by I highly recommend anybody with a Subscription Box Business to start testing TiKToK ads. We started playing around with the platform a few months ago and the results are very promising.
The reason why I think this platform will be big for Subscription Boxes is because this type of advertising allows you to create demand for your product. That is one of the main reasons why Facebook and Instagram have always been so effective for Subscription Box Marketing.
Those platforms allow you to target your ideal audience (who may have never even heard of your box 5 minutes before) and if your very good at creating offers and running ads, make them sign up on the spot (or shortly after)
I will give you an example.
Imagine you have a Basketball Subscription Box. There are probably millions of Basketball lovers around the world who would love to sign up to your box.
The only problem is The Subscription Box industry is still pretty new and niche so the majority of those people aren’t searching for you on google because they don’t know your product even exists.
This doesn’t mean they wouldn’t sign up for your box though. If they knew about it there is a chance they would. This is why Facebook and Instagram are so powerful. They allow you to target BasketBall lovers and create demand for your product and potentially sign up a lot of people.
Well the good news is TikTok is the exact same.
Over the years there have been platforms that showed potential. A lot of the time, though they never followed through. Either the ad platform was completely garbage or the platform didn’t grow to enough users where you could actually drive volume to make it worthwhile.
TikTok is completely different. Their ad platform is good and they are at serious scale and growing rapidly. (Over 1 Billion Users)
This means there is a massive opportunity to start testing ads and learn what works while it’s still early in the game. The cost of ads on TikTok are extremely cheap as it doesn’t have near the amount of advertisers Facebook has so there is less competition (CPMS are a fraction of the cost)
Also, if you have been running Facebook ads awhile the TikTok ads manager will be pretty easy to get the hang off. It’s designed very similar and a lot of the terminology and some of the features will carry over.
If you think your audience won’t be on TikTok you are probably wrong.
This platform is no longer exclusively for young people. Our Rep showed us a breakdown of the demographics and older people are signing up rapidly.
There is a big opportunity and if you put in the work and dedicate some of your budget to testing there is a chance you will crack a highly profitable acquisition channel that can drive volume.
Now there are a few things to bear in mind when it comes to advertising on TikTok.
- The tracking is still pretty poor
TikTok is single session attribution with no look back window. (That means unless somebody purchases your subscription immediately after clicking your ad it won’t count as a purchase on the TikTok dashboard) For the vast majority of people this won’t be the case.
What we have found is the majority of people will see your ad and then click over to your website to take a look but they may not purchase right away. Normally people want to google your company and check reviews before signing up. When this happens TikTok won’t count the purchase.
Apparently this will be sorted out in the future, but until that time comes you should use some common sense when it comes to tracking and understand just because your results on the dashboard in TikTok looks terrible it may not be reality.
Even with common sense, though I do admit it is hard to justify spending a lot of money on the platform when you don’t know 100% for certain where the sales are coming from. This is one of the big downsides of the platform and I look forward to it been sorted.
2. New Platform. Still Developing.
This is still a new platform so don’t expect all the features or algorithm to be as powerful as Facebook. I think they will get there eventually and they have made a lot of progress over the last few months but still have a good bit to go.
You have to remember Facebook ads have been going for years and the platform is at a much bigger scale. This has giving them time to refine all of their features and to collect much more data points which enables the algorithm to be more powerful.
TikTok are a good bit behind them in this regard and you wont be able to target as precise as Facebook and may need to go broader or get creative with your targeting.
That doesn’t mean you can’t drive results though. If you are good at marketing and understand how the platform works you will be able to sign up a lot of subscribers.
3.Burning through creative.
You will burn through creative very quickly and unless you put a system in place to create a lot of new videos you won’t be successful. CPMS are ridiculously cheap and you get massive reach because of this. That means your ads can burn out quickly, especially if it is a tight audience.
If you’re not committed to gathering lots of fresh videos that are native to the platform you shouldn’t bother with TikTok ads.
TikTok is an entertainment platform and you need to bare that in mind when producing your videos. Box opening videos can work very well, but the other creatives tend to be a bit different compared to what works on Facebook. So you should spend sometime studying the platform and trying to figure out what would work well for your niche.
It can be pretty daunting because of the sheer amount of creative you need to keep coming up with so you should look to put a system in place to make it easier. Reach out to as many influencers, friends and family as possible and see who is willing to supply you with fresh videos. This really is key when advertising on TikTok.
I think everybody with a Subscription Box Business should be testing TikTok ads as I think the potential is massive and getting in early will give you the best chance of success. For us Facebook and Instagram are still our main channels and this is where the majority of our budget goes. In time, though I can see us putting more and more of our budget into TiKTok.
I hope you found this article to be helpful. If you have any questions about TikTok ads or Subscription Boxes in general please let me know.
