When running tiktok ads, if you are not getting any sale, it can be frustrating.
To better understand why you aren’t getting any sales or very few sales, then it’s important to look into your ads metric.
If your ads metric shows that your ads aren’t performing poorly, you need to analyze the situation, analyze the metrics, test and fix the problem and this is what this Article is going to be about.
So, first thing first, how do you know that your ad metrics are poor?
let’s look at the following Tiktok ads metrics examples;
Ad budget; this is the budget amount you chose for your ads. For example; let’s say you have $50 daily ads.
Ad schedule; this is the day the ads are scheduled to run. For example let’s say your ad is scheduled to run today and is “Ongoing”
Total cost; this is the total cost already spent. For example, let’s say your ads have spent 21.46 USD
Clicks; this is how many times your ad was clicked. So if you have an ad which is aimed at getting people website urls. Clicks is the amount of times your url was clicked. For example, let’s say you had 47 clicks
CPC (cost per click); it’s how much ad budget was spent on each click. So, this is the total cost vs the click. For example, we have a CPC of 0.46 USD
Impressions; is the number of times your ads were seen. For example let’s say we have an impression of 1,918
CPM (cost per thousand impressions); this is the cost of each 1,000 impressions. For example, we have a CPM of 11.19 USD
CTR (click through rate); this is the percentage of clicks that were made given the impressions. CTR is calculated as “clicks/impressio x 100”. For example; we have an impression of 2.45%
Conversions; this is the number of times people took the action your ads are aimed at. if you have selected the goal as “complete payment”, the conversations will be the number times payments were completed on your store. For example, we have a conversion of 0
CPA (cost per action); this is the cost of each action. it is calculated at “Total cost divided by conversion” For example, we have a CPA of 0
CVR (conversion rate); this is the percentage of conversion given the number of impressions. CVR is calculated as conversion/impression x 100. For example, we have a CVR of 0
ATC (Add to cart); ATC is the number of times people added a product to their cart. For example, we have an ATC of 2.
It’s important to know that you won’t have to calculate your metrics manually as Tiktok, would already display your ads metrics in tabular form.
Now, let’s analyze the above metrics to understand why we are having 0 conversations, test and fix it.
The analysis
Before we proceed to analyze the metrics above, it’s important to note that;
The ad graph is always a zigzag and not a straight line. This is to say that there will days with low ad performance but what’s important is your lifetime profitability.
So, if you’ve decided to start running Tiktok ads, it’s possible that the Tiktok algorithm is still trying to figure out the right audience for you and your ads will improve over time. Try being patient for about 2 days and see.
On the other hand, if you’ve been running ads and getting conversion, it could be that this is a bad day and your ads will improve. When running ads there are bad and good days, so look out for patterns and your lifetime profitability.
Now analyzing the metrics;
The most important metric is the CPA. This is because CPA tells you the cost you have to spend on ads before the desired action is met. For example, the cost you spend on ads before you got a purchase.
The CPA metric will inform you about the profitability of your product given the price of the product and how much you had to spend on ads to get the product sold.
Although CPA is not stable and can go up and down. The more purchases you get, the lower your CPA. If you had to spend 100USD to get 1 purchase, your CPA is $100 and if you spent 100 USD and got 10 sales. Your CPA is 10.
As we said earlier, the ad graph is not a straight line but a zig zag. so always take into consideration patterns instead of a single day’s metrics.
looking at the metric example we have where the CPA is 0. The CPA is 0 because there were no conversions.That’s interprets that the algorithm, don’t know how much you will have to spend to get a conversion because you have no conversion.
So why are there no conversions?
We can see that on the example metric we have a daily budget of $50 for an ongoing ad which has already spent 21.46 USD and gotten and impression of 1,918
So, we know that the ads are spending fine. if the ads weren’t spending then we would have to troubleshoot ad spending issues.
Next, Let’s analyze the click through rate. it is often the first first indication to know if you should kill your creative product or change your targeting options.
From the example metric above, we have a CTR 2.45%. Is that a good CTR?
What is a good CTR will differ depending on your niche. Some categories of products may have a higher CTR than others.
Average CTR may also vary for seasonal products. For example greetings cards will have a higher CTR during the Chrismass holiday than in April.
However, generally, a CTR of above 2% is considered good. A CTR of 5% is considered amazing.
In the ads metric example above, we have a CTR of 2.46% which is good.
If our CTR was poor, for example 0.5%, we would need to adjust our ads, test our adjustment by letting the ad run for at least 1 day and see if we have an improved CTR.
We can adjust our targeting options, we can duplicate and re-launch Campaign to see if that improves our CTR. This is called the daily new campaign scaling strategy and is generally effective.
We can also change our ad creative, let the new ad creative run for at least 1 day and see if that increases our CTR.
We can change our ad targeting options, let the ad run for at least 1 day and see if that increases our CTR.
Finally we can change our product, let’s the ad run for some days and see if that increases our CTR.
warning! changing the product may re-start the tiktok learning phase and may require you to make a redesign of your ecommerce store, landing page or url. So, this should be the last adjustment to test out (if all else to increase CTR fails).
Also, there is no need to adjust and test for an increase in CTR if you have a low CTR, for example; 0.5% and still profitable.
In the example metrics above, We have a good CTR of 2.45% with no conversions. Why are there no conversions?
We try to figure this out by analyzing the demographics of the audience visiting our site and if there are any “Add to carts” on our store.
Even though we haven’t provided an example demographic, the idea is to see what demographics of persons are visiting your store.
If you understand your product and your ideal customer’s demographics and the majority of people visiting your store do not fall within that demographic then it could be that you are having bot traffic and need to fix that or Tiktok algorithm is still trying to work out the right audience for you and you have to be patient with it.
For example, if you’re selling makeup kits, the ideal customer profile will be young and middle aged women but if you notice that the demographics of people visiting your store are men aged 60 years and above, then it’s likely that tiktok is still trying to figure out the right audience and you have to be patient with it.
For example, let’s say a store that sells makeup kits and uses beautiful young female models for their ad creatives.
Demographic of me 60 years and above may just be watching the video because they are fascinated by these models.
Chances are they click the links but they do not purchase as they have no intention to buy makeup kits. Although, we find this is more common with Facebook ads.
Over time the algorithm learns that they are not the right audience to bring conversions for your store and makes an audience shift.
Tiktok algorithm is continuously learning to deliver your optimization goals.
Are there “Add carts”?
If there are Ads to carts, that’s a good sign that your ads are working for you. In the example metric above, we have 2 add to cart yet 0 conversions.
To troubleshoot this; Check if the checkout is working. You can do a small text payment to see if everything is working.
You can check if you have any failed payment on your payment processor dashboard. For example if you use Stripe, you can check here.
Also, check if your products are in-stock? if your products are out of stock, people will not be able to complete their purchase.
Optimize your checkout page, make sure you don’t have any hidden fees like high shipping price and tax rate that people see for the first time at checkout, since that may cause them to change their mind.
Also ensure you have different payment options and not only the card payment option. You want to have other trustworthy payments options like Paypal, Stripe, Apple pay or google pay.
If your product price is high, you can should consider Buy now, Pay later options like Klarna, After pay or Payl8r.
Another reason can be your ad account is wack. In rare cases and especially if you’ve used your ad account to text multiple products from different niches, your ad account can be at a place where it’s confuse about who you’re ideal customers are and the easiest way to spot this is that you’ll just keep getting bad metrics over and over for each campaign. To fix this, create a new ad account.
Finally patience, if you have fixed everything and you are now getting good metrics, ATCs but no conversion yet, be patient.
There are other reasons that people may not buy that are beyond your control, for example they simply just decided to change their minds about making that purchase because of their own financial priorities or other reasons.
So, be patient. the conversions will come.
