Paid social media ad campaigns are key to reaching your business’s goals through social media. When creating an ad, it’s important to be strategic to get the most out of your ad and, more importantly, the most out of your investment. You must optimize your ads so that you reach your objectives in the most efficient way possible. To dive deeper into this topic, I analyzed a TikTok ad from Waterboy.

Waterboy’s Ad from TikTok’s Ad Library

How Effective Is This Ad?

Waterboy listed their objectives for this ad as product sales and conversions. More specifically, this ad serves as a way to show why you should buy Waterboy’s Weekend Recovery over a competitor’s similar product.

The format of the ad is a video response to a comment. This immediately stood out to me because video responses are a popular video style on TikTok, often used by creators. I like how this format helps the video feel less like an ad. Within the video, you can see the comment which asks, “How do you compare to LMNT?” Below the comment is a graphic with a side-by-side comparison of Waterboy’s Weekend Recovery, Waterboy’s Athletic Recovery, and LMNT’s Electrolyte drink mix. This graphic clearly shows why Waterboy’s product is better than its competitors. It also highlights the differences between Waterboy’s two products, showing how they’re both better than LMNT, but they have different strengths depending on your needs. The ad links to a landing page where you can purchase Waterboy’s Weekend Recovery.

Waterboy’s Weekend Recovery is a product that is meant to be used when drinking alcohol. The purpose is to combat hangover symptoms. I would imagine they’re targeting a younger demographic, specifically men and women ages 21-35. The interests of their audience would include social activities that involve alcohol. If they’re targeting specific locations, I would think big cities with nightlife would make the most sense. This ad is for consumers who haven’t tried Waterboy yet, and especially ones who have tried LMNT or other competitors in the past and weren’t completely satisfied. Even if they were satisfied with the competitor, this ad highlights how Waterboy is even better. 

I looked at WordStream’s Facebook Ad Benchmarks to estimate the performance of this ad. Looking at the various industries, I decided Waterboy best fit within fitness. The average click-through rate is 1.01% and the average conversion rate is 14.29% for the fitness industry. When looking at how this ad performed on TikTok, it definitely performed above the industry average. As shown below, this ad had high CTRs and CVRs throughout the video. 

What I Would Improve

I think this is a great and effective ad, but there are some changes I would make. The video is simple, with a graphic on screen as music plays for 15 seconds. I would try using a voiceover rather than music. The voiceover could draw more attention and further explain what is shown in the graphic. Some users will see a static image with a lot of words, especially on TikTok, a video platform, and scroll away. A voiceover or perhaps someone standing in front of the graphic using the greenscreen effect could help keep the viewers’ attention. I would also try including a CTA in the video. The ad has a link to the page where you can purchase the product, but a CTA in the video could convince more users to visit the link. I think “click the link before your next night out” would be a good one to use here. These different changes could be tested out one by one using A/B testing, to see if using one or all of these tactics improves the performance.

Overall, this ad is effective and it’s clear why it’s performing well on TikTok. I’m even convinced now that I should try Waterboy!