TikTok Ad Creative That Delivers Results
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Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle.
And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.
Hello, hello, hello.
Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast, brought to you by
Social Media Examiner.
I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business
owners who want to know what works in the world of social media.
Today we're going to be joined by Chase Chappell, and we're going to explore how to create TikTok
ad creative that really, really works.
By the way, I'm at Stelzner on Instagram and at Mike underscore Stelzner on Twitter.
If you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow this show so you don't miss any of
our future content.
We've got some great stuff coming your way.
Let's transition over to this week's interview with Chase Chappell.
Today I'm very excited to be joined by Chase Chappell.
If you don't know who Chase is, he's the founder of Chappell Digital Marketing, a company that
helps e-commerce businesses, authors, coaches, and consultants generate more leads and sales
with paid acquisition.
He's also the founder of Surge.io, an attribution tracking platform.
And he's also the founder of the Ads Mastery Mentorship Program.
Chase, welcome to the show.
How are you doing today?
Doing great.
Thank you so much.
I'm super stoked to have you here today.
Today Chase and I are going to explore TikTok ad creative that really works.
So if you've been struggling with making really great ads on TikTok, you're going to want
to pay attention to what we're going to talk about today.
Now before we go there, I want to hear a little bit of your backstory.
How the heck did you get into TikTok and the TikTok ad start wherever you want to start?
Yeah, well, going back before TikTok ads, I got into the social media space managing
pages for a luxury pool builder.
And essentially they wanted us to manage their Facebook ads.
And I didn't know how to manage Facebook ads at the time.
And he was like, well, if you know how to grow a social media page, I'm sure you could
figure out Facebook ads.
And this is back before you could even do, you know, video view campaigns, lookalikes
and all that stuff.
What year do you think that was?
This was 2013, end of 2013.
And essentially we started running ads and we booked him out for an entire year.
They're a pool builder and these are luxury pools in people's backyards.
These aren't like your standard pools.
These are like lazy rivers in people's backyards, which is pretty extreme.
And we booked him out for a full year.
He was like, that's never happened in our industry.
Thank you so much, but we no longer need services.
And I was like, well, hold on, wait a minute.
Why don't we just go to next year?
He's like, Chase, nobody thinks about getting a lazy river in their backyard two years out.
He's like, most of the time they don't even know which home they're going to be spending
their time at.
And I was like, well, maybe we could try it.
And so he gave it a shot.
We booked him out the second year.
He calls me and said, Chase, thank you so much.
This time we're actually pausing.
And I know I'm no longer need services.
I'm retiring and I'm going hunting with my son.
So that was my entryway into marketing.
And so it was my first and only client landed him and then lost him.
And I took that as a case study to get into e-commerce and, you know, snowball effect
from there, landing a bunch of clients.
And that eventually led up to getting into TikTok ads about three years ago.
And we started to see TikTok take off on the scene.
And essentially, I hopped on the platform, blew up to over 100,000 followers very quickly.
And I was like, you know, this is a huge audience for our customers.
I'm sure this could be a great ad platform too.
And so we started testing with ads and we had a client do 300k their first month on
TikTok and it was absolutely explosive.
We'd never seen anything like it so quickly.
I mean, we know we can get really good results on Facebook, but the explosiveness with TikTok
was just unquestionably very interesting to look at.
So we started offering that as a service and that's really where it all started.
King on.
OK, so you started creating content yourself.
It sounds like on TikTok.
What kind of content were you creating before you started offering advertising services?
Educational content around Facebook ads, just showing people tips, tricks, how to, you know,
leverage the ads, how to set them up and just little tips like that.
And we had a video do a million views and that brought a lot of attention.
How fast were you gaining followers, if you will, on the TikTok platform?
Within the first or second month, we'd had 60k followers.
And then by four months in, we'd passed 100,000.
I'm a little over 230k followers now, a couple of years in.
So you decided that you were going to offer ad services specifically on the TikTok platform.
Tell us a little bit more about that journey, because obviously that's different than Facebook,
right?
What did you start in the beginning?
Was your business doing a lot of Facebook ads and just a little bit of TikTok ads and
kind of tell us a little bit more about that journey?
Absolutely.
So we're media buying only.
We didn't we didn't focus on creating content.
We hadn't focused on launching any other services.
We're not for full service at all.
We're extremely specialized and very specific in what we did so we can provide the best
service possible.
And so TikTok ads on the media buying side, we wanted to incorporate that as another service
that we added in.
And once we started getting into that platform and started seeing really solid results, we
continued to focus on landing more clients on there.
And that just really grew from there.
And the main thing we noticed about TikTok that was really different from Facebook was
it wouldn't consistently grow on its own.
You could get a campaign really optimized on Facebook and the algorithm is going to
learn from you as you optimize it and it can get better with time.
You could see an ad creative last three months.
TikTok, we couldn't get a creative to go more than two weeks on the platform without dropping
off a cliff.
And most people have experienced this.
A lot of people who've ran TikTok ads understand that their creative doesn't last much longer
than a week.
And if it does, the ROAS is very diminished in its ROI and return.
I want to back up just to your story a little bit.
So I know we're getting a little ahead here.
So you were learning as you went on the TikTok platform.
Bring us from the, I started advertising on TikTok and I started having clients get really
great results to kind of like bring us up to the present a little bit about what you're
doing on TikTok.
And then also mentioned the school.
And then I would like to hear also how you founded this other business called Surge as
well.
Yeah.
So, I mean, essentially we had a Facebook ads program as well, a part of our training
company where we teach people because we had a lot of people come to our agency where they
wanted to essentially become a client of ours.
And a lot of times if people had been burned by previous agencies, they weren't really
turned on to the fact of wanting to work with another agency.
They wanted to do it themselves or in-house.
So eventually we decided to launch a training program to help people with Facebook ads.
People absolutely loved it.
I was posting about it on TikTok.
People loved our program because it was database.
And more people were asking, Hey, are y'all going to launch a program around TikTok ads?
We're interested around this platform.
And this is the time when there was millions of people hopping on this app every single
day is when all of the trends were happening.
Charlie D'Amelio was popping off.
This was on everybody's social media feeds.
A lot of people were just discovering TikTok, just downloading it.
This was all happening around that time.
So there was a lot of demand for a training out there as well as understanding how to
effectively operate the platform because a lot of people couldn't get results.
And they tried to apply the same media buying skills they had from Facebook to TikTok.
And they would notice, okay, these strategies aren't the same.
They don't work.
We can't take a Facebook ad and put it as a TikTok ad.
And so essentially, we decided that if we are going to make a program around TikTok,
we are going to offer this as a service.
We're going to have to master this ourselves.
And so we started launching our own ads for our actual company, as well as started testing
with a few clients to actually see what the process was like to really nail it down.
As we continue to get more clients, we're finding the actual offer, we're finding how
everything worked.
We started to get a few basic understandings of what would make a TikTok ad convert, how
to structure the audiences, how to actually make the right campaigns, as well as looking
through case studies, seeing past successful results.
Where we are now, we have thousands of clients on this service and people have gone through
our trainings on TikTok ads.
It's been absolutely incredible, the success that a lot of people have had.
But with all of that, we've been able to gain tons of data around what style of creatives
work, what audiences, how to structure things, what are the strategies that make something
tick on the platform, how to scale to 30K days.
We've spent $30,000 a day before.
We've taken an app to the number one spot in the app store from TikTok.
We've taken businesses from ground zero to millions of dollars a year, all from TikTok,
which has been absolutely amazing.
Okay, perfect.
So there are some marketers listening right now who are actively using Facebook ads, for
example, and maybe they're just not yet on the TikTok platform when it comes to ads,
or maybe they're resistant to it for whatever reason.
What do you want to say to them?
Why should marketers pay attention to what TikTok can do on paid acquisition side?
Absolutely.
So we had a client that was in the skincare space, and they were getting really amazing
results on Facebook.
They wanted to know why they should get on TikTok.
We had launched their ads on TikTok with them, and they were getting tons of traffic that
was increasing on Google because the amount of views they were receiving on TikTok, people
were starting to search the brand online.
So their direct searches started to increase from the amount of awareness they're getting
from TikTok.
Not only that, we're getting a baseline return on ad spend, but also the amount of clicks
that were coming from TikTok was near 10 to 1 what Facebook was producing.
We're paying $2 to $4 a click on Facebook, whereas TikTok is giving us $0.10 clicks.
And so the retargeting audiences all of a sudden went from doing 3x to 6x, 7x on Facebook
ads because we're pulling in so many people from TikTok who already previously had accounts
on Instagram and Facebook.
So the audiences and the pixel started picking this up.
And we could start to see that the returning audiences were benefiting dramatically from
the lift in overall sessions and traffic coming from TikTok.
So really, it's not like your main driver for getting amazing return on ad spend over
a long period of time.
It's really for explosive growth, I would say, and being able to, you know, if you are
going to maximize the channel, then you got to understand how it plays into your other
marketing channels as well.
It's not the one channel you should have.
It's definitely one that's one plus one equals three type situation.
It will add more great benefit having it working in tandem with your Facebook ads or
your Google ads.
It can help with your search volume if you have good rankings already, and it can lift
Amazon sales as well.
So it's really a good piece to add into the puzzle that's going to give you a better picture
of your marketing outcome.
Earlier, you were kind of alluding to some of the important things marketers need to
understand about TikTok ads before they start.
Let's restate some of that.
And you know, there's plenty of people right now.
I mean, most people, frankly, aren't using TikTok ads.
Let's be actually honest.
So like, what do they need to understand about the TikTok platform?
What have you figured out that you can like share some wisdom so people don't make some
of the mistakes that maybe you made or that you've seen other people make?
Yes.
The biggest thing is going to come down to the creative and the format of the creative
of how you structure the video to be able to resonate on the platform.
You can't get away with making it look like an ad.
The TikTok community is too strong in the sense that they like raw, authentic format
video, short form content.
They trust it more than Google in a lot of ways because people are searching now on TikTok.
Hey, how do I fix this sink in my home?
Or hey, what's a good workout routine?
They're getting quick answers there because they're trusting this content better than
they would an article on Google.
And so because of that, you have to fit in that format with your ad to be able to successfully
resonate with an individual to get them to convert.
We can talk a little bit about the video styles here in a second, but just to focus
on what the fundamentals are, you need to be able to have a creative capacity to launch
content every single week.
This is important because if you aren't launching new, fresh, creative every single week, then
the algorithm is not going to necessarily favor it.
Your video is going to drop in overall return on ad spend.
Your CPMs can end up rising.
TikTok likes fresh content constantly coming into the ads manager.
It's been proven and they share this time and time and again.
If you want to be able to eventually scale, you're going to need to be able to be putting
a new creative every single week to have it always fresh.
Whereas on Facebook, if you launch an ad, you can let it run for a good amount of time.
It could be two weeks, three weeks, a month, three months before you see a diminished return
on ad spend.
TikTok, it's going to be a weekly thing.
So if you can figure out a way to constantly get content from either curators, if you don't
know how to do it in-house, or if you do know how to do it in-house, then somebody on your
team who's constantly creating a new video every week for your ads.
Couple quick questions.
You mentioned earlier that people are searching on TikTok for things, which is probably fascinating
for those of us that aren't active on TikTok like I'm not.
Do the ads show up before the organic content when they're searching?
It's in the second or third placement.
So it would be in the first few videos you see.
This is big because now it's playing at SEO.
Now your ads can be SEO based.
If you have the right keywords, if you say, what's the best fitness routine, and you have
a fitness program, now you can be, it would literally say sponsored on your video as a
second or third placement there.
The shelf life of the content is kind of surprising.
I wonder if it's because it's an ad, right?
Because isn't it true that some organic content can go a lot longer than a week?
Absolutely.
Yes.
We've seen videos run for many weeks, even videos that will gain a thousand views a day
over the course of a year.
So is it possible that the videos that we create as ads could still have lift if they're
really successful and they're not ads anymore?
Do you understand where I'm going with this?
Absolutely.
So that is a good question.
So a lot of times it could be that most marketers are launching a video and maybe it's not sustaining
at scale.
And so it gives out after a week.
But a lot of times if you have a really solid video that can convert over a year timeframe
where you're maintaining a thousand views and you launch it into the ads, the chances
of it being more successful and lasting longer is true.
I'm not saying that every video will die 100% after seven days, but the percentage of ads
that do is substantially higher than any other platform by far.
Is it true that you start with a piece of organic content and turn it into an ad or
is it an ad that disappears after the ad is shut down?
So you can leverage organic videos in what are called spark ads.
And a spark ad is essentially taking an organic video, whether it's from your profile or somebody
else's profile, doesn't matter.
You can run the ad from whoever's page you'd like.
As long as you get what is called a spark ad ID code, you take that, plug it into your
ads manager and essentially you can run an ad from either their page or your page.
And the more views you drive it, it can gain likes and that will also affect the lights
directly on your organic video as well.
But the videos that we're talking about are not spark ads.
They're just organic ads.
I mean, they're just video ads that when you shut them off, they disappear.
Is that generally what I'm hearing you say?
In our case, ads would just be spark ads or videos you've uploaded into the ads manager.
Got it.
And when those ads are done delivering, they disappear.
But it doesn't mean you couldn't use the content to fulfill on your page later if it was successful
organically.
Yeah.
So, I mean, if it's working organically, you can certainly test it in an ad.
Okay.
We found that, you know, coming up with ad styles are very, you know, you want to focus
on ad like videos for sure in your ads manager rather than just only using organic content.
Okay.
So, so far we've talked about that the shelf life of these is relatively short and you've
come to this conclusion.
What happens after the first week?
Will it continue to deliver ads, but the costs go up or will it just kind of die out?
I mean, just help people understand why, what happens after that first week.
Totally.
So, you're definitely gonna have to allow your ad to get some time to optimize.
That could be four to seven days and then it will continue running thereafter and getting
results.
Usually what will happen is you'll see really good return on ad spend within those first
few days, four to seven days.
And then over time your ad, your return on ad spend goes from like a 2X to 1.8, 1.6.
Each week it's starting to decrease.
Whereas if you notice each time you launch an ad, very similar to the one you already
have, it could be, you know, a near spitting replica of it, just slightly different scenes,
but it always jumps up in ROAS when you launch it compared to the other one.
So the strategy then became, okay, rather than allowing this just to slowly drop over
time or jump off a cliff in some cases, why don't we just continue to repeat these ads
over and over, just launching them weekly and maintaining the return on ad spend at
scale.
And that's what we found when we were doing this for a campaign where we were spending
$300,000 per month at our peak, 30 to 50K a day.
We were receiving 20 pieces of creative content weekly to float this entire system we had
going.
We'd have 20 creators launch videos.
We'd receive these videos.
We'd launch those 20 pieces of creatives into the campaigns.
We'd be spending, you know, 10 to 30K, then 30 to 50K daily.
Those videos would do extremely well during that timeframe because we had enough for us
to be able to push out a lot, get a lot of results.
And then we'd see the diminished return after about a week and we'd say, okay, we need another
round.
And we just continue this process at scale every single month.
And that got that app to the number one spot in the app store at the time.
Very interesting.
All right.
So let's talk about creative because I think that this is really important because you
mentioned this, that the creative, the ads, the videos that we create for TikTok need
to not look like ads, right?
So this is going to be hard for some marketers to wrap their head around this, right?
Because perhaps they're used to YouTube where they can just directly sell and pitch.
And like, this is a whole different marketplace, right?
So let's explore some of the ad creative types that you have found really work.
And maybe we can just go one at a time.
We'll start with the first one and dig in on it.
And then we'll go to the next one and dig in on it if that works for you.
Absolutely.
So one of the first styles that we've really discovered that has consistently produced
results every single time we recommend somebody to try is the founder story.
This is something that dates back to just behavioral things that us humans love is a
good story.
You share your story around how you launched your product.
If you came up with a patent or if you designed your product, or there's something unique
about your product that's very different than a lot of other products, you share the story
around the creation of it, or share the story around the creation of your business.
Maybe not your specific product, but your service.
If you can share a good story around why you got started or how it all began.
And then at the end of the video, you have a call to action.
Hey, if you want to support us, go buy our product here.
Hey, if you want to support us, go use our service here.
Those videos do great, both organically.
And this is by far one of the best organic style videos that has sold out e-commerce
stores consistently.
We've seen this style of video do 700,000 in sales in a single post.
We've seen this organic style of video do 360,000 in sales.
We've seen these videos do 30K over the course of three days, 10K each day.
And then we've seen them average a few hundred dollars a day over the period of a few months
just from the views that they maintain.
And the founder story is really great to connect the community, build awareness, and drive
a lot of growth.
There's a brand called Waterboy that we worked with.
They are great at storytelling.
They share the stories about how each one of their team members joined the team.
They share the story of how they became partners with the people in their business.
They share the story of how they got their product in their first retail location.
They share the story of how they launched their product at a pool party.
And these stories people love and they get millions of views, but on the back end, they
get millions of sales as well.
And that's all from organic.
Now once you have a strategy that works like that, you can then actually take those videos,
launch them in ads, and take them from a 1.6 million view video to a 7 million view video,
fueling your ad growth and getting tons of sales from it.
Okay, a couple questions.
I know TikTok can go up to three minutes, I believe, right?
So how long is the ideal length of these videos?
And stylistically, if you could share a little bit of like, is this holding the camera in
the hand, the selfie kind of iPhone thing, or what is it?
Like talk to us a little bit about production quality.
Totally.
Yeah.
So the founder's story is typically about a minute long.
That's the average time.
And that's about how much time it takes somebody to really get their story across if they're
to condense it from the whole picture.
Then it's a combination of pulling clips.
And usually if it's a story, there'll be some catalog of clips that maybe you've taken over
the course of your business.
Maybe you've been around for three years, maybe you're just launching.
Could it be a photo too with a voiceover, that kind of stuff?
It can be.
Yes, absolutely.
So this includes a voiceover, captions, which is text running throughout the video.
And this is iPhone clips that are just raw shot or Android, whichever device.
And it's a clip of them working in the garage.
It's a clip of them packaging their first item to ship out.
It's a clip of them with their designs.
It's a clip of them arguing in the room about which flavor is best or which size is going
to be the most important, these types of things.
And this is a story that you pair all these clips together to share.
You voiceover lay it, which means essentially you're just recording, you telling the story
around all these clips and the text is running throughout.
So it's engaging visually.
It communicates effectively with the clips by cutting what are called jump cuts.
This usually means each clip is like three seconds roughly and then jumps to the next
clip.
And then it has a call to action at the end of the video.
And that's really the baseline formula of a storytelling video.
What I love about this is you could, especially for all the podcasters out there that have
podcasting equipment, you can read a script, edit the script, right?
And get it really dialed in audio wise.
And then what you can do is you can go film all, you can reenact it if you have to, right?
You can go film all the little pieces.
It could be with you or without you in it, but just kind of sewing the whole thing together.
Is that how you see some people doing it?
Absolutely.
Yes.
Podcasting is like one of the greatest ways you can distribute content online.
I mean, if you have a podcast and you just start clipping these into one minute, 30 second,
15 second clips and adding in the, if you already have a script and the text is ready
to go on the videos and it would be easy content.
I'm just thinking the audio quality, the audio quality is going to be so good, right?
Because, because when you, when you're just.
Generally speaking, the audio isn't great, but I would imagine if it's not supposed to
look like an ad, isn't that looking like an ad when you add all these B roll slots in
there, is there a way to do it?
So like, should you have the shaky camera effect or, I mean, how do you make it look
not like an ad?
Yes.
So that's, that's a good question.
Not saying quality doesn't work.
It's just that the community going back to the community on Tik TOK, it's all about trust
and people are finding it easier to trust people on Tik TOK because it is so raw.
Right.
So it's those clips that are kind of dark in style or grainy.
In some cases, it doesn't have a dramatic effect on the results.
Now you do want a high quality video.
You don't want it to be completely not understanding of what the clip is, but it doesn't mean you
have to have the fancy camera.
Now if you do have it, it could definitely be beneficial as well because it could help,
you know, with the credentials and quality overall.
But I would imagine if you have an iPhone in your pocket, you have all you need to be
able to put something like this together, right?
Absolutely.
Okay.
So that's your story.
What's next?
What's another example of some creative that works?
Yes.
So, I mean, you have the product comparison style video.
This is another video that is a double in terms of being able to get both views and
sales.
Not every video format will achieve both, but this is definitely one that meets the
criteria.
Product comparison is usually taking your products and comparing it to another one.
And ideally a company that is substantially larger in size.
Let's say you do a million dollars a year or maybe six figures a year.
You can compare your product against a billion dollar brands product or a, you know, a brand
that's just doing much higher numbers than you.
That would be the comparison.
And the reason you would be comparing it is if your product is better in price, that'd
be a good comparison.
Or if you're offering something they don't, if your ingredients are healthier and theirs
aren't, if there's less sugar in yours and theirs has more sugar, these are the types
of things that are good comparisons.
We've seen this with cosmetic brands that we've tested and it will show how their makeup
will stay on longer than others or if it gets wet, what it looks like when it's wet.
If it gets smeared, how does it look when it's smeared?
If you touch it with your fingers, what happens?
Does it get on your fingers?
And they show even a billion dollar brand, you would think their product has absolute
best quality, but a lot of times what you'll find is they're really looking to squeeze
a lot of margin out of there.
And you know, they're holding responsibility for investors to maximize profit in a lot
of cases.
And that ultimately sometimes unfortunately comes down to lowering the quality.
And so these smaller businesses will have higher quality products, make thinner margins,
but they ultimately have a better product at the end of the day.
So it's really important for them to share not only their story for small business, but
also to really highlight, hey, our product is higher quality.
And even if it is higher in price, that's totally fine.
Most of our clients actually are higher in price because they are higher in quality.
But this is a great way for you to compare because when these videos get 700,000 views,
a million views, we're seeing at least 10, 15,000 sales, 3k on the small side.
And you know, on the high side, you could do as much as 70, 100 K we've seen.
It is very likely if your video gets enough views and it has a strong call to action at
the end of it.
People love a good product comparison because they probably know the big brand and they
might use it even, or they've seen it in a store location, but they don't know your brand,
but they're now realizing, wait, you do offer something amazing, even though it might cost
more, I'd love to buy it and support you.
So let's talk about the visual structure of this.
I would imagine this is probably another one of those audio overlay kind of videos.
And do you have split screen where you maybe have, like in the case of makeup, the same
person putting on the makeup at the same time and showing how, I mean, I think of the paper
towel commercials we used to see on television, right?
It's almost like that, isn't it?
Right.
Like where they fall apart or whatever.
I mean, like, so any, any wisdom on how to like create those kinds of ads and are they
also one minute long, generally speaking?
So these videos can be 30 seconds to a minute usually, because that's the amount of time
it normally takes just to talk about their product and then talk about yours.
And let's say it's a drink and somebody wants to compare their beverage, carbonated, you
know, drink to another carbonated brand.
Well, you have the two cups in one shot and pour it in, pour it in and then flip it around
and then talk about the ingredients on both while in the same video.
With makeup, they have, you know, both their arms or somebody else's and they're going
through on both.
It's usually in the same shot to make sure that they can see it and it keeps people engaged.
So that way they can compare at the same time.
So definitely having either a split screen or trying to keep it all in the same scene
for sure.
Is there any like issues with including a big brand in your ad?
Do we have to be careful about that?
Absolutely.
Now I'm not a legal, you know, professional or an attorney.
You should consult with one.
But at the end of the day, I can say with clients, we've had people on the bigger brands
have seen the videos because I mean, when you're getting millions of views, it's going
to come across somebody's feet eventually.
And so, you know, they've reached out to TikTok and TikTok has policies around certain
things.
And so, you know, a lot of times brands will just cover up that billion dollar brand and
just talk about, Hey, this is a big billion dollar brand that, you know, or big brand.
You might drink that rhymes with klepsy, something along those lines.
Yeah.
So in cases like that, yes, because there are policies you have to look into for how
you compare things and what to say and whatnot to say.
But it's not, you know, it's not against the rules to compare products by any means.
It's just a matter of making sure that, you know, when you are doing it, just doing it
in a way that makes the most sense.
So if you only have 30 seconds, I mean, you can't go very deep.
So what do you recommend as far as like the structure of something like this, pick the
one huge differentiator between these two things or what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah.
So you definitely want a few if possible.
If you have a couple of different things, it's going to help.
So I mean, these are bullets.
These are three second clips like, Hey, here we're zeroing sugar.
We're low in calories next.
And you're just saying they're in high in calories, they're high in sugar, and you're
just comparing.
And it can be quick clips.
Well, and I would imagine you could just structure this by taking out a sheet of paper and drawing
a little T diagram, right?
And you could say them versus us.
And you could kind of identify all the differentiators if you haven't already done so.
And then you can decide which ones are going to have the biggest impact.
Right.
And I would imagine if this is an ad and they're only going to see it for 30 seconds, you should
choose one that's designed to spur some sort of emotional response, right?
Absolutely.
Two of the biggest videos in the product comparison was using a whiteboard with T chart, using
a piece of paper.
Okay, cool.
Well, it's really fascinating how something that simple can actually move the needle.
Okay, so what is the next example of creative that, and by the way, so far, we've talked
about the founder story, which is really just a way of sharing a unique story.
What I'm hearing you say is you can share many founder stories, right?
Like there's probably a thousand founder stories you could choose and you could just do founder
stories all day long and that could work, right?
And then if you want to go really into the weeds, right, which probably is a little bit
deeper down the funnel, right?
Then you're dealing with the product comparison, right?
Like here's us versus them and you're probably buying them.
And here's why you might want to consider buying us, right?
What's the next creative example that we can talk through?
So the interview style, and this is great for a lot of different brands.
This one helps with sales more indirectly in terms of tracking.
And primarily this one's great for views.
And the interview style is a great way to communicate because it's easy for people to
understand because usually how it goes is you have somebody ask a question, hey, what
is your app do?
And then the other person that cuts to the frame and says, well, our app does this.
And then they go, okay, how can I use the app?
What's the benefits of it?
Well, here's the benefits.
Here's how you'd use it.
Okay, great.
Where can I find this app?
Here's where it's located.
Here's how to download it.
Okay, what code do I need to get access?
You get the point of going back and forth.
This works great for podcasts, cutting between two frames and uploading the video.
This works great for explaining your product.
This can work great for mainly tech companies.
We've seen this outstandingly for apps, services, and just being able to cut between these two
scenes is very easy for people to follow.
And we've also seen this in the space of giving tips, tricks, hacks.
There's this lady on TikTok, I believe her name's Erica, and she's like an attorney.
And she'll be like, here's how you can get a free pair of Nike shoes.
And it'll be like the customer service agent.
And it's her on both of these.
She is the one interviewing the person herself and she is the interviewee.
It's a good little scene.
So you don't always have to have somebody to talk to.
It could be yourself talking to yourself.
Yeah, I would imagine I've seen people like on other platforms where they're just changing
their hat, right?
Or they're changing their hair.
They're changing their hair a little bit and they're cutting back and forth.
It sounds to me as if this is in some cases, the most frequent asked questions.
And it could be objection handling, right?
Absolutely.
It also could be like you mentioned tips, hacks, and tricks.
And I would imagine if you are a service provider, right?
Let's say you're a consultant or you provide any, you're an attorney, you provide any service
that's super valuable, answering commonly asked questions or providing insights that
the rest of the world doesn't know could work really, really well.
And I would imagine this could work for paid and organic.
Am I right?
Absolutely.
It goes hand in hand both ways.
With the app that we took to the number one spot in the app store, we got a video that
had over 50 million views in the span of a week.
It was on so many people's feeds.
And that was an interview style video.
And it was essentially just us, two people going back and forth explaining how the app
worked.
How long are these ads typically?
The interview style is roughly 20 seconds to a minute in length.
So 20 seconds to a minute is pretty short.
Do you have any strategies?
Like I can imagine someone right now saying, okay, we're going to do an interview in 20
seconds.
I mean, that feels crazy.
Do you speed up the answers?
I mean, like how do you get it in there?
You know what I'm saying?
So the biggest thing about TikTok is being direct.
A lot of times if you have the result, you put it at the beginning.
So rather than saying, here's the before, always show the after really first.
And so essentially it forces you to get the information out to them in the beginning.
And then you're following up after.
Usually there would be a lead up.
And in this case on TikTok, you don't.
You kind of want to reverse it, which is give out direct information immediately, deliver
the result immediately, share immediately what the end is, and then you go through the
information.
And that essentially helps with the hook.
And it also forces you to take out all the pieces that just aren't necessary to share.
Can you give an example of one of these that maybe you've done for one of your clients?
Yeah.
So a good example, let's take a reaction.
If somebody is reacting to, let's say that you sell sour candy and somebody wants to
try the sour candy rather than you walking up to somebody and saying, hey, do you want
to try my sour candy?
And then they go, what does it taste like?
And it's like, oh, it's cherry.
And they're like, oh, I like cherry.
I'll try it.
Okay, well, we're already almost 10 seconds in and we had to go through all this dialogue
to just get to the reaction.
When in reality, most people are dropping because they just don't care and they don't
know what's about to happen anyways.
So you take that reaction of them having a sour candy and they're making this super scrunched
up face, their mouth's watering, their eyes are all squinted.
And it's either might be funny to some or other people are like, ooh, I want to try
this.
And you take that clip, put it at the beginning.
So all of a sudden you're like, what in the world is going on here?
And then it pauses and it points with an arrow.
This person just tried the most sour candy ever.
And then it cuts and it's them starting to walk up to them.
And so now they want to wait again to watch the video once more.
And so they're willing to wait through the rest of it because you just delivered all
that excitement in the beginning.
I like this because you've actually gone to our next example, which is the reaction videos.
What I really like about what you've done is if you are doing an interview and there
is some sort of really solid gold moment, you put that at the beginning.
And then you somehow in a minute lead up to that because they're waiting for it.
Maybe it's just a piece of it.
It doesn't even have to be the whole thing.
100%.
So to parlay this into how that would work interview wise to exactly your point, you
can take the gold piece, put it at the beginning, and then it starts.
And the thing is, is when it starts and you play all the way through, the ending is the
beginning, which is the gold.
It's a loop.
So that's the best part.
So technically it still works out because it forces them to still watch through and
they can still understand it without being confused.
So it's not taking it out of the timeline.
It's just a loop.
So when it comes to loops, is there any, do you have to pay twice for it if they watch
it twice or how does that work exactly?
No, if anything, it just drives up your view volume, lowers your CPMs, gets you better
results.
TikTok wants ads to have high watch time as well because it means that it's relevant.
Higher watch times, even on Facebook, this applies to last thing.
These platforms like TikTok and Facebook want is to serve an irrelevant ad that doesn't
make any sense for somebody.
Let's say you're showing diapers to somebody who has no kids that, you know, something
somebody just wouldn't have an interest in.
So the likelihood of staying on the app actually decreases.
You're more than likely to jump off.
So the more relevant, the longer you can get someone to watch, the better you're going
to be with your cost.
Okay.
So reaction videos, you just gave us an example of a reaction ad that's combined with a interview
style ad.
Are there other types of reaction videos that are not based on interviews?
If so, maybe explain that a little bit.
There's absolutely.
So there's so many reaction style video formats.
A lot of times if you have a product or a service, you can be in different locations.
Let's say you're in the gym and you're selling supplements and as people are walking out
the door, you're having them try your new flavor.
There's another brand that's selling sake soda on Tik Tok and it's him in a different
grocery store locations and he's essentially filming each time he has an interaction with
somebody who's doing a taste test on his product.
So that's a public location and there's so many areas you could do this in New York.
You could do this in any space really where there's going to be people.
It's getting people to try something or react to something.
And reactions can also work with asking strangers questions.
If you've seen the video of the Daniel guy who asked strangers questions like, what do
you do for a living?
It's like, Hey, nice car.
If you've seen those videos, it works extremely well.
It's asking a stranger a question and then the reaction comes from either the people
watching the videos or the person reacting to why is this guy asking me what I do for
a living because of my car?
So I've seen videos where there's this guy that asked these random girls, how much do
you pay for rent in the city that he's in?
Have you seen these videos?
And then they end up getting, and then he says, can I get a tour of your place?
Right?
And then they show off the whole place.
Right.
And it's really, really interesting.
He's not selling anything, but he is essentially, it's got a little bit of a, kind of a shock
because he's asking someone a question you don't normally ask people, you know, in public.
Absolutely.
And this reaction style video is really a broad term for so many sub video that you
could try, like the, you know, asking somebody about touring their home.
And that could end up developing into him getting, you know, deals with either apartment
buildings or getting him deals with real estate agents and stuff like that.
So there's so many opportunities that come up, these things it's unreal.
Okay.
So we've talked about reaction videos, interview style videos, product comparison videos, founder
stories.
Now, I guess the question is like, how do we analyze what the heck's working and what's
not working?
Because you said that there's definitely drop off and there's gotta be some like, what's
your take on how we assess if it's working or if it's not working?
That's a great question.
So for it to define working, you have to understand what your ultimate goal is.
From an organic standpoint, if that's followers and views, whichever format out of those formats
we just shared that you've tested, whichever ones you can see this in your analytics, you
click on more data on your video, it'll tell you how many followers you got.
It'll tell you how many views you get, how long they've watched it, whichever format.
If you did the interview style 20 times and you average at least 100 to 1000 followers
per video and you did the reaction videos 30 times and you only get, you know, 10 followers
per video, you'd likely just want to stick to the interview style video to maintain your
follower growth if that's your goal.
Now if it sells and it's working really well from the reaction style video, well then you're
going to definitely want to test that by launching it in ads.
Because if you do so, it's going to be really easy for you to not only fuel your organic
growth, but being able to take that format, add it into your actual ads manager and then
fueling it even more with some ad spends.
So you're getting two benefits from this, both the organic side, then the ad side.
And that's where you can have your rotation weekly and you just basically take your best
videos out of that pool organically.
Not every single one, just take your best ones and migrate them over.
You mentioned earlier that there's sometimes untrackable Google searches that come as a
result of doing these things.
What advice do you give to people if they're just doom scrolling, if you will, for lack
of better words, through TikTok and they happen to see your ad and then later they forgot
what it was, so they Google it.
How in the world do we track that kind of stuff?
What's your thoughts on that?
Yeah, that's a good question.
So, I mean, expectation wise, you don't want to look at TikTok as the platform that's going
to solve all of your sales issues or be this next channel that's going to be the main driver
of all of your growth.
A lot of times TikTok is going to have a lot of indirect value that comes from it, long-term
and short-term.
And one of those is people seeing your video on TikTok, making a Google search, and then
later getting the credit sent to Google, even though they originated from TikTok.
One of the ways you can track that is by having a short survey, asking people to self-identify
where they came from after they purchase or after they complete your service.
How did you hear about it?
So maybe have a checklist, like check all that apply, Google, TikTok, dot, dot, dot.
Totally.
And it's not 100% every time, but it's going to give you better insights into where they
came from, because if you know they came from Google and then they share with us that they
originally heard about us from TikTok.
All right, let's split it up 50-50.
They chose to go to Google, but at least we know they at least heard us maybe on this
platform that they just selected.
So that can give you some insights.
Tracking as well.
Let's say that they click on your ad.
If you have a UTM applied to it, that is just essentially a unique tracking metric.
That's what it stands for.
If you have TikTok appended to it, it came from TikTok, it adds it into your system.
Well, let's say they didn't purchase and you're still tracking that data.
If they eventually say, oh, what was that ad I clicked on that I didn't buy from that
I should have checked out on?
Oh, I remember its name.
Typed it in on Google.
Here it is.
There's my cart, purchase.
Well, it'll still say it came from Google, but at least if you go look at the user journey,
you can say, oh, they did originate by clicking on my ad from TikTok, even though it didn't
get the credit in the system.
Is there any tips on helping people remember your company?
Like do you recommend flashing a logo up on the screen or a name?
Because I would imagine most people that are watching TikTok ads just don't act at all.
They just move on to the feed, right?
Or they see whatever comes next.
Any thoughts on that?
So, I mean, there's going to be things you can do in advance that are just good plays
to begin with.
Short names for brands.
If you think of like words like Google, you know, YouTube, easy to understand words rather
than having like three words or really long ones.
If they're, if they all start with E's or all start with A's that can, you know, be
a little bit more alliteration.
Yeah, right.
So it's best to really make sure you, how you structure it.
So you get a short form URL that just re-forwards that people can understand.
Simple words are always great to do, but ultimately if you have your logo in the video, it's best
if it's really small.
We know now on Facebook, this can provide a better lift long-term.
It can increase your ROAS.
It can increase your conversion rates.
It can increase your search traffic if you have your logo.
Now here's where this connects.
If we look at the history of the Facebook platform, there was once a rule where you
couldn't have more than 20% of text in your ad because they didn't want ads to look like
ads on the feed.
So everybody had to figure out how to make an image or video without 20% text.
Well fast forward to today, Facebook doesn't care about how much text you have in your
ad.
It could be as filled as you want it to.
And the reason is that it will look, every ad on Facebook looks very ad-like these days.
Now what they found was, well, we balanced user attention, keeping them on the platform,
but we started to see with our studies, it provided a better ROI long-term for our advertiser
clients who make us the most money.
Now they have to balance both sides, but the user behavior, they slowly rolled this out
and people got more used to seeing ad-like.
I think the same thing will happen to TikTok long-term and you'll start to see loads of
logos, way more text and more ad-like content.
But for now, I think TikTok's really prioritizing the feeds more than anything.
And that's really what you have to play the strength to because if that's what they're
choosing now, you kind of have to fit in that box until you can really start to play
outside of that.
So if you are going to do a logo, the long answer here would just be to make it much
smaller so that can be awareness and conversions at the same time.
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Chase, this has been really fascinating.
For those that are watching the video, you're wearing a hat that says Surge.
So I would love you to tell people what you're working on there and also mention where they
can discover you if they want to find out more about you.
Yes.
So Surge is a platform that we launched after the iOS changes happened to help with ad attribution.
Now with Facebook, there's estimated purchases.
They can no longer fully report to the most accurate degree on where somebody came from.
They're able to give you an estimated idea of where your purchases came from.
But if somebody purchases, not always will that purchase conversion value get reported.
The purchase might in Facebook, but the purchase conversion might not.
And that means that your ROAS isn't as accurate.
It might be shown to the wrong audience.
You might have a good idea of how many overall purchases came from the platform, but not
specifically on the more detailed analysis of which ad, which audience.
And Surge is bridging the gap there because it falls under the first party data where
you can use it with your Shopify store.
We're only exclusive on Shopify right now.
And essentially once you set it up, you can connect it to your both Facebook ads, TikTok
ads.
It'll provide you better tracking and allow you to identify exactly where, when each ad
got the conversion and show you accurately how those conversions are happening.
It's giving you a better picture of which ads work, which audiences work, which campaigns
work.
And in April of 2023, we have a damped up dashboard, analytics dashboard, ROAS goals,
predictive analytics, and a lot of suites and tools that are coming out.
So it's really exciting stuff and we're super happy about it.
Surge for those that are not watching the video is spelled S-I-R-G-E.
And Chase, if people want to follow you on the socials, where's your preferred platform?
And also if they want to check out your products and services, where do you want to send them?
On Instagram at realchasechapel.
If you DM me the word S social media examiner, SME.
Just SME?
Yep, that'd be the best one.
Just DM me SME and you can get a free training from this video going over each reaction style
video for free.
As well as if you go to chasechapel.com slash SME, you can also get a free training covering
exactly what we did here.
Awesome.
Chase, thank you so much for answering all my questions and helping us understand how
to create ads on TikTok that are actually going to work.
We really appreciate your time today.
Awesome.
Thank you so much, Michael.
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at socialmediaexaminer.com
slash 550.
If you're new to the show, be sure to follow us.
If you've been a long time listener, would you let your friends know about this show?
I'm at Stelzner on Instagram and at Mike underscore Stelzner on Twitter.
This brings us to the end of yet another episode of the social media marketing podcast.
I'm your host, Michael Stelzner.
I'll be back with you next week.
I hope you make the best out of your day and may social media continue to change your world.
The social media marketing podcast is a production of social media examiner.
