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Getting Started with TikTok Ads – A Practical Guide for Businesses Starting from Scratch

for beginners

advertising campaigns

performance marketing

social media

TikTok

tiktok ads

Getting Started with TikTok Ads – A Practical Guide for Businesses Starting from Scratch – Photo #1

A hand holding a smartphone with the TikTok app home screen

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Many business owners and marketing managers approach TikTok with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. On the one hand, they see the platform growing and delivering results. On the other, they feel like it's an alien world governed by rules they don't understand. The good news: getting started on TikTok is easier than it seems. This article will walk you through the entire process, step by step.

From account creation to first results

It all starts with TikTok Ads Manager – your campaign management hub. Go to ads.tiktok.com and register as a business. You'll need:

  • company email address
  • company data (name, country, time zone, currency)
  • phone number for verification

(The rest of the article can be found below the form)

Fill out the form and schedule a call with an expert

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Your data is safe. More about personal data protection

The controller of your personal data is Verseo, a limited liability company with its registered office in Poznań, at ul. Węglowa 1/3.

About Verseo

The Company's registered office is located in Poznań. The Company is entered in the Register of Entrepreneurs maintained by the District Court for Poznań – Nowe Miasto and Wilda in Poznań, 8th Commercial Division of the National Court Register, under KRS number: 0000910174, Tax Identification Number (NIP): 7773257986. You can contact us by mail at the address provided above or by email at: ochronadanych@verseo.pl

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After registering, it's a good idea to immediately install the TikTok Pixel—a snippet of code placed on your website. The TikTok Pixel helps measure campaign effectiveness and supports optimization.

TikTok Ads Manager operates on a three-tiered structure. Understanding it early on will save you from many mistakes.

Level 1 – Campaign

At this level, you choose your advertising objective. TikTok offers three groups of objectives:

  • Awareness – building brand recognition, reach
  • Consideration – website traffic, video views, profile views
  • Conversion – website sales, lead generation, TikTok Shop sales, app installations

The choice of objective determines how the algorithm optimizes the campaign. Want sales? Choose conversions. Building awareness? Choose reach. This decision determines the entire logic of the system.

Level 2 – Ad Group – Manual Targeting vs Smart+

This is where you define who sees your ad, how much you spend, and when. TikTok offers two targeting approaches that work very differently:

  • Manual targeting – You define your target audience based on demographic data (age, gender, location), interests, behaviors (e.g., watching videos from a specific category), and your own recipient lists (mailing database, retargeting, lookalikes). This works well when you have a precisely defined customer profile or want to test specific segments.

  • Smart+ (recommended by TikTok) – a campaign type where settings and optimization are focused on results. It simplifies management to a minimum and, in many cases, is an excellent starting point for first steps in TikTok advertising – especially for businesses just starting out and lacking extensive historical data. TikTok actively recommends Smart+ as a starting point for new advertisers.

Level 3 – Advertising

This is the right creative – video, text, headline, and link. TikTok recommends a vertical video format (9:16). We describe in detail how to create effective creative in the third article in this series.

We recommend a budget of 10 times your target CPA (cost per lead acquisition). The logic is simple: campaigns typically need a sufficient number of conversion events to stabilize and improve results over time.

If your target cost per lead is PLN 200, your optimal daily budget is around PLN 2000.

In practice, however, depending on the industry and level of competition, a test budget typically starts at PLN 3000 per month. This is the minimum that, in our experience, provides campaigns with enough data to stabilize and the signal needed to make meaningful optimization decisions.

Important note: The sooner you start testing on TikTok, the more campaign data and creative insights you'll gather—and the stronger your position will be heading into more competitive periods. It's worth starting sooner rather than later.

Lacking your own recording studio isn't an obstacle these days. TikTok offers two free creative tools.

TikTok Creative Center

Available at ads.tiktok.com/business/creativecenter. There you will find:

  • The best-performing ads in your industry and region – literally see what your competitors are doing and which creatives are generating results
  • Audio Trends – What sounds are currently popular and can increase organic reach
  • Effective hooks and narrative structures from specific product categories
  • Ready-made video templates – create a video from photos, text, and music in minutes

TikTok Symphony Creative Studio

An AI-powered tool that lets you create ready-made video creations almost from scratch. Symphony Creative Studio can:

  • Generate a script and storyboard based on the product or service description
  • Automatically assemble a video from your photos
  • Add a voiceover, subtitles, and music tailored to the TikTok format
  • Prepare several creative variants simultaneously for A/B testing

For companies just starting out and without production facilities, Symphony Creative Studio can be the first step towards effective content – ​​without a large investment of time or budget.

TikTok recommends Smart+ campaigns as a starting point for new advertisers, allowing them to focus on what matters most – creative quality and business results.

Our recommended launch campaign structure:

  • Cel: Conversions (sale or lead) – requires Pixel installed and tested
  • Campaign type: Smart +
  • Budget: minimum PLN 80/day, target 10×CPA
  • Creations: prepare 5–7 video variants – different hooks, different messages, different CTAs (Smart+ will choose the best combination)
  • Time: minimum 30 days – campaigns need a full data cycle to optimize effectively
  • CTA: one specific call to action on each creation

Why 30 days? Because campaigns optimize iteratively. Stopping a campaign after a week is like judging an employee after their first day on the job. Give it time – a full month of data will allow you to make informed decisions.

How to Measure Results – Key TikTok Ad Metrics

Knowing what to measure is just as important as knowing how to run a campaign. Here are the metrics we think are worth focusing on:

  • CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) – how much do you pay for user attention
  • Hook Rate – the percentage of people who watched the first 3 seconds of the video. A key indicator of the quality of the creative's opening. Our benchmark: at least 20%. A lower score means the hook doesn't stop scrolling – change the first shot.
  • Watch Through Rate (VTR) – what percentage of people watched the entire video
  • CTR (click-through rate) – what percentage of people clicked on the ad? Our benchmark: 1–2%, although strong creatives achieve much more.
  • CPA (cost per action) – how much you pay per conversion (purchase, lead, install). Your main performance metric in sales campaigns
  • ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) – how much sales revenue each unit of advertising spend generates. A key profitability metric for e-commerce.

The most common mistakes at the start – what to avoid

It takes at least 30 days to collect enough conversion events. Decisions made after a week are based on noise, not data.

Horizontal creatives, static banners, or videos shot "like a classic TV commercial" perform less well on TikTok. They can serve as a starting point, but content natively tailored to the platform's aesthetics tends to align more closely with TikTok's creative best practices.

Smart+ needs testing material. A minimum of 5-7 different videos—different hooks, different CTAs, and different approaches to the topic.

TikTok Pixel helps measure campaign effectiveness and supports optimization.

On TikTok, use sound consciously and make sure your creation feels native to the platform.

Your roadmap to getting started

Entering TikTok is a series of specific steps:

  • Create an account in TikTok Ads Manager and install and test Pixel
  • Define the campaign goal – sales, leads or reach?
  • Browse the TikTok Creative Center to see what's working in your industry
  • Prepare 5–7 variants of video creations in 9:16 format
  • Launch a Smart+ campaign with a minimum budget of PLN 80/day and a 30-day plan
  • Track Hook Rate, CTR, CPA and ROAS – don't jump to conclusions too early
  • Optimize based on data, not intuition

 

Have questions about setting up an account or your first campaign? Verseo specialists have implemented hundreds of TikTok ads. Contact us and let's get started together.

All data and recommendations cited in the article come from Verseo's own experience.

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