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Agency Foundations

  • Published: Jun 3, 2024
  • Duration 20m
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Outline

Looking to set yourself and your clients up for success on TikTok?

This course will help you get started, as well as point you toward additional valuable resources to ensure strong TikTok strategy and tactics.

Setting up your Business Center

You're busy. We're here to help.

The TikTok Agency Business Center is an all-in-one hub that helps you track performance, manage your clients' payments, and collaborate with your team to reach your TikTok goals. Through a centralized hub, Agency Business Center helps you to manage access to all your clients' assets and data.

The Agency Business Center allows you to control...

  • Account Management: Grant and adjust users' access to data and assets.

  • Creative Strategy: Create, access, and share to build diverse campaigns across ad accounts.

  • Media & Analytics: Review ad performance and insights across your campaigns and tactics.

  • Finance: View, top up, and pay balances in ad accounts you own.

And the Agency Business Center makes collaborating easy.

You can customize your Agency Business Center to reflect how your team interacts with one another and with external partners in real life.

Invite teams and assign tasks with flexible roles and permissions to help you create together.

Here's how your team can get started.

1) Create Your Agency Business Center

  • Visit business.tiktok.com or click the "briefcase" icon in TikTok Ads Manager (TTAM) to get started.
  • If your client already has a TikTok Ad Account, we'll show you how to connect it to your Agency Business Center a little later in the course. Invite Members & Partners

2) Invite Members & Partners

Think of your Agency Business Center as a virtual organization - joining is the first step.

  • Invite members to Agency Business Center and assign their access (Admin vs. Standard) to assets.
  • Only an admin can invite new members and add assets.

Admin members have full control over your Agency Business Center, and can manage all activities including members, assets, and settings, while Standard members will only be able to see and edit the assets to which they're assigned.

See an overview of Admin vs. Standard roles below.

Finance Managers vs. Finance Analysts

Within Business Manager, there are advanced roles, including Finance Manager and Finance Analyst. This optional level of permission exists on top of the basic Admin and Standard roles and gives members of your Agency Business Center the ability to view and/or manage the finances of your Agency Business Center and the ad accounts it manages. An overview of the Finance Manager vs. Finance Analyst role can be found below.

Members & Partners

The Partner feature helps agencies improve collaboration by sharing assets with one another in bulk. Sample scenarios include:

  • You are an agency working with a brand or an advertiser.
  • You are an agency and want to collaborate with a partner agency or subsidiary.

In the example at left, Tom, the BC1 admin, would invite his colleagues Amy and Mia into his Agency Business Center as members. He would also invite BC2 as a partner so BC1 and BC2 can work together.

3) Create & Share Assets

The Agency Business Center allows you to easily consolidate and manage all of your clients' TikTok activities in one place.

What are assets?

Assets are elements that brands and agencies use to enable and expand their activities (i.e. ad campaigns) on TikTok. Assets can be shared with Agency Business Center members or partners, and some can be connected to the other assets within your Agency Business Center.

For example, you can connect organic TikTok accounts with your ad accounts to seamlessly generate Spark Ads at scale via your Agency Business Center (more on those later).

Ad Accounts

Ad Accounts are a special type of asset that allow you to assign specific roles for your Agency Business Center (BC) members to ensure your teammates only have the permissions they need. There are two ways for you to centralize your client's ad account management (these can be done by a BC Admin):

  • Creating an Ad Account
  • Requesting Access to an Existing Ad Account

Clients can choose to close an Ad Account created from BC when there is no active campaign, or unpaid spending.

When your clients are new to our ecosystem and are ready to start advertising on TikTok, you can create their account in the three easy steps below.

  1. Click "Create Ad Account."

  2. Fill in the ad account registration info as requested, and click "Next."

  3. Add your business information as requested, and click "Submit" to finish.

Request Access to Ad Account(s)

If your client already has a TikTok Ad Account that you'll be managing on their behalf, you can request access to that account (or accounts) and assign it to your team via the process below.

  1. Click "Request Access."

  2. Paste in the Ad Account ID and select the access users would like to request for their Business Centers. You can also choose to send an email notification to the Ad Account owner asking for approval.

  3. Once the request is sent, ask your client / the account admin to accept the request in Ads Manager. If your clients are also the admin of the Ad Account, the request will be automatically approved.

You will need to acquire the Ad Account ID to request to link it to your Agency Business Center. You will also be prompted to select Admin, Operator, or Analyst to access the Ad Account.

We recommend requesting Admin access (the highest level) to the Ad Account. See below for a map of assets you can manage, and how they can be used in the Agency Business Center.

4) Set Up Payment & Billing

When it comes to payments and billings, there are two major considerations: Billing Options, which dictate how and when you will pay; and Payment Methods, which deal with your financing methods.

1. Automatic Payments: Auto Pay charges your credit or debit card when your account reaches your billing threshold or bill date, whichever comes first. Threshold refers to the amount of costs that trigger your auto-payments; bill date is each Sunday for self-service advertisers, or the first of the month for managed service.

Key benefits include:

  • No need to top up account balances manually.
  • Keeps campaigns running without worries around insufficient balance pauses.
  • Automatically pay for costs after they accrue/ads run

2. Manual Payments: With manual payments, your ads run and accrue costs thanks to an up-front investment that creates a credit. When this credit is used up, your ads stop running.

Key benefits include:

  • Pay whatever amount or top up whenever you like, or as your budgets evolve.
  • Make payments whenever is convenient for you
  • Access without limitation - if there are issues with your automatic payments, you can use manual payments.

3. Monthly Invoicing: With monthly invoicing, TikTok for Business provides you with a credit line for your advertising costs; you're charged for the amount you spent the previous month.

Key benefits include:

  • Time to pay - invoices are due 30 days after they're issued.
  • Reduced transactions - consolidating your ad account charges into one monthly bill saves time and effort.
  • Billing groups allow you to consolidate costs for multiple ad accounts into a single invoice.

Payment Methods

While available payment methods vary based on your country, currency, and billing options, you can pay with:

  • Credit or Debit, such as Visa or Mastercard
  • Net Banking / Bank Transfers
  • PayPal
  • Offline Checks

Find out more about supported payment methods for your region here.

5)  Review & Optimize Strategies

Improve your campaign planning and execution by accessing business-level insights and ad performance reports across different accounts via your Overview page.

Read on to discover more about activating for your clients, and to test your knowledge!

Building for Successful Activations

Nail the Brilliant Basics

Once you've set up your Agency Business Center, it's time to ensure you're putting the right structures in place to efficiently and effectively plan, buy, measure, and optimize your clients' media and creative on TikTok.

1) Start by Setting Up Your Clients' Ads Manager

After getting your clients' Ad Accounts set up on your Agency Business Center, you'll be able to access their Ads Manager to create campaigns, monitor data, and make optimizations.

Setting up TikTok Ads Manager (TTAM) for your client is essential, as it will serve as your hub to manage their campaigns; the process is simple - in your Agency Business Center, click the "Add a New Advertiser Account" button to automatically set up your client's TTAM account. If your client already has a TTAM account, you can link your client’s TikTok Ads Manager to your Agency Business Center.

2) Determine Your Client's Campaign Goals

TikTok has you covered, no matter what you and your clients are looking to achieve. Upon aligning with your clients on their goals, you can leverage the below objectives and ad products that align.

Ensure you create structures in line with client business objectives.

  • Reach - show your ads the maximum number of times at an efficient price.
  • Video Views - maximize plays of your ad among audiences most likely to engage.
  • Community Interaction - build a community of loyal fans and future customers.
  • Traffic - drive people to a destination (i.e. a website or app).
  • Lead Generation - identify + convert potential customers into leads.
  • App Promotion - encourage audiences to install and engage with your app.
  • Web Conversions - inspire users to take valuable action on your website.
  • Product Sales - drive purchases of products sold online.

3) Set Up Your Pixel to Track, Measure, and Optimize

Once your clients' TTAM accounts are set up and approved, implement the TikTok pixel to help build marketing audiences, optimize ad delivery, and measure campaign performance. Installing the pixel on your clients' site is easy and can be done in one of two ways: manual implementation, or automatically setting the pixel up through partner platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, or Google Tag Manager.

See below for an overview of how the pixel works.

Setting up the TikTok pixel is easy.

  1. Decide which category of pixel you'd like to install.
  2. Install the base code, either manually, or via a partner.
  3. Set up Events to track valuable actions on your clients' websites, such as Add to Cart, Subscribe, or Check Out.
  4. Share the pixels you set up with your clients via the Agency Business Center.

4)  Develop Creative for Your Client

TikTok runs on a content graph, meaning the videos a user sees on their For You Page (FYP) is based on what they love, not who they know. This means brands and businesses can be discovered based on the quality of their creative content alongside creators and community members.

Great creative starts with the six Creative Codes outlined below and remember to spend time in your own FYP to get inspired.

Lean in to connecting and co-creating with the TikTok community.

Visualize your client as a community member and explore TikTok to understand how they might behave in different communities such as #BookTok or #FoodTok.

This will also help you to understand what type of content is likely on your client's FYP. From there, you can determine who your client is to this audience - the personality and expertise they bring to the conversation.

Get inspired at the TikTok Creative Center.

The Creative Center (TTCC) is designed to help you keep up with the latest and greatest of what's happening on TikTok, including:

  • Creative Strategies & Insights
  • Trend Intelligence (Hashtags, Songs, etc.)
  • Top Ads & Top Products
  • Creative Tools
  • ...and more.

Leverage our creative tools and services to build great videos, easily.

Avoid common ad policy roadblocks.

All TikTok ads are subject to approval - you can keep some of the top blockers below in mind:

  • No "swipe up" capabilities.
  • No TikTok-related elements (i.e. saying "I love TikTok.")
  • No TikTok watermarks.
  • No profanity in lyrics, text, captions, voiceovers, etc..
  • No promises (i.e. "you will get good grades...").
  • No absolutes (i.e. "we are the #1 app.")
  • No "before and after" comparisons.
  • No excessively visible skin exposure.

5) Test the marriage of Organic + Paid with Spark Ads.

Spark Ads are a native ad format that allow advertisers to tap into authenticity by boosting organic content directly from a business account or a creator.

6) Power your clients' customer conversations with TikTok targeting.

TikTok offers a variety of targeting, from basic demographic to custom audiences built from your own customer files. Check out the brief overview is below.

Targeting can help you to...

  1. Grow Your Business: show your ads to relevant audiences and target those who have shown interest in your campaigns.
  2. Engage with Customers: leverage data to reach new and existing audiences; reach and scale with TikTok's targeting expansion and re-engagement tools.
  3. Understand & Refine: plan, forecast, and build campaigns with free and easy-to-use tools available in TikTok Ads Manager.

Continue on to test your knowledge!

Agency Foundations Knowledge Check

Congratulations on finishing the Agency Foundations course! This quick quiz will help to test what you've just learned.

  1. True or False? The Agency Business Center is an all-in-one hub that helps you manage your clients' payments, track performance, and collaborate to reach your goals on TikTok.
  2. True or False? Agency Business Center admin members will only be able to see and edit the features to which they are assigned?
  3. True or False? The key benefits of manual payments are: charge your account automatically; reduce unnecessary campaign pauses; and accuse costs first, then pay.
  4. True or False? There is only one way to set up the TikTok Pixel.
  5. True or False? TikTok’s recommendation engine prioritizes content, not a person's following.
  6. Which of the following is not an element of a Spark Ad?                           a. Account Page b. Engagement c. Landing Page d. Promoted Music Tag not Clickable
  7. Which of the below are TikTok Creative Codes? Select all that apply.      a. Trendsb. Simulation c. Music d. Sound

Answer Key

  1. Correct Answer: True
  2. Correct Answer: False
  3. Correct Answer: False
  4. Correct Answer: False
  5. Correct Answer: True
  6. Correct Answer: D
  7. Correct Answer: A, B, D