I’m so excited for you guys to meet Savannah Sanchez, a.k.a. The Social Savannah

I’ve been following her for years, and she just GETS TikTok media buying and creative. 

The native-looking, UGC-style ad creative that does numbers for e-comm brands? Kind of her specialty. 

She collabs with a team of ~15 creators to make it happen for brands like REVOLVE and ShoeDazzle.

Savannah has actually been working on TikTok since April 2020 — 2+ years where…

  • TikTok blew past 1B monthly active users
  • TikTok’s targeting and pixel attribution got waaaay better
  • TikTok Ads vs. Facebook Ads became a legit rivalry

“It’s really now surpassed the performance and scale that I’m seeing on Facebook,“ Savannah said on The Marketing Millennials podcast.

Here are five tips she shared for making the most of your TikTok budget, in her (lightly edited) words.

1. Why TikTok’s not just for impulse shopping:

Sometimes we’ll run flash sales like, “Get 50% off today only. Use code TIKTOK.” 

For ads like that, a large percentage of people purchase right then. 

With evergreen ads, only 50% of people purchase that same session. The other 50% of take up to 7 days to purchase. 

They’re Googling it later. 

They’re getting retargeted with a Facebook ad and then purchasing. 

So I recommend using third party tracking tools to keep tabs on their journey.

I like a combination of… 

TikTok’s in-platform attribution
Post-purchase surveys
Third-party attribution tracking tools with UTM tags

2. How to make great TikTok creative:

Between 15 and 30 seconds is the sweet spot for ads.

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It needs to be vertical, so it looks organic to the platform.

Use native TikTok TEXT, ANIMATIONS and TRANSITIONS. 

When people are scrolling through TikTok… 

They should not immediately recognize they’re being advertised to!

Your ad should be as entertaining and informative as a video they would organically watch.

3. Top-performing TikTok ad hooks to test: 

I have a few clients where we’ve tested the introduction line of “Things TikTok made me buy.”

Then we go into….

 “I saw this really cool mascara on TikTok.” ➡️

“I didn’t know if it’d be any good.” ➡️

“I decided to try it.” ➡️

“Here’s me unboxing it and oh my God, I love it so much.” 

It’s something that works well organically on TikTok. I think that’s why it makes such a good ad hook. 

Other good hooks are… 

“Things in my apartment that just make sense”
“Stuff I wish I knew about sooner”
“Things I found on the internet that I can no longer live without”

4. How Savannah recruits and collabs with creators: 

I go through my For You Page and find girls posting about their favorite products. Or I’ll search hashtags. 

I’m looking for people who…

Are comfortable talking to the camera and seem very natural
Have  bright, natural lighting — especially for makeup videos
Don’t have a big following

I’m really not looking for them to post this on their profile, or create an original video. 

I’m looking at them as actresses. They’re going to film the content for me and follow my script.

Creators aren’t necessarily e-commerce marketers.  

5. How the TikTok algo works for advertisers (it does!):  

There is a learning phase on TikTok Ads.

One of the mistakes people make — they start with a small budget, try it for a couple weeks. 

Then they’ll say, “Oh, TikTok doesn’t work for us.” 

I recommend they do more creative testing! 

When you first start out, TikTok has no idea who your brand is. 

You almost need to pay for some learnings up front. 

Start spending on TikTok, so it can learn what type of users respond to your videos. 

That effect just compounds every month that you keep advertising.

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maerice
maerice
Level up your marketing game

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