57% ROI on TikTok in 4 days

TikTok has been making quite a buzz in the affiliate community for quite some time now.

The comments and feedback from those who tried the platform vary a lot - some are crushing it saying TikTok is the new thing, while the others say it’s a waste of budget, the algorithm learns slowly etc.

We have never worked with TikTok Ads and were reluctant to try TikTok,  mainly because of creatives. Creatives are a huge part of success on this platform - but short catchy videos were a new format for me and a team. 

Nevertheless, we decided to run a very rough test and I would say that overall I was very satisfied with the results and the platform showed enough potential for us to keep testing and learning how to use it.

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Let’s get into the details:

• Source: TikTok‍
• Target: Male 35+‍
• Geo: USA‍
• Advertise period: 4 days‍
• ROI: 57%

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‍Campaign and ad sets settings:

On our first launch I tried to set up targeting based on audience interests, but got very high CPM. I stopped the campaign and launched it with quite a wide targeting - geo USA, male 35+ with optimisation parameters on “lower cost”.

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Creatives:

For creatives we used stock videos with women making selfies in front of the mirror and added text and sound on top of the video.
Here is the example of the creative that worked best:

We have noticed an interesting pattern building up as I tested different creatives - women 35+ years performed better than younger women. Authenticity and natural, real looks of the women also performed way better than full-on makeup, doll-like faces.

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Pre-land:

Having studied the old and the new ways and funnels in the social communications vertical, we decided to test something new and drive inspiration from other verticals. 

We came across an interesting case - the use of horoscopes. It seemed interesting to test and adapt in our pre-land. 

We built a page where you are asked to choose your zodiac sign to help find the best fit.

After that we invite users to take a quiz.

Quiz questions examples:

Results:

On average, registration cost was around $10. We used a new account that did not have any history. At the beginning, registration cost was $8-9, it raised a little bit when scaling the campaign. 

As you can see from the account screen - in the long run creatives gave a stable CTR of up to 4%.  

‍Summary:

We’ve seen potential and will keep testing TikTok to get more insights and study the platform further. For our test developing creatives turned out to be less complicated than we expected and the simple videos we put together worked fairly well.

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*A minimum budget for the tests R&D team runs is $1500