The 2024 Clearwater Invitational will feature 10 teams that were ranked in the preseason top 25. Here’s how to watch, plus X factors for each team.
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For today’s most competitive brands, design isn’t just about aesthetics — it’s a critical business tool. An AI name generator can get you started, but design is the next step in differentiation and identity. Entrepreneurs …
The post Design Basics for Entrepreneurs: Essentials Every Business Owner Should Know appeared first on Paper.li blog.
Racing series the world over are promising carbon-neutral fuels, and they may save internal-combustion engines — on the racetrack, anyway. The post Can synthetic fuels save racing as we know it? appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.
India plays host to a top-tier motorsport series after almost a decade, as Formula E comes to town in the form of the Hyderabad E-Prix on February 11.
The post What is Formula E? All you need to know as India set to host first-ever E-Prix appeared first on Buy It At A Bargain – Deals And Reviews.
Not that long ago, it was all about Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but now everyone is talking about TikTok.
It seems like every top brand is on there, and even smaller businesses like Elf Cosmetics and start-ups like Vessi are taking the platform by storm.
The social media site is so wildly popular that TikTok total user spending on Google Play and the App Store exceeded $824 million in Q4 2021. With eager buyers already lined up, It shouldn’t be a surprise that TikTok has got on board the social commerce train.
Recently, the social media site announced a new feature called TikTok Shopping; the potential is obvious, given its vast audience of over one billion users.
However, is TikTok Shopping for you, and how does it work? That’s exactly what I’ll talk about here.
If you’ve ever been on TikTok and wanted an easy way to buy a product you’ve seen, TikTok Shopping lets you do just that.
In its launch statement, TikTok explained:
“TikTok Shopping is a suite of solutions, features, and advertising tools that give businesses the opportunity to capture the full power of TikTok’s influence on purchase decisions.”
The social media site explains that TikTok Shopping allows merchants to ‘enjoy a full-service commerce solution’ with TikTok managing the retail side, from product upload and purchase to shipping and fulfillment.
Sellers have two options. TikTok’s Shopping Direct Integration creates an e-commerce experience for creators/merchants that want to run their e-commerce stores directly from the TikTok platform. This option provides a full e-commerce experience with everything, including post-payment processes, occurring inside the TikTok app.
Then, there is Partner Integration, where sellers can add product catalogs via a TikTok Business account and buyers can browse and purchase inside the TikTok app. However, post-payment processes like returns occur outside of TikTok on the partner’s app or website.
As a buyer, you find TikTok shops as a tab on a seller’s account. You place your items in the shopping bag, just like regular e-commerce sites. Once you click on it, it takes you to the product catalog.
From there, you browse the store as you normally would and add items to your basket. When you’ve finished shopping, you can check out in the app or go to the company’s website.
To make TikTok shopping possible, the social media site is teaming up with well-known shopping brands, including:
Additionally, TikTok says the likes of Wix, OpenCart, BASE, and ShopLine are coming on board soon.
Currently, TikTok shopping is open to business account holders in the following countries:
If you have a Shopify, Square, Wix, or other TikTok shopping partner account, you should be able to set up a store.
Before you decide if selling on TikTok is for you, it makes sense to look at your overall strategy and your customer base.
First, you must ensure that your target audience is active on the platform. If they’re not, then you’re not going to get much traction selling your products on TikTok.
According to Statista, 24 percent of TikTok’s audience are women aged between 18-24, and men in the same age group account for 18 percent of its audience. Further, women aged between 25-34 make up 17 percent of TikTok’s demographic, while men in the same age bracket account for 14 percent.
Then, it makes sense to look at the most popular categories on TikTok. Fitness and sports, recipes and cooking, fashion, home renovation, and beauty and skincare are among the top categories on the site. You could be a good fit if you have a business in any of those niches.
Next, you need to have an engaging and creative sales strategy. Since TikTok is all about short videos, can you capture the audience’s imagination in minutes while saying what you want to say? You can? Great. Now you just need to ask yourself one more thing.
Is TikTok Shopping worth your while? Or could you be putting your time and energy someplace else? Often, you won’t answer this question until you give it a try. It never hurts to have additional sales channels, and if social media shopping fits with your business strategy, then it might be for you.
TikTok Shopping is ideal for use alongside its other advertising solutions. Here’s a look at some of TikTok’s offerings:
TikTok provides three in-feed shopping ads, including Collection Ads, Dynamic Showcase Ads, and Lead Generation. Collection ads let brands add custom, swipeable product cards in their in-feed videos to promote products.
Dynamic Showcase Ads lets you advertise thousands of your product SKUs with personalized video ads, and Lead Generation appears inside in-feed video ads, letting your business collect TikTok users’ details with online forms.
(Image: TikTok)
Engage viewers, build relationships, and increase conversions with TikTok LIVE Shopping. With this advertising solution, brands can integrate their products from TikTik Shopping into a LIVE session.
For you as a brand, that means real-time connections with your audience. TikTok users can then buy products they see during a LIVE Shopping stream.
TikTok LIVE Shopping is on the up, with LIVE Shopping purchases increasing 76 percent between March 2020 to July 2021, and it’s available to business sellers.
Before you can start selling on TikTok Shopping, you need to register. Here’s how to do it:
With your TikTok Shopping account set up, it’s time to start getting the news out about your new sales outline. Follow these tips to get started.
Treat your product pages the same way you would any other e-commerce site. Ensure you use high-quality images, use keywords, and keep your branding consistent.
Make sure your descriptions are detailed, tell customers all they need to know, and keep titles within the 34-character limit.
One of the most important steps of any advertising campaign is getting the news out. That means telling friends and family, sharing the link on your other social media channels, and posting regular videos.
You could also consider teaming up with brand ambassadors and influencers for a wider impact.
Want to stand out? Then add tags. TikTok Shopping allows businesses to tag products in their videos, making it easy for viewers to learn more about and purchase the products they see. One way to find suitable tags is to see what’s trending. You can do this by going to the ‘Discovery’ tab to view the tags users regularly add.
Who doesn’t love a discount? Encourage people to come to your store by offering exclusive discounts or deals. Make discounts time-limited to create a sense of urgency and come up with unique deals shoppers can’t get anywhere else. For instance, if you’re selling cosmetics, create a bundle of branded products.
TikTok shopping is an e-commerce platform that lets business sellers create a product catalog. It’s currently running a pilot scheme in several countries, including the United Kingdom.
It’s difficult to say at this early stage. It depends on which category you’re selling in and whether your target audience is on the platform. However, it does provide a fresh outlet to sell from and a new way to reach consumers.
Business sellers can register for an account, and then they have to wait 2-3 days for approval. Once you get an approval email, you can start selling on TikTok Shopping.
TikTok has an audience of more than one billion users, and with the growing popularity of social shopping, it makes absolute sense that it would launch into e-commerce at some point.
Like any other platform, it won’t necessarily be right for your business. However, if your ideal customer is likely to use the platform, so consider having a presence there and see how it goes.
It’s easy to set up a store, and there’s only one real way to find out what TikTok Shopping can do for your business, and that’s to give it a go.
Will you be joining TikTok Shopping?
Not that long ago, it was all about Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but now everyone is talking about TikTok.
It seems like every top brand is on there, and even smaller businesses like Elf Cosmetics and start-ups like Vessi are taking the platform by storm.
The social media site is so wildly popular that TikTok total user spending on Google Play and the App Store exceeded $824 million in Q4 2021. With eager buyers already lined up, It shouldn’t be a surprise that TikTok has got on board the social commerce train.
Recently, the social media site announced a new feature called TikTok Shopping; the potential is obvious, given its vast audience of over one billion users.
However, is TikTok Shopping for you, and how does it work? That’s exactly what I’ll talk about here.
If you’ve ever been on TikTok and wanted an easy way to buy a product you’ve seen, TikTok Shopping lets you do just that.
In its launch statement, TikTok explained:
“TikTok Shopping is a suite of solutions, features, and advertising tools that give businesses the opportunity to capture the full power of TikTok’s influence on purchase decisions.”
The social media site explains that TikTok Shopping allows merchants to ‘enjoy a full-service commerce solution’ with TikTok managing the retail side, from product upload and purchase to shipping and fulfillment.
Sellers have two options. TikTok’s Shopping Direct Integration creates an e-commerce experience for creators/merchants that want to run their e-commerce stores directly from the TikTok platform. This option provides a full e-commerce experience with everything, including post-payment processes, occurring inside the TikTok app.
Then, there is Partner Integration, where sellers can add product catalogs via a TikTok Business account and buyers can browse and purchase inside the TikTok app. However, post-payment processes like returns occur outside of TikTok on the partner’s app or website.
As a buyer, you find TikTok shops as a tab on a seller’s account. You place your items in the shopping bag, just like regular e-commerce sites. Once you click on it, it takes you to the product catalog.
From there, you browse the store as you normally would and add items to your basket. When you’ve finished shopping, you can check out in the app or go to the company’s website.
To make TikTok shopping possible, the social media site is teaming up with well-known shopping brands, including:
Additionally, TikTok says the likes of Wix, OpenCart, BASE, and ShopLine are coming on board soon.
Currently, TikTok shopping is open to business account holders in the following countries:
If you have a Shopify, Square, Wix, or other TikTok shopping partner account, you should be able to set up a store.
Before you decide if selling on TikTok is for you, it makes sense to look at your overall strategy and your customer base.
First, you must ensure that your target audience is active on the platform. If they’re not, then you’re not going to get much traction selling your products on TikTok.
According to Statista, 24 percent of TikTok’s audience are women aged between 18-24, and men in the same age group account for 18 percent of its audience. Further, women aged between 25-34 make up 17 percent of TikTok’s demographic, while men in the same age bracket account for 14 percent.
Then, it makes sense to look at the most popular categories on TikTok. Fitness and sports, recipes and cooking, fashion, home renovation, and beauty and skincare are among the top categories on the site. You could be a good fit if you have a business in any of those niches.
Next, you need to have an engaging and creative sales strategy. Since TikTok is all about short videos, can you capture the audience’s imagination in minutes while saying what you want to say? You can? Great. Now you just need to ask yourself one more thing.
Is TikTok Shopping worth your while? Or could you be putting your time and energy someplace else? Often, you won’t answer this question until you give it a try. It never hurts to have additional sales channels, and if social media shopping fits with your business strategy, then it might be for you.
TikTok Shopping is ideal for use alongside its other advertising solutions. Here’s a look at some of TikTok’s offerings:
TikTok provides three in-feed shopping ads, including Collection Ads, Dynamic Showcase Ads, and Lead Generation. Collection ads let brands add custom, swipeable product cards in their in-feed videos to promote products.
Dynamic Showcase Ads lets you advertise thousands of your product SKUs with personalized video ads, and Lead Generation appears inside in-feed video ads, letting your business collect TikTok users’ details with online forms.
(Image: TikTok)
Engage viewers, build relationships, and increase conversions with TikTok LIVE Shopping. With this advertising solution, brands can integrate their products from TikTik Shopping into a LIVE session.
For you as a brand, that means real-time connections with your audience. TikTok users can then buy products they see during a LIVE Shopping stream.
TikTok LIVE Shopping is on the up, with LIVE Shopping purchases increasing 76 percent between March 2020 to July 2021, and it’s available to business sellers.
Before you can start selling on TikTok Shopping, you need to register. Here’s how to do it:
With your TikTok Shopping account set up, it’s time to start getting the news out about your new sales outline. Follow these tips to get started.
Treat your product pages the same way you would any other e-commerce site. Ensure you use high-quality images, use keywords, and keep your branding consistent.
Make sure your descriptions are detailed, tell customers all they need to know, and keep titles within the 34-character limit.
One of the most important steps of any advertising campaign is getting the news out. That means telling friends and family, sharing the link on your other social media channels, and posting regular videos.
You could also consider teaming up with brand ambassadors and influencers for a wider impact.
Want to stand out? Then add tags. TikTok Shopping allows businesses to tag products in their videos, making it easy for viewers to learn more about and purchase the products they see. One way to find suitable tags is to see what’s trending. You can do this by going to the ‘Discovery’ tab to view the tags users regularly add.
Who doesn’t love a discount? Encourage people to come to your store by offering exclusive discounts or deals. Make discounts time-limited to create a sense of urgency and come up with unique deals shoppers can’t get anywhere else. For instance, if you’re selling cosmetics, create a bundle of branded products.
TikTok shopping is an e-commerce platform that lets business sellers create a product catalog. It’s currently running a pilot scheme in several countries, including the United Kingdom.
It’s difficult to say at this early stage. It depends on which category you’re selling in and whether your target audience is on the platform. However, it does provide a fresh outlet to sell from and a new way to reach consumers.
Business sellers can register for an account, and then they have to wait 2-3 days for approval. Once you get an approval email, you can start selling on TikTok Shopping.
TikTok has an audience of more than one billion users, and with the growing popularity of social shopping, it makes absolute sense that it would launch into e-commerce at some point.
Like any other platform, it won’t necessarily be right for your business. However, if your ideal customer is likely to use the platform, so consider having a presence there and see how it goes.
It’s easy to set up a store, and there’s only one real way to find out what TikTok Shopping can do for your business, and that’s to give it a go.
Will you be joining TikTok Shopping?
When’s the last time you attempted to make a recipe in the dark? I’d venture to guess you’ve never done so. It’s unnecessary and reckless. Would you be surprised to learn, then, that more than 60 percent of companies have ignored marketing analytics data when making marketing campaign decisions?
Just like making a recipe in the dark is unnecessary and reckless, so too is ignoring the invaluable marketing data when making expensive and time-consuming decisions for your business.
In this post, we’ll introduce marketing analytics and its benefits. We’ll cover the types of marketing data and how to create your own report. Finally, we’ll highlight three examples of companies that used digital marketing analytics to their advantage.
Marketing analytics is the use of data to evaluate the performance of a marketing activity or collective marketing efforts.
From 2012 to 2020, the share of projects where marketing analytics were used to make a decision has ranged from 29 percent to 43.5 percent. While this number seems low, it does go to show that using marketing analytics to drive your own business’s campaigns will give you an edge against the competition.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, it helps to understand why marketing analytics is so important. While some companies may argue that analytics data isn’t crucial to their business, others will stake their success solely on their ability to follow the data.
Perhaps the greatest benefit to digital marketing analytics is the ability for businesses to understand big-picture marketing trends and forecast future results.
On a micro level, marketing analytics can help a business to understand the ROI of their individual programs. This can help them to determine which programs to cut and which programs to invest in. It will also teach them what they need to know for future projects.
Finally, consider that sophisticated marketers (those who utilize 5 or more analytics tools) are 39 percent more likely to see an overall performance improvement in their marketing programs. Just imagine what that growth could look like across your portfolio!
When it comes to marketing analytics data, there are three categories it can fall into. Here’s a description of each, as well as examples of the metrics used.
Descriptive analytics provide insights into the current state of your business. They answer the question, “what is happening now?”
The types of metrics you’ll see here are surface level. They provide a quick snapshot of the business as it is today but without any analysis or reasoning behind it. These metrics include page views, revenue, units sold, average unit price, and conversion rate.
Diagnostic analytics provide a root cause as to the descriptive analytics. That is, they answer the question, “why is this happening?”
When you have questions about your descriptive metrics mentioned above, you’ll dig into the diagnostic metrics. These dig deeper to find the cause of the diagnostic metrics by looking at things such as traffic sources, bounce rates, exit rates, and last touch channels.
Predictive analytics provide a look into the future of your business. They answer the question, “what’s likely to happen in the future based on past and current trends?”
As you can imagine, predictive analytics requires more sophisticated input. While you can pull descriptive and diagnostic analytics and make connections, you cannot do so easily with predictive analytics. Instead, you’ll typically need the help of a predictive modeling tool or a data analyst.
If you’ve been tasked with creating a digital marketing analytics report for your business, the steps below will help to get you started.
Where does it all begin? With the raw data.
How you pull your data will depend on the tools and platforms you use. There are many free and paid options available and you may find yourself using more than one to get a fuller picture.
Google Analytics is a free tool that provides you with in-depth website analytics. If you’re using an e-commerce platform like Shopify, you may also have access to free analytics within your account. Paid options include HubSpot, Domo, and Tableau.
There are two important questions to answer before you compile your data. They are:
To answer those questions, you’ll want to dig deeper by answering the following:
Are you pulling the data just to get a snapshot of the business, or is there something more specific in mind? Are you delivering the report to top-level executives or a direct manager? How will this data be used? How often will this data report need to be compiled?
A weekly report on the state of the business to your direct manager will look completely different than an analysis of a business unit to the CFO of the company.
You have the data and you know the purpose and audience for your report. Now it’s time to ensure you’re highlighting the right data in your report. This will come down to understanding the type of data analytics you’ll need to answer to your audience (e.g., descriptive, diagnostic, predictive).
Let’s say you’re tasked with reporting on the launch of your company’s newest product. It hit the virtual shelves two weeks ago and it’s time to evaluate its initial success. What does this look like?
Here you’ll be pulling descriptive analytics. This includes metrics like product page views, add to carts, revenue, and conversion rate.
It doesn’t end there, though, because your audience will likely want to know whythe above metrics are what they are. Whether they’re below or above the target goals, it’s good to understand what happened to get you where you are.
This means you’ll also be pulling diagnostic metrics like last touch channel and traffic source. You can also dig into the customer demographics and behaviors.
With this data, your report will begin to shape itself into more of a story than just a bunch of KPIs and graphs.
You have the data, you know your audience, and you have your story. Now it’s time to consider the best way to tell your story to make sense to your entire audience. Visuals are a crucial way of doing so.
Visuals include graphs, charts, maps, funnels, and Venn diagrams. They are a great way to help you see your data in a new light andtell your story more effectively.
The good news is most analytics tools offer a suite of visualization tools so you don’t have to find yourself reinventing the wheel. However, programs like Microsoft Excel also make it incredibly easy to turn raw data into visualizations.
It can be inspiring to see how other businesses are using marketing analytics to inform their decisions. Here are three examples for you to consider.
Averages are used frequently when evaluating marketing analytics. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but as we’ll see below, it can be good to look at those outliers to determine the true efficacy of the average.
Looking beyond the average customer for Costa Rican Vacations has resulted in a 40 percent increase in website conversion.
According to Casey Halloran, the Co-Founder and CEO of Costa Rican Vacations, their team frequently looks to averages to inform their decisions: average spend, the average length of stay, and the average number of travelers.
Upon taking a deeper dive into the data, they realized the average number was so far off the actual customers’ metrics due to the extremes of the outliers. That is, the majority of their customers were on one end of the spectrum or the other with very few actually falling into the middle.
With this information, Costa Rican Vacations made a shift in its product offering. One way they did so was by adjusting the total budget slider on their homepage to go up to $20,000.
By doing so, they opened up their offering to a new, higher spending customer base and increase website conversions by 40 percent.
Other businesses, too, can benefit from this example. After all, how often do we look at averages and medians without considering the impact of our marketing decisions on the outliers? With this in mind, take time to truly understand how average your average customer really is, or whether they’re simply a product of extremes on either end.
Allrecipes is the world’s largest digital food brand. It boasts 18 websites in 23 countries and more than 85 million users. No matter how large your brand, there’s always the competition to consider. To maintain their competitive advantage, Allrecipes worked with Tableau to better understand every stage of the customer journey.
The brand had several primary objectives, including to:
Allrecipes leveraged Tableau, a business intelligence platform to visualize data all in one place. With custom dashboards and organizational collaboration, the brand was able to achieve numerous goals. In particular, let’s look at how Tableau’s device-level analytics enabled them to drive mobile engagement.
According to Esmee Williams, the VP of Consumer and Brand Strategy, mobile usage had increased from 8 percent to three-fourths of all visits in recent years.
The goal was to increase mobile usage while also providing a continuous experience across devices. They performed an A/B test which showed the mobile site on all devices as a way to learn more about how users interacted with mobile site elements.
Using Tableau’s digital marketing analytics collection and visualization tools, Allrecipes used the data they collected to improve the mobile site. This included optimizing content and encouraging photo uploads with an easy-to-use interface.
While you don’t need to perform a cross-device A/B test to get these same results, your business too should evaluate mobile device engagement to understand customer behavior. Only then can you implement changes that have a measurable impact on customer engagement metrics.
Let’s end our examples with a titan of industry, Netflix.
Netflix has a customer retention rate of 90 percent which is far above Amazon Prime’s 75 percent and Hulu’s 64 percent. What is it that drives Netflix’s success? According to Netflix, its success is largely due to the collection and use of customer behavior analytics.
What kinds of data does Netflix collect and feed to their algorithm? Here are a few examples:
Of course, Netflix also looks to interactions the customer has with their shows and movies. If a user selects a show based on the 96 percent recommended rate by Netflix, does the customer finish the series? Do they rate the series well?
With more than 150 million subscribers, Netflix has a large data pool from which to gather insights. This is critical to their success considering 80 percent of viewer activity is triggered by algorithmic personalized recommendations.
Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about marketing analytics.
In addition to the three marketing analytics data types listed above (descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive), there are also said to be prescriptive analytics and cognitive analytics.
Your digital marketing analytics campaign should be scalable, sustainable, and affordable.
The needs of your business will largely inform your decision on marketing analytics tools. However, a few tools to consider are Tableau, Power BI, and Adobe Reporting.
A data analyst can certainly offer important insights for your business. For small and medium-sized businesses, though, they likely aren’t necessary.
Marketing analytics is more than just a collection of data. It provides invaluable insights that could have otherwise gone unnoticed.
After all, when you’re making big decisions regarding your business’s marketing campaigns and programs, you need to evaluate all of the data available to you. Only with a proper analysis of previous data and current trends can you ensure you’re making the best decisions for your company’s bottom line.
What percent of your business’s marketing decisions are made using analytics?
With over 1 billion users and counting, TikTok presents a great opportunity for businesses to advertise their services, grow their audience, and increase their ROI through targeted ad campaigns.
The challenge? Standing out on such a competitive platform and ensuring the right audience sees your ads at the right time. If you want to get the most from your TikTok advertising budget, you need to employ effective strategies, so here’s how to master TikTok ads and execute winning campaigns.
Anyone can advertise on TikTok. However, TikTok ad campaigns work better if you’re targeting certain demographics.
Here’s what I mean. TikTok typically attracts teens and young adults. According to DataReportal’s research:
Just over 11 percent are 45 or over, so it’s not the best platform if you’re targeting this age demographic.
We can delve a little deeper into the demographics.
Say you’re targeting young U.S. women. Do TikTok ads work better for certain businesses instead of others even within this demographic? Possibly. Fitness and sports-related content are among the most popular content with over 57 billion views, while beauty and skincare content has over 33 billion views.
To be clear, TikTok is available in 154 countries, so it does have global appeal among teens and young adults.
While there isn’t a “right” way to run a TikTok advertising campaign, there are ways you can optimize your TikTok ads and boost your chances of success. To master TikTok advertising, follow these seven simple tips.
TikTok Ads Manager is a hub from which you can create, run, and manage your ads. With TikTok Ads Manager, you can:
How much does TikTok advertising cost? Well, TikTok uses a bidding model, so you can set your own daily and campaign limits depending on your marketing budget. As a guide, be prepared to spend at least $50 per day for campaigns, and $20 per day for specific ad groups.
Before you create TikTok ads, you need a TikTok Ads Manager account. TikTok offers a breakdown for getting going, but here’s a quick start guide.
First, head to the TikTok for Business page and “Get Started.” From the next screen, click “Sign Up” then input your details before hitting “Sign Up” again:
Next, input some basic business details to create your account:
Once you’ve registered, you’ll need to provide a few more business details, including payment information, and wait for account approval before creating your first ad.
Once there’s a campaign set up, you can set up an ad group and then create individual ads. The instructions are super easy to follow, and you can be up and running in minutes.
Here’s something crucial to note. Once you create a campaign, you can’t change the budget. Make sure you’re happy with your maximum spend limits before creating your TikTok Ads campaign.
Although you can run ads for up to 60 seconds, TikTok suggests you keep most ads under 15 seconds. Given the short timeframe, you’ll want to use some fun creative elements to stand out, so here are some suggestions.
Laneige, a popular Korean skincare brand wanted to increase engagement and encourage people to download a coupon for skincare products. They used Branded Effects to show what people may look like before moisturizing:
Then after moisturizing:
The result? 419,000 engagements, 12,000 new followers, and thousands of coupon downloads.
Unsure of what elements to use? View popular posts in your niche, consider why they resonate with your target audience, and apply these principles to your campaigns.
Ever seen someone using (and loving) your product on TikTok? Do you wish you could run this user-generated content (UGC) as part of your own ad campaign?
Well, thanks to Spark Ads, you can take existing, organic posts from other TikTok accounts and turn them into original ad content. Why would you want to do this? Let me give you three reasons.
Using existing content means less work for you, for one thing.
What’s more, since the content comes from real TikTok accounts, any activity you generate (such as likes, follows, or shares) is linked to your post. If you’re looking to boost your engagement, Spark Ads can help.
Finally, UGC adds authenticity to your company and helps to boost your brand’s reputation. Since customers are over two times more likely to prefer UGC to branded content, Spark Ads are definitely worth your time.
Here’s an example. Digital bank Up targets Australians aged between 18 and 34. They wanted a creator partnership to build brand awareness and grow their audience reach.
For their mission, Up chose an Australian finance influencer, @TashInvests. They produced Spark Ads which generated over 1.5 million impressions and 76 app downloads, which exceeded Up’s original expectations:
Here are some tips for getting the most from this form of TikTok advertising.
The most successful ads target a specific audience. TikTok knows this, so the platform lets you tailor who sees your ads by excluding certain audiences and directly targeting others.
You can target audiences by dimensions such as their age, behaviors, device, interests, and physical location. For example, maybe you want to target under-25s using iPhones, people based in Canada, men interested in soccer, and so on.
Here’s how to do it.
From TikTok Ads Manager, go to “Ad Group,” then “Targeting.”
Then, choose which audience segment to target. For example, you might choose U.S. users aged between 25 and 44:
TikTok will then optimize who sees your ads so there’s a greater chance of running a successful campaign. Cool, right?
Hashtags allow people to organize content into categories so others can find what they’re most interested in. For example, someone looking for Starbucks content might search for #starbucks.
While you can use as many hashtags as you want, you won’t reach your ideal audience unless you know which hashtags to target, so here’s how you might choose the right ones.
First, check out which hashtags your most successful competitors use. Chances are, it’s worth including at least one or two of these hashtags to boost your visibility.
Next, use trending hashtags. Mountain Dew, for example, targeted #nationalpetday to advertise its “Code Red” beverage in a fun, engaging way:
To find these hashtags, scroll to the “Discover” tab and check out the day’s top tags. Choose any that resonates with you:
You can also find related keywords by searching for a word and leaving the hashtag out. Tap “Hashtags” under the search bar, and you’ll see similar hashtags to include in your campaigns.
TikTok is a highly visual platform, so your ads need graphics and videos to stand out. If you don’t have expensive recording equipment, don’t worry; you don’t need it. Here’s how TikTok creator @lucajpeterson quickly creates high-quality visual content.
First, film and upload your video content as usual. Before clicking “Post,” hit “More Options” and drag the “Upload HD” bar right so it turns green:
Sharp videos bring your content to life. In this Zoomerang TikTok video, for example, we get a real sense of the fabrics, textures, and colors since the brand uses high-quality graphics:
To get the most from your TikTok advertising, upload the clearest, sharpest graphics and videos you can.
Let me leave you a final tip here. According to TikTok’s own research, more than 63 percent of videos with the highest click-through rate (CTR) highlight the main focus product within the opening three seconds. Whatever your marketing goal, get to the point quickly.
When it comes to TikTok ads, you might only have someone’s attention for a few seconds. This means that you need a clear, concise, and actionable call to action (CTA).
CTAs ask viewers to do something, whether it’s visiting your website, using a promo code, or downloading an app. Good CTAs can help boost sales by responding directly to users’ needs and driving specific actions.
For example, Sour Patch Kids wanted to promote its “custom mix” which lets customers build own candy bag. The display card “Make Your Mix” is colorful, engaging, and fun, and specifies the desired action:
You can access pre-made CTA buttons through TikTok Ads Manager; however, creating your own visual inlay helps make your campaign stand out.
Your TikTok advertising cost depends on several things. At the campaign level, there’s a daily and lifetime budget of $50. At the ad group level, you need a minimum budget of $20 per day, and your lifetime budget works out as your daily budget multiplied by the number of campaign days scheduled.
First, create a TikTok Ads account and choose your campaign objective. Name your campaign, set your marketing budget, determine the ad placement, and choose your target audience. Set your campaign schedule and create your ads.
If you’re a business on TikTok, you could try TikTok ads. However, TikTok ads might work best for retailers selling to younger audiences.
Good TikTok ads are visually appealing with clear CTAs and well-chosen hashtags to boost visibility. They use high-quality images and successfully capture a viewer’s attention within just a few seconds.
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If you want to maximize visibility, increase your ROI, and boost your social media reach, then try TikTok ads. TikTok advertising is suitable for all businesses on the platform, it’s easy to get started, and since you don’t need a huge campaign budget, it’s accessible for startups and small companies.
To create a winning TikTok ad, use images and creative elements like videos where possible, keep your CTAs brief and impactful, and target the most relevant hashtags. Need help getting started? Take a look at my consulting services.
Have you tried TikTok advertising yet? What do you find most challenging about TikTok ads?
The full strawberry moon, the next full moon, will fall on June 13-14. The supermoon is also known as the honey moon, mead moon or rose moon, according to NASA.
What could your small business do with a million dollars? Most small business owners think getting a million dollar business loan is a dream come true. Yet, do you really know what it takes not just to get a business loan of that size, but to pay for it? How much does a million dollars cost? Here’s what you need to know.
FoundationYour small business needs a FundableFoundation to qualify for business loans. The foundation is how your business is set up.
A small business that isn’t set up to be Fundable will be hard pressed to get business loans of any type, especially traditional bank business loans.
For sure, a million dollar small business loan will be difficult to get. This is what sets your business apart from you as the owner. As a result, the foundation is the kick start to overall Fundability.
Foundation? A Fundable Foundation is necessary for any type of business loans. That means a small business loan, vendor credit, credit cards, or any other type of business funding. It includes the following.
First, your business name needs to be registered with the Secretary of State. Furthermore, it should not include or allude to a high-risk or restricted industry. Lenders do not like risk, and most are not in the habit of making business loans to businesses in high-risk industries.
Also, your business name has to be consistent everywhere you use it. If it changes, change it everywhere, and be sure it is the same.
Consider the following examples.
“Bill & Tom’s Discount Fishing Lures, Inc.”
“Bill and Tom’s Discount Fishing Lures”
“Bill’s and Tom’s Discount Fishing Lures”
Of course, they are similar. Yet, they are not the same. So, if you use one of these on your registration with the Secretary of State and one of the others on your million dollar loan application, you may not even make it to the underwriting process.
Likely, your application will be automatically denied for business loans due to fraud concerns.
This must be a deliverable physical address, never UPS box or a PO Box. It’s true, a virtual address can work. Yet, we know of at least one credit provider that will not accept them.
You can get an EIN, or Employer Identification Number, free at IRS.gov. Then, use it to open a bank account and to build a business credit profile.
Be sure to verify that all agencies, banks, and trade credit vendors have this number and associate it with your business .
Using a corporation or LLC structure gives you more credibility. Better yet, it reduces your personal liability.
Remember, toll-free phone numbers are best. Also, it should be listed in the 411 directory.
Always make sure you have the proper licensing.
For many reasons, you need a professional website that is helpful. Lenders will research your business online, especially before lending a million or more.
As a result, you should pay for web hosting. Unfortunately, this is not the time to use a freebie. Also, the domain should be the business name, if possible.
In addition, you need a company email address. It should be the same domain as your website.
Due to the fact that business banking history is vital to getting business financing, it is necessary to have a separate, dedicated business bank account. Of course, the longer the bank history is, the better.
As you know, lenders like to see a strong business credit profile. As a result, while personal credit isn’t ignored, good business credit can soften the impact of a bad personal credit score.
Without a strong business plan you won’t get business loan approval. Whether you are looking for a traditional loan, SBA loans, or working with online lenders, this is important. This is true even though online lenders tend to be less strict with business financing approvals, a strong business plan never hurts. The presentation should be professional in both appearance and content.
You can hire a business plan writer, or do it yourself, but use all available resources.
The Small Business Administration offers helpful business plan writing resources, and not just for SBA loans.
The Small Business Development Centers have a number of helpful aids also. Check with local universities to find one near you.
Obviously, you can’t get funding without revenue. Of course, this is because business loan repayment comes from revenue, and lenders want to know they will be repaid.
But, exactly how much is the payment on a million dollar business loan?
Business loan terms and payment amounts are variable based on terms and rates. Consider a $1M loan with an interest rate of 4% fixed for 20 years. The monthly payments on that business loan would be $4,774.15.
Then, consider the same business loan with the same interest rate for 15 years. The payment on that is $7,396.88 a month.
If you have a Fundable Foundation and strong business and personal credit, the next step to getting more funding is collateral. It allows for better loan terms, including more money with lower interest rates and better terms. Furthermore, many SBA loans require collateral anyway.
Collateral can be pretty much any valuable asset. These include:
To get the most funding possible, whether through small business loans or other funding, you need:
We can help with the Fundability and business credit. We know the secret sauce to get you started and help you grow in the most efficient way possible.
Then, you can get the funding you need, when you need it. With Credit Suite, you may be eligible for a million dollar loan sooner than you think.
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