Experiment: We spent $345 advertising Spark on TikTok. That’s what happened

If you’re thinking about getting started with TikTok ads (specifically Spark Ads), you’re not alone. TikTok ad revenue is expected to triple in 2022, with more companies than ever using paid promotions to expand their reach on the platform.

TikTok ads are already reaching nearly 885 million people worldwide and up to 81.3% of Americans over 18, making them a valuable addition to your social media advertising strategy. But what can you expect?

We were curious ourselves, so we did a little experiment. Check out our results below, as well as our key takeaways to help you develop your own strategy.

Methodology

You can run different types of ads on TikTok, but we wanted to test Spark Ads. They were only added to TikTok Ad Manager in June 2021 and allow brands to promote organic content in the feed – similar to the Boost Post option for Facebook.

The unique thing about Spark Ads is that you can not only use your own organic content – you can also promote other authors’ posts (such as user-generated content) if you have permission. This allows businesses to capitalize on the positive feedback from influencers and customers and eliminates the need to create ads themselves.

If you use your own content, Spark Ads has another advantage. Unlike regular feed ads, the engagement generated by Spark Ads is attributed to the original post, expanding the reach of your content and boosting your channel’s engagement metrics.

We decided to test two Spark Ads with different goals. One ad was focused on community engagement in order to get more users to our profile. Another of our advertising goals was video views.

We had the same goal for these campaigns: we wanted to see how leveraging our most effective content could help us reach a wider audience and expand our community.

Here is a breakdown of each campaign.

Ad campaign 1: video views

Budget: $150.

Campaign duration: 3 days

Audience: We have made it as wide as possible, including male and female users of all ages and all regions.

Advertising campaign 2. Interaction with the community

Budget: $195

Campaign duration: 3 days

Audience: Same as above.

Results

Overall, we got good results from both campaigns. While both performed well, our video views campaign had the upper hand. Here’s a breakdown of how the two campaigns compare on the same metrics.

And here’s a breakdown of the performance of each campaign based on its targeted outcomes:

Ad campaign 1: video views

@hootsuite

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♬ Sunroof – Nicky Youre & dazy

Most of our ad budget was spent on users aged 13-17, who had the most impressions and the lowest cost in terms of the metrics we track. On average, users watched our video for 7.65 seconds. Our ads performed equally well among women and men, with users in Canada, the UK and the US having the most impressions.

While video views were the target of the campaign, we saw a nice increase in our subscribers and likes. As you can see from the table above, this campaign generated nearly eight times as many new subscribers as the Community Engagement campaign. We also received 466 profile visits.

While this is just one experiment, it is a reminder that the best way to win over an audience is through exceptional content. Spark Ads allows you to show your best performing videos to more people, encouraging them to follow you if they like what they see.

Advertising campaign 2. Interaction with the community

@hootsuite

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♬ original sound — edaheransgingerpub3s ??

The purpose of this campaign was to attract users to our profile. For our $195, we got 2,198 profile visits during the campaign – a click through rate (CTR) of 4.57%. For context, SmartInsights found that the average CTR for Instagram feed ads is just 0.22%, while Facebook’s CTR is 1.11%.

Our CPC was $0.09, which is pretty good when you consider that the average Facebook ad CPC is $0.50.

Most of our advertising spend was directed towards users aged 18 to 24 who generated the most clicks. However, the highest click-through rate was among users aged 35-44. Our ads were more successful with male users and, as with our video views campaign, we received the highest number of impressions in the US, Canada and the UK.

What makes a great TikTok Spark ad?

We got some insider tips from the folks at TikTok who gave some tips on choosing content to promote with Spark Ads. They recommend choosing videos based on the following four brand pillars:

• Connected. Content that will resonate with your audience and feel authentic and sincere. This is where it is useful to truly understand your audience on social media.
• Desirable. Videos that are positive and focus on your brand’s accomplishments or status tend to perform well. Just make sure you don’t deviate from that first pillar of relationship! Content that is too polished or slick does not match the creative and spontaneous spirit of the platform. As TikTok says, “Don’t make ads, make TikTok. “
• Inspiring. Content that demonstrates possession of valuable skills. What excites your audience? What are their ambitions? For Hootsuite, these are social media managers and professionals looking to hone their skills.
• Informative. The best content does more than just entertain or help someone kill a few minutes while they wait for their toast to pop. Focus on content that contains valuable information, such as guides or helpful tips.

Top 5 Takeaways from Spending $350 on TikTok Spark Ads

1. TikTok Ads offers bang for your buck compared to other networks.

The most important thing we noticed in our experiment is the value. While we didn’t spend a ton of money, we saw a pretty good ROI for our goals and other results. This is especially noticeable when you compare CTRs and CPCs with other social media advertising platforms.

This finding is supported by our Social Trends 2022 report. We interviewed 14,850 marketers who reported that Instagram and Facebook became less effective between 2020 and 2021. Meanwhile, TikTok is perceived as increasingly valuable — 700% more marketers find it effective in achieving their business goals in 2021.

It might have something to do with saturation. Ads have long been present on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which can lead to audience fatigue with ads. And it can also be the result of using Spark Ads, which uses organic content. This meant that our ads were merged with the rest of the content in the user’s feeds.

2. You don’t have to spend a lot to see results.

We didn’t invest a lot of money in any of the campaigns, but we were impressed with such positive results. Because you can spend as little as $20 a day on ads, you can start with just about any budget.

TikTok Spark Ads are great for companies that are just calculating their ad budget because they allow you to increase the performance of your organic content. This is one of the most reliable advertising strategies since you have already tested the content with your current audience.

This brings us to the next conclusion.

3. ABC (Always Calibrate)

The secret to the success of any social media ad? You should always test your content and refine your strategy.

For this experiment, we didn’t think too much about the campaigns we chose. We just used recent content that performed well. But a smarter strategy is to test short campaigns with different content and target audiences to see what produces the strongest results. With each iteration, your advertising strategy improves.

Even well-performing advertising has a finite lifespan. TikTok recommends changing ads every seven days, otherwise your viewers will get bored.

4. Experiment with different goals

TikTok Spark Ads offers a range of different objectives that you can choose from for your campaign. They are worth testing when you calibrate your advertising strategy to find out which ones are producing the best results.

We noticed that both of our campaigns delivered positive results beyond our intended goal: our Community Engagement campaign generated video views, and our Video Views campaign generated an amazing amount of subscribers and likes.

However, an ad campaign is only successful if it supports your business goals. Don’t get caught up in vanity metrics that don’t lead to conversions or meaningful customer engagement.

5. You learn something new from every campaign

While we call this experiment a success, we remind you that even a mediocre result is informative. If your advertising campaign is not successful, you have the opportunity to learn from it and try something different next time: a new creative, a different target audience, a new goal.

We will apply what we learned in this experiment to our next foray into TikTok ads, with more confidence and a better understanding of what the platform has to offer.