3 Smart Tactics for Selling Products on TikTok Shop

Even before the official rollout of TikTok Shop in September, merchants were already building a presence on the platform to create brand awareness and generate sales. It's safe to say it would evolve social commerce in some major ways. With its official release in the US, it's poised to become a significant revenue stream for many eCommerce retailers in 2024.

TikTok Shop is seeing an influx of new and established brands now selling products on the platform, creating or collaborating on shoppable content, and launching campaigns to capture audiences' attention. 

The question is—how do you grab a piece of the pie without overspending on your paid campaigns? This article will explore three smart tactics to maximize your effectiveness and your revenue on TikTok Shop.

1. Understanding the changing TikTok audience

To succeed on TikTok Shop—like anywhere else—you must know your target audience well. 

TikTok has a reputation for having a young audience, but that audience is rapidly growing older. As the social platform has become more mainstream, it’s acquired a more diverse (and more mature) user base that savvy merchants will know to target.

While Gen Z remains TikTok's dominant demographic, young Millennials are close behind. Almost 420 million of TikTok's advertising audience are aged 18-24, followed by 354.8 million aged 25-34. 

Older audiences are less present on the platform, but usage among this demographic is growing steadily (and, obviously, existing users are aging too). In other words, you shouldn't write off all those 170 million users aged 35 to 44 and 87.3 million users aged 45 to 54—that's a lot of potential customers. 

Tailoring your promotional strategy to reach these diverse audience groups can be more effective than taking a blanket approach. For example, only 5% of brands spend on influencer campaigns that reach Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980) despite their increasing presence on TikTok. Plenty of untapped opportunities exist for companies willing to expand their reach.

We don't say you shouldn't target Gen Z or Millennials—you absolutely should if they're your target buyer—but consider expanding your strategy to reach older generations on TikTok if they match your personas. Specific niches and communities are also often overlooked, so merchants who get to know their specific audiences are often more successful than those who do not.

How do you craft your strategy to the likes of different audience groups?

• Find out what kind of content each of your customer personas engages with. Do they follow specific hashtags, prefer entertaining or informational content, or participate in TikTok LIVEs? TikTok Ads Manager can help you better understand your audience’s interests and behaviors.
• Collaborate with TikTok creators across diverse verticals and age ranges.  Not sure where to find Gen X influencers? Accounts of Wayne Brady and Corrbette Pasko could be a nice place to start. Regardless of your target audience, find out the specific influencers, channels, or hashtags they follow. Sometimes, teaming up with an influencer with a smaller, more dedicated following can be more valuable than someone with 20-30 million people.
• Adopt their communication style. Tailor your content's language and tone to resonate with the preferences of different age groups. Don’t assume that all TikTok content involves silly dancing and girl dinner. Authentic, native content always pays off on TikTok, which means a nuanced approach.

2. Simplifying operations to avoid manual hassles

When you know who you are selling to, it’s time to figure out how to sell on TikTok Shop efficiently. Attracting buyers to your TikTok Shop is one thing. Fulfilling their orders is a whole different animal. 

TikTok Shop's emphasis on short-form, visually appealing content makes it a perfect platform for impulse-driven purchasing decisions. Seventy-one percent of TikTok users admit they shopped when they stumbled upon a product promotion in their feeds. 

Put yourself in the customer's shoes. 

You’re browsing TikTok and see your favorite creator showcasing how they’ve miraculously cleared their skin with Hero’s pimple patch. 

You haven’t been looking for anything like this but need it desperately. You click the link and whoops… it turns out the product is out of stock. It also turns out you don’t need the product that much to be patiently waiting for a restock—you’ll be swept away by another creator’s video promoting GroovyLED’s strip lights in a few seconds.

Managing product information and orders across several platforms isn’t just stressful and risky because it’s easy to overlook something or introduce errors. It’s also incredibly time-consuming. 

Top brands use a centralized product feed management tool to save their team time and update their product listings across major eCommerce platforms. AfterShip Feed streamlines your multi-channel eCommerce operations, allowing merchants to sync their store products directly to TikTok Shop in minutes.

No need to manually link products or centralize orders. Connect your TikTok Shop with major platforms like Shopify, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, or Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and manage all your operations through AfterShip Feed. 

AfterShip Feed saves retailers workforce costs associated with order fulfillment by improving operational efficiency with advanced order management capabilities. 100% accuracy when syncing your eCommerce platform and TikTok Shop also ensures you’re not caught overselling stock that you don’t have.

3. Building a TikTok Shop marketing strategy

TikTok audiences want content made for the platform—not ads or content repurposed from other campaigns, even if that content was successful on other platforms. So, build up a promotion strategy tailored to the specific tastes of TikTok users.

Here's what you can do.

Engage TikTok creators

TikTok creators represent a large group of users (around 800,000 creators at the time of writing) monetizing their content through brand partnerships.

You can connect with potential content partners on the Creator Marketplace. The platform gives you access to detailed creator profiles, including the data on engagement rates, audience demographics, and other metrics—everything you need to find the right match.

What does it cost to engage creators? Two types of compensation brands may offer to TikTok influencers: a one-time campaign payment and an affiliate commission. The latter is a particularly effective model for driving sales on TikTok Shop.

Affiliate marketing on TikTok involves partnering with creators who promote your products and earn a commission for each sale generated through their unique affiliate link. This approach aligns with the interests of both the brand and the creator since the creator benefits directly from the campaign's success. 

Set a commission rate that makes sense to you. Invite TikTok creators to become your affiliates. You can also open your program to all creators to scale sales faster.

Follow the hottest content trends

TikTok engagement is built on trends. One day, someone posts a video using the "Surprise, surprise!" song by Cilla Black, and within a month, the #surprisesurprise hashtag explodes with billions of views.

More and more businesses are catching on to the power of TikTok trends for their promotion. 

Take K18 for example. This haircare brand launched in late 2020, and the company used TikTok to build rapid awareness, partnering with talented TikTok creators to create User-Generated Content (UGC). But influencer campaigns aren't the only tactic responsible for K18's tremendous success on the platform. The company shares hilarious videos on the brand TikTok account, always following the hottest content trends. 

K18 successfully capitalized on the 'girl math' trend. This content boosts traction and drives people to your TikTok Shop (because who can resist "girl math" done right?).

@k18hair An investment in your hair that's less than your weekly Starbucks order #k18hair #k18results #sephora ♬ original sound - SpongeBob background music

Mix fun and engaging content with how-to and UGC videos, and you get a perfect formula for selling on TikTok without feeling too salesy.

Optimize your content for visibility

Sometimes, publishing a funny video is enough to go viral on TikTok and attract buyers' attention. But most often, it's not.

Luckily, there's a free way to boost your content visibility—you should pay specific attention to managing your content and hashtags, namely:

• Always include relevant details in video captions.
• Research hashtags your audience follows and use three to five hashtags per post.
• Configure device and account settings like your language preference, country setting, and device type. 
• Use trending audio in your videos.
• Post content consistently—show up daily to stay on top of your audience's minds.

Run LIVE events

TikTok LIVE is a promotion method with an incredible conversion rate. According to research done by TikTok,  50% of users have purchased something after watching TikTok LIVE.

Major brands are already seeing success with live shopping, even in places like North America, where the experience is relatively new. For example, when joining the TikTok Shop in Vietnam early in 2023, Kiehl's hosted 40 livestreams over 30 days. They used LIVE Shopping Ads and Video Shopping Ads to amplify livestreams, seeing a 6.7x increase in ROAS. 

Kiehl's is just one of many companies that use live events to drive sales. What makes the tactic so effective? It may be because TikTok LIVE allows brands to connect with their customers directly, creating a sense of community, one of the three entry points for entertainment on TikTok.

Sell on TikTok Shop through a centralized product feed management system

TikTok Shop gives you access to a large and engaged user base. You can expand your audience and boost sales by employing the tactics in this guide. We've also created a more fundamental guide to getting started on TikTok Shop that'll take you through the nitty-gritty.

But first, optimize seller operations with AfterShip Feed. Having taken care of your product feed and order management, you can focus on creating engaging content for your TikTok Shop.