5-Day TikTok Ads Experiment: Does It Work For Small Accounts?

The Problem:

There is a big stigma around “inorganic growth” on social media.

However, as I’m slowly building my media agency, I have also committed to making tests and coming to my own conclusions… and the more I do so, the more I learn.

My Instagram account was doing relatively well in terms of growth, I had a sense that the right folks were finding me, even though I wasn’t growing fast.

But then TikTok is a whole different game. As of the writing of this post (mid-September 2024), it seems that the content that performs were on TikTok is the “phone-made, low-budget, high-value”.

On instagram (and YT shorts) however, the better edited videos, recorded with a profissional camera, seemed to be doing better.

So then… is my content just sh*t or is there more to the story? Maybe both? I tried to figure out.

So I ran a 5-day experiment with TikTok ads to figure out if it actually works.

The Results:

Before:

After:

Like it or not, the account more than doubled.

Why This Video?

This video performed really well on IG and on YT shorts, it over-indexed in comparison to my other videos, but had totally flopped on TikTok. I couldn’t understand it. I HONESTLY felt like it was a good video and that, perhaps, I just never hit the right people…

Here’s the video, feel free to tell me your thoughts: https://www.tiktok.com/@luis.pollon/video/7394569190742428958

So I decided not to give it up, time to run some tests.

But Why Would You Spend Money on This?

Good question. Two answers:

Answer 1: As a media agency owner, part of what we do is run ads for clients. The strategy is relatively simple and comes from Gary Vee’s “Day Trading Attention”

1. Produce a lot of content

2. Take the content that over performs (relative to your own stats)

3. Adjust that video as necessary for your ad goal.

4. Run ads on that, because you already know it resonates with people, so you waste less money.

Side note here: please understand that I TRULY believe I got decent results because of the organic itself more than anything else. So if you’re considering doing the same, make sure to focus on making organic content you’re proud of and that resonates with people.

Answer 2: I also have a couple of video editors that work for me (yes, I’m a video editor myself and I still decided to outsource my content editing sometimes).

1. This means that I already have a cost per video created

2. Which means… I want to get the most juice out of the videos I create

3. So then you get into little dilemma: Make another video, or push a video that might still have life to it?

4. In this case, I chose the latter. After all, the video performed well on IG.

Ad Overview:

For some of you nerds, here are the actual audience I used. Feel free to tell me how to optimize this even more.

I think the real “good reasoning” was in the interest and behaviors this time.

Oh, the amount allocated was 50 USD over 5 days ish.

So… What were the results?

The official results seem to have been understated. Here’s what I can see on my end: Cost: 50.00 USD Impressions: 3,397 Follows: 180 Follow/Impression Rate: 4.09%, which takes my cost per follower to 0.28 USD (aka it’d take me 280 bucks to get 1000 followers, and 2.8K to get 10,000)

Would I do anything different? Probably, I noticed the conversion rates were showing a ton of “zeroes” everywhere, which we know is not accurate. If anyone has thoughts here I’d be glad to learn from you. In fact, a BIG reason is likely the lack of setting a Pixel here, but maybe I’m off.

Screenshots below:

Now, where these results REAL?

I’ve ran these sorts of promotions/ads on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok so far, and I’d say this:

• YouTube promotions brought me A LOT of subscribers, but ZERO engagement.

• TikTok and IG brought me the fewer subscribers (I also spent less money), but REAL engagement.

The followers that came from TikTok were either liking, saving, commenting, or following (or all at once).

This metric is important, because that means we’re targeting the right folks, and they actually enjoy what they’re seeing.

Final thoughts:

Was it worth it? I think so. It’s good insight and the account grew with the right people. It definitely felt much better than using the promotions tab on YouTube.

If I ever do more of these, which I might, I’ll go ahead and report over here.

You should know:

These posts of mine are always a combination of Minimalism, Time Management, Effective Learning, Philosophical Introspection and a ton of insights on growing my business.

Sounds confusing? You’ll get used to it and you’ll probably enjoy the “confusion” too hahah

Take care, thanks for spending some of your time with me.

Best,
LP