How Baku Electronics Cracked the Back-to-School Season with AI-Driven TikTok Performance Marketing

Written by

Anna Voronina

Date published

Nov 4, 2025

The Challenge: Converting Seasonal Momentum into Results

It was September 2025, and Baku Electronics faced a familiar e-commerce crossroads. The back-to-school season was in full swing — a critical window when consumer spending spikes and competition intensifies. As the leading distributor of over 60 international brands across Azerbaijan, including Samsung, LG, Sony, and Apple, Baku Electronics knew they had the products. What they needed was a way to reach the right audiences at the right moment without burning through their marketing budget.

The stakes were high. Back-to-school campaigns are expensive on traditional advertising channels. Rising CPM costs and declining conversion rates mean many retailers either overspend or miss the moment entirely. Baku Electronics needed a performance channel that could deliver both reach and efficiency — or risk leaving money on the table during their most important selling period.

The Shift: Discovering TikTok as a Performance Channel

Rather than doubling down on familiar channels, Baku Electronics decided to test something different. They turned to TikTok — not for brand awareness, but as a direct performance channel. Artunj Behbudlu, Head of Growth Marketing Unit at Baku Electronics, saw a tactical opportunity in automatic product feed placement, and it paid off.

“The campaign launched with a clear mandate: push products for back-to-school while maintaining efficiency metrics that traditional channels couldn't deliver.
We wanted to test how TikTok could help us show our products to the right audience in a natural way. The product feed placement made it easy for people to discover and shop directly from the ad.”
— Artunj Behbudlu, Head of Growth Marketing Unit, Baku Electronics

This strategic shift proved transformative. TikTok became more than a platform for engagement — it turned into a measurable sales driver.

The Results: When Efficiency Becomes Competitive Advantage

During the 11-30 September campaign period, Baku Electronics achieved:

Cost per click (CPC): $0.04
Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM): $0.55

But these metrics only tell half the story. The true victory was contextual. The campaign delivered lower CPM and lower CPC rates simultaneously — a feat that defies the typical advertising trade-off where cheaper impressions mean more expensive clicks, or vice versa. By using AI targeting and dynamic product feeds, Baku Electronics found an equilibrium that shouldn't have existed.

The reason was simple: better targeting means fewer wasted impressions, which lowers CPM. The dynamic feeds added conversion opportunities at every step, compounding these efficiencies.

The Strategy: Three Forces of Digital Retail Alchemy

The success of Baku Electronics' campaign hinged on three strategic pillars working in concert.

First: AI-Driven Targeting That Outpaces Human Intuition

Instead of relying on manual audience segmentation, Baku Electronics deployed AI targeting through TikTok's native tools: Smart+ and Catalog ads. This wasn't just automation for automation's sake. The AI identified buyer intent patterns faster than traditional targeting methods could — recognizing which users were actively searching for back-to-school electronics, home appliances, and furniture. The result was a campaign that delivered strong engagement and conversion rates early on, before competitors had even begun their optimization processes. By letting algorithms identify intent patterns in real-time, Baku Electronics eliminated the typical lag time between campaign launch and performance optimization.

Second: Creative Consistency Through Unified Visual Identity

One of the most overlooked aspects of modern e-commerce is the gap between discovery and conversion. A user sees an ad, clicks it, and then lands somewhere completely different. This friction kills conversions.

Baku Electronics solved this by maintaining creative consistency across all touchpoints. They developed a unified campaign visual that was customized and deployed across all product feed ads thanks to Aitech team. The payoff was measurable: creative consistency boosted brand recall, increased user trust, and enhanced CTR.

Third: Real-Time Inventory as Your Competitive Advantage

Where many retailers treat product catalogs as static data, Baku Electronics integrated real-time product feeds directly into their TikTok ads. This meant that users could explore items directly within the ad experience itself — no click, no navigation, no friction. They could browse Samsung laptops, LG televisions, Apple products, and Bosch appliances without ever leaving TikTok.

This integration reduced the friction between discovery and purchase for customers, while simultaneously providing Baku Electronics with granular data about which product categories drove the most conversions.

The Lesson

Baku Electronics used a smart system — AI to spot intent, consistent creative to build trust, and real-time data to cut friction and guide decisions. The result: a lower-cost, high-impact back-to-school campaign. More than a win, it’s a model for 2025 performance marketing — where strong systems make every part work smarter together.