TikTok Works: Grow your business with Brandformance

About TikTok Works

TikTok is a global entertainment platform that enables brands to meaningfully connect with people at scale. And as a committed partner to advertisers, our team of experts helps brands make smarter advertising decisions through a suite of measurement solutions. Our global research and measurement partners have proven TikTok delivers measurable business impact across the user funnel. So, to inspire advertisers to achieve more on the platform, we've launched TikTok Works. In this blog series, we'll explore the full-funnel impact that TikTok can drive for your business, with tips, tricks, and success stories.

What is Brandformance?

Amid an uncertain macroeconomic environment, advertisers are favoring short-term results, prioritizing high, immediate return on investment (ROI). Warc Marketer's Toolkit 2023 shows that 46% of advertisers plan to increase investment in short-term performance advertising. Meanwhile, only 31% are planning to increase spend on brand advertising.

At first that might seem to make sense, amid pressures such as high inflation and global instability. But according to Matt Chappell’s The Long-term Impact of Advertising report, 58% of advertising returns are overlooked when we focus only on the short-term. Clearly, this approach can neglect the influence and long-term benefits of brand advertising.

That’s why we want to discuss the benefits of Brandformance. This holistic approach combines performance with brand marketing in a way where the two complement each other. Brandformance is key to promoting overall business growth by expanding audience reach, resulting in an increase in purchase intent in the short-term, while also boosting long-term sustainable demand.

This diagram breaks down the complementary relationship between brand building and sales activation.

Why is TikTok effective in delivering full-funnel results?

The traditional marketing funnel begins with brand discovery and awareness, followed by a period of consideration, and then results in sales conversion. TikTok improves on that model by offering a unique shopping experience that seeks to educate and entertain. We call it Shoppertainment. This form of entertaining commerce funnels users into a community, and offers them a much more immersive shopping experience. Think real-time product reviews and limitless opportunities for active participation.

We see the path to purchase as non-linear. Instead, it's an infinite loop that drives a virtuous circle from discovery to purchase. This journey combines earned and paid media, and upper- and lower-funnel activities, and is driven by consumers, communities and brands.

The illustration below shows how this all works. In this infinite loop, paid media achieves return on ad spend (ROAS) of 1.3 on TikTok. That's 1.6x higher than other media channels. Moreover, paid media drives earned community participation, resulting in a higher total ROAS of 2.6.

Source: TikTok Marketing Science, Marketing Mix Modeling, September 2021, conducted by Nielsen

Unlock business growth with Brandformance

Our research has shown that focusing on a single campaign objective, such as video views or website conversions, is far less optimal than adopting a Brandformance strategy. Our data suggests that when advertisers run Brand and Performance campaigns in tandem, they can expect a major boost to results, including 4.3x higher conversions, 36% lower cost per action (CPA), and 33% higher conversion rates (CVR).

Brandformance can also help advertisers to:

• Uplift lower-funnel efficiency

This includes increased app installs, sales conversions, and TikTok Shop purchases, among others. Combining Brand and Performance objectives can also improve conversion rates of measured events compared with using Performance ads alone.

• Reduce CPA and enhance ROAS

Strategies that combine Brand ads and Performance ads are also proven to reduce CPA and improve ROAS, in comparison to running a campaign with Performance ads alone.

• Expand the brand's audience

Brand ads can be effective in broadening the audience pool for Performance ads. By incorporating upper-funnel Brand objectives, advertisers can reach a wider user base, which in turn enables you to connect with new users and expand your business. Our meta-analysis also indicates that audiences exposed to Brand ads exhibit improved conversion rates that help to improve ad delivery on our system.

Check out these Brandformance success stories

These two brands proved in real-life testing how Brandformance strategies drive fantastic results uplift.

Flip

Flip – one of the leading payment service providers in Indonesia – wanted to understand if Brand ads on TikTok actually drive users down the conversion funnel for more Checkouts and Registrations with greater efficiency. Flip’s Brandformance campaign achieved a 9.9% relative uplift in CVR, as well as a 10.9% reduction in CPA. That’s compared to the control group, a campaign which only ran Performance ads.

Y.O.U Skincare

Y.O.U, a growing global beauty brand was searching for integrated Brand & Performance solutions to grow sales in Indonesia during the Mega Sale season. They tested Brandformance on TikTok by leveraging TopView ads to stand out and drive buzz, before sustaining awareness with Reach and Frequency. After brands ads they optimised for complete payment events with Video Shopping Ads and Live Shopping Ads. This was effective in driving +4.8% uplift in Ad Recall, +5.5% in Purchase Intent and 3.1% more efficient CPA.

How to measure the impact of Brandformance

To fully understand the impact of Brand and Performance campaigns on their business, Brandformance tests can be set-up to verify the hypothesis - if executing a mix of objectives could lead to better performance in terms of improvement in efficiency metrics (CVR, CPA) and incremental conversions.

Here's a step-by-step break down of what the process looks like:

Best practices to keep in mind for Brandformance campaigns

When setting up a Brandformance campaign, there are three aspects to keep in mind: Brand, Performance, and Coordinated Creative and Targeting.

And don’t forget that all-important synergy between Brand and Performance creatives. You’ll need to consider logo usage, key messaging, a consistent storyline, and creating a journey that drives users toward action and purchases.

Next steps for improving campaign success

Ready to test out Brandformance in your next campaign? There are other strategies you might want to consider including too, such as Split Test, Brand Lift Study, and Media Mix Modeling.

Reach out to your TikTok measurement partner and start developing your Brandformance strategy today. It’s time to test!