Choosing the right campaign solutions for your business goals

Our Performance suite of solutions cater for all your major business goals by harnessing TikTok's unique consumer behavior and driving action at the point of discovery. They allow you to unlock full-funnel impact on your business goals, from attracting customers to your business domain to achieving sales targets.

In this article, we've laid out some best-practice frameworks that combine different performance solutions to optimize towards specific business outcomes. Each framework will guide you through our recommended campaign setup, and provide the best options to measure and scale your results.

Before you get started, make sure to set up secure data connections to ensure your conversions can be measured.

How to attract customers to your business

To drive customers to your website or app, start by setting up a Traffic campaign. You can do this even without Events API or TikTok Pixel implementation.

You can then use Landing Page View, an optimization goal under the Traffic objective, which is designed to drive higher quality traffic to your destination. A Landing Page View is counted only if the ad is clicked and the landing page is successfully loaded. It works by understanding whether people who click on TikTok ads remain in session until the landing page loads. It then delivers ads to users who are likely to remain in session.

To measure results, we recommend using a Conversion Lift Study. This will allow you to identify "incremental" conversions — the conversions that actually resulted from your campaign — and identify winning tactics that you can scale.

Learn more about attracting customers here.

How to generate high-quality leads

TikTok offers a cost-effective, easy solution to help find people who are interested in hearing from your business and the products or services it provides. With just a few taps, people can safely share their information with you through a lead generation form. This enables you to grow your future customer base and increase your chances of converting leads into customers.

Set up a Lead Generation campaign to drive sign-ups, registrations, or offline conversions. Common Lead Generation events include submit form, complete registration, click button, view content, contact, search, subscribe, and add to wishlist.

There are two ways to set up a Lead Generation campaign: by creating an instant form that loads within the TikTok app, or by driving people to your own lead page on an external website. When you use an instant form, you don't need to install the TikTok Pixel. You can synchronize leads from TikTok directly into your CRM in real time for seamless sales activation. If you use your own lead page, you should leverage both Events API and TikTok Pixel, and set up full-funnel events that address user actions of awareness, consideration and conversion. TikTok Ads Manager provides a full-funnel events template which can recommend important events for common use cases for your business.

To optimize your Lead Generation campaign, create a Custom Audience to pinpoint engaged users who interacted or showed interest in the lead form. You can then use this to expand targeting to similar users with a Lookalike Audience.

For best results, follow our targeting best practices: start with broad targeting to give ad models more freedom to optimally determine the right users to see your ads. You can also enable Smart Targeting to expand your targeting settings based on variables that you enable.

How to maximize conversions on your website

To use TikTok ads to drive conversions on your website, start by setting up both Events API and TikTok Pixel. This will allow conversion data from your site to optimize ad delivery on TikTok. Make sure they are set up to capture full-funnel events for each action that customers take on your website. The Advanced Matching tool allows you to connect customer events from your website with people on TikTok who interacted with your ad.

Next, set up a campaign using the Web Conversions objective. For best results, you can pair this with the Traffic objective. If your goal is e-commerce sales, you can also combine this with Video Shopping Ads (for catalog). To maximize efficiency, enable Smart Performance Campaign. This is an end-to-end automation tool that produces multiple creatives and bids for auctions with minimal input needed from you.

To optimize your campaign targeting, create a Custom Audience to pinpoint engaged users who visited your website from TikTok. You can then use this to expand targeting to similar users with a Lookalike Audience. Start with broad targeting, or use Smart Targeting for more granular options. If want to target people who are likely to make higher-value purchases, you can use Value-Based Optimization to bid based on either highest purchase value or minimum return on ad spend (ROAS).

In order to maximize conversions, it's best to use a holistic and phased approach: start by optimizing for upper-funnel events and then gradually move through the funnel in stages. This strategy provides the system with learnings that can then be scaled to increase conversions in lower-funnel campaigns.

There are many ways to unpack impact from conversion campaigns. We recommend using a Conversion Lift Study to validate impact on sales leads and identify what worked best. You can also use post-purchase surveys to poll customers immediately after a sales event, adding a valuable layer of insight into their path to purchase.

Using learnings from your campaign, you can refresh your customers' information and continue to nurture them through reward programs or subsequent promotions.

How to maximize conversions for your app

To get started, we encourage using Events API to share full-funnel app activity events with TikTok. If you already work with a mobile measurement partner (MMP) to track the performance of your ads across mobile platforms, then ensure they are configured to correctly post back data to TikTok.

TikTok's recently launched Self-Attributing Network (SAN) provides advertisers with a comprehensive view of all conversions driven by their TikTok ads.

Note: TikTok began transitioning all app advertisers to the new SAN in the second half of 2023. For optimal campaign performance during the transition, configuration is required between existing app advertisers and their MMPs. To learn more about the full operation guidance and timeline, please reach out to your TikTok representative, or contact your MMP representative for technical support.

With tracking configured, set up your app campaign using the App Promotion objective, which allows you to drive action such as installs, in-app conversions, or pre-registration. You can also optimize for value, in order to reach app users likely to generate the highest ROAS. App Promotion campaigns support retargeting, so you can use it to re-engage existing users of your app.

You can boost specific in-app actions like subscriptions and purchases using App Event Optimization, or target high purchase-value app users with Value-Based Optimization. We recommend using both together to maximize purchase efficiency and ROAS.

To improve performance for iOS 14+ campaigns, we recommend using App Profile Page, a customizable, fast-loading instant page experience which acts as a bridge between TikTok and the App Store. Our system will collect high-intent onsite signals from the App Profile Page, like clicks on the download button, and use them to optimize ad delivery and conversions.

To hone in on engaged app users, create a Custom Audience and then reach similar users with a Lookalike Audience. Start with broad targeting, or use Smart Targeting for more granular options.

We recommend using a Conversion Lift Study to validate the business impact from your app promotion campaign. You can also explore optimal creative and targeting tactics using tools like Creative Insights in the Creative Center Audience Insights in TikTok Ads Manager.

Based on new audiences reached in your app campaign, you can expand your customer profiles, and then continue to nurture them through an always-on promotional app campaign.

How to drive product sales and grow revenue

There are multiple ways to sell products on TikTok. In this section, we'll explore two different frameworks catered to different ways customers can make purchases: from your website or in-app with TikTok Shop.

Driving sales on your website

When selling from an e-commerce website, data connections are critical for powering ad delivery. For best outcomes, we recommend using both the TikTok Pixel and Events API together. Configure them to share full-funnel events across the customer journey from your site — at minimum, these should include view content, add to cart, and complete purchase. These events, along with content_id, content_type, currency, and value parameters, are baseline requirements for catalog-based ad formats.

Next, create a catalog in the TikTok Business Center, upload the required catalog product parameters, and add the pixel as an event source in Catalog Manager.

Once your website events and product catalog are connected, confirm your events-catalog match rate is ready. This refers to the percentage of signals events shared that can be matched to SKUs in your product catalog using the "content_ID" parameter. A higher percentage indicates that more of your customers' product interactions are captured. Aim for a minimum 50% match rate for add to cart and purchase events.

You can now set up a Video Shopping Ads campaign to drive e-commerce purchases from your website, with the option to seamlessly generate videos and carousels featuring different products in your catalog. You can customize your video ads with additional product information using Interactive Add-Ons. To enhance the shopping experience, you can first lead customers to browse your products in a native instant page, which increases signal collection to help improve your campaign performance. You can also enable the Dynamic Destination feature, which directs your audience to either your website or instant page, depending on which is more likely to generate the best results for your business.

In line with general best practices, start your Video Shopping Ads campaign with broad targeting, and explore Smart Targeting for more granular options. You can also use Value-Based Optimization to target high purchase-value users.

To evaluate the impact of your website sales campaign, we recommend using Conversion Lift Study and post-purchase surveys.

Driving sales in your TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop allows you to sell products directly on TikTok through in-feed videos, LIVES, and the Showcase tab. If you don't already have it set up, you can register in the TikTok Shop Seller Center.

To set up an ad campaign that drives customers to specific products in your TikTok Shop, first you'll need to connect it with your ad account. You can do this in the Seller Center or Business Center.

You can now start a new Video Shopping Ads campaign for TikTok Shop in TikTok Ads Manager. Within this campaign, you can optimize ad groups for clicks, checkouts, purchases or gross revenue.

For targeting, ensure that your age selection is set to 18+ and start with with broad targeting to allow the system to find high-intent users. To strengthen sales and ROAS, use the Shop Activity Audience feature to retarget people who have interacted with your TikTok Shop.

To enhance the shopping experience, set up a Product Showcase tab on your TikTok profile to display products sourced from your TikTok Shop. You can also build out your TikTok Shop campaign by connecting a Business Account or a creator's profile to display as the identity in your ads.

For best results, we recommend combining your Video Shopping Ads campaign with regular shoppable livestreams using LIVE Shopping Ads.

To evaluate the impact of your TikTok Shop campaign, we recommend using Conversion Lift Study and post-purchase surveys.

Measure, iterate, test and scale

Once you've identified the framework that works best for your campaign goals, learn more about measurement, then set up a plan for testing, learning and scaling what works best.