I decided a long time ago I wasn’t going to spend my money on fancy purses and shoes, but I would for food.

The Food industry is everywhere but especially on tiktok, that is the industry that targeted me the most! Shocker! In some ways even for smaller business and lower budgeted advertisements food will always have a way of standing out. It’s one thing every living person in the world has to do. Although it’s not measured in any data shown it is a social factor to note.

I did a deep dive into the top ad campaigns for the food industry on tiktok creative center and got some really interesting insight. The highest performing ad surprised me and didn’t at the same time. But I wanted to narrow it down so I picked spicific goals, I wanted to see what was the key to hitting measurable performance goals.

The Top performing Ad with the goal of high traffic and product sales is HiddenValleys Creamy Ranch Mac ‘n Cheese with Ranch Seasoning.

This ad does a great job at telling you exactly what the ad is for right away, all about that Ranch! You know the ad performed well because the second highest performing ad in that category is for the ranch dressing itself. The brand broke down the data and noticed a formating process that helps drives sales and website traffic so why not repeat it for a different product.

This ad is in the top 22% for click through rates and that was the overall goal because the website landing pages has a very clear call to action. They drove traffic to the website’s landing page for people to sign up for a Hidden Valley Reward Program and to start shopping for different products. 

Three seconds into the video the full product is on display for the viewer. However, the video itself struggles to keep audiences attention, maybe that’s to do with that fact that the brand is already established and well known. Meaning people would click the link to the webpage just because they already enjoy the brand. Overall the campaigns goal is to drive traffic and that’s what it did!

This made me curious what the top rated post is when the goal is about conversion. My search led me to a cookie company called YVR Cookies.

This had a medium budget which is interesting because it performed overall better in statistics than the well known Hidden Valley brand with a higher budget. This brand is in the top 7% of the industry average for click through rate. They have a creative video post that keeps audiences invested until the very end. This is something Hidden Valley didn’t do.

The video grabs attention and even better kept that attention throughout. The brand’s post is also in the top 5% for Conversion rate, so maybe learning from this might increase the budget allocation for the post to reach an even wider audience. The only thing is that it might be a hair too long. The most clicks were at the beginning of the video and at the end. The middle can sometimes get lost. However, it also drives people to a sign up landing page.

The analysis shows a steady consistency for retention on the video so maybe there is another key reason why the middle loses clicks. That is always something to think about. That is where something like A/B testing comes into play, maybe try switching platforms are changing the hashtags.

It also helps that the product looks delicious!

You may be wondering why look at this silly little data at all. As Sharon Lee Thony wrote in The Marketing Campaign Playbook, ” Data allows marketers to make informed decisions based on actual user behaviors and trends,” it is an ever changing world out there, marketing needs to keep up or it can get washed out. Both ads meet and exceed goals but can always learn from the analysis for the next campaign.