Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Are you sick of hearing about Apple’s iOS 15 update that rolled out recently? Us too. But unfortunately, something tells us we’ll all be discussing it for quite some time.  This update changed email marketing. If you didn’t do much to prepare for this rollout, then you may be dealing with some unfortunate repercussions with…
The post How to Use Google Analytics to Track the Success of Your Email Campaigns appeared first on Benchmark Email.

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Before they ever made a single jacket, Paynter Jacket Co. founders Becky Okell and Huw Thomas talked about historic couture on Instagram.
To their followers, it was a community to talk about all things jackets.
To Becky and Huw, it was product development research.
But to the startup world, it’s simply called “building in public.”
Originally driven by passion, building in public became Paynter’s recipe for success: By the time the duo launched the first Paynter jacket, it sold out in minutes.
Featuring insights from Buffer’s Small Business, Big Lessons podcast episode three and the accompanying unpublished interview, Becky and Huw explained how they chose to build in public, the ethos they share, and how building in public built Paynter.
Beck and Huw, Founders of Paynter Jacket Co. Rebuilding an iconic jacket and spotting an opportunity
Huw used to work for a small denim brand in Wales where he’d take fabric scraps from the cutting room floor and stitch together his own jackets. He also had a hobby of buying vintage jackets and taking them apart to see how they were made.
Then came the iconic blue jacket. He simply couldn’t take it apart but desperately wanted to recreate it.
Sharing his passion with Becky shortly after they met, the two decided to recreate this jacket together. They managed to get in touch with a retired Burberry pattern maker who developed the first pattern for them. From there, they attend Premier Vision, “the holy grail of fashion trade shows” as Becky put it.
“It’s basically your job to walk at least 20,000 steps over the course of three days or every day, and just meet as many people as you can, and explain what you’re doing, and try and get people on board,” said Becky.
After meeting so many different people and companies that help make the pieces of a single jacket, Becky and Huw began to think about sharing this journey online. They got the inspiration from a personal pain: they loved other designers’ work but wished those people would share their journeys.
“We were looking at the references of the brands that we really, really love and admire and thinking, I wish they had shared their process in their early days… why is their logo the way that it is?” said Becky. “Why do they have two logos? Why is their art direction the way that it is?”
This is how the two stumbled upon a concept that they would later learn is called building in public.
“We thought… if we’re ever going to be a brand that anyone references, it would be really cool to actually have almost an open book right from the start,” said Becky.
Cultivating a community with stories
After that spark at Premier Vision, the duo officially decided to launch a jacket company. It was supposed to take five months – but ended up taking nine – between attending the trade show to having their first jacket ready to launch. And they shared the whole journey on Instagram.
Paynter on Instagram“We shared the whole thing – things that we were happy with, things that we weren’t happy with – on Instagram,” said Huw. “We even got people to vote on what colors they’d like to see.”
Huw and Becky also shared their journey of building a business, including the less-flashy parts like figuring out how to fund the operation by selling possessions on eBay.
“We were very, very keen on keeping Paynter very independent, just run by the two of us, and we didn’t have enough to actually put through a production run with the factory,” said Huw. “So we shared on Instagram, us at the post office, sending the things we’ve sold on eBay just to raise as much money as possible to pay for production.”
Then, something clicked.
On a trip to Portugal to visit the factory where their jacket would be made, they shared the whole process of jacket-making in action: buttons, garment dyers, putting parts together, and more. Their audience couldn’t get enough.
“I think for the first time people’s names that we hadn’t heard of – they weren’t friends or family,” said Becky. “And that’s when you start to realize, wow, we’re not just talking to ourselves, there’s something more about this.”
People even wanted to pre-order jackets, but Becky and Huw realized the fabric wasn’t quite right. In keeping with their vision of a quality-first, independent brand, they made the tough call to delay batch one by four additional months so they could get the fabric they wanted. But the whole time, they kept talking to people on Instagram and sharing their journey.
Finally, Becky and Huw were ready to launch the first Paynter jacket. They had about 600 followers at the time and it sold out quickly.
Building in public touches every element of the business
Paynter has four launches per year and takes customer feedback very seriously. For them, building in public isn’t about sharing their journey one way, but interacting with customers throughout the creation process.
Becky and Huw from Paynter Jacket Co. “We always get customers involved before we’ve made all of the final decisions on a product,” said Becky. “For example, we know that there’s certain colors we definitely want to make, but we’d love to open up to the floor and see what colors customers would like. So that might just be in a simple Instagram voting system, it could be a TypeForm. It’s all pretty lo-fi, but we just want to make sure we’re listening to people and getting their opinions on things.”
“There’s a tiny card pocket that’s now on the inside of every jacket that we make, and we’ve got a guy called Max to thank for that pocket,” Becky continued. “He was on the Eurostar [train] texting us about his favorite jacket, but wishing it had a card pocket and we’re like, well, great, consider it done.”
They also get feedback on what people don’t like, which can be difficult at times but ultimately lead to amazing moments with customers.
“One of the best parts of taking our audience’s advice is showing that you listened,” said Huw. “For [example], batch number four. We had maybe 10 colors. We hadn’t quite chosen the final few, and there was this emerald green that we weren’t going to do but people just absolutely loved it, and so we brought it in and people just reacted really well. They go, oh wow, this is a brand that listens.”
Building a company with morals
Only doing four runs per year is a very conscious decision for Paynter. They always sell out and have demand for much more, but they don’t want to create any waste in the company, both in terms of production and the additional effort needed to maintain a larger operation.
Instead of expanding production, Huw and Becky invest their energy into telling stories with their jackets. Every Paynter jacket now comes with a thank you card that includes a link to a full digital story about the jacket’s origins, including videos from the artisans who make different pieces like buttons or pockets.
Beyond a culture of not wasting and not adding more to the environmental harms that fast-fashion can create, Becky and Huw also love the unique feeling customers get when they get a Paynter jacket knowing not everyone can get one and it’s incredibly high quality so it will last for a while.
And because of the small batches, there are multiple people in the world that are the only Paynter jacket owners in their country.
“Wow, that must be pretty cool,” said Huw. “You’re the only person in that country with that jacket.”

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Have you ever wondered why those pesky social media algorithms exist? Though it may seem like they gatekeep your content, algorithms aren’t out to get you or hide your content from the masses. Let me paint a picture for you.
You’re connected with hundreds of people — maybe even thousands — on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But when you log in to each of these social networks, it’s likely that you don’t want to be bombarded by every single update from every single connection. That’d be pretty overwhelming, wouldn’t it?
That’s how the folks from each of these social networks feel — and they’ve done plenty of user research to validate that feeling. In fact, that’s exactly why the news feeds — and the algorithms behind them — exist.
All three of today’s most popular social networks have gravitated toward an algorithm-based feed in the effort to create better experiences for their users. The trouble is, each algorithm works differently. What’s worse, they’re constantly changing, making it hard for marketers like us to keep up.
To help get it all straight, we’ve put together this simple guide on how the news feed works on the three most popular social networks: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Let’s dive in.
Note: Keep in mind that the algorithms are constantly changing. We’ll continue to write about major social algorithm changes as they happen.

Essentially, social media algorithms analyze user behavior and prioritize content the platform believes the user wants to see and is most likely to engage with.

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News Feed Algorithm
Each major social media platform has its own version of a “news feed” style algorithm. Below we’ll dive into the specifics of feed algorithms for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but here’s an overview of what the algorithms for these platforms factor in when prioritizing content.
Engagement
When you first create an account on a social media platform, you’re more likely to see a mix of random content that may not align with your interests. But over time, you’ll see the content will be more in line with your interests. How does that happen?
Social media platforms begin learning your interests and preferences very quickly based on what kind of content you engage with. Once a platform has a good idea of what a user is likely to engage with, they are going to prioritize that type of content in the user’s feed.
Time on Platform
Why does what you engage with matter so much? Well because the more time you spend engaging, the more time you’re likely to spend on a platform. When you spend more time on a platform, you’re susceptible to see (and buy from) advertising that is shown to you. And the more time you spend engaging on a social media platform, the more insight that platform has into your preferences, purchases, and habits.
Now let’s get into the details of how the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram algorithms work.
Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm
Since the inception of the largest social media platform to date, Facebook’s news feed has been focused on personalizing the social media app’s user experience. According to eMarketer, we spend about 34 minutes each day using the platform.
To give users the best experience possible, Facebook’s team of engineers are constantly studying user behavior and picking up signals that show what kind of content each user is most interested in.
How It Works
The Like button has always been the epicenter of Facebook’s user experience — not only because we see it on everyone’s posts, but because it allows us to personalize our experience (and influence everyone else’s). Since it was first introduced in November 2007, it’s helped Facebook’s engineers figure out which posts were delighting users, boring them, offending them, and so on.
Nowadays, the algorithm that governs Facebook’s News Feed has become much more sophisticated. It isn’t just about the Like button anymore — and not just because reaction buttons are now in the mix. In fact, Facebook’s algorithm is by far the most complicated of the three social networks covered in this post.
Here’s a quick rundown of the most important things Facebook’s algorithm takes into account.
Relevancy Score
When picking posts for each person who logs on to Facebook, the News Feed algorithm takes into account hundreds of variables — and can predict whether a given user will Like, click, comment, share, hide, or even mark a post as spam.
More specifically, the algorithm predicts each of these outcomes with a certain degree of confidence. This prediction is quantified into a single number called a “relevancy score” that’s specific both to you and to that post.
Once every post that could potentially show up in your feed has been assigned a relevancy score, Facebook’s sorting algorithm ranks them and puts them in the order they end up appearing in your feed. This means that every time you log in, the post you see at the top of your News Feed was chosen over thousands of others as the one most likely to make you react and engage.
Ads are given relevancy scores, too, so that Facebook can show users the ads that could matter most to them. Again, this is supposed to give users a better experience — but it’s also helpful for the businesses that are paying for the ads. It’s calculated based on the positive feedback (video views, conversions, etc.) and negative feedback Facebook expects an ad to receive from its target audience. (Learn more about relevancy score for Facebook ads here.)
Prioritizing Friends
Before 2015, Facebook was predicting what users want to see on the News Feed based on more indirect signals, like Likes, comments, and shares of others. Eventually, it added options for users to filter out posts they don’t want to see. But what about helping boost the posts users do want to see?
Through studies and surveys, Facebook found that many users were concerned about missing important updates from friends they cared about the most. In response to these concerns, the social media platform began changing the News Feed algorithm to give more control to the users themselves.
It started in April 2015, when the company began giving priority (in the form of higher relevancy scores) to posts from friends over the Pages they follow and promotional posts. Later that year, in July, Facebook introduced the “See First” feature, which lets you actually hand-pick which accounts — whether friends or followed Pages — you want to see first at the top of your News Feed.
Now, when you want to prioritize a person or page to “see first,” their posts will appear at the top of your News Feed. To prioritize the people or pages you want to “see first”: click the downward-facing arrow in the top-right corner of any Facebook page and select Settings.

In the window that appears, scroll until you find News Feed Preferences and select it.

Next, select Prioritize who to see first.

Finally, select up to 30 of your Facebook friends to add as favorites. You’ll now see posts from these individuals first.

Time Spent on a Post
Facebook started monitoring how much time users spend viewing certain posts. Of course, the time you spend on a post can vary depending on your internet speed, the length of the post, and so on — and the folks at Facebook are aware of that.
However, the platform’s strategists found that dwell time, the act of spending a lot more time on a particular post in their feed compared to the majority of other posts they look at, is a good sign that the content was relevant to them.
How does this play out in the feed? If you spend more time on a particular post, Facebook is more likely to show that post on your friends’ News Feeds.
Video Engagement
In summer 2015, Facebook surveyed users on how they interacted with video on their News Feeds and found that many people who were interested in a given video didn’t necessarily Like it, comment on it, or share it with their friends. Since engagement is one of the primary ways Facebook measures people’s interest in posts, it had to come up with other ways to figure out whether people enjoyed the videos they were seeing.
To do that, the company started monitoring other forms of video engagement — like turning on the audio, switching to full-screen mode, or enabling high definition. So if you turn up the volume on a video or make it full-screen, the algorithm will interpret that as you enjoying the video, and will show you similar videos higher up in your feed.
The update doesn’t mean users will see more videos in their News Feed — only those who already engage more with video-related content.
Facebook’s algorithm is very, very complex, but we hope that gives you a good idea of what it considers important so you can tweak your Facebook marketing strategy accordingly. Now, let’s move on to Twitter.
Twitter’s Timeline Algorithm
Whereas Facebook makes most of the decisions about what will show up in your Facebook News Feed, Twitter’s historically taken a very different approach with what it calls the “Timeline.”
Your Timeline is the stream of tweets from the users you follow that shows up on your account home page when you first log in. It used to be that your Timeline was made up of every single tweet from every user you follow, in chronological order. But the folks at Twitter found that similar to what was happening on Facebook, users felt they were missing all the best tweets from the people they care about most.
The changes made to the Twitter algorithm aren’t nearly as platform-changing as the ones Facebook has made, but they are somewhat of a departure from the real-time element that has defined Twitter since the beginning.
How It Works
The engineers at Twitter have attempted two different approaches for surfacing the “best” tweets first on your Timeline: the “While You Were Away” feature and the even newer “Show me the best Tweets first” feature.
The “While You Were Away” Feature
This feature was added as an attempt to rid users of whatever FOMO (fear of missing out) they might have been feeling from the chronological nature of the original Timeline.
Basically, it’s a recap of some of the best tweets you may not have seen otherwise. How do these tweets make the cut? It’s determined by “user engagement”.
You can’t turn off the feature, but how often you see it depends on how often you use Twitter. The recaps pop up more frequently for users who check the app less often.
The “Show Me the Best Tweets First” Feature
The “Show me the best Tweets first” feature is a little more similar to Facebook’s News Feed. Why? Because it actually changes the content on your Timeline based on a tweet’s relevancy, rather than listing tweets chronologically.
By default, Twitter’s algorithm puts the tweets it thinks you’ll find most interesting at the top of your Timeline, these posts are still recent and in reverse chronological order. These tweets are chosen based on accounts you interact with most, Tweets you engage with, and much more.
The “Best Tweets” Feature
The rest of the tweets will be displayed right underneath, also in reverse chronological order. Unlike the “While you were away” feature, these “best tweets” won’t be highlighted or indicated in any way — so you won’t be able to tell where the “best tweets” stop and the rest of the tweets begin.
There are two ways to remove these “best tweets” from the top of your Timeline. One is a quick fix: You can always refresh your Timeline to see all new tweets at the top in the live way you might have been used to seeing in the past.
But if you want to always see your Timeline live, then Twitter does allow you to opt out of this feature if you’d like — unlike Facebook’s News Feed.
To opt out of this feature: Tap the three-star icon in the top right corner of your screen. Then tap Switch to the latest Tweets.

Is Twitter Moving Away From a Real-Time Timeline?
There’s no reason to believe so — at least not right now. One of the three sections of your Twitter timeline is composed of tweets displayed in reverse-chronological order. After you scroll through the “While you were away” Tweets and “Best Tweets” you’ll be left with the tweets from your followers starting with the most recent.
What might be an emerging trend on Twitter is the opportunity to subscribe to people’s tweets. While this feature wouldn’t disrupt the timeline’s mostly reverse-chronological order, it could add just one more section to your feed that you’ll need to scroll through before seeing the latest updates from your followers.
Twitter isn’t the only social media platform iterating its algorithm to show the most interesting content first — Instagram’s algorithm is giving Facebook and Twitter a run for their money.
The Instagram Feed’s Algorithm
As of January 2021, Instagram has more than 1.2 million active users on the platform making it a hotspot for marketers in nearly any industry. However, it’s a newer platform compared to the other two on this list, so many of us marketers are still trying to figure it out. The best place to start is from the bottom up — with the algorithm.
Instagram’s algorithm has evolved since 2016 when it first began sorting users’ news feeds in order of relevance rather than recency. Now, the algorithm works similarly to its parent company’s — Facebook. Using machine learning to aggregate six factors, Instagram can determine what content you’ll appreciate the most and influence your news feed to prioritize that content.
These six factors shared by TechCrunch are:

Interest: This is a prediction Instagram makes about how interested you’ll be in a particular post.

Frequency: How often you use the app that will determine what posts you see first when you open the app again.

Following: The more people you follow, the less likely you’ll be able to see everyone in your news feed.

Recency: How recently was a post published? This impacts when you’ll see a post in your news feed.

Relationship: Who shared the post and your connection to them will be a significant factor in how often you’ll see their content. This is influenced by tagged photos, engagement, and even how often you direct message them.

Usage: The time you spend on Instagram affects the content you see as well.

What about the Reels, Shop, and Explore pages?
With the advent of Reels, Shop, and the Explore page, there are several opportunities for Instagram users to naturally affect the factors listed above by interacting with content outside of their news feeds. If you enjoy cooking videos, for example, you may see more of those types of videos and reels in your news feed.
Is Instagram removing likes?
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention one of the more controversial Instagram algorithm updates — removing likes. Removing one of the most popular features of the app was initially tested as a measure against bullying and increased pressure to post content that garners more and more social approval for young Instagrammers.
The change began in several countries including Canada, Brazil, and Australia. Ultimately, Instagram decided against removing like counts for all users, and instead gave users the option to hide public like counts on their own posts, and the ability to apply this change to all posts in their feed under account settings.

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Other Key Algorithms
In addition to updates in the main feed, it’s important to note that each main area of a social media platform has its own algorithm. That means the content that gets shown to you on your Instagram feed is operating on a different algorithm than the Instagram stories that are shown to you.
The biggest differences are between how users are shown photo and video content, respectively. Let’s discuss some of the other key algorithms that impact what content users see and when.
Inappropriate Language
Social media platforms are constantly on the lookout for ways to keep users safe, especially younger users. Platforms may scan content for certain words or subject matter that may be deemed inappropriate, which could lead to that content being deprioritized in the feed.
Copyrighted Content
Have you ever tried to add copyrighted music or video clips to a piece of content? Chances are, it was either quickly flagged and removed or potentially had lower reach. That’s because copyrighted content is often not included in the licensing agreements social media platforms have, and can be a liability, and can impose legal consequences for users and platforms responsible for distribution.
It’s best to avoid including copyrighted elements you don’t have the rights to and follow the specific platform’s guidelines for appropriate ways to incorporate elements such as music in your content.
Cross-Platform Content
While repurposing content is a common best practice among marketers and creators, doing so can have implications on content reach.>
In early 2021, Instagram announced the algorithm will prioritize recommending Reels that do not have visible TikTok logos, in an effort to discourage users from cross-posting TikTok content to Instagram. That means if a user downloads a video they have created on TikTok and shares the same video with the TikTok watermark to Instagram, the Instagram algorithm will potentially show that content to fewer people.
For maximum engagement potential, Instagram’s @creators account encourages users to create fresh content for Instagram instead of cross-posting content from other platforms (particularly TikTok). To get around this, some users take to third-party websites to download their TikTok without watermarks and post to Instagram.
It’s All About Content Quality
The key takeaway for brands and individuals alike is this: Quality is Queen.
These algorithms are meant to filter out irrelevant and poor-quality posts so that the highest-quality content gets through. Control over what users see and don’t see is a collaboration between the social platform and the user. The user interacts with what they find interesting and the social media platform takes note and shows you more of that the next time you open the app.
The big lesson for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram marketers like us is to remember that it’s our job to post content to social that’s interesting, entertaining, helpful, and/or relevant to our audiences. This means picking relevant topics, writing delightful copy, and posting compelling images and videos.
By following these best practices, your posts will have a better chance of getting shown to users — so you can continue to inspire, delight, and educate them.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In 2018, Musical.ly, music sharing app, was purchased by Chinese tech firm Bytedance and merged with the firm’s new app, TikTok.
It started out as a video-sharing social network where users shared short clips of themselves lip-synching and dancing to trending music. It has since expanded to house more diverse videos and become a creative outlet for brands.

After the merger, TikTok’s active user base grew by almost 800%. Today, the platform has over 1 billion monthly users and brands are using TikTok ads to reach them.
In this article, we’ll cover everything you need to know about TikTok’s advertising platform and discuss if it’s worth leveraging.

Types of TikTok Ads
How do Tiktok ads work?
How to Set Up Your TikTok Account
TikTok Ad Review Process
TikTok Ad Examples
TikTok Advertising Cost
Should you leverage TikTok for Business?
TikTok For Business Pros and Cons

The platform’s stated goal is to help businesses unleash their creative side by teaching them how to use the app through their e-learning service and guiding them through making advertisements on the Ads Manager platform.

The sole marketing format for businesses to use on TikTok is video advertisements. The TikTok For Business Ads Manager platform helps marketers create these advertisements, and they can choose from five different formats.
TopView Ads
TopView ads on TikTok are videos that appear once a day, immediately after a user opens their app for the first time. Here’s an example of a TopView ad by candy company M&M that they’ve created to advertise a virtual Halloween experience.

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TopView ads can be up to 60 seconds long, which is longer than the typical run-time for TikTok videos. Because of this, it’s perfect for businesses looking to advertise products or services that require longer periods of attention, like TV trailers.
In-Feed Ads
In-Feed ads are videos that appear on a user’s discovery page, otherwise known as the “For You” page. This is where users land when they open the app. The For You page features videos that the TikTok algorithm believes are of interest to the user based on their app activity.
These ads are the fourth video users see as they scroll through their feed. For reference, this type of advertisement is similar to those that appear in a user’s Instagram feed. Here’s an example of an In-Feed ad created by food delivery service GrubHub.
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In-Feed ads are especially valuable for marketers looking to use TikTok to drive sales conversions, as the videos can feature a call-to-action (CTA). Acorns, a finance business, has used the In-Feed CTA feature to prompt viewers to download their app.

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Some brands have created their own version of In-Feed ads by partnering directly with influencers. For example, Raising Cane’s Restaurant partnered with famous TikTok influencer Chase Hudson to promote their business.

@lilhuddy
this my way eating @raising.canes what’s yours #CaniacAmbassador #raisingcanes
♬ Stuntin’ On You – Tyla Yaweh

Users who follow Hudson would see this video within their For You feed.
Branded Hashtags
Branded Hashtags are advertisements that businesses use to inspire TikTokers to create content around a brand-related hashtag of their choice. Businesses using this ad format have exclusive access to the hashtag, which is not the case on other social media sites. Its exclusivity comes along with a high price tag, and reported average costs are around $150,000 USD for six days.
For example, say you’re a sportswear company that has just launched a new athletic shirt called Blue Shirt. You may create a branded hashtag called #InMyBlueShirt, where you encourage TikTok users who have your product to post videos of them doing physical activities in the shirt.
Jennifer Lopez, a music artist, has used the Branded Hashtag feature to advertise her song, Pa Ti. The hashtag is called #PaTiChallenge, and Lopez posted a video of herself dancing where she encouraged other TikTok users to take part in the challenge by replicating her dance.

@jlo
Let’s goooo! ✨🚨✨ Can’t wait to see and share some of your best #PaTiChallenge dances! Thanks for kicking it off @charlidamelio! @papijuancho
♬ Pa Ti – Jennifer Lopez & Maluma

The #PaTiChallenge hashtag has garnered 2.4 Billion views.
Hashtag Challenges can be featured on TikTok’s Discover page, where users can find new creators and browse trending hashtags. The Discover page is similar to Instagram’s Explore page.
The hashtag challenge #WorldSeries, sponsored by Major League Baseball, is featured on TikTok’s Discover feed, and the hashtag encourages users to post videos showing how they’ve celebrated baseball games. Clicking on the hashtag brings users to an internal landing page that features the sponsors’ logo, challenge description, and other videos using the hashtag.
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Brand Takeovers
Brand Takeovers are an ad format that can include TopView, In-Feed, and Branded Hashtags all at once. They can also be videos, gifs, or still images. The takeover aspect of these ads is that TikTok only features one business per day, and the starting cost is around $50,000 USD per day.
Guess, a fashion company, ran a Brand Takeover on TikTok to advertise their denim jeans. Over six days, their TikTok account gained over 12 thousand new followers and generated a 14.3% total engagement rate. Their Brand Takeover included Top View, Branded Hashtag, and In-Feed ads.
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Branded Effects
Branded Effects ads use 2D, 3D, or AR to add images of your products into TikTok videos. Brands typically create stickers of their products or create filters that TikTokers can use when creating their videos. These filters and stickers increase engagement and brand awareness, as using them typically involve playing brand-specific games.
Puma, a clothing company, used the Branded Effects feature to advertise their new soccer shoes. Their 3D sticker prompted users to play a virtual reality game with a soccer ball. They paired their Branded Effects sticker with a hashtag challenge that generated over 100,000 videos of user-generated content.
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How do TikTok ads work?
Setting up a TikTok ad is relatively easy.
First, you have to create a business account from which you will build, manage, and track your ads. The next step is describing your business and setting up your payment type.
Now, here’s where the fun starts. You can choose between two ad manager modes: simplified and custom.
In both options, you build your ad in levels. You first outline your campaign, then define your ad group, and finally create your individual ads.
Here’s the difference between these two modes:

Simplified mode takes a simple and straightforward approach to ad creation, letting Tiktok’s algorithm do the heavy lifting.

Custom mode gives advertisers full control over their ads with advanced customization options, such as A/B testing, audience targeting based on video and creator interactions, and ad combinations.

Choosing a mode isn’t permanent, you can always switch to another mode.

Now that you know how TikTok ads work, here’s how to set up your account and build your ad.

Create a business account.

Describe your business.

Enter your billing information.

Set up your payment type.

Select your ads manager mode.
Build your ad.
  Pro-tip: When building your ad, consider Promo, the video marketing tool that allows you to find video templates and create high-quality promotional videos.
Review and submit.

TikTok Ad Review Process
When you submit an ad for review, it usually takes 24 hours to review. To avoid any delays, you want to make sure your ad meets the platform’s ad requirements and follows its policies.
Here’s a checklist to use when reviewing your ad before submission:

The landing page:

Is functional and mobile-friendly.
Delivers on what it outlines in the ad.
Matches the product name in the ad.
Is in the language of the region it’s targeting.
Doesn’t automatically download files to a user’s device.

The ad:

Is free of spelling and grammatical errors.
Contains audio.
Is between five to 60 seconds.
Doesn’t include excessive use of symbols, spacing, numbers, or capitalization.
Matches the caption.
Is in the language of the region it’s targeting (or includes subtitles.)
Doesn’t include any prohibited products or services. Find a full list here.

Is not blurry or pixelized.
Follows standard video sizes: 9:16, 1:1, 16:9.

TikTok Ad Examples
1. Fly By Jing

In this TikTok ad, food brand Fly By Jing partnered with food influencer TiffyCooks to demonstrate how easy (and tasty) it is to use the brand’s product.
Leveraging a known influencer is always a great way to raise awareness for your brand and build trust with your audience. Another great thing about this ad is that the offer is clear: Users can get 10% off by clicking on the CTA and using the code.
2. Tiffany & Co.

To promote its latest partnership with Beyoncé and Jay-Z, the brand has launched a series of ads including the artists.
The ad is simple, but effective and leads users to a landing page where they can learn more about the campaign.
3. Omsom

In 20 seconds, this food brand accomplishes a lot.
The video effectively showcases hows how its product is used. The caption also gives users some background on the brand and tells a story in just a few words. In addition, the CTA leads users right to a product page (instead of the homepage) where they convert.

Lastly, too often, ads seem jarring because they don’t fit the feel of the platform. That’s not the case here. The ad feels so natural in the feed that you wouldn’t know it was an ad if you removed the #sponsored tag and CTA.
TikTok Advertising Cost
When it comes to budgeting for Tiktok advertising, here’s the breakdown. You can select a daily or lifetime budget, which can be changed at any point during your campaign.
At the campaign level, you must have a minimum daily and total budget of $50 USD. For an ad group level, your budget must exceed $20 USD daily.
As for the advertising cost, TikTok hasn’t released its pricing policy. However, there is some information out there.
In 2020, Digiday reported that TikTok had a cost-per-mille as low as $1. After running their own experiment, JungleTopp reported that the cost-per-click was $0.19 – much lower than Facebook and Instagram.

With this platform, you can choose between several bidding strategies that are optimized for specific goals.
Should you leverage TikTok in your marketing strategy?
Since peaking in 2020, TikTok has become a go-to advertising platform for many brands. As the number of users increased, the number of ads they saw also followed from 19% in 2020 to 37% in 2021.
A 2021 Kantar report ranked the short-form video platform in the number one spot for ad equity, surpassing Amazon, Instagram, Google, and Twitter. This isn’t the first time either – they also held that spot the year prior.
Despite this impressive ranking, the data suggests marketers are still unsure about the platform. According to the report, many marketers view TikTok as highly innovative but not quite trustworthy.
As such, many prefer to rely on tried-and-true media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
From a consumer perspective, consumers go to TikTok for authenticity and community.
According to a 2020 Nielsen study surveying global TikTok users, 59% of respondents said they feel a sense of community when they hop on the app. It’s also a major source of discovery for consumers, with 85% of users discovering new content they enjoy on the app.
As a result, the ads that are on the platform also tend to be more creative and a little less “commercial.” The study revealed that 68% of TikTok users globally find that the ads on the platform are unique and different from other social media platforms. In Indonesia, that figure goes up 23%.
So, the audience is there and ready to engage. However, the decision to use TikTok For Business in your marketing strategy ultimately comes down to your business goals and desired campaign outcomes.

To make the decision easier, we’ve compiled a list of pros and cons for marketers to use when making this decision.
TikTok For Business Pros and Cons

Pros
Cons

TikTok Ads Manager will help you expose your content to new audiences. The ‘similar audiences’ feature helps you select lookalike audiences that are similar to your target ones. TikTok has a reported 1 billion monthly users and is available in 155 different countries. If your brand is smaller or less well-known, this could bring significant awareness to new audiences. 25% of TikTok’s user base is between 10 and 19, and 22% are between 20 and 29. If your target audiences are of different age groups, you could gain exposure to a new type of customer.

TikTok’s largest user base is not representative of all demographic groups. Since its primary user base is very young, the audiences that businesses market to on the platform may be significantly younger than the intended target audiences. Advertising on the app may require you to tap into a user base that may not understand the need for your product or service.

TikTok thrives off of informal, ‘behind-the-scenes’ content. Authenticity matters to Generation Z, and they tend to shy away from the ‘ sales-to-drive’ leads marketing ads. If your brand or business typically creates sales-driven formal content, utilizing the platform can help you diversify your content types and display a new, creative side of your business.
TikTok requires niche content. The type of content that TikTok calls for may not be in line with your brand mission. If you’re a more serious, sales-focused business, learning to adapt to the fun and exciting content required for TikTok versus just driving sales conversions may be a difficult skill to learn.

TikTok has higher engagement rates than Instagram and Twitter. In 2019, TikTok’s average engagement rate at all follower levels was higher than both Instagram and Twitter. Small accounts with just 1,000 had an average engagement rate of 9.38% . Even if you’re a smaller brand just starting on TikTok, you’re guaranteed to have an engaging audience.
TikTok For Business reporting tool can’t be integrated with other platforms. All marketers know that data is crucial to understanding the success of marketing campaigns. At the moment, it doesn’t seem as though the platform can integrate with your preferred insights tool. While the Ads Manager is convenient, it will require an additional step for collecting data that you can use to understand your campaign engagement and ROI.

Should you choose to incorporate TikTok into your advertising strategy, it can be a valuable tool for growth. While the app does call for niche types of content, brands and businesses can diversify their strategy and advertise to a new audience.
Whatever your final decision is, TikTok For Business is available to those who want to harness the app’s advertising potential.

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a new blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of Black business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.
Over the last year and a half, entrepreneurs have had to revamp their marketing strategies to navigate doing business during a pandemic. This shift hasn’t been easy, especially for Black business owners. According to an H&R Block study, more than half of Black-owned small businesses experienced at least a 50% decrease in revenue during the pandemic.
As a Black woman who launched two businesses in the last year and a half, I’ve had to revisit my marketing strategy to avoid this dip in revenue. My goal was to pay close attention to who my audience is, keep track of performance metrics, and create engaging content without wasting time or money. The key was to use marketing tools that make our company more strategy-focused and data-driven.
If you have a small team, you don’t always have to hire more people to maximize results — you can invest in tools and systems to streamline your marketing strategies. Read on to discover seven high-quality tools that are user-friendly, cost-effective, and able to help you succeed.

7 Marketing Tools for Black-Owned Businesses
1. HubSpot

Best for: Customer Relationship Management
Price: Starts at $45/mo
If your marketing strategy is on point, you’ll have leads flowing in with ease. Keeping track of those leads can tell you what converted them to a buyer — this is key for knowing what’s working in your marketing strategy.
Our team uses HubSpot’s CRM tool to keep track of conversions, and when revisiting our marketing strategy, we look at two essential items:

How did the lead hear about us
What services/products are they interested in

Your marketing strategy should include a clear overview of your buyer’s journey, from awareness to decision making. HubSpot’s Deal Stages dashboard houses this important data. That way, you can keep track of each stage, and better nurture leads with relevant content.  

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2. Mailerlite

Best for: Email marketing
Price: Free, then $10 if you have less than 1,000 subscribers
My company Perfeqta started using Mailerlite this year and the benefits are endless. With the tool my team has been able to:

Easily design landing pages and newsletter campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor.
Create pop-ups and embed forms to add to our company website.
Monitor subscriber lists and divide them into interest groups.
Quickly access campaign reports to understand results.

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For those who are less email marketing savvy, Mailerlite’s academy program will walk you through its core functions so you can start building email campaigns within a few days’ time. Because of the free plan, this is one of the most cost-friendly options for all of its features.
3. Buffer

Best for: Social media marketing
Price: Free for three social channels – $10/mo per social channel for unlimited channels
Buffer is an all-in-one social media tool that my team uses to manage 12 different accounts. The dashboard is incredibly user-friendly, and it is easy to schedule (as shown in the image below), review, and publish content without having to change pages or switch accounts.

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Here are the key benefits that have allowed my team to maximize their time:

Approval tool that lets you review posts before they’re published.
Option to create campaigns and view analytics in one spot.
Audience demographics so you know who you’re targeting.
Download reports as charts and images to share with the team.
A community management tool that lets you reply to comments and engage with followers from your desktop.

And here’s another bonus: If you’re a Black- or POC-owned or -led organization that engages in anti-racism work, Buffer offers a 50% discount.
4. Google Analytics

Best for: Website tracking
Price: Free
No matter the size of your business, tracking website analytics is essential for company success. There’s a reason why many companies use Google Analytics to track customer data — it’s easy to understand, even if you aren’t very familiar with metrics.
Here’s how my team uses Google Analytics to drive our marketing strategy:

We can see which pages lead to conversions and turn people away, which allows us to make effective changes.
We can see audience demographics, which gives us a better understanding of who our clients and customers are, where they live, and how they engage with content.
We can better plan for future marketing campaigns and set attainable goals because we have clear data to reference.

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As you scale your business, you’ll want to track growth as closely as possible, so you know how to stay connected to your audience and serve them content they will engage with.
5. Canva

Best for: Content creation
Price: Free – $12.99/mo for Pro account
Once a simple software for quick, text-based graphics, Canva has become a full-fledged design suite. My team uses Canva to create content for social posts, presentation decks, flyers, proposals, and more — for only $13 a month.

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If you don’t have a designer on board, you can use Canva templates for inspiration and customize them based on your brand guidelines.  With a pro account, you can also:

Import your brand fonts and create brand color palettes.
Use Canva stock photos, which have become more diverse in ethnic representation.
Collaborate with your team and comment feedback directly on posts.
Plan your content and share it directly to your social channels.
Organize files into folders to keep track of content.
Export various file formats, including png, jpeg, pdf, gif, and more.

The platform also has a video editor, which helps eliminate the many hours spent creating quick, 60-second social media posts.
6. Asana

Best for: Building out a marketing strategy
Price: Free – $24.00/mo
Effective communication and project management are crucial for running two companies with multiple team members. Asana has made it incredibly easy for me to outline marketing campaigns, assign tasks to responsible individuals, monitor due dates, and link files to specific projects.

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My team creates visual workflows for our marketing strategies by making lists, cards, and a project calendar for each phase. Here’s how we break down some of our boards:

Research and Discovery: This section includes links and files to outside research and our brainstorming notes.
Content: We share links to relevant folders under specific tasks, so it’s easy to pull social media assets and navigate directly to Google Docs, where we write our copy.
Technical Support: We send our technical specialist reminders to ensure she keeps up with regular website updates and tests our campaigns before they go live.
Reporting: This is where we create visual charts to help us keep track of progress on an individual and team level.

Asana is also mobile-friendly, so everyone gets project updates sent directly to their phone and email.
7. Moz Pro

Best for: SEO & keyword research
Price: Starting at $99/mo
Spending endless hours creating content isn’t worth it if your target audiences won’t see it — Moz Pro helps ensure that this won’t happen. Use the tool to serve content to your audiences and rank higher in search results, drive traffic to your website, and monitor SEO campaigns, all of which are essential to growing your business and increasing visibility.
Here are the key benefits of Moz Pro:

Keyword ranking and search visibility score to see what your audience is searching for.
Link research to increase the number of high-quality links pointing to your website.
Technical site audits to make sure technical SEO issues don’t go unnoticed.
SEO insights and reporting so you can use data-driven insights when strategizing for multimedia content.

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Moz also has tons of resource guides to help you understand link metrics and analytics altogether.  
As Black business owners, it’s essential to have tools and systems that streamline your marketing processes while also supporting your business growth and team growth.
Remember, you don’t need to be an expert in every area of your business. Take advantage of the resources that have already been created by the experts so you can focus on what you do best – building amazing products and services that people love.