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TikTok now has 1B monthly active users – here's how to monetize them

You don’t need a ton of followers to blow up on TikTok. Any account can do it, including a branded one.

“I know creators with 500 followers who had a TikTok viewed 900,000 times,” Jason Wong told MarketerHire. “That doesn't happen on YouTube.”

UGC about a brand can also achieve massive organic reach on TikTok. John Deere, for example, has no official TikTok account, but the #JohnDeere hashtag on the app has more than 3 billion views.

Lower CAC.

“Our CAC on Facebook is $27, and our blended CAC is $8 because of TikTok,” Wong told MarketerHire. “[Organic] TikTok drove our customer acquisition costs down by 60%.”

That’s because some people make purchases based on recommendations from organic TikToks and UGC.

Also, greater brand awareness helps paid ads perform, on and off TikTok.

Speaking of...

Paid TikTok ad formats, explained

Advertising on TikTok can cost an intimidating amount — think $2 million for premium placement on a holiday — but it doesn’t have to. You can spend under $100 a day testing out TikTok’s ad platform; a lot depends on your timing and your desired ad placement.

In-feed video.

This is TikTok’s standard ad type, inserted into users’ For You page. These 15-60 second video ads — almost indistinguishable from organic content, except for the CTA button — have become the most accessible ad type for small businesses.

Pricing: Requires a minimum daily budget of $20 per ad group, and $50 per ad campaign.

TopView.

TopView ads get premium placement — for a premium price. These 5-60 second videos are featured full-screen when a user first opens the app.

Pricing: Last year, Digiday reported that these ads cost about $65,000 per day, but that number has reportedly skyrocketed — TopView will cost nearly $2 million on a holiday in Q4 2021, according to Bloomberg.

Branded effects.

Augmented reality effects are another useful tool for TikTok marketing. Brands can create custom effects like 2D and 3D lenses, stickers and filters, which TikTok users can use to enhance their organic videos.

Most recently, TikTok has added Gamified Branded Effects, which function sort of like Wii games — with these effects turned on, uses can control AR elements of their videos with their bodies.

Think people juggling an AR ball by wiggling their eyebrows.

Pricing: Upon request.

Hashtag challenges.

These are probably the most popular of TikTok ad types. Used by major brands like Chipotle, these six-day challenges encourage users to interact and drum up engagement.

Though they often see strong ROAS — 90% of branded hashtag challenges see at least 2.5X ROAS, according to TikTok — a core campaign objective for these six-day challenges is typically generating awareness and UGC.

To facilitate that, TikTok highlights sponsored hashtags in its Discover tab,, with CTAs recommending contributions.

Brands running hashtag challenges often collaborate with creators on sponsored posts tagged with the hashtag, and supplement hashtag challenges with TopView or in-feed ads.

Pricing: Bloomberg found that one of these challenges can cost a brand up to $500,000 for three days, and that doesn’t factor in music licensing fees or creator collaborations.

This content originally ran on MarketerHire. Learn more about TikTok ads (as explained by experts)!

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