With the rise of social media shopping, it’s become increasingly more important to manage your brand’s social media accounts well in order to accelerate your sales. Today we’re going to focus on some key learnings on how to run ads on TikTok, or better yet, what you should avoid.
Apart from some tactical decisions around managing your ads you also have to ensure compliance with TikTok policies. TikTok holds its advertisers to a high standard, and because of that, each ad is reviewed to determine if it complies with ad creative policies and local regulations. But with so much information on the internet, it’s easy to get lost! It’s important to know what could harm your brand and bring advertising issues, and finding good practices to follow can make a huge difference.
This type of advertising may be new to some e-commerce business owners, so we have created a list of the most common problems with TikTok advertising and ways to solve them.
Tactical Problems to Avoid to Maximize Ad Performance
1. Creative Not Compelling
Many people think that technical problems experienced when creating an ad causes poor performance. But in most cases, the content is the problem. If it doesn’t catch attention in the first 3 seconds, and if viewers don’t interact with it and scroll down right away, the algorithm will automatically reduce the visibility of your ad.
So, it’s crucial to have an interesting video and make it look as organic as possible. Pro tip: Change the videos in your ads once a week. The TikTok algorithm loves when you refresh your campaigns with new videos, and it will push them more.
2. Budget Control and Flexibility
Since the competition is high, it’s important to set your budget higher than you think ($50-$100/day). Always make sure to have enough money on your ad account! Otherwise, your ad’s performance will suffer. The algorithm will try to save money, and it will reduce the visibility of your ad so it can last longer. It’s good practice to occasionally increase the budget based on the ad’s performance, but not more than 20%.
3. Targeting and Strategy Mismatch
When creating a campaign, it’s imperative to start with broad targeting. If you start with a narrow audience and use the targeting options, the campaign will probably perform badly. This is because the algorithm needs time to collect the data and learn how your audience interacts with your ad. Best practice: start with the View Content optimization event and wait for it to collect 50 conversions and pass the learning phase. After that, you can move on to another optimization event, such as Add to Cart and Complete Payment.
Common Causes of TikTok Review Failure
4. Exaggerated, Overstated, or Misleading Claims about Product Performance
To err is human, but you should avoid it in your advertising. For example, TikTok ads with the following ad or caption text issues would fail review:
- Grammar mistakes
- Spelling errors like “rfom” instead of “from”
- Using symbols in place of letters like “S@le”
- Excessive and distracting capitalization “S.a.L.e”
- Text/logos that have been covered by stickers/mosaic
- Incomplete text in videos/pictures
Be careful and double-check each time before starting a new campaign or running ads. Also, you should consider hiring a copywriter who can write quality content, professionally check grammar / spelling, and create persuasive copy that sells.
5. Issues with Audio Quality or Video/Image
It’s most likely that your TikTok ad will fail ad review if:
- It contains poor audio quality, or it’s hard to understand
- It doesn’t contain audio at all
- It has low resolution and blurry video/image
- A part of a video/image is covered up with black bars or pixelation
The best way to ensure your ad doesn’t fall into this category is to be familiar with universal best practices for video ads on TikTok and adjust your ads accordingly. After all, the TikTok app is where new musical trends and dance moves are born, and its Commercial Music Library has over 150,000 royalty-free tracks.
6. The Product and Price in the Ad are Not Consistent or Relevant to Those on the Promoted Website
This is one of the common problems with TikTok advertising to avoid at all costs! Your ad and product website shouldn’t have inconsistencies; otherwise, your ad will not pass the ad review. Be conscious about when you adjust your price online so that you reflect it in your advertising as well.
Other common mistakes regarding inconsistencies:
- The ad is irrelevant to the product website. Let’s say you run an ad with a particular product, and it draws your potential customer’s attention. Yet, the moment the customer goes on the website, the product of interest is nowhere to be found, and the catalog shows an entirely different item than the one displayed in the ad.
Showing product A in your ad and offering product B on the website is why your ad won’t pass the review.
- The ad says “up to 50% off,” but the product website states that there is only “up to 30% off”. No one likes being lied to, and the audience is no exception. Feeling fooled will cause your potential customers to never consider purchasing at your store again, and it’s a bad move for your brand image.
We always recommend being truthful, and the right audience will find its way to you.
- The website is too vague to determine if the ad is relevant to the products featured on the promoted website. For example, your ad features a “clothing brand,” but the website features generic images of a “large city.” Just like we said in the previous examples, it feels misleading and won’t bring good results.
Even if your ad brings in fewer people, but they are genuinely interested and drive conversions, that will always turn out better for you than “scamming” people into your website and promoting a negative brand image.
7. The Promoted Website Doesn’t Function Properly or Contain the Information Required by Local Regulations
The most common issues within websites and landing pages are:
- A website isn’t mobile-friendly
- A website doesn’t function properly or comes out as a 404 page
And don’t forget to add your contact information, refund policy, and a clearly stated privacy policy. Without these, your ad will fail review.
8. The Ad Contains a Third-party Logo
We can all agree that seeing a bunch of logos in one video ad won’t be pleasing to our eyes, but it’s not only for aesthetics that you should avoid this practice. Advertisements that use any unauthorized third-party logo would fail review.
Here are some examples:
- Ads that feature a TikTok logo
- Ads claiming that the product is a “TikTok Bestseller”
9. The Ad Contains Shocking Content
Although the content that provokes shock value will cause strong reactions and can quickly become viral, you shouldn’t fall into this trap. TikTok ads that use shocking content will very likely fail review.
In Summary
Tiktok Ads are not yet as widely adopted by many e-commerce businesses, but it can be a great channel for growth if you have the right content and product! To get started, make sure you follow the tips above in order to run a smooth ad process and to help you grow your business on TikTok.
If you have any doubts or questions regarding the common problems with TikTok advertising, visit Sellers Alley and book a free consultation with our specialists.
About the author
Marko Dabović is a TikTok Specialist at Sellers Alley, and he’s interested in both Amazon PPC and TikTok Ads. Marko is fully dedicated and focused on helping clients to reach their goals and growth potential.
