start advertising your products. 

Other articles: Are TikTok ads better than Facebook ads?

Tiktok has updated its pixel to the newest version 2.0 to optimize uses and help merchants to track the most common events. After having a pixel installed on your website, it is crucial for pixel to start learning by creating events and defining the tracking rules. The more your pixel can learn, the better results you can get to optimize your ads afterwards.