How to grow your business using TikTok Shop

Are you ready to grow your business? Because TikTok Shop may just be the way to do it. 

TikTok Shop is probably the best marketing feature across social media right now. As an extension of TikTok’s already fantastic shopping capabilities, TikTok Shop brings together a range of features and tools to enhance your brand, such as: live streaming, creator affiliate schemes and easy-to-create promotions.
Laura Mallows,  founder of Mallows Beauty, recently said she earns the same amount in 2 hours of TikTok live (via TikTok shop) as she does in one week in her brick-and-mortar store in Cardiff. 

Being free to join for all brands/businesses, it’s an opportunity you don’t want to miss experimenting with. 

Firstly, let’s look at why TikTok is such a fantastic marketing opportunity. 

Demographics

Globally, TikTok currently has 1 billion global active users, with approximately 13.1 million users in the UK with the expectation that there will be 15 million users in the UK by 2025. 

Source: Hootsuite

According to Hootsuite’s Digital 2022 report, you have the opportunity to reach:

18-24 years old – 5,619,900 users 

25-34 years old – 4,087,200 users

35-44 years old – 1,676,800 users

45-54 years old – 825,300 users 

55 + – 445,400 users 

TikTok’s user demographics have changed a lot over the last few years, with older people finding entertainment and value within the app. 

The label that Tiktok is purely for Gen Z is outdated, which means there is space for you to experiment with social commerce on the platform. With such a broad range of users, it’s likely that your audience is using the platform – so with its great shopping features, TikTok should be the app you experiment with next. 

If your current customers are purely UK based, TikTok could also open your brand up to an international audience. With over 1 billion monthly active users globally, this channel has huge opportunities.  

#TikTokMadeMeBuyIt

This hashtag has over 12 billion views to date. Social commerce has been booming on the platform since the introduction of in-app shopping, with TikTok stating that 37% of users who see a product on TikTok immediately want to buy it. 

There is an extremely unique community feel on TikTok that enhances trust in brands and creators. Due to the promotion of authenticity on the platform and a lot of people showing their true selves, trust is naturally increased. 

This could play a huge part in why social commerce on the platform is so successful. 

A video from @TikTokShop_uk shared these statistics about social commerce in the UK right now:

• 20% of consumers buy via social media 
• 11 million shoppers bought on social media 
• 95% increase in social commerce sales 

The benefits of using TikTok Shop

TikTok Shop has a range of benefits to support brands and businesses including: 

1. Merchant-led lives and in-feed videos 
2. Creator Collaborations 
3. Campaigns and promotions 

TikTok has done a fantastic job of listening to what businesses on TikTok want and need, while analyzing what works on the platform. As a result, they have created a tool that has a plethora of beneficial features to support selling.

Live streaming

Live streaming is engaging, captivating and sells. Remember QVC, the flagship shopping channel that has sold millions (and shipped approximately 183 million units in 2016 across its global markets)?  It’s still here. 

With live streaming you can authentically connect with your audience in real time. They can ask questions and get answers straight away. You can show them the pros and cons, what a product looks like. You can really sell the products that you are passionate about. 

The platform also comes with great analytics that gives you clear figures including views, impressions and revenue to help you understand the power of your TikTok Shop activity. 

With such detailed data, you can inform your future product pushes around what works and what doesn’t. 

Collaborating with creators

If you need some additional support or if you want to use the power of creators, Tiktok has made this easy. 

TikTok shop has affiliate plans that enable brands/sellers to work with creators via Shop. Once an affiliate has been created, you will pay influencers commission on sales generated. If you have a list of creators you want to work with, you can invite them to your affiliate.  

Here are the plans: 

• An open plan is visible to all creators who are qualified for affiliate. Creators interested in the respective products will apply for selling the products and can start doing so once their applications are approved. 
• A targeted plan allows you to invite targeted creators to promote products for you. Creators can start promotion after they accept your invitation. 
• A shop plan enables you set a universal commission rate for all products in the seller center. The priority of displaying commission ratio for a product in different plans is: ‘targeted plan> open plan> shop plan’. 

If you’re not comfortable creating your own content, here’s an article on how you can use user-generated content in your strategy.

Campaigns and promotions 

TikTok knows the power of campaigns and promotions – that is why they’ve made it easy to create them.  

TikTok campaigns 

These are TikToks own campaigns; you can register your products to be a part of one. A recent one was their spring sale with products upto 70% off. It had 309 million views. 

Flash sales

This type of campaign can only be used on one product at a time and the cost has to be lower than the original price. The items will have a special tag with ‘flash deal’ to encourage buyers and the campaign is limited to a short time frame. 

Discounts 

These campaigns can be applied to many products, in the form of x% off, or fixed price discounts that can last longer than a flash sale. 

Free shipping

Exactly what it says. This campaign offers customers free shipping but comes with a special tag on the video to entice people in.

How to sign up to TikTok Shop? 

Signing up is quick and easy, plus TikTok has a range of videos and tutorials to support you with everything you do across the platform. 

Once you’ve signed up, here are some top tips from the TikTok community to help you out: 

Live Shop tips

1. Pin your products to encourage more click-throughs (repeat this throughout your entire live as the pin function only lasts 30s each time) 
2. Go into a lot of detail on your products (tell them why they need it) 
3. Tell viewers to click on the orange basket to go to your TikTok shop
4. Repeat yourself over and over as view times are very short 
5. Big up exclusive discounts and giveaways 
6. Use comparisons to enhance your product 

Here’s an extra tip from Elizabete from @eternalmusehair: “Be confident and be yourself, talk to it like you’re talking to your mum on Facetime.” 95% of Elizabete’s sales are coming from TikTok. Within 1-year she sold 18,000 of her bestseller on TikTok.

For any more information on TikTok or our digital services, get in touch with our team!