A Guide to Analyzing Your Competitor's TikTok Ads Strategy

Aim: To walk you through how to analyze your competitor’s Tiktok ads strategy.

Optimal Outcome: To give you insights into your competitor’s ad campaign strategies on Tiktok which can help you plan and improve your own Tiktok ad campaigns.

What do you need to start: A TikTok Creative Center account or a paid Tiktok ads analytics tool.

Why is this SOP Important: Analyzing competitor's TikTok ad campaign can give insights into their marketing strategies and inform your own efforts, helping you identify market gaps, opportunities, and ways to differentiate your offerings. It can also help you stay aware of changes in the market and stay ahead of the competition.

When and Where to execute: A competitive analysis for TikTok ads can be performed at any time, but it is particularly useful before launching a new campaign or before making major changes to an existing campaign.

Who Should Be Doing This: Social media manager, marketing staff, media buyers

What is a Tiktok Ads campaign?

TikTok Ads is a platform for businesses to advertise on the popular social media app, TikTok. Advertisers can create various types of ads, such as brand awareness ads, performance-based ads, or shopping ads, and target specific audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and other criteria. TikTok Ads campaigns allow businesses to reach a large and engaged audience, drive brand awareness, and achieve specific marketing goals, such as increasing website traffic, driving sales, or boosting app installs. The platform uses a bidding system, where advertisers place bids on ad impressions, and the highest bidder wins the placement. TikTok Ads provides robust reporting and analytics to track the performance of advertising campaigns.

Execution

Tiktok Creative Center (Free)

Note: You won’t be able to research your specific competitor using the Tiktok Creative Center but you can search for ongoing trends, see top creators / advertisers within your niche.

1. Login or create a Tiktok Creative Center account.

2. Click Inspiration, then select Top Ads Dashboard.

3. Type a keyword relevant to your product and click Search. You’ll see the total number of ads related to your keyword.

4. You can filter your search using the following filters.

5. Country

6. Industry

3. Objective

4. Duration

5. You can sort the results using additional filters such as Reach, CTR and view rates.

6. Click one of the ads from the results page.

7. You can see the stats from this specific ad, including engagement and conversion rate.

8. Next, go back to Inspiration, then click Keyword Insights.

9. You’ll be able to see top keywords related to your product. Use a filter to zero in on keywords close to your product or service. You’ll be able to see keyword ranking and corresponding click-through rate (CTR). Next, click Details.

10. Take note of the phrases and video style used by brands selling similar products as yours.

Paid analytics tool (Example: HypeAuditor)

You can find more insights if you subscribe to a paid tool to analyze your competitor’s ad strategy. There are a lot of useful tools available so you’ll need to assess what will give you the most value.

Here’s an example of a comprehensive analysis from HypeAuditor.

Search your competitor’s profile to analyze their key metrics. Since Tiktok is a short-form video-sharing platform that runs on a recommendation system, it is essential to know what is trending within your niche.

Summarize your findings and create an audit report

Criteria	Example Findings
Ad engagement	Sample Comment: Brand: xhsshop Total number of views, comments, likes, and shares
Ads Volume	How many ads are they currently running?
Countries	How many countries are they currently targeting and which countries?
Promotions	Sample comment: Brand: xhsshop Do they run sales or promotions frequently? What do they offer?
Collaborations	Sample comments: Brand: xhsshop Do they collaborate with influencers? Which influences or brands do they collaborate with?
Creative Type	Sample comment: Brand: xhsshop Text overlay, Ad text, voice over etc.

Conclusion

That’s it! You now have a way to get some insights about your competitor’s Tiktok ad strategy. Remember that competitor analysis need to be done regularly to be on top

1. Analyzing the content, creative, and targeting of your competitor's ads, you can gain insights into the demographics and interests of their target audience.

2. Analyzing competitor's TikTok ad strategy can serve as a benchmark for your own performance, helping you track progress and measure the impact of your efforts.

3. Understanding what works for your competitors can give you insights on how to improve your own TikTok ad strategy and create more effective campaigns.

4. By avoiding strategies that are not effective for your target audience or market, you can save money and allocate resources more effectively.

5. Assess the value of online analytics tools before subscribing. It might be helpful to request for a demo to see if the data they have on their platform can help you with your analysis.