Marketing on Social Media, Paid Promotions & How to Do It: TikTok

Tiktok reached out last week via notification and informed me of a promotion they had going on for 20% off the price of promoting a video. I thought, hell, why not and decided to turn into a bit of an experience. Basically, let me waste my money so you don't have to. 

To pay for TikTok to promote a video you have to purchase their "coins" with your real money and then use the coins to purchase the ads. \

65 coins is 99 cents
330 coins is $4.99
660 coins is $9.99
1321 coins is $19.99
3303 coins is $49.99
6607 coins is $99.99
16500 coins is $249.99

Coins are expensive with tiktok, and it honestly takes a lot for a good full promotion. But for the purposes of my experiment, I spent about $30 in coins. (Without the promotion, it would have been approximately $20 per paid promotion if I refilled each time). 

The video I promoted I had posted on October 8, and it had already had a good amount of views (over 1500) which is honestly average for my videos. 

Some of the things to take into consideration was the set days for the promotion and audience activity averaging on those days, the amount to spend, and the time limit. 

I did two days for both seperate promotions, to spend 500 per day, totaling 1000 (coins). My goal for both was for "more followers" (there were three options 1. more followers, 2. more views, 3. more website clicks). 

The first round was from November 5 to November 7th. This first round I decided to let tiktok choose my audience. I did not set the demographic of my audience, tiktok did. 

The results from this were the following:
Video Views: 2.1K
New Followers: 7
Likes: 80
Shares: 0
Comments: 0
Gender:
 - 54% Male
 - 46% Female
Age:
 - 13-17 31%
 - 18-24 31%
 - 25-34 21%
 - 35-44 9%
 - 45-54 5%
 - 55+ 3%

Now, before I show you the results of the second round of promoting the same video, I want to share with you my audience demographic on all of my social media platforms:

TikTok -
Gender: 93.8% Female & 6.2% Male
Top Territories: U.S. 93%, Canada 2% & Brazil 1%

Instagram - 
Gender: 97.5% Female & 2.5% Male
Top Countries: U.S. 95.3%, Canada 1.1% & Puerto Rico 0.6%
Age Range: 13-17 0.3%, 18-24 4.1%, 25-34 41.9%, 35-44 33.8%, 45-54 15.2%, 55-64 4%, & 65+ 0.7%

Facebook Business Page - 
Gender: 90.4% women, 9.6% men
Age Range: 18-24 ~4%, 25-34 35.2%, 35-44 ~28-30%, 45-54 ~15%, 55+ ~10%

YouTube:
Gender: 99% Female & 1% Male
Age Range: 13-24 0%, 25-34 29.8%, 35-44 33.2%, 45-54 32.2%, 55+ 4.8%

So from these social media platforms I know the following about my target audience demographic:
Target Gender: Female
Target Age Range: 25 to 55

So on the next round of the same video being paid to be promoted, I did this from November 7 to November 8 (Still 2 days 500 a day totaling 1000 TikTok coins) and I also chose the same goal of more followers. Here is what I chose for my audience:
Gender: Female
Age: 18-44
Interest Options I Chose: 1. Baby, Kids & Maternity 2. Beauty & Personal Care 3. Apparel & Accessories 4. Games 5. Food & Beverage (i chose these options based off of the content I mostly see revolving women content creator videos). 

And here were the results:
The results from this were the following:
Video Views: 775
New Followers: 80
Likes: 154
Shares: 0
Comments: 1
Gender:
 - 0% Male
 - 100% Female
Age:
 - 13-17 0%
 - 18-24 62%
 - 25-34 26%
 - 35-44 12%
 - 45-54 0%
 - 55+ 0%

Now while my views were 1325 LESS then what the original promotion was, I received 73 more followers, 74 more likes, and 1 more comment in the second round of promotions. My engagement rate is HIGHER because people are not just seeing my videos they are INTERACTING in my videos because they are an audience that is typically more interested in my content. 

While I do not typically pay to promote anything (Facebook & Instagram banned my ads account after someone hacked it a year and a half ago and I have not been allowed to post ads since), if you do decide to do any type of ads, make sure you are not relying on the social media platform to choose the audience for you, even though that platform is the one providing YOU with your demographic information, they are just happy to take your money. 

And an example of this is when I was playing around with TikTok promotion options to see how the estimates changed. 

Telling TikTok that I wanted to choose my audience, they assumed i would received 593+ video views using 1000 coins over two days. If I allowed TikTok to choose my audience for 1000 coins over 2 days, they estimated that I would receive 1979+ video views. While that is intriguing, I know that my audience engagement wouldn't be the same and having individuals follow me versus keep scrolling, shows they are willing to see my videos come up again because they enjoy my content. 

So take a moment to evaluate all of your social platforms in which your business is on, look at the statistics and form your ideal target audience demographic. This is important as then you can MARKET your products to an audience whom is actually interested in your products!

Hope this helps, and thanks for reading!

xo Sarah


Leave a comment

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.


You may also like

View all
Example blog post
Example blog post
Example blog post