TikTok Launches 'Promote' Tool To Allow Users To Boost Their Videos By Turning Them Into Ads

Source: TikTok

A month after launching Spark Ads, a native ad format that enables brands to amplify existing organic videos by creators, TikTok returns with another ad-related feature in Promote. 

Promote is a new tool that allows users to turn organic videos into ads directly within the TikTok app to reach a bigger audience and drive growth.

Source: TikTok

Promote can be accessed in two different ways in the app. Users can either select the video they want to promote and click the Promote button in the video settings or go to the Settings and privacy option within their profile, tap on Business Suite, click the Promote button there, and choose their desired video.

How Promote Works

Like most ad products, Promote provides users the ability to choose a specific campaign goal. Currently available goals include:

• More video views: This helps get more people to watch your video.

• More website visits: This guides more people to your website.

• More followers: This helps you gain more followers.

For campaigns with More website visits as an objective, users will need to enter the website URL to where they want to drive traffic and an appropriate call to action button such as Learn More, Shop Now, or Sign Up. Additionally, users can choose their target audience through the Custom Audience feature and select the genders, age ranges, and interests of people they want to reach. Alternatively, users can lean on TikTok to automatically pick their target audience through the Automatic feature. 

Lastly, users set the budget for their ad and the campaign duration to outline their desired ad spend and the length their ad will be running, respectively.

Once the Promote campaign is up and running, users can access real-time data and insights about their campaign through the Promotion details page. This page highlights performance such as the number of video views, number of link clicks, likes, comments, shares, and more. 

Those who want to use Promote should keep in mind that it is only available to public videos and only videos that use original sound or sounds approved for commercial purposes.

In all, Promote is quite similar to Facebook's Boost and Instagram's Promote buttons.

The Benefits Of Promote

Organic reach on TikTok has traditionally been substantial for users. Still, there is always a need for a paid media strategy, whether an individual creator, an upstart business, or a legacy brand. 

While more sophisticated marketers will opt to create ads using TikTok's Ads Manager, Promote offers users a quick and easy way to drive growth based on their objectives without the requirement of knowing the ins and outs of TikTok's ads platform. For users that are limited on time and don't have deep knowledge about paid media campaigns, Promote is a strong alternative. 

As with any paid media solution, users who put dollars behind content will benefit from increased performance, whether top or lower-funnel activities. Additionally, with more creators and brands building and strengthening their business off of their TikTok presence and content, Promote likely will become an incorporated tactic. 

What Promote Means For Influencer Marketing Campaigns

An example of this is in the influencer marketing space. Brands partnering with TikTok creators on branded content could provide creators with additional funds and target parameters to extend the reach of their sponsored content using Promote.

Creators could also use their own funds to amplify content they are creating on behalf of a brand to match the brand's expected results for the partnership. Many creators do this now for Instagram influencer campaigns, but it could be even more of a tactic for sponsored TikTok campaigns as content performance can be much more volatile due to the platform's algorithm. 

Promote Gives TikTok Another Revenue Stream

From a TikTok business standpoint, the launch of Promote continues TikTok's journey of building out its ad capabilities. Outside of catering to creators, its most significant efforts in the last year have been extending e-commerce functionalities and ad solutions to help businesses sell products and get in front of the right audience. New ad solutions, even if they are somewhat simple like Promote, give TikTok new revenue streams. 

Why Ad Solutions Could Lead To A Decline In Organic Reach

Overall, ad solutions are great as they can drive specific actions with hyper-targeted audiences, but at the same time, as they roll out, it seems like platforms start to limit organic reach. Using Facebook and Instagram as examples, the more the platforms rolled out ad tools, the more organic reach seemed to decline. While the ever-evolving algorithm certainly plays a role, it would make sense for a social media platform to limit organic reach to get people to use its ad solutions to reach a bigger audience, especially something as easy as Promote.  

One of the biggest things people love about TikTok right now is its massive organic reach. If organic reach remains strong, most people won't need to amplify their content with paid dollars. But, if organic reach starts to decline, that could encourage users to put money towards their content to get results. So even if it's a few dollars here and there from users, it starts to add up, especially considering how big TikTok's userbase is.

This is all speculation, but it's something to think about, especially as "pay to play" becomes the norm across platforms, and platforms look to increase revenue. 

For more social media and influencer marketing news and analysis, connect with me on Twitter, and LinkedIn.

SOURCE: TikTok For Business