TikTok for Business Formula 4 Success: A Small Business Playbook to Drive Website Sales

Welcome to the essential resource for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) where you can learn how to connect with an authentic, highly engaged audience ready to take action on your ads, and to maximize your marketing impact for the highest return on ad spend (ROAS).

We're diving into the Formula 4 Success Playbook, the essential guide with four best practices you need right now to set up the foundations for your TikTok ads and drive customers from TikTok straight to your website. By following these strategies, you can enhance your TikTok presence to connect with prospective customers, increase web traffic, and see a tangible return to your marketing efforts, all of which are crucial for driving sustainable growth for your business.

Excited to get started? Feel free to skip ahead and grab the quick guide here.

The ecommerce solution to boost website sales with TikTok Ads

We created a detailed playbook to guide future customers from TikTok directly to your website using our four best practices, called Formula 4 Success. This consists of setting up your ecommerce ads with:

1. Account Foundation & Data Connections

2. Audience Strategy

3. TikTok-First Creative

4. Budget Best Practices

Formula 4 Success is here to help you set up the foundations for your TikTok ads, expand your customer base, and make a bigger impact with your marketing. It’s designed to help you achieve different goals, like bringing more visitors to your website and turning those visits into sales. This guide shows you how to customize your campaigns for every step of your customer’s journey and attract the right audience to increase conversions. Plus, you’ll learn how to reconnect with past visitors and build strong customer relationships through engaging storytelling ads.

Getting Started with TikTok Ads

Here’s how to get started with TikTok ads and use the tools TikTok for Business provides. We’ll walk you through the details.

Account Foundation & Data Connections for Ecommerce Ads

Ensure all your marketing efforts are set up properly and tracked accurately. This will provide valuable insights into which ecommerce ads are performing the best, allowing you to create custom audiences to retarget in the future and optimize performance.

Create your TikTok Ads Manager Account

• Register for a TikTok Ads Manager account (see detailed instructions here—best done on desktop).

• Set up a payment method (Go to Dashboard > Account Settings > Payment).

• Set up your TikTok Pixel.

• Select TikTok Pixel under Assets > Events > Web Events.

Audience Marketing Strategy

Reaching the right people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services is key to increasing ecommerce sales.

Select your audience and targeting

During the first 14 days, start off with "Broad" or "Balanced" targeting to increase the traffic of TikTok users to your site. To see if you have a "Broad" or "Balanced" audience, follow these steps within your TikTok Ads Manager account:

• Create or Edit a Campaign: Start creating a new campaign or edit an existing one.

• Targeting Section: Navigate to the "Ad Group" level where you set up your targeting.

• Audience Targeting: Look for the section labeled "Audience targeting".

Retargeting Strategies

Once you’ve gathered enough data, you should implement retargeting strategies. This allows you to reach users who previously visited your website but haven’t converted yet. Retargeting can be powerful for improving retail advertising efforts, guiding users through the next stage of their customer journey, and boosting conversions.

TikTok-First Creative for Engaging Ads

Engage your audience by crafting content specifically designed for TikTok’s unique style and user preferences, making your ads more engaging and relatable.

Build your first ad creative

Check out our creative tools for inspiration. Find an existing TikTok video that you’ve created and/or one made by other creators with their authorization to use as a Spark Ad. Spark Ads transform TikTok videos into paid ads that appear in the For You feed. Because Spark Ads blend seamlessly with the TikTok user experience, they tend to perform better in driving ecommerce engagement.

With Spark Ads, you can see a 134% higher completion of viewers who watch the entire video ad from start to finish.¹ Why do Spark Ads work so well? Because they feel more natural within TikTok’s ecosystem, giving them higher engagement rates and better overall performance. This makes them a great tool for retail advertising campaigns aimed at driving website sales.

Check out our SMB Creative Playbook for best practices and tools to help you create ads that resonate with your audience.

Campaign Budget Tips

Maximize your return on investment by ensuring that every dollar spent is optimized, allowing you to get the most out of your advertising budget.

Start strong with at least 100 USD/140 CAD for the Daily Ad Group Budget. This amount gives the algorithm enough data to learn who your ideal audience is and optimize results early.

What Comes Next?

1. Ad Review All ads go through a review process after you click “Submit” to ensure all paid content is safe and engaging for the community. You will receive a notification once your ads have been approved and published. Most ads are reviewed within 24 hours. See here for more details on the ad review process.

2. Build Your Organic Presence A good organic strategy can help you maximize the effect of paid content and increase your ROAS. Use your organic channel to test and learn what content works best—then boost success with Spark Ads.

3. Set up your Business Account on TikTok A Business Account is a public profile on TikTok and your business’ home base on the platform. Learn more here.

4. Build your organic strategy on TikTok Post 3-5 times a week to see what resonates most with your audience. Research trending content and use popular sounds to gain traction. Need more tips? Get them here.

Proven Results

Take it from SweetTreatyCo, a family-owned, US ecommerce candy business known for their freeze dried candy. They used TikTok's Formula 4 Success to drive more website sales.

As a first step, SweetyTreatyCo set up a website Pixel, including full-funnel events, to better understand their buyer journey events. The business used a balanced to broad targeting strategy to start. SweetyTreatyCo focused on Complete Payment events, so they scaled up to $120 daily budget. Because SweetyTreatyCo already had an organic presence on TikTok, they used Spark Ads for their first campaign creative.

Explore Additional Advertising Resources:

• Video Inspiration: TikTok's Creative Center is a free, ever-growing suite of creative resources where you can discover the latest trends, ad examples, best practices, and tools to create effective TikTok ads. Find creative inspiration for your next TikTok video here.

• Product and Ad Policy Questions: Visit the Business Help Center for tutorials, ad policies, and more here.

• TikTok Pixel: Learn how the TikTok Pixel works and explore easy installation options here.

Key Takeaways:

• Leverage TikTok for Ecommerce Success: TikTok offers small businesses a unique opportunity to create targeted ads, captivating and innovative content, access detailed performance analytics, and connect with an engaged community of customers, all of which can boost traffic and drive sales.

• Implement the Formula 4 Success Playbook: Follow the four best practices outlined in the playbook—Account Foundation & Data Connections, Audience Strategy, TikTok-First Creative, and Budget Best Practices—to optimize your ecommerce ad campaigns and improve conversions.

• Combine Organic and Paid Strategies: Enhance your advertising efforts by integrating a strong organic TikTok presence with well-crafted paid ads. This approach will help you test and refine content, increase engagement, and boost overall campaign performance.

Are you ready to achieve your conversion goals with TIkTok? Create your first ad.

1. TikTok Marketing Science Global eCommerce Study (US results) 2022 conducted by Material