Why your TikTok ads are not working

Hey there! 👋

Been enjoying writing these weekly pieces a lot. It's a good way to write down my thoughts about what we're seeing as an agency managing 10-15 clients and spending 100K+ per month for them, which I hope provides a lot of value.

A trend I am seeing is that TikTok ads don't seem to be working for many brands, and time and time again I see the same mistakes come back. So for this week, I want to go into the 3 of the most common mistakes of why your TikTok ads are not working.

1. Using the same strategy as Facebook

This might be the most common one I am seeing people get it wrong. They run the same type of account structure as Facebook, they optimise the same way and test the same way. 

Not only is Facebook's algorithm a lot smarter, but it also is way more developed over the years it has been active (since 2007, that's 16 years!) If you compare that to TikTok which started in 2020, that's only 3 years...

For example, if you drop in 5 creatives in an adset on Facebook, it will know which ad to push and shift most budget towards the best one. Facebook will get it right 95% of the time. While TikTok we've seen isolating creatives provides a much better testing mechanism as the spend allocation in an adset with 5 ads is a lot worse than Facebook.

Basically, the tactics that worked for Facebook in 2017 still work on TikTok nowadays, the platform does get smarter every year, but you can do a lot more media buying tactics there to scale your account. 

2. Copy and pasting your Facebook ads to TikTok ads

Next to the first mistake, this one is very common as well. To be honest, we do this as well sometimes, but only with the creatives that we think would work on TikTok. We do take into account the way the text is displayed, so the UI from TikTok doesn't cover it.

Now I am not saying don't do this altogether, but be mindful of what you're launching on TikTok, as some ads are just not worth it to be tested and will only lead to wasting your budget.

Here are some guidelines for your ads in order to have the highest chances of success with them on TikTok:

1. Have a unique hook

2. Address a problem and tell a story

3. Clear call to action

If you get these 3 in all your ads you are set up for success so your TikTok budget won't go to waste.

3. Not iterating enough

You get a winner creative, woohoo! 

But then after a week, the inevitable happens...

It dies out.

What if I say this could have been prevented by looking at your creative data more and iterating more often? Get into the account every day and see which creatives are generating most of your sales and have the best data.

Check your ROAS, CPA, CTR, Hook and Hold rates. And based on that data, iterate.

If you get one winner, try the following:

Winner A:

1. Version A-1: Change the opening hook and keep everything else the same.

2. Version A-2: Change the song and keep everything else the same.

3. Version A-3: Change the CTA and keep everything else the same.

And so on and so on. You can keep tweaking your creative by changing one thing at a time and identifying what can further improve your performance. Only by doing this will you know what is the most powerful part of your video and are you able to unlock more levels of scale.

Of course, this needs to be backed up by data. If your hook rate is low, then obviously change your hook. If the hold rate is low, then obviously change the scene after the hook. Is your Hook and hold rate good but CTR low, then change the CTA or anything that comes in the final part of the video.

It's not that hard if you think about it right!

Most Valuable Piece of Content

Every week I want to share a piece of content I've found valuable and learned a lot from. Being a massive fan of REPRESENT I really enjoyed this episode of the Ecom Gold podcast. It provides a great insight into how founder George built up his brand and puts his cards on the table on how he's building the brand. Any brand owner in the fashion space should take notes on this one!

Top 5 Ads of The Week

I've been using Foreplay for months now, and I can honestly say it's one of the best value-for-money tools for any eCommerce brand, agency owner or anyone that runs paid media. It allows you to save ads from TikTok's and Facebook's ads library and keep them forever in your inspiration boards!

Go get yourself a free trial here!

Tweet of The Week

I did a collab with Loox and worked together on 24 DTC social proof ads that generated millions for their founders. 

That's a wrap!

I hope you've enjoyed this week's issue of DTC with Dennis and it brought you value on how to scale your business with the right model and why you need to stop stressing so much about ROAS 😉

See you next week at 7 PM CEST.

All the best,

Dennis 💚

P.S. On Twitter? Follow me here for daily value bombs about eCommerce and DTC!