On a platform that’s driven by creators, content authenticity, and the engagement factor, it’s crucial to nail all three aspects in paid ads – both in the ad itself and in the post-click experience. 

TikTok users naturally have shorter attention spans and lower tolerances for unengaging or unentertaining content. Whereas users on Facebook or Instagram have longer attention spans and can give content a longer chance to win over their few seconds of consumption. 

Additionally, TikTok is driven by creators and influencers, not brands or big media outlets that can have major success on Meta. this makes whitelisting via Spark Ads and harnessing authentic creator content even more crucial for success with TikTok ads. Ad creative aside, TikTok users generally want to engage with real humans, not companies or brands, so leveraging their voices and their social power in your ads can unlock real scale, efficiency and engagement.

TikTok Spark Ads – What Is Working

That being said, the content from the creators still needs to be engaging, authentic and relatable. It’s not enough to just run ads from their profiles – you still need to do all of the heavy lifting to win over those precious few seconds that a user has to offer. 

It takes very minimal effort for a user to swipe their thumb and continue scrolling. So, the first few seconds are critical to grab and retain attention in a way that is relatable to the bulk of the ad and your message.

Your hook should speak to the user directly. Don’t speak to the crowd. Speak to an individual who has the problem you’re solving and engage them with a strong hook that gets their attention and gets them in consumption mode.maybe primes them to convert?

A key finding across GrapevineAI partners who are successfully scaling whitelisting campaigns on TikTok is that having a call-to-action as your hook (stop, come here, reminder, alert, etc.)can lead to significantly better:

• Thumb Stop ratios
• Hold rates
• CTRs
• CPAs & ROAS

The Post Click Experience – Engage and Entertain vs. Sell

Just like TikTok users don’t want to be fed ads or content from companies or brands, they don’t necessarily want to be sold right off the bat either. Users go on TikTok for entertainment, engagement and fun. Not to be sold products they’ve never heard of before.

So aligning in strategy is crucial. One way to do this is to drive users to an engaging, education-first piece of content. Tell a story, engage them with high quality, entertaining content and then sell them on your product.

TikTok Whitelisting Case Study: GrapevineAI x Cirkul

Before engaging with GrapevineAI to put together a scaleable, third-party voice campaign on TikTok, Cirkul had been running the majority of their ads through their brand page. 

It’s important to note that Cirkul has a massive organic audience and massive organic reach on their brand page. So they engaged with GrapevineAI to work with top-tier creators to create third-party voice campaigns.

To date, with the tactics and learning GrapevineAI has garnered across 120+ DTC brands, Cirkul’s TikTok CPA through the third-party campaigns is lower by a magnitude of 15-50%. CTR’s nearly doubled and the average lifespan of an ad increased by weeks.

Here are two key learnings from Cirkul’s success:

• The Hook: like mentioned above, ASK for your users attention, grab and make it worth it for them. Since Cirkul is centered around creating healthier hydration habits, grabbing attention with hooks around dehydration created outsized success for Cirkul.
  • Not only did they deliver value to users through their hook, but they got them engaged through a problem-solution method. 

• The Post-Click Experience: Cirkul realized that driving users directly to a PDP from TikTok was not going to convert profitably. So the solution was to drive them to an entertaining, authentic piece of content hosted on GrapevineAI’s domain. The content is written by the creator themselves and is focused on the experience with Cirkul, the problem it solved and why they recommend it to others.

Especially with the post-click experience, the key learning for Cirkul was that leveraging a third-party voice that is consistently throughout the funnel (TikTok page, creator in the ad, and creator-written landing page) can drive highly profitable paid acquisition in the channel. 

Scaling With 50% Lower CPAs and Massive Engagement

After a few months of testing and finding creators that can authentic storytell, engage and sell through ads and editorial landing pages, Cirkul is now scaling their TikTok campaigns through GrapevineAI to spend levels they couldn’t reach internally. 

At significantly higher levels of spend, Cirkul is achieving:

• 50% Lower CPAs
• 100% Higher CTRs
• Millions of views and likes
• Tangible Performance Lifts Across Other Paid Channels.

Start Content and Creator Whitelisting on TikTok With GrapevineAI 

GrapevineAI works with top DTC brands like Cirkul, Care/of, Athena Club, Prose, Keeps and more, offering access to a reputable third-party reviews domain and an entire pool of creators for whitelisting across multiple platforms including TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.

GrapevineAI is able to match you with creators, campaign ideas and project coordination all through their tech-enabled, efficient process. You’re able to onboard and get a third-party whitelisting campaign up and running within days when you use the GrapevineAI platform – all without onboarding calls, content coordination back-and-forth and friction with the creator selection process.

The platform is best suited for top growth marketers at $20M+ DTC brands as well as freelance growth marketers who work across multiple fast-growing DTC brands. 

Additionally, GrapevineAI allows their partner brands’ growth teams to manage the entire paid media campaign unlike most opportunities in the marketplace today. There’s no media spend minimum to work with GrapevineAI and their packages start at just $600/month.
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