I finally moved a client's budget from Google Ads to TikTok and now I can't tell if I made it worse
Back in March I shifted $4,500/mo for a small skincare brand in Portland from search to TikTok Spark Ads and their cost per sale dropped from $38 to $22, but their return customers almost dried up. Is cheaper traffic worth losing the people who actually come back, or am I reading the data wrong?
I used to think cheap traffic was just cheap traffic and you take the win. Then I watched a friend's candle shop do the same thing, cost per sale went from $41 to $19 on TikTok, and six months later their repeat rate had fallen off a cliff. The people coming from search were typing "best face cream for dry skin" with a card already out. The TikTok buyers were impulse buys at 11pm who never thought about the brand again. So yeah, $22 looks great on a dashboard until you factor in lifetime value and suddenly that $38 search customer who buys four times a year is the better deal. I'd say split the budget, keep some search running, and watch repeat rate over 90 days before you call it either way.