What to avoid on your TikTok ads

Hey there! 👋

I want to welcome you to the first iteration of my weekly newsletter "DTC with Dennis" in this newsletter I will be covering all things DTC, eCommerce, Business and the life and times of an agency owner managing multiple 6-figures in monthly ad spend across 10+ of our partners.

So buckle up! In this week's newsletter, we're diving deep into what to avoid on your TikTok ads.

TikTok Ad Hooks

You've all seen the "TikTok made me buy it" ad hook pop up on your newsfeed or heard people raving about it online. Well, rightfully so. These worked great 1-1.5 years ago and crushed for a lot of brands.

Nowadays, I want you to stay far, far away from these "overused" angles. Think about it, everybody's grandma is using these hooks in front of their videos.

Try something unique. For example, we needed some new creatives for one of our partners. The brand is active in the oral health niche. Here are some of the hooks we came up with:

• Do NOT waste your money on toxic toothpaste

• Exposing my white and healthy teeth secret

• This is your sign to throw away your toxic toothpaste

These are not groundbreaking, but they are a lot better than the following I have seen on my timeline a gazillion times:

• TikTok made me buy it part ___

• Stop scrolling

• [company name] has sent me ___

The moral of the story here is, to get creative, think outside the box and try to think niche specific hooks that apply to your brand's industry.

Copying Meta ads to TikTok 1:1

Let me preface this by saying some brands can totally get away with this and have their Meta ads crush it on TikTok. These are exceptions to the rule. But in 60-70% of cases in order for your ads to hit you will need to adjust them to TikTok specifically.

Here are 5 ways to do this:

1. On Facebook, you'd usually place your captions at the bottom of the video. For TikTok place them at the top or in the middle so it doesn't get covered by the UI.

2. Keep them under 1 minute.

3. Make sure they are in the dimension 1080x1920.

4. Apply the TikTok native fonts and make your video look more organic.

5. Keep your video fast-paced and change scenes every 2-3 seconds. (you can get away with every 4-5 seconds too if you lack the material)

Of course, there are many more hacks to make your TikTok ads perform better, but these are the bare necessities you should be doing.

Not looking at data

Meta makes it very easy to check the performance of the ads you're running. In the TikTok ads manager, it's a bit harder to analyse your creatives. But it's an absolute must when running any ads on TikTok.

Look for the following metrics:

1. Spend. The algorithm will spend on the creative it's most confident in. BE CAREFUL: TikTok can get it wrong sometimes, which is why we usually opt for isolated creative testing.

2. CTR. In most cases you want to aim for 1%+, there are exceptions where you will see creatives perform really well at a sub 1% CTR.

3. Hook rate. 3-second video views divided by impressions. This will tell you how attractive your hook is. We also like to call this the thumb-stop ratio. Aim to get it at at least 30%

4. Hold rate. 100% video views / Impressions. This will tell you how many people will watch your video compared to how many people it was served to. This will give you an indicator how interesting your video is and how long people stay around. Aim for around 30%.

Watch the numbers like a hawk and make sure to optimise your creatives based on it.

Low hold rate?

Change the middle part of the video

Low hook rate?

Change the first 3 seconds of the video

These are the things to absolutely avoid on your TikTok ads. I hope you enjoyed reading this first iteration of my weekly newsletter.

I'll see you next week in your inbox every Sunday at 7 PM.

Let's crush it next week!

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