2023 TikTok Ads Dropshipping: The Ultimate Guide For TikTok Ads

If you’re dropshipping, chances are that your sales have been struggling. You might be thinking about quitting dropshipping altogether and pursuing other e-commerce models. But before you do something rash, let us introduce you to the dropshipping strategy many marketers used to make tens of thousands in sales using TikTok ads!

The dropshipping industry is booming. It’s so easy to get started, and there are so many dropshipping suppliers out there. However, dropshippers often make the mistake of only advertising on Facebook or Google Ads. That’s a huge mistake! Tik Tok ads can be an amazing way to generate more sales for your dropshipping business by targeting users who might not have found you otherwise.

TikTok is a social media app that has recently become wildly popular with teens and young adults. In the last couple of years, it has grown as an advertising platform for dropshipping businesses, making it the perfect place to find customers who are ready to buy! TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users worldwide. What’s surprising is that it had only 55 million users in 2018. This significant leap forward in garnering the attention of people has resulted in making TikTok the new hot destination for business owners and marketers. It’s a great way to get your products/services out there and generate more sales. You can utilize this platform for free, which means that there’s no risk.

In this TikTok ads dropshipping guide, we’ll go over how to generate dropshipping sales with TikTok ads. If you’re a dropshipper and have been struggling with generating sales, TikTok can be an effective tool in your arsenal. We will review the basics of using TikTok ads as well as share some valuable tips on how to make them work best for you and how to advertise dropshipping business!

Data-Backed Reasons Why TikTok Ads is the Best Platform to Promote Your Dropshipping Store

TikTok has over 1 billion monthly active users globally. It’s a great way for dropshippers and marketers to build credibility with their target market, which will lead to more conversions in the future.

Unlike other social media platforms, such as Facebook or Instagram, you don’t need any followers before starting your ad campaign on TikTok! You can start making money even if no one knows who you are yet. This is perfect, especially for those dropshippers who have just started out and don’t have a following yet. On most social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, where having an audience matters –  you need to start building your audience before you can expect any dropshipping sales – but TikTok is an exception and dropshippers can benefit from this greatly.

A Diverse Audience Demographic

TikTok has a diverse audience range, from GenZ to GenX, millennials, and even baby boomers. While the majority of users on TikTok are aged between 16 and 24 (41% are GenZ), 59% fall into the category of GenX and baby boomers (aged 35-55). With such a diverse user base, dropshippers will find it easier to reach out to new potential customers for their products.

TikTok has about 20% of its users from outside the US and another 12 million daily active users in South Korea. This makes promoting your dropshipping store on TikTok a great opportunity as there is more international exposure. This can lead to increased revenue streams that you wouldn’t have had otherwise!

Targeted Marketing Opportunities

Advertising with Facebook or Google Ads means targeting people based on demographics like age groups and interest categories selected by the advertiser. However, these platforms lack one crucial element. They don’t show ads based on interests expressed through posts made by users on Facebook or the search history in Google. TikTok has this unique feature that allows dropshippers to target customers based on their activity and interests, making it easier for dropshipping marketers to find potential buyers within a specific demographic category.

TikTok has a wide demographic audience, meaning there’s probably someone out there interested in what you have to offer. The app is popular with teens and young adults, so if they are your target audience then this could be one place where you can find many customers ready to buy now.

High Converting Dropshipping Video Ads

If you’re a dropshipper, chances are that your focus is on ecommerce. The video ads and social media posts put out by most dropshippers are typically text or image-based. However, a dropshipping video ad has been proven to have more impact compared with other forms of ad content.

With TikTok’s short-form videos, dropshippers get an opportunity they never had before: a compelling visual representation of their products/services! Studies show that consumers respond better when there’s a video in play compared to written word only. This creates an ideal situation for dropshipping businesses who can use these engaging visuals in their TikTok video ads so customers immediately see what they stand to gain from buying your products.

TikTok Ads are Cost-Effective

In dropshipping, true success can be measured by how much you spend on ads and marketing versus what you earn as a return. In the case of TikTok Ads for dropshippers, it’s an absolute no-brainer!

Since this ad platform allows dropshippers to target their audience based on behavior (interest expressed through posts) rather than demographics like age or gender, they get more bang for their buck when it comes to dropshipping sales with TikTok ads!

In a recent experiment conducted by Jungletopp, they spent $31k on Facebook ads and $21k on TikTok ads and analyzed the results. To everyone’s surprise, their TikTok ads generated over 11 million impressions compared to Facebook’s 4 million. Above all, TikTok ads generated over 100,000 clicks compared to Facebook’s 70,000 clicks. So, it turns out that TikTok ads are not only cost-effective but appeal to potential customers more as well.

Easy Set Up

What dropshippers love about advertising on TikTok is how easy it is to set up a campaign in minutes! All you have to do is choose the audience, spend limits, and your ad or campaign name – then just sit back or wait for dropship traffic to flow in! It’s that simple. TikTok will then deliver relevant customers right into your lap!

TikTok Ads can Improve Brand Awareness

One of dropshipping’s biggest perks is that marketers get to spend less on advertising while still achieving the same results. When dropshippers use TikTok ads with a target market who are already predisposed to what they offer – it only makes sense that dropship entrepreneurs can expect more conversions in return!

Let’s take the example of Princess Polly, an Australian online fashion retailer. Princess Polly ran a discount code campaign using TikTok’s auction ads with an aim to generate more sales, drive more traffic to its website, and increase brand awareness. The result? They generated over 9 million impressions, 15X return on ad spend, and 1.05% CTR – the best they have ever achieved!

In doing so, they not only cut their ad expenses significantly but also gained some additional benefits from this new traffic source, such as improved customer loyalty and brand awareness. In fact, studies show that one video view leads up to an average earned media value (e-commerce revenue) of $0.25, which is phenomenal when you compare it against other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which only pay dropshippers $0.08 to $0.13 per view!

TikTok is the Perfect Platform for Influencer Marketing

TikTok is filled with influencers and brands are smart to partner with influencers to promote their products and business. Dropshippers can leverage this fact as well and partner with influencers on TikTok to create awareness for their dropshipping products.

In fact, dropshippers can even create an official TikTok account to promote their dropship business and interact with influencers from all over the world.

Using a dropship business profile on TikTok is not only cost-effective but also highly effective when it comes to spreading awareness for your products in the long run. When using this platform for dropshipping sales – marketers can expect more brand loyalty and credibility as well!

According to reports from Statista, there are over 3.1 million influencers on TikTok, of which 393k are solely based in the United States. So it’s not hard to find a TikTok influencer who suits your brand and needs.

What are the Types of TikTok Ads?

TikTok dropshippers have four types of ads to choose from – In-feed Videos, Brand Takeover, Hashtag Challenge, and Branded AR Content/Effects. You can choose an ad type that will best suit your dropshipping business and target market.

It is best to experiment with different types of ads so that you can see which performs best for your dropshipping business.

1. In-feed Videos: 

In this kind of TikTok ad, a scrollable video feed appears on tiktok users’ for you page and tiktok feed. This is a great way to promote your dropshipping products without being too pushy or spammy about it. In-feed videos are also great for dropship entrepreneurs who want to focus on targeting new audiences since the impressions are not targeted. These ads appear among the native feed of the users and can be seen when they’re scrolling through their “For You” page.

2. Brand Takeover: 

This kind of TikTok ad is similar to Facebook stories ads or Instagram’s native ads and is a great way for dropship marketers to increase their brand awareness with the help of influencers on this platform. Such ads display on the whole screen for a few seconds before turning into an in-feed video. A dropshipper can control all aspects of design, placement, and targeting in order to generate more exposure and build trust among users in an organic manner. This helps in boosting dropshipping conversions! The key here is not just creating awareness but also building loyalty among potential customers by focusing on long-term benefits rather than quick returns.

3. Hashtag Challenges: 

These ads challenge users/viewers to complete certain tasks like dancing or singing along with your product. The idea behind these kinds of dropshipping TikTok ads is to make your product or brand seem fun and exciting and to help increase brand awareness. These ads can be seen in the Discovery section of the TikTok app. The goal is to create a challenge where users use your product(s) as a prop to gain more exposure.

4. Branded AR Content/Effects: 

This kind of TikTok dropshipping ad allows dropship marketers to create augmented reality (AR) effects. These kinds of ads appear in different forms, including lenses, stickers, and more, allowing users to use them in their TikTok Videos. Using branded AR content is an innovative way for brands of all sizes (including small businesses) to market themselves while also engaging customers through the power of augmented reality!

These are just a few examples of the kinds of TikTok ads that dropship marketers can create to promote dropshipped products on this social media app. Remember – Dropshippers must experiment with different ad types and placements for best results!

Creating Dropshipping Campaigns with TikTok Ads

Creating your TikTok ads is not rocket science! All it takes is three distinct steps and you are good to go. The first thing you’ll need to do is create a campaign on TikTok Ads Manager. To start, they will have to choose the audience and location of the target market. Next, dropshippers should upload their video content. Lastly, you must set up targeting parameters for your ads so that you can track performance metrics like views/impressions per day. This helps determine which types of TikTok ads are most effective in generating dropshipping conversions!

When setting up your ads, keep in mind there are three different groups that you’ll be working with: ad campaigns, ad groups, and ads.

1. Ad Campaigns: 

The first step is to create a TikTok ad campaign, which requires you to set a budget, name, and goal for the campaign. It is an important step because dropship marketers can track the performance of their dropshipping campaigns better with this. Next, you will have to create ad groups where they place all the ads that are related to one another.

2. Ad Groups: 

The next step is to create ad groups, where you will need to set everything from your goals to duration, budget, targeting, creative type, details, and placement. Once you’ve chosen ad placement, fill in all of the relevant information requested such as bidding and optimization, etc.

3. Ads: 

After you have created your ad groups, you can now move on to creating ads within those given ad groups. These ads are where dropship marketers will need to provide a video ad that is catchy enough to draw the attention of TikTok users. You can create up to 20 ads per ad group.

Let’s discuss each step in detail and see how dropship marketers can create TikTok ads of their own!

Step 1: Set up a TikTok ads campaign

To get started, log in to your TikTok ads manager, locate and click on the ‘campaign’ section, and start setting up your ad objectives, budget, and campaign name.

• Setting Objectives: 

When it comes to TikTok ads, there are five objectives to choose from – video views, catalog sales, app installs, conversions, and traffic. You need to analyze your business goals before choosing an objective because it will determine the performance metrics you’ll be able to track. For instance, if your goal is to generate traffic to your website, then choose the traffic objective. Just make sure that you have a website in place!

• Budget: 

The budget is one of the most important parts to consider when creating TikTok ads for your dropshipping business. In this instance, you need to think about how much money you are willing or able to spend on ads and then set that as your campaign’s daily cap/budget. The good thing is that dropship marketers can choose between manual bidding and automatic bidding when it comes to TikTok advertising – both work well, but you’ll just need to test conversions before choosing which method works best for your business goals. This doesn’t mean that your budget needs to be fixed throughout the campaign. Based on your ad’s performance, you can edit the budget as required. Nevertheless, you need to set an initial budget for your dropshipping campaign on TikTok ads.

• Campaign Name: 

This should be simple enough, descriptive names that help you understand what the campaign is for are your best bet. 

The best way to ensure more conversions is by making sure that all information provided in this step, along with the content of each dropshipping ad, is relevant, accurate, compelling, engaging, etc., so as to interest customers into clicking through or purchasing products from your dropshipping store.

Step 2: Set up a TikTok ad group

Once you have set up their campaigns, you can then move on to setting up ad groups where you will need to add all the ads that are related to one another. In this section, you will also need to choose an objective for each group and select a layout/template from the options available in TikTok campaign manager.

TikTok allows you to create a maximum of 999 ad groups per campaign. So, you can try out different styles and layouts and see which ones work best. The placement of videos also matters as it can help increase visibility, so dropship marketers should carefully choose the placements that will show their TikTok ads to more dropshipping customers!

To create ad groups, you need to perform the following actions:

• Ad Placements: 

Dropship marketers can choose from the following ad placements – ‘feed,’ ‘search,’ and ‘video’ as dropshippers will need to ensure that their TikTok ads are showing to the right demographic. You can choose ad placements either manually or let TikTok carry out automatic placements. The “automatic placement” option offered by TikTok is managed by the robust TikTok system that, using smart calculations, gives the marketers the best possible ad placement combinations. This not only saves you time but also the effort that you have to put in fine-tuning the ads. If the automatic ad placement doesn’t interest you, you can go for “select placement”, which allows you to choose where your ads are going to appear.

• Set Ad Details: 

This section requires you to fill in some vital information, such as the promotion type, upload profile picture, and give a suitable display name to the ad group. When it comes to the display name and profile picture, it is highly recommended that you add your logo and brand name for the display name and profile image. Before progressing to the next step, just make sure that User Comment and Video Download options are not turned off. If they are turned off, the users won’t be able to download or comment on your videos, which is a big blunder that you want to avoid.

• Set Creative Type: 

Turning on the automated feature that allows TikTok to automatically generate fully optimized creatives consisting of texts, videos, and images you provide. It ensures to use high-performing combinations so that dropshippers get a better chance of winning customers.

• Targeting: 

This is an important section of the TikTok ad group as it allows you to set a targeted customer base for your TikTok ads. Targeting is done based on three different categories – audience, demographics, and device. On the other hand, if you already have a predefined customer base on TikTok, then you can save a lot of hassle. Based on your ad requirements, you can create a custom audience by uploading the user IDs. This will help dropship marketers focus on one particular audience and attract customers. Dropshippers can upload the list of users they want to target, select age ranges, and choose gender options. You need to carefully go through this section and ensure that the demographic information is correct, as it will determine which ads show up for your TikTok ad group! Consider the following table for a more comprehensive idea of the ad targeting parameters:

• Set Goals, Duration, and Budget: 

Dropshippers need to set the goals for their TikTok dropship campaigns in order to measure their success. There are three different options dropshippers can choose from – sales, engagement, and traffic. In addition, dropship marketers should also select a campaign duration that will allow them to limit dropshipping ads on TikTok only during certain hours of the day or week! It will also help marketers work on a tight ad budget. 

TikTok gives you two options when it comes to setting a budget. They are Lifetime Budget and Daily Budget. A Lifetime Budget entails that your ad campaign will keep on running until you stop it. Under the Daily Budget, you have a fixed number of days in which your campaigns will run. For Daily Budget, $20 is the minimum amount you have to pay. And for Lifetime Budget, a $20 x Scheduled days minimum budget is required. That is, if you schedule a 25-day delivery, the minimum budget you need to come up with is $20 x 25, which equals $500.

• Bidding and Optimization: 

Bidding is how much you are willing to spend per 1000 impressions, per click or per conversion. Based on your requirements, you can always change your bid. Under bidding and optimization, there are three goal types you need to choose from: 

1. Reach: Your ads will be billed as cost per mile (CPM)
2. Click: Your ads will be billed as cost per click (CPC)
3. Conversion: Your ads will be billed as optimization cost per click (oCPC)

And when it comes to delivery, your TikTok ads can be delivered in two ways:

1. Accelerate: Your ad budget will be spent quickly
2. Standard: Your ad budget will be spent evenly under a scheduled time (recommended option)

Step 3: Set up your TikTok ad group

Finally, once your ad campaigns and ad groups are set, you can now set up your TikTok ad. Please note that while you can create up to 999 ad groups per campaign, a single ad group can only contain 20 ads or less. So, plan accordingly.

• Add Creative: 

The final step of creating TikTok ads for your dropshipping business is to add creatives. TikTok gives you two options to choose from – a single image or a single video. But if you’re targeting TikTok users, your only option is video. Dropship merchants need a compelling video ad that will attract potential customers and convince them to check out the product they are promoting! Once your video is uploaded, pick an engaging cover, add some text (captions, hashtags, stickers, emoticons, etc.), and enter the ad name. You need to optimize the text and cover as they will be displayed to the users. Last but not least, add a call-to-action. CTAs are important in TikTok ads as they guide the users to the next step. If your objective is to generate more traffic, write a compelling CTA that will drive the users to your official website.

That’s it! You now know how to create TikTok ads for your dropshipping business. Now, it is up to you how you use the platform to promote your dropshipping products and grow your brand. If it is your first time, things can seem a little complicated. So it is important to try out different formats of the ad before zeroing in on one. As said, you can create 20 different ads for a single ad group. This is your opportunity to try out different marketing angles and see what your audience likes the most.

The Essentials of Successful Marketing Strategies for TikTok Ads Dropshipping

In order to grow your audience on this social media app, you need to have a strategy that will engage viewers and encourage them to purchase from your store. When you have a successful TikTok marketing strategy, your dropshipping sales will increase. It is the perfect way to grow your brand and reach more customers around the world. However, if you’re not familiar with TikTok ads it can feel like a whole different ball game. While you may now know how to create robust TikTok ads for your dropshipping business, they are of no use if you don’t know how to market them. The marketing strategies for TikTok are different from any other social media platform. In this section, we will discuss how to create a successful TikTok marketing strategy for your dropshipping business.

Get Familiar with TikTok

Many marketers make the same mistake of approaching TikTok as they would other social media platforms. TikTok is an entirely different platform with unique features, trends, and behaviors. So, it is important that you spend some time exploring TikTok, especially if you are new to this social network. See what other brands are posting and the type of content they are posting. Most importantly, pay attention to the hashtags users are using. Review why certain videos have the most number of views, what’s so special about them, and more. Doing this will give you a better understanding of what your audiences want.

In addition, it is important that you familiarize yourself with the official TikTok guidelines. In order to have success on this social media platform, there are certain rules and policies that all users must follow. These rules will help guide marketers as they create effective content for their dropshipping stores. It is also a good idea to keep up-to-date with any changes in these guidelines so you don’t find yourself penalized or banned from using TikTok altogether.

Using Popular Hashtags

The secret to getting noticed on every social network is being part of trending topics and hashtags. Since most posts go unnoticed because not enough people engage with them, popular hashtags can increase exposure. Research popular hashtags based on your industry and business and use them in your posts.

In addition, it is a good idea to add the popular hashtags of TikTok when you post ads on this social media platform. In doing so, you will have more exposure from people who are not following or connected with you but want to find content similar to yours. For example, if someone searches for ‘red lipstick’ they may come across your video where you talk about the benefits of using red lipsticks from your brand. You can search different hashtags related to what interests your viewers and include these within the description box of each individual video.

You should also use popular hashtags that relate directly to your niche, such as #fashionvlogger, #fashionblogger, #ootd, and more, as examples if fashion is your niche. In doing so, you will attract a large following of users who are interested in that topic.

In addition to hashtags on TikTok that relate directly to your niche or industry, it is also important to have unique keywords that are relevant to each ad. These should be placed within the description box of every individual video because they can increase views by making people want to click through them for additional information. 

For example, if someone searches for ‘red lipstick’ but sees your posts where you use ‘lipstick queen red’, there’s an increased chance they’ll click your ad even though it wasn’t what they were originally searching for! This strategy works great with a variety of keywords that relate to your niche and industry. 

Define your Target Audience

If you want to grow your following and reach as many people as possible, it’s important that you define who your target audience is. This will help marketers create better ads for their business because they know exactly what type of interests or personality traits each follower has.

For example, if a company markets specifically toward teenage girls, then the content should be more fun and dramatic (and not too serious) compared to an account that targets women in their 40’s with families and full-time jobs. If you take time creating personas based on these characteristics, this knowledge can guide all marketing decisions moving forward including how much money is spent per ad rather than just experimenting blindly without any previous information!

Most importantly, it is important that marketers do not try to market to everyone. This strategy will waste money and time because there are too many people for the business to reach, making it difficult (and expensive) to connect with them all.

Perform a Competitive Audit

Before you create an ad campaign for your business, it’s important to do a competitive audit. This means auditing other brands in the same industry so marketers can see what they are doing well and where their weaknesses or opportunities lie. So, start with answering this question – Are your competitors on TikTok?

If they are, you should look at their content and see how it is similar to or different from your business. If you notice that most competitors post more images than videos (or vice versa), then this can affect the direction of your future TikTok marketing strategy as well! In addition, if one brand does particularly well on TikTok but yours doesn’t have a presence there yet, now might be the time for you to join in order to grow with them and stay relevant long-term.

One great way marketers can do an audit like this is by using Ahrefs – a tool that has access to competitor data such as backlinks and social media activity among other things. This information will help brands learn about their competition quickly.

By understanding how similar companies operate on TikTok, marketers will be able to find out which hashtags are most popular among their target audience, what type of content works best with this group (such as vlogs versus Instagram-style photos), and more information that will influence their marketing strategy moving forward.

This is also helpful if there are any competitors who have ads running at the moment because it helps explain why some users engage with them while ignoring others! For instance, if one brand has 100% engagement, but a similar business only has 20%, it’s likely that the higher engagement is because they have an ad going so people are already familiar with their content.

For example, if your TikTok marketing strategy involves running ads on behalf of several different brands in order to grow awareness for each one, you must first discover which competitors are already promoting themselves before creating any new campaigns! This will prevent marketers from trying to compete against other businesses that may be spending more money on advertising than them – something that can create major problems moving forward.

Align Goals with Business Objectives

It is important that marketers set realistic goals for their dropship business to help them stay on track and moving forward. However, before they do this, they must first understand what the company’s objectives are!

For example, if you want to expand your product line but have no idea how much time or money it will take to accomplish this goal by the end of 2021 (or even 2022), then there is nothing wrong with setting smaller short-term milestones along the way, such as doubling social media exposure and increasing website traffic during Q42021 compared to Q32021 in order to build momentum and work toward expanding later down the road.

If you don’t know where your brand currently stands regarding specific metrics like the organic reach on Facebook or the number of website visitors on a monthly basis, then you may need to look into this information before creating any new TikTok marketing strategies. For instance, if your business has more than 100k followers but only gets around 20 views per post – depending on the industry – doing this can be very difficult moving forward even if they are spending money!

After determining what type of metrics will help drive performance for your dropshipping business in 2021 and 2022, you should create realistic goals that align with your current objectives, so you can know exactly where exactly your brand stands at all times. This is just one example of how setting reasonable short-term milestones help brands stay confident during challenging moments throughout the year while working toward long-term goals.

Now It’s Your Turn

As you can see, there are many ways that dropship marketers can utilize Tiktok to create appealing ads for their dropshipping businesses moving forward.

However, before they can begin to do this successfully, each of these strategies must first be aligned with their brand’s current objectives. Begin by determining which metrics are important today and how you will measure success six months from now, so brands have a clear road map moving forward!

It is also recommended that marketers create realistic goals for the next 12-24 months based on where their company currently stands regarding specific milestones in order to help them stay motivated throughout the year while working toward long-term initiatives over time. By doing this, dropshipping businesses will be more likely to achieve all of their business targets rather than setting unrealistic expectations that could cause major problems down the line!

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