Why TikTok Leads Go Cold: 4 Opportunities Marketers Keep Missing

Annie Heavercroft, TikTok's global head of product marketing communications and industry development, has spent nearly five years shaping the platform's B2B (business-to-business) lead-generation strategy — first across Asia-Pacific, now globally. She's noticed marketers tend to make the same mistakes, treating TikTok purely as an "awareness" tool when the platform's real strength lies in closing the conversion.

Invisalign's campaign is a prime example. Instead of a standard lead form, the brand built a "Smile Test" directly into the ad — users answered a few questions without ever leaving TikTok and found out whether Invisalign was right for them. The result: a 28% lift in form completions, an 11% drop in customer acquisition cost, and a 133% increase in fully completed page loads.

Heavercroft points out that TikTok has over 1 billion monthly users, but fixating on that number is a mistake: "It's easy to see it as a reach play, but it's really about how the quality of our community and the engagement of our audience convert into quality leads." Marketers should use TikTok's range of formats — from pixels and APIs driving to their own site, to in-platform forms, messaging ads, and click-to-call ads — at every stage of the funnel.

One of America's leading pet insurers, Spot Pet Insurance, moved from form fills to tracking quote requests and completed payments, and saw 23% more quality leads at a 19% lower cost per lead. Toyota Germany routed every lead into long-term nurture programs within its own CRM and cut customer acquisition cost by 38% — an example, Heavercroft says, of building a relationship with a lead instead of letting it go cold.

Working with creators is another underused opportunity. Spanish energy provider Gana Energia A/B tested brand-made content against creator-made content through TikTok One — the creator format won, driving a 632% increase in total lead volume and cutting cost per lead by 64.5%.

Heavercroft recommends brands follow a five-step core framework: start with a clear business outcome, build a diverse mix of brand and creator assets, set up quality signals through pixel, API, and CRM, follow platform best practices, and continuously analyze results to shift budget toward what's working.