How to Increase TikTok Ads Conversion Rate

There’s a reason so many brands from B2B to B2C and D2C are flooding to TikTok’s advertising platform. Not only does TikTok hold the fastest growing acquisition of new users, but they also boast one of the smartest ad management platforms which optimises your campaigns for you. As a result, data-driven TikTok ad creation is now one of our most commonly requested services - and we love creating them!

With that in mind, it’s important you start integrating TikTok ads into your marketing strategy. However, understanding how to increase the conversion rate of your ads before you begin could increase your return on investment two-fold and save you money.

In this article I’ve compiled some of our most successful techniques for increasing TikTok conversion rates across our campaigns from Huel to Wild Deodorant.

What is the average conversion rate for TikTok Ads?

The current industry average conversion rate is 0.58%. Now whilst that may seem extremely low, keep in mind that this is an average across all industries.

For example, a 0.58% conversion rate for a premium car brand like Aston Martin would be extremely desirable. Whereas, the same conversion rate for Huel would be considered poor and the average conversion rate in industries tends to reflect this.

5 ways to increase TikTok conversion rate

Whether you are about to start advertising on TikTok or have been advertising for some time and would like to increase your sales, here are five ways in which you can increase TikTok conversion rate:

1. Target a broad audience
2. Use more than one creative
3. Use a user-friendly conversion event
4. Use high tempo music
5. Integrate storytelling

1. Target a broad audience

After years of being lectured on target markets and customer personas, this seems a little counter-intuitive right?

Don’t worry, I don’t plan on ripping your marketing qualifications up quite yet. You only need to start with a broad audience before using the report data and analytics to focus on the most effective audience later down the road, let me explain…

Let the TikTok algorithm do the work for you

TikTok has received much praise for its TikTok Ad Manager. Equipped with an ultra refined algorithm that can learn which audience tend to view, engage, share or ideally convert from your ads. The algorithm is even able to pair specific audiences with specific ad creatives.

By starting with a broad audience, you’re allowing the TikTok Ads Manager to work out the best audience for itself and report to you in easy-to-understand analytics. Keep in mind that the initial results over the first 48 to 72 hours could look poor, but the algorithm needs time to understand which audience is best. I recommend running the ad for two weeks before refining your audience further.

After letting the broad audience run, narrow your audience down by the following criteria:

• Interests
• Behaviours
• Age
• Gender
• Location

Don’t assume you know your best audience

Remember, the customers you have now may not be the best customers in terms of order size or customer loyalty. Be prepared for TikTok’s Ad Manager to find you a brand new, more committed audience to help your business grow.

If you're unsure as to which audience you should start by targeting, book a call with one of our TikTok advertising specialists who can help.

2. Use more than one creative

And by more than one - I mean ideally three. This is where hiring or subscribing to an eCommerce video ad service could help.

By circulating more than one ad creative, you will be improving your ad performance both for a short and long-term, here’s how:

• Short-term - by avoiding ‘ad fatigue’, where your audience loses interest in your product or service because they keep seeing the same ad.
• Long-term - through a process of trial and error, you’ll be able to achieve a chemical combination of music, colours, call-to-actions and much more that you know with certainty will have a high conversion rate.

Within these three or more TikTok ad creatives ensure that you’re experimenting with the content itself by:

• Using different user generated content
• Using different people
• Using different music styles and paces (more on this at point 4)
• Using different call-to-actions

Before you know it, you’ll have the perfectly optimised ad creative with a high conversion rate that you can rely on and use as a template for creating future TikTok ad campaigns.

3. Use a user-friendly conversion event

And preferably it actually works - this may sound obvious but it’s easy to get so fixated on the creative and audience used that someone forgets to test the conversion event itself. During this phase, if you are using GA4 to track your conversion events, make sure you check these are coming through on your analytics dashboard.

Having a conversion event that works is one thing, but there are other considerations when choosing which conversion event to use in your TikTok advertising campaign; load speed and making the user work.

Improve load speed

If you require your audience to visit a website or landing page in order to convert and act on their interest in your offering, ensure you make sure that landing page is fast to load from a mobile device. Google PageSpeed Insights is a great way to test your page speed, as well as finding out what steps you can take to increase load speed and as a result, conversion rate.

Avoid giving too much work to the user

There is nothing worse than having your enthusiasm in a new product or service dumbed down by a long sign-up page. Remember, TikTok users will often have the shortest attention span of all social media users - as low as 8 seconds - so make it as quick and easy for them to enquire into your service or order a minimum commitment version of your product.

4. Use high tempo music

For any TikTok ad creative you use, you want to be aiming for around a minimum of 120 beats per minute. Unsurprisingly, this is the average bpm for most pop hits that perform well in the charts and it’s often the tempo that DJ’s will use to warm up a crowd. 

Your ads should act similarly to the DJ, you want to attract attention and engage your audience's focus on the ad content.

Should the music tempo vary based on the target audience?

Absolutely, whilst 120 bpm is a great target, it’s important you consider the nature of the target audience you’re trying to attract.

Imagine you're a travel agent and you need to create a TikTok ad campaign for party weekends in Ibiza and a couples getaway wine tasting in the south of France. The former should consider a high tempo dance track to build excitement, whilst the latter should use a slower (but not too slow) French jazz or folk soundtrack to relax and transport your busy working professional couple.

5. Integrate storytelling

Nothing engages a cold audience like a story. We all have the same limbic system in our brains that produces feelings and emotion to engage us with a story. Your TikTok ads can do exactly that.

Start by planting the itch with your customers, the problem, and then introduce your product subtly as the ointment with which to cure that itch. 

Take the below advert by Bushmills Whiskey for example, aside from the beautiful surroundings, impactful music and perfect shots - there is a story told in 60 seconds.

The story shows a young man, plunged into a new, rugged and unfamiliar life where through practice and hard work eventually finds love, laughter and friendship. All brought together by guess what? Whiskey.

The genius here is that the visuals, music and sound effects capture your attention only for the product to be shown in the final 10 seconds. That’s because a great story will leave a lasting impression, and lasting impressions generate conversions.

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I hope you found this guide to increasing your TikTok conversion rate useful. If you’re looking to improve your TikTok ad game, select from one of our plans to get beautifully captured ad creative delivered monthly.

Also don’t forget to visit our social media marketing blog for more helpful articles just like this one.

Written by Aled Nelmes for Aura Ads.