If you’re thinking TikTok is just for kids who want to watch funny dancing videos, think again! TikTok had 1.5 billion monthly active users in 2023 and is expected to reach 1.8 billion by the end of 2024.
Chances are most of your competition aren’t using TikTok ads yet, so now is a good time to experiment with the platform and hopefully generate some affordable leads for your business.
With that in mind, following is a step by step guide showing you what to expect when setting up your first TikTok Lead Generation Ad Campaign.
Start by creating a new Campaign from your TikTok Ad account.
TikTok will ask of you want to use a Basic or Advanced setup process. I like to use the Advanced option as it tends to give me more options and control over my ads and campaign settings.
Select the Lead Generation objective in the Advertising Objectives section.
Name your campaign and set your budget. Leave “Create split test” and “Campaign budget optimization” turned off for the sake of simplicity for your first campaign. Unfortunately, as of the time of writing, the minimum daily ad spend is $50. Click Continue once you’ve set your budget.
Name your Ad Group. The Ad Group section is where you will choose your target audience, so name your Ad Group something that will help you recognise the audience you’re targeting.
Choose your Placement Options. By default, all these settings are turned on. If you think you ad might be inflammatory in any way, I’d suggest turning the comments off. Otherwise leave these as-is.
By default, TikTok suggests a broad target audience, based on your location, however, I suggest you narrow this down to your ideal target audience. Afterall, we are spending $50 a day… the less waste the better!
In the Demographics section you can select the location you want to target, gender, age range, language and spending power. Interesting to note that if you set up your account from outside the US, or EU, you won’t be able to target these countries.
If you haven’t used TikTok ads before, you probably won’t have any audiences setup, so just leave these sections blank.
TikTok, similar to Facebook Ads, provide a broad interest and behaviours targeting list, so take some time to explore the options available by using search area.
TikTok has some interesting device targeting options available that could help you target high net worth individuals (for example), based on device type and even the cost of the device. If this is your first TiktTok lead ads rodeo, I’d suggest you start with the broadest audience. If you find you’re getting lots of unqualified leads, then use this to narrow your audience in future.
While you’ve already set the campaign level in an earlier step, you can now set your Ad Group level budget. It looks like this can be slightly less than the campaign budget so go ahead and select your minimum budget. You can also use Scheduling and Dayparting to only show your ads during certain times.
Given we’re running a lead generation campaign, the default objective is Target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). You can try setting a target CPA or leave this blank. When first running a campaign, I usually leave this blank to see what results are like before trying to optimize it.
For many businesses, creating catchy videos for TikTok can be the greatest barrier to entry. The best format for TikTok ads is a 9:16 video, 9-15 seconds long.
If you’re not keen on jumping in front of the camera, here are a few resources to help get you creae video ads:
In this step, I’m going to assume you have your own ad creative. If not explore the Create option to use TikTok’s video ad generator or the tools listed above.
In this example, I’ve created a lead magnet out of one of our most popular blog posts: how to target rich people with Facebook ads. We turned this into a PDF download. Checkout our lead magnet generator post for tools that can help you do the same.
Note that we’re using two different video versions – always test multiple creative no matter what type of ad you’re running.
Choose your call to action depending on what action you want people to take once they click on your ad and see your form. In this example we’re using the Download Now CTA.
Click the Create button under Instant Form. We’re going to use the Classic layout editor and select the simple form. Click the confirm button to continue.
Add your logo, display name, a headline and a promotional slogan (optional)
In this section you need to enter a purpose for the form and customise your lead form questions. In my form, I’ve change the Name field to a First Name field. You can also add custom questions if you want more information and/or to better qualify your leads.
Make sure you fill in the privacy policy section and link to your website privacy policy. If you don’t have one, you can use our privacy policy generator.
Add in the appropriate details for your lead form thank you page. In this example, I’ve used the button as a call to action to download the PDF guide we created.
When you’re first starting out, leave these to the default settings.
This is an optional and an advanced feature. Just leave the tracking section blank.
😅 phew! I know there were a lot of hoops to jump through, but you’re done! Well done you!
Once your campaign has generated some leads, you’ll be able to find and download your leads from the Tools > Instant Pages section.
If you have success with TikTok lead ads, then you may want to also try setting up a Facebook lead ad campaign.
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