Graphed LogoGraphed
Login

How to Set Up a TikTok Ad Campaign

Cody Schneider•

Thinking about running TikTok ads but not sure where to start? You're in the right place. This guide will walk you through the entire process step-by-step, from setting up your campaign and defining your audience to creating the ad and hitting publish. We’ll cover everything you need to know to launch a successful TikTok ad campaign without the guesswork.

Before You Start: Getting Your House in Order

Jumping directly into TikTok Ads Manager is tempting, but a little prep work will make the whole process much smoother. Before you create your first campaign, make sure you have these three things sorted out.

1. Create a TikTok for Business Account

You can't run ads without an ad account. If you don't have a TikTok for Business account yet, head over to the TikTok for Business website and sign up. This will give you access to the Ads Manager, the central hub for all your advertising activities on the platform.

2. Install the TikTok Pixel

The TikTok Pixel is a small snippet of code you place on your website. This is not just a nice-to-have, it's essential for any serious advertiser. The Pixel allows TikTok to track actions people take on your site after seeing your ad, like making a purchase, filling out a form, or adding an item to their cart. This data is critical for understanding what’s working, optimizing your campaigns, and enabling a powerful targeting feature called retargeting.

You can find the setup instructions for the Pixel inside the TikTok Ads Manager under "Assets" > "Events." Platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce have direct integrations that make this process much easier.

3. Prepare Your Creative

On TikTok, your ad creative is everything. You can have the most dialed-in targeting in the world, but if your video doesn't capture attention, your campaign will fall flat. Unlike the polished, high-production ads you might see on other platforms, the best-performing TikTok ads often feel native to the platform. They look and feel like regular TikTok content.

  • Keep it Vertical: Always shoot and edit in a 9:16 aspect ratio (1080x1920 pixels).

  • Grab Attention Fast: You have about three seconds to hook a viewer. Open with a strong statement, an interesting visual, or a question.

  • Use Sound: Sound is essential on TikTok. Use trending audio, compelling voiceovers, or background music to make your ad more engaging.

  • Be Authentic: Don't be afraid to use a smartphone to shoot your ads. User-generated content (UGC) style often outperforms slick, professional videos because it builds trust and feels more genuine.

Have at least two or three video variations ready before you start building your campaign so you have something to test.

Step 1: Creating Your First Campaign in TikTok Ads Manager

With your prep work done, it's time to log in to the TikTok Ads Manager and build your campaign. The structure in TikTok is simple: Campaigns > Ad Groups > Ads. A campaign holds your overall objective, ad groups contain your targeting and budget settings, and ads are the actual creatives customers see.

Click the big blue "Create" button on the Campaigns dashboard to get started.

Choosing Your Campaign Objective

The first thing TikTok will ask is, "What's your goal?" Your campaign objective tells TikTok's algorithm what you want to achieve. This is a crucial step because it determines how TikTok will optimize and deliver your ads.

The objectives are organized into three categories:

  • Awareness: The goal here is "Reach." Choose this if you want to get your ad in front of the maximum number of people possible for the lowest cost. It’s ideal for brand building or big announcements, not for driving direct sales.

  • Consideration: This group focuses on getting users to interact with your brand.

    • Traffic: Send people to your website or a landing page.

    • Video Views: Get more people to watch your video ad.

    • Lead Generation: Collect emails or other contact information directly on TikTok using an instant form.

    • Community Interaction: Drive more followers and profile visits for your TikTok account.

  • Conversion: This is for driving specific actions.

    • App Promotion: Get people to install or take action in your app.

    • Website Conversions: This is the most common objective for e-commerce and B2B businesses. Choose this if your goal is to get sales, sign-ups, or form submissions on your website. You must have the TikTok Pixel installed for this option to work correctly.

For most businesses looking for a direct return on ad spend, Website Conversions is the right choice. Select your objective and give your campaign a descriptive name you’ll easily recognize later.

Step 2: Defining Your Ad Group

Think of the ad group as the "who, where, and how much" of your campaign. This section is where you define who you want to see your ad, where it will appear, and how much you're willing to spend.

Placement and Ad Type

For placements, you can usually leave "Automatic Placement" selected. This allows TikTok to show your ad across its family of apps where it's likely to perform best. Under "Creative Type," you’ll see an option for "Automated Creative Optimization." For your first campaign, it’s best to keep this toggled off so you have full control.

Setting Your Target Audience

This is where you tell TikTok exactly who you want to reach. You can start broad or get incredibly specific. Here’s a breakdown of the powerful options available:

Demographics

These are the basics. You can narrow your audience by:

  • Location: Target users by country, state/province, and sometimes even DMA (Designated Market Area).

  • Age: Break down audiences into buckets like 18-24, 25-34, etc.

  • Gender: Choose between male, female, or all.

  • Languages: Target people based on their device’s language settings.

Interests & Behaviors

This is where TikTok's targeting really shines. You can layer on interests and behaviors to find your ideal customer.

  • Interest Targeting: This targets users based on long-term interests they’ve shown by interacting with certain types of content. For example, you can target people interested in "Skincare," "Hiking," or "Coffee."

  • Behavior Targeting: This targets people based on their recent actions within the TikTok app over the last 7 or 15 days. You can target people who have watched videos to the end, liked, commented on, or shared videos in a specific category. This is incredibly powerful because it finds people who are actively engaged with content like yours right now.

Let’s say you sell eco-friendly cleaning supplies. You could target users who have recently watched videos about "Home Organization" or shared content from the "Environment" category.

Custom & Lookalike Audiences

Once your Pixel has gathered enough data, you can create even more powerful audiences:

  • Custom Audiences: You can create audiences of people who have already interacted with your business, such as website visitors, past purchasers, or people on your email list. This is perfect for retargeting campaigns.

  • Lookalike Audiences: TikTok can analyze your existing custom audiences (like a list of your best customers) and create a brand new, much larger audience of people who share similar characteristics. This is a game-changer for finding new customers at scale.

Budget and Schedule

Here you set how much you're willing to pay. You have two options for your budget:

  • Daily Budget: The maximum amount you’ll spend per day. This is recommended when you're starting out, as it gives you easy control. Start with a budget you're comfortable with, like $20 or $50 per day.

  • Lifetime Budget: The total amount you'll spend for the entire duration of the campaign. This is better for campaigns with strict end dates.

You can also set a start and end date for your ad group or let it run continuously until you turn it off.

Bidding and Optimization

Your optimization goal should automatically align with your campaign objective (e.g., Conversions). For the bid strategy, "Lowest Cost" is the standard option. This tells TikTok to get you the most results possible for your budget. While other bid strategies exist, Lowest Cost is the simplest place to start.

Step 3: Creating Your Ad

You're almost there! This final section is where you upload your video and write the ad copy that will appear alongside it.

First, give your ad a name. Then, choose your ad format, which is almost always a single video.

Uploading Your Video & Ad Details

Upload the video creative you prepared earlier. TikTok will show you a preview of how it will look. You can choose a thumbnail for the video or upload a custom one.

Next comes your ad copy, or as TikTok calls it, the "Text."

  • Text: This is the caption that appears over your video. Keep it short, engaging, and clear. You can use relevant hashtags here. The text should complement the video, not repeat everything it says. Pose a question or highlight a key benefit.

  • Call-to-Action (CTA): This is the clickable button that encourages a user to take action. Choose one from the pre-populated list like "Shop Now," "Sign Up," "Learn More," or "Contact Us." Be sure it matches the action you want users to take.

  • Destination Page: Paste in the URL of the website or landing page you want to send people to when they click your ad. Double-check this link to make sure it works!

Step 4: Review and Launch

Give everything a final look-over. Check your campaign objective, audience targeting, budget, and especially your ad creative and destination URL for any typos or mistakes. Once you're confident everything is set up correctly, hit the "Submit" button.

Your ad will go into a short review process with TikTok. After it’s approved (this usually happens within a few hours), it will start delivering. Congratulations, your first TikTok ad campaign is live!

Final Thoughts

Launching your first TikTok ad campaign is a big step, but it's just the beginning. The key to long-term success lies in monitoring your results, understanding what metrics matter, and continuously testing new creatives and audiences to see what resonates most.

One of the biggest challenges advertisers face is connecting the dots between ad spend on one platform and real business outcomes on another. After all, figuring out if that spike in TikTok engagement actually led to a bump in Shopify sales used to mean hours of messing with spreadsheets. That's why we built Graphed. By connecting all your data sources in one place, you can ask simple questions in plain English - like "Compare my Facebook vs. TikTok ad spend and revenue last week" - and get a real-time answer instantly. We help you skip the manual reports so you can focus on making better decisions, faster.