Summary

Avantera Health saw major success promoting their Nootropic supplement product on traditional ad platforms like Facebook and Google. With a product that people loved and a dedicated customer base, they were ready to take advantage of the massive reach TikTok ads offer. We worked with Avantera to launch their TikTok ad strategy from scratch and, when implemented, drove ROI-positive, uninterrupted daily growth on the platform almost immediately. With our help, Avantera went from zero to 4 figures per day in revenue on TikTok in less than 2 weeks.

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What we did

1. Creative Strategy - we evaluated the creative that was working across all of Avantera's other ad channels, Facebook, Snapchat, and Pinterest, to build a shortlist of ads that would have the highest chance of success on TikTok. With each ad we asked: does it feel organic and native to the platform? Did it have above-average engagement on non-TikTok channels? Can the format be easily re-purposed for TikTok's dimensions/ad specs?

2. Pre-launch Checklist - Before going live on TikTok, we placed the ad pixel via Shopify's native integration and allowed it to gather conversion data to build up its audiences for several weeks. We tested our conversion events, compared our setup with other marketers to determine the optimal account structure to initially test, and even built this guide to TikTok ads based on the research that we did. We learned the nuances of TikTok vs other platforms - everything from its average traffic quality to how organic should work together with paid to drive results.

3. Audience Targeting Strategy - After the initial research phase, we decided to test 2 audiences out of the gate: a more defined audience with the goal of tackling TikTok's inherently lower-converting user base - we used guardrails like iOS-only targeting and day-parting - and a "control" audience of recommended interests based on what was most widely used by other marketers we spoke with. We kept our account structure extremely simple - one campaign with an adset for each of these test audiences, with each adset containing our top 4 creative from other platforms.

4. Initial Launch - Once the ads launched, we monitored performance closely to ensure that 1) UTM data was coming in cleanly and 2) we were spending our full budget. I optimized for purchase conversions with the lowest cost bid method, the goal being getting to a point of profitability as soon as possible. Some advertisers opt for a more upper-funnel approach when launching TikTok, but we believe this actually gives the pixel inaccurate learnings on the type of customer it should be attracting rather than its intended objective.

5. Scale Phase - As winners and losers became apparent in ad creative, we shut off under-performers and began scaling budgets aggressively wherever we saw efficiencies. More importantly, we worked with the client to begin strategizing our next round of creative based on what was working to ensure we had fuel in the tank to continue to scale once ads began fatiguing. We also restructured the campaigns to include a "creative testing" campaign once we hit $1k/day in ad spend.

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