Performance Fundamentals: 4 simple steps to drive growth on TikTok

By Brian Torpey, Head of Product Solutions & Operations - Core Ads

TikTok's advertising platform has been proven to drive performance at scale, guiding consumers from discovery to conversion.

Advertisers driving conversions — also known as performance advertisers — focus on app promotion, lead generation, website conversion, and product sales. They often find themselves on a challenging path, adjusting to the latest guidance on best practices, devising new techniques to drive efficiency, and adapting to the most advanced measurement systems. If this is you, we are here to help!

Drawing from extensive testing and analysis of successful campaigns from across the globe, we've developed Performance Fundamentals, a simple, four-pillar framework to drive growth on TikTok. By mastering this framework, you can significantly enhance your TikTok advertising success.

1. Optimize your data connections

Establishing reliable data connections between your brand's marketing data and TikTok Ads Manager is at the heart of any successful campaign, and the key to getting the most out of your investment on TikTok. The signals received through these connections allow our systems to learn from actions on the user journey, and accurately determine when and where to serve your ads, maximizing the chance of a conversion.

Advertisers can enable data connections through our web, app and offline tracking solutions through our unified Events API, TikTok Pixel, or SDK depending on their needs. We also recommend creating events for each step along the customer's journey to optimize for actions that matter most to your business, from viewing product details to completing a purchase.

On average, advertisers using both TikTok Pixel and Events API see 19% more events captured and a 15% improvement in CPA.¹

By implementing strong data connections via the TikTok Pixel, complemented by the TikTok Events API, The Bouqs Company achieved over 3.5k complete payment conversions, a substantial improvement from previous campaigns.

2. Manage your campaigns effectively

Success in TikTok advertising hinges on effective campaign management practices. Reducing the complexity of your ad account structure and experimenting with new ad groups on a regular basis will accelerate learning and maximize performance.

First up, we recommend advertisers don't make any changes to their ad groups during the learning phase. Then, it's important to close underperforming ads, specifically where the CPA is more than twice the usual, or if there are no conversions. And finally, we recommend creating a minimum of four new ad groups every week, if you're not using Smart+ campaigns.

For optimal targeting, we recommend starting with a broad audience. To maximize your audience reach, we suggest enabling automatic placement via Pangle (where available). When it comes to bidding strategies, for upper-funnel objectives we recommend using Cost Cap with the suggested bid; if prioritizing conversion volume over controlling the average cost per result, we suggest using Maximum Delivery.

In our testing, ads in TikTok Ads Manager that reach a "fairly broad" audience—defined as including over 80% of the potential users in a given country—outperform all others by a wide margin, with -15% lower cost per acquisition and +20% higher conversion rate.³

MaryRuth's used a split test to evaluate the Smart Targeting tool. The test ad group CTR was +24% higher, CPA was -31% lower, and total conversions increased by +33% compared to the control group.

3. Elevate your creative game

Developing a strong set of active creative assets is essential to scaling up your campaigns on TikTok. Exploring a variety of ad creatives (approach, storyline, creators) and doubling down on successful ones can help you reach more audiences and improve your campaign's return on ad spend (ROAS). Put another way, creative quantity multiplies your impact by increasing your visibility, while creative quality drives engagement by capturing attention and engaging users.

To get professional help with creative production, advertisers can log into TikTok One. Here they can find millions of creators, top creative partners and inspiration tools such as the Creative Center. Advertisers can also leverage our AI-powered Symphony Creative Studio to generate creator-led videos within minutes.

High-performing creative doesn't have to be expensive: research shows lo-fi production quality ads drove a +76% increase in uniqueness, +33% in consideration,+ 32% in brand likability, and +12% in purchase intent compared to the average.²

Checkmate turned to creator-led assets (now available in TikTok One) for authentic-feeling TikTok videos that taught their audience how to get the most out of their app. Using these assets improved their campaign results, with a +43% increase in CTR and -18% CPI.

4. Test, measure and scale

Once you have an understanding of your baseline performance, build a test and learn plan to iterate and refine.

We recommend using the split testing tool to test different versions of your ads and determine which performs best to optimize future campaigns. There are currently three variables you can test: targeting, bidding & optimization, and creative.

We also recommend using Attribution Analytics to compare your performance across different attribution windows and identify what's optimal for your campaign. It's important to enable view-through attribution (VTA) to get a more holistic picture of TikTok's advertising value while also giving the system more conversion data to be used for optimizations, leading to better overall outcomes for the campaign.

Finally, we recommend using a post-purchase survey (PPS), an attribution and insights tool that advertisers can integrate with their e-commerce platform (for example, Shopify) and poll customers directly after a sales event, adding a valuable layer of insight into the customer's path to purchase.

According to research by Fospha, in Q1 this year, TikTok drove 788% more conversions than last-click attribution claims.⁴

SnoreRx used post-purchase surveys to understand who their customers were, where they discovered the product, and why they were buying. Compared to in-platform TikTok attribution, survey data showed nearly 2x the amount of purchases attributed to TikTok.

TikTok is committed to providing performance marketers with the tools and strategies needed to thrive in the dynamic world of advertising. Download the Performance Essentials checklist below, and harness the power of TikTok ads to elevate your campaigns and achieve lasting success.

Sources

1. TikTok Web Events API Incremental Performance Benefit Analysis, Nov 2022 - Feb 2023

2. TikTok Marketing Science, US SMB Creative Effectiveness Study 2021, conducted by Lumen

3. TikTok back-end testing, comparing overall web conversion ads performance in Q2 2023

4. Fospha, "Last Click Continues to Undervalue Paid Social in 2024, and Fospha Reveals a ‘Halo Effect’ for TikTok", 2024