- Client
- Confidential
- Industry
- Cosmetics & Skincare
- Market
- Not disclosed
- Timeline
- 1 month
- Services
-
- TikTok Ads
- Paid Social
- Remarketing
- Creative Testing
Project overview
The client is an established cosmetics and skincare brand with an active online presence.
The goal was to develop TikTok as an additional advertising channel that could bring in new customers and generate sales.
We built the campaigns around two parts: reaching new audiences and bringing back people who had already interacted with the brand. Creative testing was also a major part of the setup, with multiple video formats running across different audience groups.
Within one month, revenue from TikTok Ads increased by 317.82%, while advertising spend increased by 30%.
The starting point
The brand wanted to reach new customers outside its existing advertising channels and test whether TikTok could contribute directly to online sales.
The platform offered access to an active audience and a format that suited the brand’s visual products, but generating views or engagement alone was not the objective.
We needed to see whether TikTok could bring people to the website and, more importantly, turn that traffic into purchases.
This meant testing audiences and creatives while keeping the campaigns focused on conversions from the start.
What success had to look like
The objectives were clear:
- bring in new customers through TikTok Ads;
- cover the customer journey from initial interest to purchase;
- increase the number of sales and the revenue generated through the channel;
- improve the return from the advertising budget.
Traffic and engagement were useful indicators, but the main measures of success were sales and revenue.
Approach
We separated the work into customer acquisition and remarketing.
For acquisition, we tested different audience types and several creative variations within each group.
At the same time, we set up remarketing for people who had already visited the website or interacted with the brand.
Once we had enough data, budgets were increased for the groups that were generating better results, while the strongest ads were moved into a separate SMART+ campaign.
What we changed
-
Tested different ways to reach new customers
The campaigns started with a conversion objective and several audience types:
- interests and behaviors;
- Lookalike audiences based on existing customer data;
- thematic hashtags;
- broad targeting.
Running these groups separately allowed us to compare their performance and see where the stronger results were coming from.
-
Ran 5–10 creatives per audience group
Each audience group included between 5 and 10 different creatives.
We tested:
- UGC;
- short product demonstrations;
- native-style product videos.
For a visual category such as skincare and cosmetics, the creative itself has a significant impact on performance. Testing several variations gave us enough data to identify which videos were working better with each audience.
-
Increased budgets on the better-performing groups
We didn’t increase budgets across all campaigns at the same time.
Once we had enough data, more budget was allocated to the audience groups producing better results.
The best-performing ads were also moved into a separate SMART+ campaign with its own budget, allowing us to continue investing in the creatives that had already performed well.
-
Launched a separate remarketing campaign
We also set up remarketing for people who were already familiar with the brand.
The audiences included:
- website visitors;
- users who had engaged with the brand on TikTok;
- social media followers;
- email audiences.
Because these users had already interacted with the brand, the communication focused more directly on the products and the purchase.
This gave us a way to continue the communication with people who had shown interest but had not yet ordered.
Results
-
+317.82%
TikTok Ads Revenue
The most important comparison is between spend and revenue: advertising costs increased by 30%, while revenue attributed to TikTok Ads increased by 317.82%.
-
+259.54%
Sales
Sales increased from 131 to 471.
-
+250.63%
Visits from TikTok Ads
Visits generated through TikTok Ads increased from 6,622 to 23,219.
-
+30%
Advertising Spend
The takeaway
The first month gave us enough data to confirm that TikTok could contribute to sales for the brand, not only traffic and engagement.
The campaigns brought considerably more visitors to the website, but the increase in purchases was even more important: sales grew by 259.54%, from 131 to 471.
At the same time, TikTok Ads revenue increased by 317.82%, compared with a 30% increase in advertising spend.
The next step was therefore not to change the approach completely, but to continue working with the audiences and creatives that had already performed well, test new variations and use the results to decide where additional budget made sense.
