TikTok is a discovery channel that creates demand, not an intent channel that captures it like Google
Your first 3 seconds must work without sound, if it does not hook visually, the viewer is already gone
Start with $12-15 per day for 14-17 days before making any scaling decisions
Spark Ads that boost organic content outperform brand-only ads because viewers see real engagement
The real power of TikTok is feeding warm audiences to Meta retargeting, not converting cold traffic directly
You have probably heard someone say TikTok is only for Gen Z. That person is losing money.
TikTok reports more than 1 billion monthly active users on its newsroom and policy pages, with industry trackers like Statista placing the global figure higher. A meaningful slice of them are in Singapore, and they are not just watching dances. They are discovering products, comparing options, and making purchase decisions, often before they ever open Google.
Singapore businesses that treat TikTok like a younger Instagram are wasting every dollar they spend on it. The platform works on completely different logic. Once you understand that logic, the economics become surprisingly attractive.
This guide covers everything: campaign setup, the creative formula that actually converts, targeting beyond basic interests, and the budget strategy that gives you real data without burning your runway. By the end, you will know whether TikTok belongs in your channel mix and exactly how to set it up if it does.
TikTok Is Not Instagram
Instagram is a follower-first platform. Your content reaches the people who chose to follow you. Growth comes from building an audience over time. Organic reach to strangers is limited unless you pay to boost.
TikTok is algorithm-first. Content gets shown to strangers based on engagement signals, not follower counts. A brand-new account with zero followers can publish a video today and reach a meaningful audience overnight if the algorithm decides it is resonating, something I have personally watched happen on Singapore client accounts. That is not a fluke. That is how the platform is designed.
Tyler Ang
Digital Marketing Consultant
After consulting with 255+ businesses, Tyler discovered most do not need more traffic. They need someone to look at their business properly first. He built sportifate.com to 6,800+ organic users with zero ad spend, proving the research-first system works.
Every month you run ads, post content, or pay for SEO without knowing what is actually working is another month of budget leaking, and in one conversation I can pull up your Google Ads, Search Console, and Analytics to show you exactly where the hole is and which underutilised areas deserve your attention first.
What you get from a 30-minute strategy call:
Full Platform Audit
A full breakdown of your current numbers across Google Ads, Meta, Search Console, and Analytics, showing where your money is going, what it is returning, and which underutilised areas could produce results faster
Biggest Constraint
The single biggest constraint holding your business back right now, identified from your actual platform data rather than guesswork
This changes the economics of cold reach dramatically. On Instagram, cold reach is expensive because you are essentially renting attention from a platform that tightly controls distribution. On TikTok, cold reach is cheap because the algorithm actively wants to show new content to new audiences, that is what keeps users scrolling.
But this cuts both ways. Because TikTok users are in discovery mode, not intent mode, the conversion path is longer than Google. Someone searching "buy gym shoes Singapore" on Google is ready to buy. Someone scrolling TikTok and stumbling on your shoe brand is just becoming aware of you. Those are very different moments, and they require very different strategies.
The businesses that fail on TikTok treat it like a direct-response channel and wonder why their ROAS is terrible. The ones that succeed use it as an awareness engine that feeds a broader multi-channel funnel.
The Cross-Channel Flywheel
TikTok rarely converts cold traffic profitably on its own. That is not a bug, it is the design. Its job in a well-built marketing stack is to create awareness, not close sales.
Here is the customer journey that makes TikTok worthwhile for Singapore businesses:
A potential buyer scrolls TikTok and sees your ad or organic video. They watch it, maybe follow your account, but do not buy.
A few days later, they search your brand name or product category on Google. Awareness has become consideration.
Google Shopping or your search ads capture that intent and drive a click to your site.
They browse but do not convert. Your Meta Pixel (Meta's on-site conversion tracking tag) fires and tags them as a warm audience.
Your Meta retargeting (re-showing ads to people who already engaged) campaign shows them a product ad on Instagram or Facebook. They convert.
TikTok is step one of a five-step journey. Measuring its success by step-one conversion rates is like judging a dating app by how many couples got married on the first date.
The practical implication: run TikTok alongside Google Ads and Meta, not instead of them. Read the Meta Ads guide to understand how retargeting works once TikTok has warmed up your audience. And if you are not already running Google Ads management, that needs to be in place before TikTok makes sense.
Chase Chappell walks through his complete process for creating high-converting TikTok ad creatives, from hook structures to visual formats that drive results
TikTok Ad Benchmarks
Before you run a single dollar of TikTok ads, you need a baseline. These are industry benchmarks, not guarantees. Your numbers will vary based on creative quality, audience fit, and offer strength. Use these as a calibration tool, not a promise.
Quick acronym key for the table below. CTR (Click-Through Rate): clicks divided by impressions. CPC (Cost Per Click): how much you pay each time someone clicks the ad. CVR (Conversion Rate): the share of clicks that turn into a defined goal action. CPM (Cost Per Mille): cost per thousand impressions. ROAS (Return On Ad Spend): revenue generated for every dollar of ad spend.
TikTok ad benchmarks vs other platforms (directional ranges I use when reviewing Singapore client accounts, cross-referenced against TikTok for Business Help Center benchmark posts and WordStream cross-platform ad benchmarks; not guaranteed numbers).
Metric
TikTok Ads
Google Shopping
Meta Retargeting
What to Aim For
Conversion Rate (CVR)
0.46% avg
1.91% avg
>1.2% avg
>0.5% pass, >1% strong
Cost Per Click (CPC)
<$1.50 SGD
$2-$15 SGD
$0.80-$2 SGD
Under $1.50 is healthy on TikTok
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
>1.5% target
N/A (impressions-based)
>1% target
Above 1.5% means your hook is working
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
>2.0x target
>3.0x target
>2.5x target
2x is minimum viable, 3x+ is scaling territory
Role in funnel
Top of funnel: awareness
Bottom of funnel: intent capture
Mid-to-bottom: retargeting
Each channel has a different job
The key insight in this table: TikTok has the lowest CVR of the three channels. That is not a weakness. It reflects where in the funnel it operates. When you evaluate TikTok performance, look at downstream impact on Google and Meta conversions, not TikTok CVR in isolation.
Campaign Setup Guide
Most "how to run TikTok ads" content jumps straight to creative. That is backwards. Before you produce a single video, the technical foundation needs to be in place or your data will be garbage and your campaigns will underperform.
Step 1: TikTok Business Center. Create your Business Center account at business.tiktok.com. This is the top-level container for your ad accounts, pixels, and assets. If you are an agency managing clients, this is also where you connect client accounts without sharing passwords.
Step 2: TikTok Pixel installation. The TikTok Pixel is a small JavaScript snippet that tracks visitor actions on your site and feeds them back to the ad platform. You have two options: manual installation (paste the base code into your site header and configure events in TikTok Events Manager) or the Shopify partner integration (if you are on Shopify, this is a one-click setup that handles standard events automatically). Always verify installation with the TikTok Pixel Helper Chrome extension before running a single dollar of spend.
Step 3: Events setup. Configure ViewContent, AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, and Purchase events at minimum. Without these, your campaign optimization has nothing to learn from. The algorithm optimizes for events you tell it to care about. If you only fire a page view event, it will send you traffic, not buyers.
Step 4: Catalog connection (for e-commerce). Connect your product catalog to TikTok Ads Manager. This enables dynamic product ads where TikTok automatically pulls product images, names, and prices from your feed. It is also required for catalog-based retargeting (showing viewers the exact product they browsed).
Step 5: Comment filters. Set up negative keyword filters in your ad settings before your ads go live. TikTok comment sections can include competitor mentions, scam accusations, and irrelevant noise. Filtering these out protects your brand and keeps your comment section clean for social proof.
For businesses running cross-channel campaigns, make sure your social media management approach accounts for TikTok as a content channel, not just an ad platform. Organic presence strengthens paid performance.
The 3-Second Hook Formula
This is where most businesses bleed money. They produce polished, branded video ads that look great and perform terribly. TikTok is not a television channel. Users are not watching ads. They are scrolling at 1.5x speed with their thumb ready to flick past anything that feels like an interruption.
Your first 3 seconds must work without sound. Most TikTok users scroll with their phone on silent. If your hook depends on a voiceover to communicate its value, you have already lost the majority of your potential audience. Text overlays, visual demonstrations, and pattern-interrupt imagery must do the heavy lifting.
The video structure that works: Hook (3 seconds) leads into Transformation or Value (the middle 15-20 seconds) leads into CTA (Call To Action, final 3-5 seconds). Every second of the middle section must justify why the viewer should stay. Open a loop in the hook, close it at the end.
Here are 8 creative angles with brief direction for each. Test 3 of these simultaneously on launch:
1. POV Discovery. "POV: you just found out [brand/product] exists." Text overlay, authentic reaction energy. Works for discovery products that solve problems people did not know they had.
2. Value Stacking. Open with price anchoring ("This used to cost $X") then reveal your offer. Works for products where price is a major barrier.
3. Honest Comparison. "I tested [competitor] vs [your product] so you do not have to." Side-by-side. No branded production. Authenticity is the hook.
4. Aspirational. Show the life the product enables, not the product itself. Begin with the outcome, reveal the product as the vehicle.
5. Tutorial. "3 things I wish I knew before [pain point relevant to your product]." Educational hook, product reveal at the end as the solution. High watch-through rate.
6. Transformation. Before state, then after state, then product as the bridge. Classic structure. Still works because the emotional payoff is strong.
7. Gifting. "Things I would buy my [person] if money was no object." Positions your product as aspirational, avoids hard-sell energy.
8. GRWM (Get Ready With Me). Native TikTok format. Product integrated naturally into a routine. Works for beauty, fashion, wellness, and lifestyle brands.
Spark Ads vs Regular Ads
There are two ways to run ads on TikTok. Understanding the difference will change how you think about your organic content strategy.
Regular ads (non-Spark) are created in Ads Manager and delivered as standalone ad units. Viewers can see they are ads. They have no social proof from organic engagement because they exist only as paid placements. They perform fine, but they carry the unmistakable energy of an ad.
Spark Ads boost existing organic content, either from your own account or from a creator who has authorized you. The post appears in the feed exactly as it does organically, including real likes, comments, and shares. When a viewer sees 847 likes and 62 comments, they see social proof. That social proof changes the psychology of the interaction.
In my experience running creative tests for Singapore DTC accounts, Spark Ads tend to outperform brand-only non-Spark ads on engagement rate and CTR. The reason is simple: viewers can feel the difference between a polished corporate ad and content that real people have already responded to.
To use a creator's content as a Spark Ad, the creator grants you access through TikTok's authorization flow. You get a code from them, enter it in Ads Manager, and their post becomes boostable. You keep the views and engagement on their account, not yours, which is why creators are often willing to authorize this: it builds their own metrics.
For DTC brands, the Spark Ads strategy is: seed product to 3-5 micro-creators (10K-100K followers in your niche), let them post organic content, identify which posts get strong organic engagement, then boost the best performers as Spark Ads. You are combining authentic creator content with paid distribution. That combination is difficult to beat.
Advanced Targeting Strategy
Most TikTok ad tutorials tell you to pick interest categories and call it done. That approach works at the most basic level, but it leaves significant efficiency on the table. Here is a more layered targeting approach.
Interest targeting with adjacent luxury brands. Go beyond your direct category. If you sell premium skincare, target not just "beauty" but also "luxury travel," "premium dining," and "premium fashion." You are targeting a mindset, not just a product preference. People who buy expensive things in one category often buy expensive things in adjacent ones.
Hashtag targeting. This is native to TikTok and unavailable on Meta or Google. You can target users who have engaged with specific hashtags. For a Singapore fitness brand, targeting #sgfitness, #singaporegym, and #sghealthyeating puts you in front of people who have already demonstrated interest in your category through their own behavior. This is behavioral targeting, not demographic targeting.
Mix stacking. Layer interests, behaviors, and hashtag targeting in a single ad group. A tighter, more qualified audience often outperforms a broad one on TikTok, contrary to what Meta's algorithm usually prefers. Test narrow stacks against broader interest-only targeting and let the data decide.
Retargeting: profile views, video engagements, and site visitors. Anyone who watched more than 50% of your organic or paid TikTok video, visited your profile, or landed on your site via TikTok is now a warm audience. Create a separate retargeting ad group for these people with a different creative angle, typically one that pushes toward a decision rather than building awareness.
Competitor retargeting. You can target users who have engaged with competitor accounts or competitor hashtags. This requires some research to identify which creators and hashtags your competitors' customers follow, but the audience quality is high because you are reaching people who have already expressed interest in your category.
For a broader look at how channel targeting fits into a full strategy, the SEO vs SEM guide explains how paid and organic channels divide intent across the funnel.
Budget Strategy for Beginners
The most common mistake is running TikTok ads for 5 days, seeing low ROAS, and concluding the platform does not work. The algorithm needs time to learn. Your creative needs time to gather data. And the downstream impact on other channels needs time to show up in your attribution.
Start with a modest daily budget for at least two weeks. The TikTok algorithm needs sustained spend and a learning window before performance stabilises, and TikTok's own Ads Manager guidance recommends a minimum daily budget per campaign. Cutting campaigns inside the first fortnight usually means making decisions on incomplete data.
For a typical Singapore business running a 3-week multi-channel test with a $700 total budget, here is how we would allocate it:
Suggested 3-week multi-channel budget allocation for a Singapore business testing TikTok ads ($700 total)
Channel
Budget
Role
Measurement
TikTok Ads
$200-250
Awareness: feed warm audiences to other channels
Branded search lift, downstream conversions
Google Ads
$250-300
Intent capture: catch the demand TikTok creates
ROAS, CPL, CVR on branded + category terms
Meta Retargeting
$150-200
Convert warm audiences from TikTok + Google
ROAS on retargeting audiences, frequency
Contingency
$50-100
Scale what works after day 7 check-in
Move to highest-performing channel
Scale trigger: positive ROAS after 7 days. If TikTok ROAS is above 2x by day 7, you have a signal worth scaling. Increase budget by 20-30% (not 100%, which resets the learning phase). If ROAS is below 1x, do not kill it yet. Check whether branded search volume on Google has increased. That lift tells you TikTok is working even if direct attribution is weak.
Kill losing creatives after 7 days, not losing campaigns. At the ad level, if a creative has under 0.5% CTR after 500 impressions, replace it. At the campaign level, give it the full 14 days before making structural decisions. Creative fatigue and campaign learning are different problems with different timelines.
Content Pipeline for TikTok
Creative fatigue is TikTok's silent campaign killer. An ad that performs brilliantly in week one will often underperform by week three as the algorithm exhausts its most receptive audience segments. This is not a failure. It is a feature of how the platform works. The response is a content pipeline, not a single killer ad.
Launch with 3-5 short videos simultaneously. Keep each between 15-30 seconds. Test 3 creative angles at the same time so you are gathering comparative data from day one rather than running a single ad and hoping it works.
Plan for creative refresh every 2-3 weeks. Set a calendar reminder. When your CTR drops below 1% or your CPM starts climbing (the algorithm working harder to find fresh audiences), it is time for new creative, not a new campaign structure.
Source UGC (User-Generated Content) from micro-creators for authenticity. UGC from creators with 5,000-50,000 followers in your niche tends to outperform polished brand content on TikTok. The rough edges and authentic framing are features. Brief creators with clear outcome direction (what the video should communicate) rather than strict script control (how they should say it).
For context on how organic social content strategy connects to paid ad performance, the
Our social media management approach treats organic and paid content as a single pipeline, not two separate tracks. The organic posts that generate real engagement become the Spark Ads that drive efficient paid distribution.
When to Scale vs Kill
Scaling decisions should be rule-based, not emotional. Here is the framework we use when evaluating whether to increase budget, hold steady, or cut a campaign.
TikTok ROAS >2x AND Google ROAS >2x: scale both. Both channels are working. TikTok is creating demand and Google is capturing it. Increase budget on both by 20-30% and monitor for the next 7 days.
TikTok ROAS >2x but Google ROAS <2x: question viability. TikTok appears to be converting directly (unusual for cold traffic), but Google is not picking up downstream demand. This can indicate an impulse product where the purchase decision happens immediately on the platform. Evaluate whether the business model supports impulse purchase economics at scale.
TikTok ROAS <1.5x AND Google ROAS <1.5x: test different positioning. The offer or the creative is not resonating. Before killing the campaign, change one variable: test a different hook, a different offer angle, or a different audience segment. Give the new creative 7 days. If it still underperforms, the problem is likely the offer itself, not the execution.
ROAS passes on 2+ channels: scale budget and expand. When multiple channels are working simultaneously, you have product-market fit at the channel level. This is the moment to increase total budget, test new audiences, and consider adding a fourth channel (YouTube, Pinterest, or programmatic).
TikTok ad scaling decision framework based on cross-channel ROAS signals
Scenario
TikTok ROAS
Google ROAS
Action
Both channels working
>2x
>2x
Scale both by 20-30%, monitor weekly
TikTok strong, Google weak
>2x
<2x
Check for impulse product signal, evaluate offer economics
TikTok weak, Google strong
<1.5x
>2x
Shift TikTok budget to Google, refresh TikTok creative before retesting
Both underperforming
<1.5x
<1.5x
Test new creative angle and offer, not new campaign structure
Multi-channel pass
>2x
>2x (+ Meta >2x)
Aggressively scale, expand to new audiences and channels
For a broader view of how paid channel decisions connect to your organic strategy, our case studies show how multi-channel campaigns are structured in practice for Singapore businesses across different industries.
TikTok as Awareness Engine
Every business that has tried TikTok ads and declared it a failure made the same mistake: they evaluated it as a standalone channel instead of as the first stage of a multi-channel funnel.
When it is set up correctly, TikTok does something that Google and Meta cannot do as efficiently: it introduces your brand to people who did not know they needed you. It creates demand. It warms audiences. It feeds branded search. And it builds a retargeting pool that makes your Meta campaigns dramatically more efficient.
Start with the technical foundation: pixel, events, catalog, comment filters, all before creative production.
Build your hook first, not your production value. Three seconds without sound must communicate your entire value proposition.
Use Spark Ads from creator content to borrow social proof instead of building it from scratch.
Stack targeting layers: interests, hashtags, behaviors, and retargeting audiences in a single strategy.
Run TikTok for at least two weeks at a steady daily budget before making any scaling or kill decisions.
Evaluate success by looking at branded search lift and downstream Meta conversions, not just TikTok ROAS alone.
TikTok is not a standalone channel. It is the awareness engine in a multi-channel strategy. The businesses winning on TikTok are not the ones with the best creative. They are the ones who built the right funnel around it.
For businesses where customers actively search for solutions, Google Ads captures that intent directly. TikTok creates awareness, Google captures demand. The two channels complement each other.
If you want help building a TikTok campaign that connects properly to your Google and Meta strategy, book a free consultation. We will look at your current channel mix, your creative assets, and your attribution setup, and tell you whether TikTok makes sense for your business right now and exactly how to structure it if it does. You can also read more about SEO services and how organic search fits alongside your paid channel strategy for long-term compounding growth.
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