Best Practices for Novice TikTok E-commerce for Small and Medium sized Enterprises

This report introduces best practices for TikTok e-commerce for SMEs and beginners. The main content includes TikTok advertising basics, a checklist of steps for launching your first ad campaign, as well as related case studies and tips.

1. TikTok Advertising Basics

- Challenges and Solutions: For online retailers, finding new customers is challenging, but there are potential customers on TikTok. Globally, 92% of users take action after watching TikTok videos.

- Overview: This section introduces the steps for running TikTok ads, including creating a TikTok Ads Manager account, setting up payment, setting up TikTok Pixel, configuring at least 3 tracking events, enabling automatic advanced matching and first-party cookies, creating the first ad creative, selecting videos for Spark Ads, launching the first ad campaign, and measuring, optimizing, and growing sales.

- Optimization Strategies: For beginners starting to advertise on TikTok, it is recommended to optimize for the "Add to Cart" event first so the system can quickly learn about the ideal audience. Later, you can focus on the "Complete Payment" event.

- Case Study: HiSmile initially advertised with lower funnel events like "Complete Payment" with poor results. After switching to optimizing for early purchase journey events like "Add to Cart," revenue increased by 28%.

2. Checklist for Launching Your First Ad Campaign

- Create Account and Set Up Payment: Create a TikTok Ads Manager account and set up your payment method.

- Set Up TikTok Pixel: This section introduces the importance of setting up TikTok Pixel and how to do it, including selecting TikTok Pixel, enabling relevant switches, configuring at least 3 events (View Content, Add to Cart, Complete Payment), and some setup tips such as using partner platforms for one-click setup or using Google Tag Manager to add custom code events, and verifying if the setup is correct.

- Create Ad Creative: Don’t be intimidated by video formats. You can use existing TikTok videos as Spark Ads. Spark Ads have a 134% higher completion rate than standard in-feed ads, and some tips for creating excellent Spark Ads are introduced.

- Launch Ad Campaign: Create an ad campaign in TikTok Ads Manager, select the "Website Conversion" objective, turn off "Set Campaign Budget," choose "Website" and Pixel, optimize for the "Add to Cart" event, select "TikTok" as the placement, set a daily ad group budget, choose an identity to run Spark Ads, select organic posts or upload new videos as ads, fill in ad text and URL, choose dynamic "Call to Action," and then submit for review.

3. Follow-up Actions

- Ad Review: All ads must go through a review process. Once approved, you will receive a notification and can monitor "Add to Cart" conversions.

- Cultivate Ad Campaigns: If you have achieved certain results, consider switching the optimization event from "Add to Cart" to "Complete Payment," while keeping the "Add to Cart" ad group running to maintain conversion volume and allow the system to continue learning.

- Build Organic Presence: Establish a business account on TikTok, create high-quality content by researching trends and using popular sounds, post 3-5 times per week, test which content works best for your audience, and then use Spark Ads to boost results.