How to use TikTok ads to gain TikTok followers
Learn how to use TikTok ads to grow your follower count efficiently, with practical steps on setting up campaigns, targeting, budgeting, and ad creation. Understand when and why to invest in follower growth through paid ads.
By Andrew Southworth
Happy Monday!
Today we’re going to talk about growing your TikTok followers using TikTok ads.
Recently I ran one of these campaigns and for about $50 USD we got 265 TikTok followers, an average cost of $0.19 per follower. For reference this was a mixture of USA, Canada, Brazil and Mexico.
Before I show you how to run these campaigns, I want to give a disclaimer. For most people I don’t generally recommend running ad campaigns solely designed to increase numbers on social media, i’d much rather send people to a streaming platform or a place you control like an email list signup page.
But, there are many valid reasons artists have for wanting higher follower counts. So before you jump in and spend money growing followers, make sure you have a good reason. I also recommend having strong organic growth before relying on ads to grow your following, because if you can’t grow organically you’re never going to get the most of these followers anyways.
Alright, now lets get into it. Step #1 is for you to sign up for a TikTok ads manager account, click here to do that.
Once you have your account setup you will of course have to hook up a credit card, setup your account etc - but once you’re done with the onboarding process you’ll be ready to build a campaign.
Head to the Campaign area and click Create to create a new campaign.
For this particular type of campaign you want the Community Interaction objective. This allows you to choose Followers as your optimization goal, which is exactly what we’re looking for here.
Once you click continue to go to the ad group the first main thin you have to configure is the demographic information.
TikTok limits your country selection by where you are located in the world. If you aren’t in the USA or Canada you likely won’t have access to those countries, but if you’re in the USA you won’t have access to the UK or Australia for example.
Choose what you can that makes sense for you, define your ages and genders. Now we get to the fun part, your interest targeting.
There are actually many ways to target on TikTok. They have interests like Meta, but they also have hashtags and video topics. I recommend starting with interests. You’re likely going to want to go broad here because they don’t have nearly as many targeting options as Meta, but you should be able to find something that makes sense.
Just like Meta, they also use machine learning to help your campaigns. So even broad audiences can be good because they’ll hone in on your people as they collect more data.
Next you need to define your budget. Note that the minimum ad spend is $20/day per ad set.
For the optimization goal we want follow, and maximum delivery bid strategy.
Clicking next will take us to the ad creation page. Here if you don’t have your TikTok account connected you’ll want to do so. You can either connect the account or generate an authorization code on the post to just connect the post you want. The easiest way is connecting the account itself though using Spark.
Once you’ve linked your account you can click TikTok post and choose which post on your page you want to promote. You can also upload a video and create the ad in ads manager as well.
Now you can publish your campaign and wait for results! But I would also consider adding multi ads into your campaign. While every ad group needs $20/day you can split test multiple ad creatives in your ad groups without increasing your daily spend.
Also, just a reminder to not go too crazy with this type of campaign. You don’t want all of your followers coming from ads and nothing happening organically. I would honestly recommend only doing this after you’ve found at least some traction organically, because it will teach you how to make engaging content and how to interact with an audience on social media.
There are a lot of other campaigns you can run in TikTok, so this is just the starting point. Click here to sign up and get started with TikTok ads.
New Content
Apple Music added a new 'radio spins' feature that lets you see where your music was played on REAL radio stations around the world. Let's take a look!
Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:
My courses. Spotify Growth Machine teaches you how to use Facebook ads to promote your music on Spotify. YouTube Growth Machine teaches you how to grow a YouTube channel organically and how to use YouTube ads. Fan Growth Machine teaches you how to build a website, online store and grow your email list.
My ad agency. Forbid Media specializes in running Facebook conversion ads to promote your music on Spotify.
Website / Store / Funnels. MusicFunnels is the best all-in-one platform for music artists to make a website, online store, sales funnels and build their mailing list.
1-on-1 consulting. You can book 1-hour calls with myself or Alex Bochel here.
My Links:
🌍 MusicFunnels - Best website / store / funnels for music artists (get your 14-day FREE trial!)
🧑💻 Consultations
🎬 Get 15% off Melodist music distribution with code ANDREW15 here
Discount / Affiliate Links:
►► FeatureFM - use code ASOUTH30 for 30% off annual plans!
If you’d rather just purchase the e-book, or physical book or audiobook you can do so here.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Music Marketing Monday! Please give your feedback using the poll below.
** There are affiliate links on this site, meaning I may receive a kickback when you purchase a product or service using my links at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I’d recommend to friends, but i’m obligated to inform you that these affiliate links are present. Overall affiliate income is not my focus and is a relatively small part of my income.
In case you’re curious what platform i’m using to run this newsletter, it’s called beehiiv.
Turn Meta ads into real streaming growth
Learn the campaign structure Andrew uses to promote songs without guessing at every step.