TikTok Advertising: How to Succeed On Today’s Fastest Growing Social Media Network

The social media platform TikTok has managed to attract millions of users of various age categories and has become a place where people look for literally everything – from tips on how to dress nicely, through inspiration on where to eat, to recommendations for favorite movies and series.

You can find a lot on TikTok and the younger generation are pros at navigating it. Take advantage of it as soon as possible, before the Slovak TikTok space becomes oversaturated with advertising formats.

How does the TikTok algorithm work?

To begin with, it is important to understand how TikTok works and why it shows us the content that we see. This is down to the TikTok algorithm, which is often a mystery even to the best in the industry.

You can find different video formats on TikTok, but the most successful ones are those that are short and quick, capturing your attention and keeping it for as long as possible.

TikTok tracks your behaviour in the form of likes, comments and shares. It looks at the hashtags, descriptions and sounds used in those videos and even creates statistics about how much time you spend watching them. The algorithm then analyzes which types of content and which creators you find most appealing.

TikTok wants to keep your attention as long as possible. Therefore, it feeds you videos that you enjoy and where there is a good chance that you will interact with them. You will then easily catch yourself scrolling the so-called For You Page for a number of minutes and continuously finding similarly interesting videos being displayed.

For you as a business, this means that even with a small number of followers, you can achieve huge organic reach. But, in order for this to work, you have to create content that people are looking for on TikTok – be creative, rotate formats, test and evaluate.

What is a TikTok ad?

TikTok Ads are increasingly becoming an integral part of the marketing strategy of big and small brands. These are advertising formats directly integrated into the TikTok platform and finally became available for Slovak businesses as of August 2024.

If you are interested in individual advertising formats, read our Dex Guide marketing glossary, where we devote considerable space to TikTok advertising.

TikTok advertising is an effective option for brands, and we’ll tell you why:

• Large number of users – all surveys clearly tell us that the audience on TikTok is constantly growing, and not only among younger users. This means you have a chance to reach a wide target group and gain reach that you never dreamed of on other social media networks.
• High engagement rate – people on TikTok like to comment and share their opinion. They are active and therefore your TikTok ads have an even greater chance of success. People rate advertising on this social networkWhen were the first social networks created and which network was Facebook inspired by? Which networks are among the biggest in 2023? More much more positively compared to that on Facebook. They can have fun with it, comment on it, share it with their loved ones and as such, the ad reaches a huge number of people.
• There are no limits to creativity – you can simply go crazy here. Try different videos, combine entertaining and interactive advertising formats, try to ride the wave of popular trends.
• Performance targeting – TikTok Ads Manager provides tools for precise targeting and optimisation, allowing you to keep an eye on efficiency and ad spend.
• Less ad overcrowding – we have only had TikTok ads in Slovakia since August 2024, which means a smaller field of competitors who already use this service. However, this opportunity should be seized as soon as possible.

How to do TikTok advertising in Slovakia

We now have the opportunity to use TikTok advertising to the full, even in Slovakia. If you run campaigns on Google or Facebook, you will be pleased – this social media platform also has its own TikTok Ads Manager, allowing you to create an account and deploy paid campaigns.

TikTok enables precise targeting based on user demographics, interests, behaviour, and even specific hashtags that people follow on TikTok.

6 steps to launching your first campaign:

1. Register and set up your account – create your TikTok For Business account and set up basic campaign information. Don’t forget to create and set up a TikTok Pixel, which works similarly to Facebook.
2. Choice of targeting – similar to other social media platforms, TikTok also allows you to target impressions, clicks, conversions or, for example, app installs. It boils down to your overall strategy and where in the buying process you want to reach TikTok users.
3. Setting up the audience – a very important step in the preparation of your campaign is the decision about who your ad will be shown to. As we mentioned earlier, you can target by age, gender, interests, geographic location, and many other factors.
4. Budget and bidding – according to the goal you choose, you can also set a daily or total budget for the campaign and choose the bidding method: price per thousand impressions (CPM), price per click (CPC), price per conversion (CPA), etc.
5. Creating the creatives – the proverbial icing on the cake in the whole process. You should aim for an engaging video with a hook at the beginning, which should engage users in the first 2-3 seconds.
6. Launch and optimisation – thanks to analytical tools, you can monitor the performance of campaigns and optimise them for better results.

How much does a TikTok ad cost?

There is no clear answer to this question. You can spend a few tens of euros a day here, but you can easily spend thousands if it is in line with your marketing strategy and TikTok advertising brings you results in the form of fulfilled goals.

The price for advertising here also depends on several factors such as targeting, competition in a specific segment or the given type of advertising. The minimum daily budget for campaigns is around 20 euros.

However, TikTok offers different bidding strategies and therefore it is good to connect with someone who has real experience with advertising on this social media network and can get the most out of it. This will save you a lot of stress and, ultimately, money.

“It is recommended to test as many videos as possible. Over the course of a month, 5 is not enough, or 10, sometimes even 30 is not enough. The more videos you have in your ads, the better, and then they need to be tested. Test, test, test. However, there should be a maximum of 2 to 4 videos in one ad set. Targeting is not as important as the content creator itself.

Compared to other platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, the sales psychology on TikTok is completely different. It is important for conversion campaigns to show discounts first and call the user to action.” reveals Tomáš Šefčík, Social Media Specialist at Dexfinity.

How to go viral on TikTok

Did you know that the TikTok app was launched in 2016 under the name Douyin and originally operated solely for the Chinese market? A year later, it started operating globally, got aptly re-named as TikTok, and became a worldwide phenomenon.

Currently, TikTok has more than 1.6 billion users in the age category 18+ and their number is constantly growing.

There is no perfect guide that will guarantee you popularity on this social media network and skyrocket your reach.

Tips to succeed on TikTok

However, we have checked out several successful profiles and put together some tips to help you get ahead:

• Follow the trends. Popular videos are commonly copied on TikTok and you should not be an exception.
• Focus on shorter videos and show your face. These videos have better viewing completion rates, more impressions and bring higher reach.
• Use relevant hashtags. The TikTok algorithm will move you exactly where you need to go.
• Use subtitles so that even people who have their device sound off can watch the video.
• Don’t forget to mention your product/brand name in the first 3 seconds. An interesting hook at the beginning must also not be missing.
• Make interesting cuts between shots and use the zoom-in and zoom-out effect. It doesn’t matter if you shot the video in one shot. With the help of these effects, you can make it look special and get the attention of the audience.
• Experiment with music and don’t forget to use filters or colour effects, which are still a big hit on TikTok.
• ASMR videos must not be left out. Generation Z thinks digitally and predominantly uses social media platforms such as TikTok for their purchasing decisions. If you want to know why ASMR videos are dominating social media and how to get the most out of them, read our article Gen Z vs ASMR Videos: A Taste of the Future of Advertising?
• Don’t forget to always include a call to action in your video. Be careful, however, that the video does not act primarily as an advertisement. People go to TikTok to have fun and relax, and this kind of advertising could be intimidating. Try to create a promotional video so that it blends in with other posts, but attracts the user at the same time.
• Film behind the scenes of your creation or business itself and give people answers to their questions in the form of a video. Show how your product or service solves a specific problem. Equally popular are posts in the style of ‘5 reasons why…’, various DIY tutorials and last but by no means least – the ever popular ‘unboxing’ theme.

Start making money with TikTok advertising

TikTok advertising is gaining popularity due to the fact that the number of users on this platform is constantly growing. There is huge potential for growth for many brands. Simply choose a suitable strategy, set up effective campaigns and target the right audience. If you’re considering advertising on TikTok, get in touch. At Dexfinity, we’re here to help.